BackBlacklikeLiquor

Black woman. 30+. What up doe. about me :: grammar fugitive:: education

[backblacklikeliquor]

So like, I love fanfic authors writing black characters. Great job. I’ve found some who do it very well. But I can tell it’s definitely not a black person writing by how many times they say the black character blushes.

No they didn’t. They absolutely did not just get a little embarrassed and their face turned noticeably red. Our faces don’t do that.

I wasn’t around many white people as a child and I thought blushing was more of a physical posture & metaphorical. I was about to say: “Like you know…describing someone as turning red when angry!” But that is also a thing that can literally happen to very pale people…

So, idk. No one is reading this. But it’s a thing I find funny and interesting.

[memingursa-deactivated20250625]

The democratic party would rather try and whitewash the nazi billionaire who mainstreamed nazi talking points buying twitter than literally do anything that their progressive anti genocide base wants.

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: initial Bluesky post by goldstein.bsky.social, @ goldstein.bsky.social. It says "lmao" and a news article that shows a photo of elon musk in what looks to be a government building. The headline says "Dems eye villain-to-ally arc for Musk".

In reply, Zane Schact – Voice Goblin, @ VoicesByZane.bsky.social, posted "So like did they forget about this or what", with a photo of elon musk doing a Nazi salute at the podium of trump's twenty twenty-five inauguration. End I.D]

[guerrillatech]

[backblacklikeliquor]

My tik tok FYP thinks I understand ASL now. Idk why this is happening, but it feels like my last job. Where all the Deaf/HoH kids refused to stop addressing me in ASL*. Like I was in some kind of forced immersion program planned by teens.

So…awesome. It feels awesome. Forced language immersion is the only forced thing I give blanket consent to. I even had a doctor do it to me once and I didn’t understand one thing at all and I give that appointment 5 stars. He was like: “Well now you know what vocab to practice.” And I was like I absolutely do. Thank you for making part of my medical care briefly inaccessible to me.

[backblacklikeliquor]

I would just like to say that I think making small children do standardized tests on their iPads is ridiculous and bad and terrible.

The thing is, testing companies try to make it FUN. And cool. The problem with that is, say you’re 5. And someone is making you sit down and do silent math on your school iPad. You have to be still and quiet for SO LONG and the headphones feel bad on your ears…

And then you hear the robot voice ask you: “Which one is about as heavy as your pencil?” And then the options are picture of an ant, picture of a bike, picture of a SHARK.

Now, you’re 5. Do you remember what the robot voice just asked you? No. There’s a picture of a shark. That’s all you know!

They are CHILDREN!!! Ahhhhhhhh

[backblacklikeliquor]

Sometimes you just gotta tell your coworkers: “I think they’re just 7. I’m so sorry. I know it’s very tragic. But there’s nothing we can do.”

Actually I usually leave it to the social worker to say that unless an emergency reality check is needed lol.

And I’m not mad about it! I think everyone working in an elementary school has a moment when they forget the little people we’re surrounded by are brand new. And it is very tragic when you realize…oh.

This thing I’m being made to do by our district isn’t working and it will never work because you’re all literal children.

Sigh.

[queeranarchism]

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

'10 million votes don't just disappear!' -> Joe Biden's 81 million votes were a statistical outlier, sparked by the recent experience of the Trump presidency. The democrats failed to maintain that sense of urgency, but Harris still got more votes than Hillary Clinton, more than Obama and more than any previous democratic candidate. These numbers are not weird at all.

'The Republicans tried to infiltrate election- and vote counting organizations!' -> yeah, they did, and yet hundreds of independent legal observers didn't see anything go wrong enough to raise any alarms. Independent exit polls are also very consistently similar to the counted votes. Tons of international organizations specialized in this stuff observed the election and didn't see a reason to raise the alarm.

'But I know a dozen democrats whose mail-in votes were not counted!' -> In any election a certain number of votes are registered as invalid because something was wrong with the ballot. In a country the size of the US, that translates to many thousands of votes. The internet allows these people to find each other, creating the false impression that a suspiciously large group of voted was not valid.

'Musk used Star Link to mess with electronic voting!' -> Electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet and dozens of independent media have already debunked this myth. It is absolutely impossible to use Star Link to fake election results.

'There is voter disenfranchisement!' -> This is true. This has always been true, for every election. It's an issue worth talking about but it's not a special secret conspiracy that's unique to this election.

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

[beskad]

This this this

I worked as an election judge across multiple polling locations and election types in my state from 2018-2023 (presidential primary and general elections, midterms, and special elections like for the school board etc.)

US elections are extremely secure. There are so many safeguards in place. Everything is double and triple counted.

The number of ballots electronically counted by the box are checked against the number of physical ballots at the end of the night, and also the receipt papers that individuals exchange for their ballot. All three of these counts MUST MATCH. Sometimes you're off by 1 number and it means everyone stops and triple counts these papers until you find the error (human error, it's been 16 hours and two pieces of thin receipt paper were stuck together and the second person to recount finds it and everyone cheers because thank fuck, it means no one dropped anything on the floor anywhere.)

There are eyes everywhere and there's a deliberate mix of poll workers across political parties/affiliations. It's simply not possible to alter even 1 ballot at 1 polling place, much less thousands.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump won this election. If there was interference, it was NOT at the voting booth. That's simply not possible. The "interference" (if you can even call it that) comes from right wing propaganda convincing stupid and/or hateful and/or selfish people to vote for him.

[hachama]

In 2016, we had 60% turnout.

In 2020, we had 66% turnout.

It's too early to know what this year's number is, but I bet it's around 60%.

Trump got 1.5 million more votes this year than he did 4 years ago, which is more or less in line with population growth.

His base showed up. Harris's base didn't. That's it. There's no deep mystery here, just the usual disenfranchised minorities and disinterested populace.

When turnout is high, Republicans lose. When the electorate stays home, Republicans win. This is simple math that has been true my entire adult life, and yet every 4 years, like clockwork, people ignore it.

[backblacklikeliquor]

The thing about most of those animals, their modern equivalents are so unsettlingly large that it makes little difference to me, personally.

Wild boars now are a nightmare. Domestic pigs are even worse. A taller extinct version makes me feel nothing. African crocodiles can already eat me whole so I don’t really care that there was one 30% bigger (edit: ok, looking at the weight I think it’s like 25x as big but whatever).

Like, the extinct ones are how big the modern ones feel.

Except the blue whale. That exists and I still can’t conceive of something that large.

My life changed since that one time a sturgeon was found in the Detroit river and I found out how big sturgeons are. Everything about it was scary. Lemme Google the specs…yeah that fucker was 7ft long, 240lbs, and about ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD.

Like, oh! Ok! Now I get why everyone is beside themselves about finding a fish in a river! I thought that’s where it was supposed to be!

Most fish I eat from cans or in fillets get much larger and older than I like to think.

Nature is scary.

[skunkbear]

[teamrocketing]

i’m so glad i live in 2016 so i dont have to deal with these massive terrifying animals except the blue whale, but shes gentle and good

[backblacklikeliquor]

Internet Comments I Don’t Like

People saying Kate Middleton didn’t “really” have cancer & she’s exaggerating or something.

Hey. Hey. Fuck you!

Pre-cancer cancer treatment sucks a whole bunch and people can be very ill and need recovery time!

Have you ever had pre-cancerous cells on your cervix and had to get that shit hole punched out? I haven’t, but more than a couple acquaintances have and that sucks!

My mom had her breast cancer caught at stage 0, thank FUCK! She still had cancer and it was a rough journey through surgery and radiation and her other treatments. I know sometimes she didn’t feel like it “counted” and I would punch someone in the face if they dared say that about goddam CANCER!

Kate Middleton had chemo. Chemo sucks. People have chemo for things that aren’t cancer and it sucks then too.

I don’t care about Kate Middleton, but I care about people’s illnesses being dismissed by fuckshit assholes.

I do not care for those internet comments at all and I’m mad I even saw them.

[backblacklikeliquor]

Tik Tok Triggered Musings

So I watched a tik tok of a hospice nurse explaining how Jimmy Carter can be on hospice for “this long” and ppl in the comments were talking about various relatives who took forever to die.

It made me think of my paternal grandmother. Who was the most lucid dying person I’ve ever seen. She told us, “Well, I’m going to die soon.” Like she was going to the grocery store. It was just a thing that would happen. She told her kids to prepare, cuz was definitely gonna die within the year. And she was correct. She started dying. She started seeing old pets and people who had passed on. This made her anxious because I think she really valued her mind & ability to think and reason. But it would happen and she would remember “Oh that’s right. I’m dying. So I suppose that’s normal.” And move on with her day. One of our last conversations she whispered to me shyly, “I’m so sorry. You’re [my name], right? I’m just…my mind is going so I’m sorry if you’re actually [my sister’s name].”

I LAUGHED! Like, grandma, you don’t have a drop of dementia I promise. I mix up pictures of me and my sister all the time! We are sisters. If you had called me her name you would’ve still been right.

Some of her kids were distressed when she stopped wanting to eat. But it made her uncomfortable. Cuz she was dying.

And then she died and I had one good cry and then smiled. Cuz she accomplished two of her favorite things: 1) Being right and 2) Doing what she wanted.

What a legend.

[backblacklikeliquor]

I’m willing to hear other arguments but I think trick-or-treating is the one thing the US does that’s good. Especially in the context of dominant US culture.

1. Community event. For children! We almost never do that!

2. Kids get to practice social skills with other kids and adults! A lot of kids here don’t talk to many ppl outside of family and school. It’s awesome practice!

3. Adults get to also meet people! Especially us childless folks. It can be fun to meet new neighbors and kids who we don’t interact with much.

Actually, this makes me wonder why this even is such a popular tradition in this country. It feels antithetical to Americanness.

[backblacklikeliquor]

Another great thing about “new” math:

A lot of the time students will stop everything when they don’t understand why they’re supposed to do something.

As a whole, if their teacher is on board with the curriculum, they will look at you like you have two heads if you say stuff like “just move the decimal” or “just carry the one.” Cuz what are you talking about? What does that mean?

And I love that. I love that they expect to learn concepts first, not algorithms.

[devilboydogman]

My abnormal gait caused a police dog to lunge and chase at me while I was simply walking in my neighborhood. That’s a bit terrifying.

Thankfully it was off duty and leashed (I know it’s a police dog cause the owners are my neighbors, who are cops. Their cop cruiser is parked out front. The dog has training.)

But it scared the shot out of me and made my already difficult mobility worse and I had to limp even worse the rest of the way home, while the owner (a cop) just watched.

The implications that cops and their dogs are trained to view suspicious activity as anything abnormal, aka, many things people cannot control (disability for example, like Jesus Christ a trained dog tried to attack me for being disabled) are ferrying. I’m scared.

[doberbutts]

As someone who plays Dog Bite Simulator in real life (does protection sports with my dobermans) I've been trying to think of a good way to sort of say this for years.

A lot of the things we teach dogs that are "suspicious behavior" are things that people do when drunk or otherwise intoxicated, or when they are disabled either mentally or physically. The man who appears from behind a car with a weird gait and grunting and grumbling to himself? Yeah that's, um, pretty much every homeless guy I've ever walked past at a Wal-Mart. He's carrying a stick which he swings in a weird pattern about dog height? That's a crutch or a cane. He has a big bulky sleeve over one arm which is held out in front of him? Yeah that's just a regular ass broken arm in a cast.

There is a current of ableism baked into a lot of this, but I feel like you have to either be disabled in the ways featured to see it or you have to be paying attention to pick up on it. As I prepare Fenris for his temperament test in a couple weeks, I'm very conscious of the fact that there's gunna be someone who pops out at him who acts very much like the people we walk past every day for exercise, and he's supposed to react aggressively towards them.

It is, ironically, one of the reasons why I like the sport we're currently doing, which teaches the dogs that a bite is unacceptable unless A: they have been explicitly sent to bite by verbal command or B: aggressive contact (hitting, shoving, grabbing) has been made. While the temperament test for the breed fills me with Thoughts, the specific sport we're involved in takes care to teach the dogs that these parameters are not ever going to change, and that "people acting strangely aka in a disabled manner" is not a good excuse to bite the fuck out of someone.

But this is also why I'm constantly on my bullshit about being sure this is a door you (general) want to open with your own dog, because all it takes is one instance of your dog incorrectly reading the room and charging at the limping person with a cane or the Deaf guy talking a little too loudly or the schizophrenic having an episode in the middle of the pet store, and now you have a serious situation on your hands.

[moniquill]

Fact: there is no ethical way for the police to weaponize a dog. It is inherently cruel to force dogs into police work, both to the dog and to the people being terrorized by the dog. Cops should not be allowed to have attack dogs. At all.

Horses, either.

(Note: weaponization by police is different from sporting or home guardian training, which are not inherently cruel)

[caats]

[backblacklikeliquor]

Reading the Haunting of Hill House…

I am realizing that teen-me interpreted this setting as WAY older than it actually is. It’s just the 50s. Their speech is just regular. It felt so old-timey when I was younger…

The dialogue is interesting. Playful. Eleanor is a *Mood*

And so is Theo. I love them together. Just two girls. Both with psychic powers that aren’t important and shall not be mentioned. Putting on lil outfits to frolic around a haunted mansion that fills them with deep existential dread. I love them. What a fun story.

[backblacklikeliquor]

I bought two real actual books and I am reading both of them. This is exciting.

I started the Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett but needed something spookier and more sleep-over-y so I went on ahead and started reading The Haunting of Hill House. I’ve read this book a couple times before many years ago and of course seen most of the various media inspired by it. The vibes are always immaculate.

I think I might try The Shining. Maybe. It might be too heavy for me at this moment in time.

But I’m really excited that I’m able to focus on books again and not just the same fanfics on repeat. It’s fun.