focussesh

BA & MA - English Language, Literature and Culture; Languages: Serbian (native), English, Italian

[henezmoj]

[haverst]

Mahmoud Darwish

[artyphex]

Apparently there’s a “kids shouldn’t be allowed in grocery stores” thing being spread on TikTok because they might scream or run around and look yeah that’s annoying but at a certain point you’ve gotta just put up with kids being a little annoying in public. Sure the kid pouring milk in the isles is the fault of a shitty parent and should be asked to leave, but a single mom with an otherwise controlled by crying toddler isn’t doing anything wrong. I think you’ll live if someone’s two year old starts screaming in their arms in isle 3. It might be annoying but that mom is probably having a worse day than you

[sparklyeevee]

Also, is a lot of the Internet just, unclear on the thing where you learn how to do stuff by doing it? You know what you get if you don't let toddlers into the grocery store? School age kids who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, which is worse. Don't let them in either? Teenagers who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, which is much worse. Just ban all minors from the grocery store? Now you have adults who don't know how to behave in the grocery store, and at that point we may as well not bother with society.

Toddler in the grocery store is learning:

How to find items in space that was organized by someone else

How to share narrow or complex walking spaces with strangers

How to operate in a space full of things they can touch and maybe even pick up, but don't own

How to peacefully coexist with strangers in a public space when everyone is doing their own (similar but separate) tasks in the same place

What kinds of food exist

How to tolerate having nothing in particular to do in a high stimulus environment

How to wait in line

How to greet a cashier and complete your transaction nicely

How to pay for things in a store

Most of this they are learning just by following and watching their adult(s). They're also, and this is especially important for families who don't take much public transit, getting to see a broader cross section of people than most other age appropriate activities will readily show them. The only other public place of this sort that a toddler might routinely go is the library, which is different in ways that are potentially instructive if you have only existed for 30 months.

[delbaar]

[romessence]

[oneirofilicnaaaa]

gde su mi knjige tu mi je dom🤍

[b1rd1e]

not even kidding be SO earnest. Be so honest and forthcoming about your life, your feelings in the pursuit of connection with others, and know being as earnest as possible in your experience is what quells loneliness in those who feel the same way as you do. Is what helps us feel seen. And builds community and resolve within the fact it doesn't have to feel so lonely and insurmountable. we need community and connection. You really are not as alone as you think, we're all scared. we need to hold each others hands

[treecitysessions]

They should invent a person who is sexually attracted to you and also cares about you as a person

[crazycatsiren]

You know what?

My ancestors would have wanted pasteurization, vaccines, antibiotics, disinfectants, birth control, psychiatric medications, pain management, anesthesia. My ancestors would have wanted to be able to keep their loved ones around longer, and not lose them too early/too soon to childbirths, injuries, bacterial infections, mental illnesses, and diseases that are curable and/or preventable in our modern day life.

Modern medicine saves lives.

[yarrowthewitch]

In fact, we know they did want these things, because they invented them. They gave them to us out of generations of struggling to understand and make use of nature itself. "Ancestral knowledge" includes the unglamorous things like germ theory, the functioning of the immune system, and how to manufacture lifesaving vaccines. It's not just magical or mystical or remote, it's present in our lives at every moment. It's the reward of human connection: the sum total of human discovery and the boundless ingenuity of human invention, surrounding us at all times with absolute miracles made banal by their familiarity.

If we reject modern medicine, then we reject all the labors and trials our ancestors went through for us; we reject our very nature.

Please, for your ancestors' sake: vaccinate your kids, and take your goddamn medicine.

[popclture]

The Godfather (1972)

[sentimentalbeing2001]

bell hooks

[fidelcostco]

it's not enough to say it's okay to make mistakes. you MUST and WILL make mistakes, and the distress and negative consequences of those mistakes will be real but survivable and possibly even fun and worthwhile experiences. getting rained out of a concert because you didn't check the weather will feel like a punishment for your oversight unless you're able to see yourself as human and enjoy the walk home in a mess of an outfit and shiver into a warm shower and treat yourself with kindness and let go of the imagined perfect self that has not and will never exist. or you fucking die from ten billion nightmares forever. that's it, those are your options.

[unaliveish]

niklas rueth

[luulapants]

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

[naamahdarling]

Finally, a good fucking take.

[1anonyymous1]

me: I’m gonna sleep early

also me at 3AM: researching how astronauts shower in space.

[sinister-flower]

Yesterday evening answering emails and finish tasks with some chamomile tea.

[jamsandsuch]

does anyone else get academic zoomies? when everything starts to connect and your writing enters a flow state and everything is falling into place that you need to get up and pace around or scribble it down immediately or you'll forget it because you're so excited