Courage

My favorite Hockney piece has always been a photographic collage, The Scrabble Game (1983). I don't agree with the criticisms of shallow or cheery--both because I don't see his work that way and because I don't see those qualities as automatic negatives. To each his own!

You might be making a "mountain out of a mohel." Yuk-yuk-yuk. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohel Sorry--I couldn't resist. I have nothing to add that more knowledgeable people haven't already said better than I could.

Re: Costs of and requirements for PreP. Pardon my ignorance--I only have become active to any degree in the past few years. Besides the actual pills, what are the costs and requirements for use of PreP? Someone mentioned regular testing. Is that about it? Funny story: when I asked (on @Funguy 's rec) about Gardisil as an older adult and my doc looked at me and asked if I was going to be using sex workers. Awkward!

Hawt.

It's a hobby dominated by old white guys. The magazine probably doesn't want to be a front in the culture war, so I'll leave it at that.

I think this is important. A hobbyist magazine I read recently ran a story about a school that is "woman and trans" friendly and got some blowback in the letter column lecturing about how the mag's demographic didn't want to hear about it. The managing editor made a very good and brave response. I'm not trans, but wrote my once-a-decade letter to express solidarity. "Yes, we must indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang seperately"--Ben Franklin

Having grown up uncomfortable with the concept and identity, it's still a bit of a struggle to identify with the terms. I've settled on "gay" because it's short, it explains the situation, and it demonstrates solidarity with the people who've fought so hard.

Followed the subtitles and heard what sound like pop-type hooks, but even in English there's only a few true pop songs I know well. So I'm definitely not the best judge. I find the popularity of K-Pop by English-speaking audiences to be an intriguing and positive thing, especially these days. One of my friends recently married a Swedish woman and I asked her why the Swedish rock bands we talk about (The Caesars, The Hives, ABBA) write and sing in English. She basically said that was where the money was.

Thanks! The English version is now a minor highlight of my day today.

I consider Grace Slick's descent from White Rabbit to We Built This City to be an argument for the forced retirement of rock stars. :-P

Interesting. It's like French New Wave or something.

Lost in translation for me. :-) I have a friend who loves Asian stuff, particularly Bollywood and Korean pop and soaps--has even been to award shows in the US. I'm pretty sure she doesn't speak any Indian languages or Korean, but she loves it all the same.

(1) They can try. The results vary. Certainly, hiding the "countless" examples behind the *best* examples is overestimating the quality of all examples. (2) Some literature *relies* on the texture of personal experience. Some doesn't. There are great examples of both. (3) A white writer can transliterate dialect flawlessly, research relentlessly, document extensively, and sympathize a whole bunch...but second-hand is second-hand. It works in all directions: black writers' attempts to get into white people's minds can be pretty jarring. To pick an example, Ernest Gaines wrote in the voice of a white college student in a chapter of A Gathering of Old Men...and I didn't think it worked as well as the other voices.

I didn't realize the music thread was an old thread! Someone exhumed it and I didn't look at OP date.

(Inspired by @latbear4blk) : The song you can't get out of your head *right now*--not your "favorite" but the one between your ears at the present time. Mine is "She Don't Use Jelly" by The Flaming Lips, which I heard for the first time a few weeks ago.