AfroDiaspores

Sporadic tumblings on the African Diaspora in the Americas.   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

[itscolossal]

Experience Ana Mendieta’s Visceral, ‘Neolithic’ Work in a Major Survey

[unfuckyourhabitat]

Emergency cleaning: Unfuck your whole house in the shortest time possible

So, your landlord/parents/home inspector/favorite movie star is dropping by, and your place is a disaster. You don’t have much time to clean it up. You’re in emergency mode. Let’s get started.

Don’t panic. Panic leads to fear, fear leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to the dark side. You can do this, but you have to stay calm.

Unlike maintenance cleaning, we’re not looking to completely unfuck one space at a time. Instead, we want to decrease the overall mess in stages, spread evenly across the whole area that we’re concerned about. If you think your home is at Level 10 filth, we want to bring the whole thing down to a Level 9, and then down from there. One really clean spot in an otherwise messy home is not going to be helpful here.

Get prepared. You’ll want to shut the computer down (or turn the modem off if you need your computer to play music). Trust me. Get your music going. Gather up trash bags, your vacuum and mop, some rags or paper towel, sponges, and other cleaning supplies. Use what you have on hand. Don’t get distracted running to the store and spending an hour browsing cleaning supplies. A multi-purpose cleaning concentrate or a jug of vinegar will be just fine.

Breaks are very important. Depending on your time constraints, work in 20/10s (20 minutes working, 10-minute break) or 45/15s. But take breaks because otherwise you’re marathoning, and marathon cleaning is no one’s friend. Keep hydrated, don’t forget to eat, and check in with yourself frequently to make sure you’re physically doing OK.

Make your bed. This will be your home base if you get overwhelmed or need somewhere clear to take a break.

Start with the garbage. Going from room to room, throw out anything that is obvious trash. Once you fill a bag, take it out. Repeat as many times as necessary.

Move on to dishes. Gather the dishes from all over your house and bring them to the kitchen. If you can, start them soaking in a sink of hot, soapy water or start loading the dishwasher. After the dishes are all in one place, spend one 20/10 getting started getting them under control.

Now it’s time for your flat surfaces. Countertops, tables, dresser tops, etc. Clear them off and wipe them down. Don’t get distracted in too much sorting and organizing. We’re in crisis mode here. There will be time to get in-depth once this is all done. The same applies to cabinets and closets. Unless you have reason to believe people will be opening closed doors, leave these alone for now.

Attack the floordrobe and shoe pile. Get your clothes either put away or in the hamper. Start a load of laundry if you need to, but keep in mind that laundry and dishes have three steps: wash, dry, and put it away, goddammit!

Get random stuff up off the floors. If something is trash-worthy, throw it away now rather than just move it around a bunch of times. Otherwise, put stuff where it belongs.

Take another 20/10 or 45/15 to catch up on more dishes, if needed.

Head into the bathroom. Pour some cleaner in the toilet bowl, fill the sink with hot water and cleaner, and either spray the tub and shower with cleaner, or fill the tub up with some hot water and add cleaner and let it soak. Put everything away that’s out and shouldn’t be, clean the mirror, counters, and toilet seat. Sweep or dry mop the floor. Wipe down the sink and tub/shower, and give the toilet bowl a scrub. Mop the floor.

Sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Vacuum everything you can, and sweep everything you can’t.

Walk outside of your house (don’t lock yourself out, please). Walk back in and see what catches your eye first. Go and deal with that.

If you’re being inspected or your landlord is coming in for repairs, spend time on whatever area they’ll be focusing on.

Give the whole place one more once-over and pay attention to anything you’ve missed so far.

It’s an old trick, but if your place is a little funky-smelling, put a pan of water on the stove on low heat and add some citrus or cinnamon or vanilla. Don’t leave it unattended or forget about it.

Take a shower, put on something clean, and eat something.

You can do this. It’s overwhelming, yes, but it is not impossible. You just need to do it. You have a list. You have directions. You have a whole bunch of Internet strangers who have been there before and who are cheering you on. You can do this, but you need to get started.

Why are you still here? GO. START. NOW.

[river-b]

the number of times in my past that I desperately wanted/needed someone to sit me down and tell me this stuff. I will never get back the hours and hours lost to headless-chicken mode, but it’s nice to know that in the last year I’ve learned so many coping mechanisms :D

[victusinveritas]

Western think tanks will do anything but blame capitalism.

[goth-queen]

[phantomleaves]

The work of Betye Saar (July 30 1926 - July 26 2026) 1. Keep for Old Memoirs, 1976

2. The Good Old Days, 1976

3. Souvenir of Friendship, 1977

[milksockets]

'incubus necklace by simon costin, 1987' in jewelry: the body transformed - melanie holcomb (2018)

[shereeluvssinners]

Wunmi

[chungledown-bimothy]

reblog to tell a 14 year old that these are the very, very hard years and they're not wrong to feel the way they do.

[nojglisrenaissance]

I had a fifteen minute long crying session yesternight over the fact that all I was 10 years ago, at the ripe old age of 14, is lost and lonely, and now, at 24, I am neither and that filled me with so much gratitude

[cecil-speaks]

reblog to tell a teenager that these aren’t actually the best years of your life and that things can and will get better when you have independance and maybe are away from your situation right now.

Its me reblog to tell me that

[publicdomainreview]

Dice Man — it’s just how he rolls…

More radical fashion from the 16th-century Schembart Carnival here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/radical-fashion-from-the-schembart-carnival-1590

[fairy25]

Nearly a third of female surgeons have been sexually assaulted by a colleague, survey finds

Almost a third of female surgeons report having been sexually assaulted by a colleague, and two thirds have been the target of sexual harass

Newly published data shows that nearly a third of female surgeons (29.9%) have been sexually assaulted by a colleague and that most participants (89.5% of female and 81% of male surgeons) have witnessed some form of sexual misconduct among colleagues.

[assignedmale]

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

The American Transgender Refugee Crisis

If this were occurring abroad, to an ethnic minority, we would call it ethnic cleansing.

To put this in perspective, the last time an American subgroup migrated at these rates was the Great Migration, in which roughly 6 million Southern Black people fled Jim Crow violence and repression. This occurred over a period of decades, in the face of political repression, systematic violence, and legal apartheid.

In its fastest decade, the 1940s, 1.5 million left the South—against a Southern Black population of roughly 10 million. Black America fled Jim Crow at about 1.5% a year, at a time when baseline inter-state mobility was higher than it was today.

Trans America is fleeing red-state persecution at ten to twenty times that. In short, trans people are being internally displaced within America's shores.

[sapphosdottir]

Hey if you guys are mad about AI companies buying old and rare books to train their AIs then destroying them you can go to this page on the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers website, find your country, and send them a letter telling them they need to update their code to stop AI companies from training their LLMs on these books. If your country isn't listed on that page, you can try contacting the ILAB directly.

For people in the US, you can also contact your elected representatives, make sure you're registered to vote, and vote in the midterms.

[alkebulannews]

An investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirms that 17 children and over 1,000 adults were k!lled in Haiti by explosive drone str!kes carried out by an American private military company called Vectus Global alongside a specialized Haitian government task force.

[achillesinhighheels]

D'Angelo photographed by Derrel R. Todd at BET's 20th Anniversary Celebration [2000]

[yearningforunity]

The group Boney M in Paris, France on May 03, 1977.

Photo by Daniel SIMON via Getty Images.

[sajiabude]