Why Not?

Nika-poly, mother of one, and a nerd. I reblog whatever strikes my fancy so don't expect regularity. My ask box is always open and I try to repond in a timely fashion.

[lemonsharks]

My ancestors, watching me dump an entire stick of cinnamon, two cloves, an allspice berry, and a generous grating of nutmeg into my tea, sweetened with white sugar and loaded with cream, while I sit in my clean warm house surrounded by books, 25+ outfits for different occasions, and 6 pairs of shoes, in a building heated so well I have the windows open in mid-autumn:

Our daughter prospers. We are proud of her. She has never labored in a field but knows riches we could not have imagined.

[sighinastorm]

I like this so much better than the idea that our ancestors would be embarrassed or ashamed of us for being “soft” or some crap like that.

[therinde-dreams]

My ancestors, watching me stuff my face with fried chicken while studying: She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar. WE MADE IT

[idhren]

She eats like an imperial concubine and can afford to study like am imperial scholar

[villainous-queer-deactivated202]

My ancestors watching me use my stand mixer while living in a small apartment and attending university: Thou hast kneadeth bread in FOUR hail marys??? FOUR??? And thou ist poor as a churchmouse, yet liveth in a fine cottage with four pounds butter and fresh berries in thy larder!! And two featherbeds! And thou attendeth the King’s college, as a lord!!

[lagt-duck]

My ancestors being like:

Look at this fine young lady! She can paint she can sew and embrody, she sings and read

And without a wealthy father to pay for that, plus she is florid in the body! She doesn’t know hunger!

We did it!

[ruffboi-mags]

Me: /wearily studying/

My Ancestors: TRULY SH— what? They? A little unorthodox, but reasonable I suppose. TRULY THEY PROSPER, FOR THEY LIVE IN A DWELLING WITH MANY ROOMS AND ONLY THEIR SPOUSE TO SHARE IT WITH! THEY HAVE DOGS WHO DO NOT PERFORM A FUNCTION! THEY HAVE MANY BOOKS AND DO NOT HAVE TO SPIN THEIR OWN YARN! THEY BATHE AT A WHIM WITH GENTLE SOAP FREE OF LYE! OUR DESCENDANT BRINGS HONOR AND PRIDE TO OUR LINEAGE!

Me: /yawns and sips my coffee/

My Ancestors: /cheer wildly/

[shadow-daughter]

Me: *hunched over at my desk nursing a headache.*

My Ancestors: “Truly, we prosper; see here, our infirm descendant need not even work on her poor days, but has the luxury to rest as she sees need! A doctor attends to her illnesses; her clothes are warm and free of pests; she cares for exotic and dangerous animals within her own home! We have found the height of luxury!”

[amuseoffyre]

Me: *treats myself to a pineapple and a bunch of bananas*

My Georgian ancestors: ZOOTH SHE HAS BOUGHT A PINEAPPLE! NOT MERELY BORROWED ONE! TRULY SHE HAS ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WE COULD KNOW!

[captainlordauditor]

me: [puts on warm socks and a blanket, is now warm regardless of the weather outside]

My impoverished Russian Jewish ancestors:

[existentialterror]

Me: [learns to knit from youtube videos]

My ancestors: Our descendant, the heir to all our hopes and fears for a far-off future… She can buy fine clothes woven and knit by automatons, with but a fraction of a day’s earnings… and she does… she has so much free time to do as she pleases… and she uses some of that time to do what we did.

One woman from rural Poland, who died from smallpox in 1717 CE, a grandmother at 35: I knit roses and peonies into my and my children’s gloves… it wasn’t much extra work to dye the red, once I had already cleaned the wool and spun the yarn, and to knit in the designs… and I wasn’t a gifted knitter but I was a good knitter, and I thought, well, it might not make a difference to how warm the glove is, but it made the children happy and it made me happy. I liked to make things beautiful when I could.

Another woman, a peasant from what’s now France, who died from getting kicked by a mammoth in 8995 BCE: [Patting her on the back] I made my family’s clothes too. Every day my sister and I wove and wove and tended our children. We went out of our way to make the cloth lovely. Not a trace of it remains anywhere on earth now… But it mattered to us. And she might not know our names, or know it was us, but evidently, it matters to her too. She has so much beauty available to her, in every direction, and she wants to make it where we once made it.

[everyone sobbing and high-fiving each other.]

A man from Britain, 1104 CE, sitting at the trans-temporal telescope, reporting on my doings: She’s stopped knitting and now she’s playing minecraft.

The other ancestors: Ah, yes, the dream of building. We know this one well. What vision doth she design now?

Telescope man: Looks like… Some kind of floating temple?

Everyone: [Goes completely apeshit]

[lasrina]

Me: *literally just sitting here petting my dog*

My ancestors from 25,000 years ago: puppy

[vegannerdgirl]

[greenwire]

[animentality]

[violinsolos]

I see it a lot in my students that the ONLY mode they can engage with literature on is one in which they either say it's good because it's "relatable" or it's bad because they "can't relate to it" as well, and I feel like this is a symptom of the same problem. An unwillingness to engage with fiction outside of its ability to be a mirror to your specific worldview and set of morals. But art doesn't exist to give you moral purity badges--it's a mode of expression that produces conversations between artists and readers. And to engage in those converesations on an adult level you need to learn to process the discomfort of flawed human realities productively.

[luv3horse]

Anyone remember a post from Tumblr past, where somebody said something about being tired of having teenage chosen ones and they wish someone would write one that's older? Because my older sister did that and it's getting published in April.

[elizmanderson]

it's me!! I'm the older sister!!! and this is my book!!

[wherehavalltheflowersgone]

So let me get this straight, in Monopoly if you give one player more money to start out it’s “unfair” but if you do it in real life it’s “capitalism”? 

[carriagelamp]

You know what, I’m going to tell you guys a story.

In my Sociology class a few semesters ago, our prof had us break off into groups and, much to our naive joy, began distributing Monopoly boards! We had no idea what was going on but yay! Games! Of course, once our group, and a number of others, got the board we began to work at setting up and distributing the money…

until suddenly our prof told us to put the money down and pick up the dice.

“Roll the dice and sort yourselves from highest to lowest,” our teacher commanded.  "Now, the highest number is the upper class. The next one is upper middle class.  The next two or three are middle class. The last person is in poverty.“

Well, as the person who rolled a two this was startling and not wholly welcome news.

From that point the game changed entirely. We had to hand out the money so that the “upper class” had this fucking mountain, and then less for upper middle, even less for middle, and I didn’t get any triple digit bills. We would all collect different amounts from passing go as well.

The biggest change though? Going to jail. Upper class didn’t. Period. Upper middle class could go but they only had to stay for one turn or they could immediately pay their way out. Middle class had some pretty easy guidelines for when they could pay to get out. As lower class, it was really easy for me to wind up in jail and REALLY hard to get out. But since I was working with so little money when everyone else had so much I was in jail all the time because there was no “game over”.  If I couldn’t pay I had to go to jail for a certain period of time. I had to take out loans with interest I could never pay back just to get out only to wind up back in it again, rolling dice turn after turn hoping to be able to get out.

It was simultaneously the most enlightening and most awful game I had ever played. I was bored and frustrated and a little terrified about it all. And it wasn’t only me. I would never win, I sort of accepted this, but it was amazing how the middle classes reacted as well.  They were stressed. Because they were always that close to either being able to one-up the upper class or from crashing into poverty with me. They had to fight constantly just to stay in the middle.

(I should also mention that the upper class player in one group felt so bad for the lower income players that they ended up overhauling their entire game and creating a “socialist” society instead. I’m not sure how our teacher felt about that one.)

[kierongillen]

Worth stressing this is entirely in the spirit of the original designer’s aims for Monopoly. 

Monopoly’s  original form of The Landlord Game which was explicitly designed to teach people about the unfairness of rent systems. To quote from the wikipedia entry, just as it’s the easiest source to hand…

Magie designed the game to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences”.[2] She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed byHenry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate.

When the usual suspects start making “don’t bring politics into games” noises, I roll my eyes pretty hard. They have no idea of the history of the form.

[the-anarcho-raver]

WOW.. THIS IS CRUCIAL! Thank you for that!!! 👏👏

[aphony-cree]

I read a study where they had people play Monopoly and gave one person twice as much money as the others but didn’t announce this. In all the test groups the person with more money won quickly and bragged throughout the game about how well they were doing and that they were better at the game than the others were. None of them noticed that they had more money or considered that starting capitol may have been a factor in their winning

Rich people like to believe we all have equal opportunities and they’re just better at playing the game

[rafawriter]

[sronti]

Do this tomorrow.

[schwarz-gerat]

The best time to destroy a golf course was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

[liberalsarecool]

Cancel cars, improve cities.

[cipheramnesia]

They are also considering legislation to make the subway free for DC residents.

[reimenaashelyee]

My adaptation of the God of Arepo short story, which was originally up at ShortBox Comics Fair for charity. You can get a copy of the DRM-free ebook here for free - and I'd encourage you to donate to Mighty Writers or The Ministry of Stories in exchange.

Again it's an honour to be drawing one of my favourite short stories ever. Thank you so much for the original authors for creating this story; and for everyone who bought a copy and donated to the above non-profits.

[depsidase]

[allcops]

HAPPY LAW ENFORCEMENT APPRECIATION DAY!

[ilikeit-art]

[skaiandestiny]

[homunculus-argument]

A haunted, supernatural, and/or otherwise reality-warping place that one intrepid human keeps trying to investigate, but there's like a fae-equalent to a sign on the wall like those about cats who insist on getting into public buildings

"yes, we know about the human. His name is Gregory. We remove him from the premises regularly but he keeps coming back. Please do not feed Gregory or give him anything, he is feral and we do not want to encourage him. Interact at your own risk, we do not own Gregory and we take no responsibility of his actions.

Kindest regards, management"

[cocainesocialist]

[manynamedshe]

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

[thequeerwithoutfear-deactivated]

[images: series of tweets from @realavocadofact. tweets read, “they’re not elite they’re rich”, “they’re not better they’re better supplied”, “they’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”, “there is nothing wrong with you; you’re doing your best in a game rigged against you, probably not enough people and fruit tell you that”]

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.

I think a lot of people are afraid that by needing a service they are inherently exploiting or harming the people who perform that service, and they really aren’t. But it does benefit a capitalist system for us to all be burnt out and overwhelmed because we’re too afraid to hire the help we need. Be upfront and honest with service workers about what you need and why you need it, and treat them with dognity and kindness while they perform your service, and I promise you they will always be happy to answer your call.

[headspace-hotel]

HIRING A PROFESSIONAL TO CLEAN YOUR HOUSE ISN’T MORE EXPLOITATIVE THAN GOING TO A DENTIST OR ORDERING A PIZZA

We all fucking depend on each other, it’s about respect and treating one another as fellow humans instead of seeing them as below us

[flowergrenades]

*through gritted teeth* you are not a child taking a test with the purpose of getting the highest score, you are an adult trying new things and finding ways to enjoy your life, make mistakes, be a beginner, be mediocre, be where you need to be, be unlikeable, just. be.

[slashdementia7734]

TRUTH.

[bogleech]

Taking jesters out of government was the biggest mistake we ever made. Every single person in any position of power should be followed around by someone who’s job is to insultingly point out the flaws in every single thing they say and do.

[teathattast]

[legend-tripper]

[fuckyoubaker]