"These zones provided more than just snacks." - WILLA PASKIN, The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall), Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #mall #WillaPaskin
#DecoderRing
"It looks safe, but it's not!" - WILLA PASKIN, The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WillaPaskin
"There was a whole period where he talked to a parrot." - WILLA PASKIN, The Soap Opera Machine, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WorldParrotDay #WillaPaskin
"And she is!" - WILLA PASKIN, The Tootsie Shot, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WillaPaskin
"Jennifer Lopez ended up playing Selena in the movie, which came out in 1997." - WILLA PASKIN, The Butt and the Bustle, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #SelenaDay #WillaPaskin
🚀 Behold, the marvel of Mathup: an "easy" #MathML tool that combines the thrill of writing cryptic code with the excitement of needing a decoder ring to read it. 😵 Why not just use MathJax? 🤔 Because that would be too easy, and who needs convenience when you can have chaos? 🎉
https://mathup.xyz/ #Mathup #Coding #Chaos #DecoderRing #TechHumor #MathJax #HackerNews #ngated
Ah, yet another riveting tale of ancient gizmos that once whispered sweet nothings to spies! 🎩🔍 Let's all gather 'round the campfire to reminisce about dust-covered cipher machines that, shockingly, predate TikTok! 📜✨ Because nothing screams "cutting-edge tech" like a 1940s decoder ring. 🙄
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-combined-cipher-machine-1942-1962.html #ancienttech #spystories #ciphermachines #nostalgia #TikTokhistory #decoderring #HackerNews #ngated
"Liz is talking about playlists!" - BENJAMIN FRISCH, That Seattle Muzak Sound, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #BenjaminFrisch
"Of the 1500 or so malls built before 2007, only a thousand or so are left, with a quarter more projected to close in the coming years." - WILLA PASKIN, The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall), Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #mall #WillaPaskin
"The Cabbage Patch Kids are a dead-simple baby doll that don't do anything of particular note!" - WILLA PASKIN, The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #StupidToyDay #WillaPaskin
"It got press, attention, and thousands upon thousands of pieces of fan mail." - WILLA PASKIN, The Soap Opera Machine, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WillaPaskin
"They'll pay a little bit of juice to see pictures of high status monkeys, the monkey celebrities." - MICHAEL PLATT, The Fame That Got Away, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #MonkeyDay #MichaelPlatt
"He grew up idolizing Walt Disney and was both creatively and commercially minded from a very young age." - WILLA PASKIN, The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WaltDisney #HappyBirthdayWaltDisney #WillaPaskin
"Why did these ladies want to have such big butts?" - HEATHER RADKE, The Butt and the Bustle, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #NationalHeatherDay #HeatherRadke
"It's what makes the sequence so memorable!" - WILLA PASKIN, The Tootsie Shot, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WillaPaskin
"I mean, it was a shit job!" - MARK ARM, That Seattle Muzak Sound, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing
The Political Reading of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
This morning I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Decoder Ring. The most recent episode had a very interesting title: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…Will he want a Welfare check? I don’t remember this book from my childhood, but I do remember reading this one (and others in the series) to my kids. The podcast explores the fact that, starting around 2015, this book started to become known by conservatives as an allegory against the welfare state. While this podcast episode eventually interviews the author and confirms this was not her intention, I can certainly understand how the book could be read that way. It’s a great example of how art (literature, movies, images, music) becomes “property” of the culture once the creator releases it into the world. In many ways it doesn’t matter what the creator wanted (although I always find that fascinating), but what the culture does with it.
Funny thing in this particular case is that I’ve been a programmer since elementary school age (~30ish years at this point). So to me If You Give a Mouse A Cookie was always just a story about recursion gone wrong.
Share this:
"The Cabbage Patch Kids are one of the most successful toys ever." - WILLA PASKIN, The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #WillaPaskin
"We'd been advertising beer since day one!" - DAN ZANES, The Fame That Got Away, Decoder Ring #DecoderRing #InternationalBeerDay #DanZanes
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst