not combat rations, thats for sure. ive had enough of those for a lifetime.
but my latest food hit has been pretzel bites. pretzels are an awesome food but rarely available fresh when i want to eat them, which is usually when i’ve woken up in the middle of the night. they’re relatively labor-intensive to make, which is good once the insomnia sets in. keeps me busy. plus, pretzels are sweet on the inside, salty on the outside, just like me. except im also salty on the inside. dont listen to steve.
when i make pretzels, it’s by the metric ton, so the recipe i have makes approximately a million of them.probably you will not want this many, because you don’t have thor or steve to help you eat them. or clint. probably you could just shove some into a vaccum cleaner instead, thatd be about the same. so divide the recipe in half or quarters for normal human consumption. take 11 cups of flour, 1 cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of oil and mix. 4 cups of warm water gets 11 teaspoons of yeast and sits for a bit, then goes in the flour mix. then mix it and let it rise for about an hour. the dough should be sticky to the touch and absolutely awful to get out of your metal fingers. while you wait, wander your living area for some poor sucker to rope into helping you, because stage 2 is easier with help. or you can sit down and wonder why you talk yourself into doing things like this. consider your choices. it’s already too late to go back to sleep; youve got dough rising.
get a deep fry pan or sauce pan and fill with about two inches of water. bring it to a rolling boil on the stove and add in three or so tablespoons of baking soda. you really can’t do too much of that, as long as the water’s not getting super cloudy. preheat the oven to 400 degrees. wake steve up and tell him he has to help.
get a couple egg yolks in a bowl with a basting brush, and find some kosher salt or sea salt. grease up a few pans.
flour a surface and roll the dough out until it’s between ½ and ¼ in thick. get your poor unsuspecting minion to cut out bite sized bits. i use an inch and a half circle cookie cutter, but you can use whatever you want, really. tony used a laser cutter last time i let him help, which was…not ideal.
drop the cut outs into the boiling soda water, and let them sit for a few seconds, then fish them out. you can use your robot hand for that, but again, you’ll be getting dough out of it for days. i let them drip dry on a cookie drying sheet, but you could also drop them on a clean dishtowel i guess. you just dont want them to be wet when you put them on the cookie sheet.
they’re not gonna expand a ton, so just stuff em up close to each other on the sheet. paint the tops with egg yolks and sprinkle with salt. pop em in the oven for 10-15 min or until golden brown.
repeat the boiling-and-baking until you want to die, then keep going until you run out of dough. while the last batch is baking, take a half a stick of butter, a quarter cup of flour and make a roux in a saucepan. add two cups of milk and two cups of cheddar cheese, some salt and pepper to taste, and a quarter cup of mustard, give or take. im showing you how much to use with my hands but you cant see it. sorry, i dont really measure stuff most of the time. heat and stir till it’s melty and amazing, and dip pretzels on in there.
by the time you have completed this process and eaten as many pretzel bites as you want–and there will be enough. it’s a dang big recipe–you will want to enter a food coma and sleep forever. or for 70 years or so.
there. insomnia fixed.
It’s 4:30 am and I am, yet again, making a quadruple batch of insomnia pretzels, this time with barbeque cheddar sauce. There are 16 people currently asleep in my house; I would be shocked if these things lasted more than 12 hours.
For those who don’t have a million people to feed, a normal-sized batch of dough is as follows; follow all other instructions as-is.
2 ¾ (ish) cups flour
¼ cup brown sugar
1/8 cup oil
1 cup warm water
3 teaspoons yeast
If you’re not feeling salty/cheesy pretzels, you can also coat these in brown sugar & cinnamon and dip them in icing.
Special thanks to Nimitz, The Terror Of The Underbrush, She Who Eats Egg Whites, and to Ben, the fellow insomniac/night shift guy/provider of hard ciders/oven checker.
@copperbadge, I’m not expecting you to reply to this, but I feel like this is a recipe that is both mild enough and flexible enough that it might appeal to your supertaster and inclination for kitchen experimentation.
I’m assuming this is your doing, Hell 😀
The will of the people (at least, 52 of them) is clearly that I make pretzel bites, and I’ve got the time before I leave for the ball game at noon. I’ve always been rather nervous about trying because of the whole boiling thing, but last week I successfully made a frittata so I’m on a roll.
I have no brown sugar so we’re gonna kludge this the old-fashioned way, with white sugar and maple syrup.
My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.
I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”
I searched and searched for the post this graphic was from, and the OP deactivated, but I kept the graphic, because my BFF does the same thing, uses her imagination to come up with the worst pain she can imagine and pegs her “10″ there, and so is like, well, I’m conscious, so this must be a 5, and then the doctors don’t take her seriously. (And she then does things like driving herself to the hospital while in the process of giving birth. Probably should have called an ambulance for that one!)
So I found this and sent it to her. Because this is what they want to know: how badly is this pain affecting you? Not on a scale of “nothing” to “how I’d imagine it’d feel if bears were eating my still-living guts while I was on fire”.
I hate reposting stuff, but I’ll never find that post again and OP is deactivated, so, here’s a repost. I can delete this later, i just wanted to get it to you and I can’t embed images in a chat or an ask.
This is possibly why it took several weeks to diagnose my fractured spine.
Pain Scale transcription:
10 – I am in bed and I can’t move due to my pain. I need someone to take me to the emergency room because of my pain.
9 – My pain is all that I can think about. I can barely move or talk because of my pain.
8 – My pain is so severe that it is difficult to think of anything else. Talking and listening are difficult.
7 – I am in pain all the time. It keeps me from doing most activities.
6 – I think about my pain all of the time. I give up many activities because of my pain.
5 – I think about my pain most of the time. I cannot do some of the activities I need to do each day because of the pain.
4 – I am constantly aware of my pain but can continue most activities.
3 – My pain bothers me but I can ignore it most of the time.
2 – I have a low level of pain. I am aware of my pain only when I pay attention to it.
1 – My pain is hardly noticeable.
0 – I have no pain.
This … is very thought provoking. (By this scale, I live at 2; pre-migraine it jumps to 4; migraine is usually 8 but has gone to 9 or 10 often.)
Usually, I say my migraine is 6 or 7 on my personal scale.
This is 100% what docs want when they ask you about pain.
The Master/Apprentice (MA) archive and lists have existed for a long time and the community of writers in said has as well. Many moved to Dreamwidth when LJ had problems. I created a community on DW for MA and slash folk to post notices about fic and talk about shows/movies/comics/etc. We’ve been VERY quiet but are happy to be more chatty and welcome new people. If you head to DW you can find us at:
With its superb fight scenes and stand out performances by a
talented cast, this movie is a fan favourite and cornerstone of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe.
I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say about
it.
So I’m going to start with the little disclaimer I have for
this series as a quick reminder.
Once again I’m rating
the depiction and use of torture, not the movie itself. I’m trying to
take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence
of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims
and torturers.
The relevant plot details are, well, most of the film. I’ll
try to be as brief as I can.
Steve Roger’s (aka Captain America) boss at SHIELD (Nick
Fury) is assassinated by a mysterious man known as ‘The Winter Soldier’. Before
dying Nick tells Steve that SHIELD itself has been compromised and gives him a
usb.
On refusing to hand over the usb Steve is attacked by a
large group of his former colleges in a lift.
He escapes and teams up with Natasha Romanov aka the Black
Widow. Together they discover that SHIELD has been infiltrated by Hydra, a Nazi
organisation who are particularly interested in SHIELD’s latest weapons project
which they could use to kill millions.
The Winter Soldier, a character who is heavily coded as
mentally ill, is ordered to assassinate them by Hydra.
Steve and Natasha track down a SHIELD/Hydra agent and
threaten him with death or grievous bodily harm unless he gives them
information. They get the information they want.
They clash with the Winter Soldier and during the scuffle he
is unmasked and revealed as Steve’s long lost wartime friend Bucky Barnes.
Steve, Natasha and their friend Sam are all captured by Hydra.
The audience is told that Bucky, apparently now a super-soldier,
was captured by Hydra, tortured and brainwashed. He has been their best
assassin for decades. A scene of his memory being ‘wiped’ follows with props
that are heavily reminiscent of ECT machines.
Steve, Natasha and Sam stage an assault on SHIELD HQ in an
effort to stop the launch of the new weapons. In the process Steve takes over
the comm system and announces Hydra’s plan to the entire base.
Two sympathetic characters are shown resisting Hydra demands
when threatened with death. One of them dies for his trouble.
Steve and Bucky fight until the last weapon is disarmed.
With the threat of civilian casualties gone Steve refuses to fight Bucky and
tries instead to appeal to his humanity, asking him to remember their
friendship. Bucky beats him unconscious but stops short of killing him.
I’m giving it 0/10
The Good
And well that really is the problem: with regards to torture
I cannot think of more than one good thing about this film. Usually I’d throw
the movie at least one point for a single good scene, but in this case I think
the scene is part of a larger entirely negative trend in the narrative.
1)
The scene I’m thinking of is the attack on Steve in the
lift. About eight or nine people, all armed in various ways, attack Steve at
once. His arms are pinned by several people each while he’s repeatedly shocked
with a device a bit like a cattle prod. This basic set up is extremely true to
life for many cases of police brutality, although a Taser would have been a
more likely weapon.
The Bad
Where to begin?
1) Every major
‘good’ character in this movie engages in torture.
Our heroes Steve, Sam and Natasha
torture a Hydra agent for information by threatening to kill him, then throwing
him off a building (Sam catches him before he falls to his death).
This is not just portrayed as good and reasonable but it is played
for laughs. The scene is used to extend a joke about Steve’s dating life.
3)
The ‘bad guy’ they torture does not resist once they
have tortured him. This is extremely unlikely. The data we have at the moment
suggests that torture makes people far
more likely to resist.
4)
This stands in contrast to the way ‘good’ characters act when threatened
with death or torture. The film consistently shows ‘good’ people resisting torture and ‘bad’ (or in
Bucky’s case mentally ill) people complying
under torture. This is not only wrong; it’s frankly sickening and perpetuates
extremely harmful stereotypes about victims and torture.
5)
Brainwashing does not work and is a central, important
plot device in the film. The story simply does not work unless violence,
torture and pain can ‘force’ a victim to change sides.
6)
Torture cannot change hearts and minds. It cannot force
someone to support or work for a cause they are strongly against.
7)
Memory really
does not work in the way the film suggests. Anything that could remove old,
strongly held memories, such as those of childhood or the victim’s name, would also have removed their memory of how to
drive a car, fight hand to hand, use a gun or virtually anything else Bucky
does in the film.
8)
Even accounting for the sci-fi idea of removing specific memories, torture and pain
would not force a victim to comply with their captors. In fact it makes
resistance more likely. A Bucky Barnes
without the memory of his friends or the war would still almost certainly
resist Hydra simply because they caused him pain.
9)
There has never been a recorded case of ECT machines
being used to torture. They have been
used as a form of abuse in some hospitals but they have never been used by
military or terrorist organisations such as Hydra. This is another inaccurate
stereotype: the idea that torture is ‘scientific’ or ‘high-tech’.
10) The
film assumes that a victim of systematic abuse over decades would be physically and mentally capable of complex
assassinations. Instead the sort of damage to both physical and mental health
this would inflict means that Bucky and Natasha should both be noticeably less capable than
their colleagues. Instead they are more capable than their colleagues,
implying that abuse made them ‘better’ at committing wanton acts of violence.
11) Both
this film and other Marvel films state that Natasha has both suffered and
committed abuse, yet she shows no severe symptoms. This seems to be narratively
linked to the idea that she is ‘strong’. And I detest the notion that a basic,
bodily reaction to trauma makes victims weak.
Overview
I think the word for this movie’s use of torture is ‘dire’.
It’s not just consistently wrong.
It’s not just based around an impossible, trope laden
premise.
It’s not just running through a check list of every harmful
stereotype that regularly turns up in fiction.
The movie supports the notion that the torture of ‘bad
people’ does not ‘count’.
It shows ‘heroes’, particularly individuals that the
audience is supposed to think are morally above reproach, engaging in torture
and the plot supports and justifies
their doing so. It tells us that really ‘good’, ‘pure’ characters, such as the
titular hero, threaten ‘bad guys’ with torture and then stand back to watch
their friends do the torturing.
It shows victims (ie Bucky) as dangerous and violent and without other symptoms. It shows
torturers like Natasha as without
symptoms. It shows torture as a successful interrogation tactic and shows
torture fundamentally changing hearts and
minds.
Even accounting for sci-fi elements, the movie’s attitude to
and treatment of torture is consistently false, dangerous and fundamentally against the basic principles of human
rights.
Human rights are not for ‘good people’. They are for everyone.
Whatever their race, gender, creed, politics, or crime. Torture is never justified.
And for that reason this movie’s treatment of torture is
quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. It is a shining example of how much
torture apologia pervades popular culture.
Question re: Bucky (setting the “that’s not how memory works” aside) – I think the central premise was less that he was tortured into complying and switching sides, and more that there was some complex psychological mechanism that included him no longer being able to tell sides apart (possibly as a result of memory loss), some extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, PTSD and anything that is leftover from the army.
This is a harsh thing to read when I still want to pretend CAWS is the only MCU movie I enjoy without reservations… (ʘᗩʘ)
i don’t hold catws quite in the same regard so this was an interesting read.
I already submitted these links to @nicstoirm for their guide, but since I went to the trouble of compiling the list and figure it would be of interest to a lot of people here, I’m posting it to Tumblr as well. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to write these wonderful prayers!
This might be the apex of the internet. No, really. You can set it to low and slow and sleepy and it hits something in the hindbrain that kind of melts away anxiety.
things linguistics has taught me: do not fuck with the welsh
Seriously though do not. This is welsh nationalism in a nutshell.
So like, 150 or so years ago, nobody cared about Welsh. Not even the welsh. But then, one day, some folks got sick of paying the tolls at toll gates. Citing bizarre biblical precedent, they dressed up as women and started seizing toll gates, at which point the (also welsh) gate owners went “WTF?” and called in (english) magistrates to resolve the dispute.
The English Magistrates looked at the situation and went “WTF?” and commissioned an inquiry loosely titled “WTF is wrong with Wales??”
Well this commission did a ton of work and looked at schools and politics and people on hillsides raising sheep and all that jazz and came to the thrilling conclusion: What’s Wrong with Wales is that Ridiculous Backwards Language they all speak there.
There was a moment of dead silence, broken only by the loud scrape as Wales, collectively, as a nation, in a fit of unity not seen since the castles came to subjugate the native tribes, pushed back its chair, stood up slowly, and said “what you just say bout me?”
And folks who’d never heard it spoken started teaching their children Welsh, and the old sheep herder on the hill became a cultural icon, and the rioters and the gate owners high fived each other and said “suck it, England!” (only in Welsh this time).
And now Welsh is a protected language, there’s a strong Welsh nationalist movement, with its own flag and spelling conventions, and there’s a Welsh channel on television (which is doubly impressive when you remember that Britain only has like three channels).
And that is how the Welsh saved their language from extinction by sheer force of spite
Just gotta add those toll booth riots were called the Rebecca Riots, the rioters were known as Rebeccas and I am named after them. It’s the one consolation to an otherwise boring name.
Also my great grandad lived to the age of 101 and never spoke a word of English that wasn’t forced out of him through threat of unemployment. Despite being fluent and having 5 great grandchildren who have the Welsh vocabulary of toddlers.
Tumblr Exodus 