With the recent and still on-going tragedy left in the wake of Hurricane Helene, a lot of light is being shed on southern states that make up Appalachia.
There’s a lot of misconceptions about Appalachia and the southern United States as a whole. There are a lot of good users on this website that have put a lot of effort into combating these harmful stereotypes and clearing up misconceptions.
But there’s more than just Appalachia in the south. There’s a lot of middle ground. Places that aren’t as rural as Appalachia, but places that aren’t as populated as cities like Raleigh, Richmond, Memphis, etc.
Places where people gather surrounded by other agricultural hubs.
There are queer people everywhere. In every culture, every religion, every country, in all of history, we have existed. We cannot and we will not be erased.
A common narrative that’s floated around for many years is “if red states are passing laws that are constructive to the LGBT+ community, then why don’t those people just move?”
So why don’t we just move?
I’m sure you can find a lot of well-written posts on here explaining many reasons why queer people not just in the southern states, but all over the world don’t “just move”, and one reason I’ve seen echoed over and over again is that “we have thriving communities here too”. We exist too.
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How does one “be punk”?
It’s a question my mutuals and I get a lot, and a lot of us are tired of hearing it.
What does it mean to be punk?
Is it about the music? The clothes? The politics? Can you be punk if? Is it punk if you? Who? What? Where? When?
One common beginner tip to “being punk” is to find and join the local scene. This can lead to a lot of other questions, though. What is a scene? Where does one find the scene? How does one participate in the scene? Is there a minimum requirement?
Rest assured, literally no one is asking this offline.
A hardcore scene is so much more than just hardcore. A scene is a group of people where music is a common thread that builds the basis of other connections. A hardcore scene isn’t necessarily even hardcore.
“You have to listen to punk music to be punk”. Sure. But here’s the thing. In your local hardcore scene you will find: metal musicians, rappers, and more. You will attend shows with blues music, orchestras, and more.
Sometimes it’s not even music at all! Sometimes there is drag! Sometimes there are movie nights! Sometimes there are group outings!
It’s almost like… it’s just a social construct.
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What is the local scene? The local scene is loud music. It’s smoking and drinking. It’s stopping by the corner store and the smoke and vape. It’s carpooling. It’s movie nights. It’s text chains. It’s group chats. It’s he-said-she-said. It’s they said. It’s AMAB enbies. It’s people who don’t care about “passing”. It’s DIY HRT. It’s she was a lesbian until she met him. It’s situationships. It’s hooking up and coming down. It’s bouncing from place to place to meet up with each other. It’s showing up someplace and seeing who’s there and waiting around to see who’s coming. It’s late nights spent partying on the weekends and back to school and work come the weekdays. It’s knowing someone by looks or name even if you haven’t put the two together yet. It’s trading socials. It’s Instagram stories and comments. It’s “DM for Address”. It’s “are you going tonight?” It’s “do you need a ride?” It’s “who else is going?”. It’s going somewhere and asking who’s coming. It’s sitting around on broken chairs and lawn furniture passing around a blunt, sharing a 24 pack of beer that 4 of you ran out to get with money you all pooled together, it’s “should we order pizza?” It’s “I brought donuts”. It’s hanging out in each other’s houses and rooms. It’s respecting the businesses that offer to house you. It’s generational friendships. It’s listening to your friends as they joke about their heritage and talk about their cultures. It’s the dog you pet when you’re sitting on the curb in ripped fishnets taking drunk selfies with your friends. It’s the man playing you the harmonica as you sit outside the THC drink bar on a Saturday night. It’s sitting out in the yard listening to someone play an acoustic set where they talk about the war and poverty and politics while you slowly get high surrounded by your friends. It’s sitting on a dock in the middle of the night fishing listening to emo music huddled together with your friends. It’s autistic people showing each other the bugs they’ve found in the dirt. It’s talking about your disabilities together. It’s shoving your friends in the pit and then holding their hands. It’s seeing the cos guys in their 40s and 50s who tend the bar and work the register calling you by whatever name and pronouns you give them. It’s all of this and so much more, and it cannot be conceptualized by one single fashion style, one single music style, one single belief system. It’s not someone calling you out because you went to Chick-Fil-A and don’t you know that’s bad, it’s not someone telling you that you’re a poser because you like Chappell Roan too or your clothes were bought at Forever 21 not thrifted and DIYed.
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Everyone likes to talk about folk punk and other genres that bands like Dayz and Daze have popularized- or according to some, commodified and commercialized- but if you’re going to talk about music like folk punk, you’re going to have to respect the areas that it originated in.
Everyone want’s to talk about “local punk bands” when half the bands you’re seeing don’t even fall under the genre of punk.
Your local scene isn’t always going to be skate parks and thrash music.
Sometimes it’s the mom cooking you and all your queer friends dinner on a Friday night in her kitchen with crosses and a picture frame of her family with the quote “live, laugh, love”.
Sometimes it’s sitting around and listening to men who are old enough to be your grandfather with Vietnam Veteran hats play the blues while a pig roasts in a backyard BBQ, even though you’re in your 20s and you have blue hair and pronouns.
It’s sitting around and listening to your elders talk about how the scene used to be “back in the day”. Talk about the shows they’ve been to, the bands they’ve seen in their prime.
It’s asking what you do for work, where do you live, what brought you down here, what’s your college major?
It’s people. It’s people connecting to people. Regardless of the color of their skin. Regardless of gender or sexuality. It’s people of all ages coming together to listen to music with the idea that what you all have in common is living here and now, hating politicians, and thinking that someone should do something about the shitty state the world is in. It’s not a conglomerate. It’s individuality, and there’s no real wrong way of doing it unless you’re a Trump Supporter or a Nazi, and even then, they still have their own factions of the punk scene that are going to overlap with yours on occasion. The best you can do then is stand up for what you believe in and stay safe.
There are scenes just like mine all over this country. In southern states, in rural areas, in places that other, mainly white queers have “written off”.
So why don’t we just move?
Because this is our scene, and it’s what we make it, and in the heart of the south in the Bible Belt, we’re making it a queer-inclusive space despite what’s happening around us.
Some might believe that Apple isn’t invested in the future of the [Vision] platform either given the niche appeal or the high price, but after speaking with Della Huff (a member of the Product Marketing team at Apple, who oversees all things Camera app and Photos app) and Billy Sorrentino (a member of the the Apple Design Team who works across the company’s entire product line), I left feeling that Apple has every intention of pushing forward in this space.
The two explain that Apple is very much invested in Vision Pro and visionOS because it views the experience they provide as integral to the future of photography. Coming from the company that makes the most popular camera on the planet, that opinion carries significant weight.
I do not mean to be cynical but, well, does it carry significant weight? Of course Apple believes the Vision Pro is the best way to experience photos and videos. The company spent years developing technologies to make the system feel immersive and compelling so, at a minimum, it truly believes the effort was worth it. Also, it is not unreasonable to expect the company to justify the effort, especially after stories about executive retirements and production cutbacks. No wonder Apple is making sure people are aware it is still committed to the space.
But that is not the whole point of this article. The Apple employees interviewed argue — as before — that photos should be representative of an actual event, and that viewing them as an immersive three dimensional reconstruction is, psychologically, much closer to how our memory works. I would love for some bored neuroscientist to fact-check that claim because — and keep in mind I went to art school, so, pinch of salt — it seems to me to conflict with the known fragility of human memory. My suspicion is that this is one reason we are drawn to fuzzier representations of reality: the unique colour representation of film, or the imprecision of a needle reading a vinyl record.
I am not being facetious when I write that I am very curious about how well this actually works compared to standard photos or videos or, indeed, actual memories.
PolyCapture for Mac lets you to record webcams, microphones, screens, and apps — individually or simultaneously.
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Filter apps from your recordings on the fly, ensuring nothing gets in your way.
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Capture voiceovers, podcasts, interviews, music, or commentary. If a microphone can pick it up, PolyCapture can record it.
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Use macOS’s Voice Isolation to enhance speech quality and reduce background noise. Apply video effects like Portrait Mode, Studio Light, and Center Stage to level-up your recordings.
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