(Not so) mindless ramblings

Elle, Paris, urban geek. Black lives matter.

[xxvamprincessxx]

Went To A Black History Month Event And This Was The Cake.

It was so much fun 😁

❤️🖤💚

[yekkes]

...

[pizzaback]

In her own words:

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.

I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

[yet-another-heathen]

"I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves. What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic."

[evitwithimagination]

Her current work is teaching a lecture class on Race and Media, which anyone who can pay the $200~ tuition can view the recordings of. There's higher tiers too. She's already posted on bsky the best way to support her is through her class.

Fall Registration for Race, Media & International Affairs with Karen Attiah — Resistance Study Series

A virtual, seven week beginner and intermediate course on the history of race, mass media, and the modern world order.

[midnights-dragon]

In case anyone is having a bad night

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe (can get a bit bleak just a head’s up!)

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise

Take a breath. It’s going to be okay, I promise.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[blackisdivine]

24/7

365

[sh-kira]

Black Folklore Resource.

I’ve been thinking and researching a lot about the (Black) Southern Gothic style/aesthetic and African American folklore, so I put together a list of books for myself and thought it might be helpful to someone else. 

-;-;-

FOLKTALE COLLECTIONS

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton | Thrift Books Amazon

Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton | Amazon

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston | Amazon Thrift Books

Every Tongue Got to Confess : Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston | Thrift Books Amazon

Go Gator and Muddy the Water : Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers Project by Zora Neale Hurston | Thrift Books Amazon

Lies and Other Tall Tales by Zora Neale Hurston and Joyce Carol Thomas | Thrift Books Amazon

FOLKLORE AND STORYTELLING

Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom by Lawrence W. Levine | Thrift Books

Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans | Thrift Books Amazon

A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Recollections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of Peoples of African American Descent in the Americas by Harold Courlander | Amazon

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young | Amazon

Talk That Talk: An Anthology on African-American Storytelling by Linda Goss | Amazon

African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World by Roger Abrahams | Amazon

Deep Down in the Jungle: Black American Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia by Roger Abrahams | Amazon

Singing the Master : The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South by Roger D. Abrahams | Thrift Books Amazon

From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom by John W. Roberts | Amazon

Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Shirley Moody-Turner | Amazon

Black Folktales by Julius Lester | Amazon

Folk beliefs of the southern Negro (1926) by Newbell Niles Pucket | Amazon

Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Shirley Moody-Turner | Amazon

HUMOR

African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (The Library of Black America series) by Mel Watkins, Dick Gregory | Amazon

Honey, Hush!: An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor by Daryl Cumber Dance, Nikki Giovanni | Amazon

STYLE

The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora by Carol Tulloch | Amazon

 Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness by Rebecca Walker, Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Amazon

MAGIC/MYSTICISM

African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism by Joy R. Bostic | Amazon

Working Conjure: A Guide to Hoodoo Folk Magic by Hoodoo Sen Moise | Amazon

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Ifalaye Books | Amazon

FOLK HEALING

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee | Amazon

African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and nonHerbal Treatments by Herbert C. Cove | Amazon

African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem | Amazon

ADDITIONS: 7/27/2019 (NOTE: As I continue to add books, some of these may deviate from folklore and focus on Black history and/or Black experiences)

Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison by Trudier Harris | Thriftbooks Amazon

The Skull Talks Back: And Other Haunting Tales by Joyce Carol Thomas & Zora Neale Hurston | Thriftbooks Amazon

Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories by Karla FC Holloway | Thriftbooks Amazon

Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant by Kelly Brown Douglas | Amazon

This is absolutely not a definitive list and if you have more information or recommendations please feel free to add it! 

[1000-life-hacks]

[afriblaq]

Stolen. Not from slavery. Not from sharecropping. From benefits paid for in blood

[blvkvholic]

[jenjenthevirgo]

HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[tllgrrl]

HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH YEAR!!

[six2vii]

[andremichaux]

[rhubarbspring]

"Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we're getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without making noise? We've tried peaceful resistance.

We decided to defend our people with whatever weapons we have."

Glory to the resistance.

[fluoresensitive-deactivated2024]

"ok but where would Israeli Jewish ppl go" Palestinians have already created a plan for unity, YOU'RE just horny for this idea of brown "savages" getting revenge. White people did this with indigenous peoples, with freed enslaved people, with apartheid SA...also, if your main concern is the settlers/oppressors while the oppressed people can't even recover their dead to count them... (Insert something that'll have me put on a list)

[fluoresensitive-deactivated2024]

Liberation is never bloodless, and if you're one of the settlers (which is violence...by squatting on these people's land and barring them from water, food, their own homes and comfort, you are being violent...), idk! My reaction to seeing people who are participating in genocide by being the ruling class in Genocide Land get their shit handed to them is uhh, well, you know where my sympathies lie.

[fairuzfan]

Perfect post but also I want to add that Dr. Abu Sittah, a Nakba survivor, did a survey on inhabited land in Palestine and found that a majority of the depopulated villages from the Nakba and Naksa are uninhabited. Israel literally just prevents refugees from Gaza from just WALKING home out of pure racism. He also lays out an in depth plan about resettlement in this video. So its plainly just racist projecting and people should be ashamed of themselves for pushing the idea that liberation of Palestine means enacting a massacre for all Jews. Those people should educate themselves about Palestinian history and theory before asserting their opinions on things they don't know about.

free palestine.

AMAZING interview with famed Palestinian scholar Salman Abu Sitta about how academia participates in the colonization of Palestine and how I

[ashwantsafreepalestine]

Aamer Rahman: "A colonizer’s favourite trick is to start the timeline when it's convenient for them."

[distressedpimp]

“You are the perfect verse over a tight beat.” - Swoons, Brown Sugar

[leebrontide]

Ok so my kid had an ear infection, right? As kids often do.

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

May this knowledge find its way to someone else who can use it.

[jesusinstilettos]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)