Grubb(e)l(e)s @hivestuckmushroom - Tumblr Blog

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10 Ways to Appreciate Romani Culture

1. Attend a Festival

Festivals are a great way to partake in a culture different from your own. Romani people have numerous festivals throughout the year, many of which are open events and welcoming to non-Roma participants. Festivals, such as the Appleby Horse Fair, Khamoro, and the California Herdeljezi Festival, are all great examples of open cultural events that allow you to actively participate in aspects of Romani culture. For a list of some more Romani festivals, click here!

2. Consume Romani Media

Romani media is completely underrated. There are a plethora of great producers, actors, musicians, and radio personalities who are ethnic Roma. Consuming media is one way we can actively engage with and learn about another culture without being disrespectful.

For a list of Romani media, click here!

3. Read a Book

Romani authors are plentiful, and with a larger-than-ever presence of Roma on the internet, Romani books and poetry are becoming much more accessible. There are numerous books that have been translated from the Romani language in English, Russian, Hungarian, French, Spanish, and various other languages. A quick internet search can now produce comprehensive lists of ethnic Romani authors.

4. Buy Real “Gypsy” Fashion

Retailers, such as Romani Design, and the Tzigania Store, have made Romani-inspired clothing and jewelry accessible to and designed for both Roma and non-Roma. If you like traditional Romani motifs, purchasing clothing from a store like Romani Design not only supports ethnic Romani designers, but also allows you to consume Romani fashion in a way that is not appropriative.

If you’d like to learn more about appropriation versus appreciation, click here!

5. Learn a Language

While Roma have varying opinions on non-Roma learning our language, generally speaking, learning a foreign language is one way to appreciate a different culture.There’s also the added benefit that knowing more than one language has been proven to positively impact brain function. There are several reputable books and websites that can assist in Romani language learning endeavors.

6. Support Romani Art

Support Romani arts by purchasing Romani art, or going to galleries where Romani art is featured. As Roma, our traditional artwork is often overlooked and comes second to non-Romani depictions of us. Supporting Romani arts and efforts to preserve Romani arts has a profound impact on our communities, and allows you to appreciate Romani culture. To learn more about Romani arts initiatives, click here!

7. Donate to Romani Causes

One way to appreciate Romani culture and ensure its preservation is to actively support Romani rights causes by donating to NGOs or participating in human rights events centered on Romani rights. There are numerous existing organizations that help Roma around the world. However, some of these organizations struggle to receive proper funding, or are promised funding that becomes tied up and “lost” by incompetent politicians. For a list of Romani NGOs, click here!

8. Learn Our History

Learning about the history of our people and culture allows you to better appreciate it. Sometimes, history can help put culture into context. Why people continue to practice certain traditions can be as important as the tradition itself. Learning about the history of Romani people can also give non-Roma perspective as to why we keep certain aspects of our culture guarded. Understanding closed versus open cultures, and what that entails, can be a great way to show appreciation for a particular culture. To learn more about Romani history, click here!

9. Listen to Music

Romani music is both diverse and beautiful. We have a rich musical history and our contributions to modern music genres are often underappreciated. We had a great influence in European classical music, as well as Jazz and Flamenco. Listening to Romani music is a great way to appreciate Romani culture. Some excellent musicians are Ando Drom, Esma Redzepova, Via Romen, and Gipsy Kings, among others. Check out this page for some more Romani musicians by country!

10. Lend an Ear

Sometimes the biggest appreciation we can give is to listen to people speak about their own culture. If we say something misrepresents us, or is offensive, it’s probably because it is. There are many depictions of Roma that are steeped in racism, whether we realize it or not. If members of the Romani community ask you to respect our culture, the biggest appreciation you can give is just listening to us. Listening to ethnic Roma speak about our culture, or reading and sharing articles written by ethnic Roma are both ways of appreciating Romani culture.

sangefiruze

“we were born alone & we die alone” you delivered yourself during birth? built all the roofs that have ever given you shelter? sown the wheat in your bread?? weaved the clothes on your back??? wrote all the books youve ever read and the music youve ever listened to????? who made the literal bed youre going to die in - you, all alone?

soracities

CA Conrad, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics

liberalsarecool

Vaccines no doubt used public funds for research. This is disgusting abuse of capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

vicholas

There’s a popular post going around that’s like “well tone indicators are helpful for people for anxiety because some people need stuff like “ /nm (not mad)” or “ /nbh (nobody here)” and I absolutely get it because I have an anxiety disorder but like. You can very much add that on the text of a message itself and it will be way more clear and accessible than expecting them to memorize this whole new fabricated code.

Which one do you think will be clearer, faster to understand, and more direct to the point:

“oh my god someone is pissing me off /nbh”

“oh my god someone (not from this server, don’t worry) is pissing me off”

“have you done the dishes? /nm

“have you done the dishes? don’t worry, im not mad, just wondering”

You can be mindful of someone else’s needs and talk to them in a way that is respectful and understanding of those needs. The key is communication. Expecting people to memorize a lot of abbreviations is like the contrary of accessible.

#I spent at least a week thinking /gen meant generation #like some newfangled genZ meme or something

lew-basnight

I applied at a chain bookstore when I was 20 for a seasonal temp position, on a drunken whim. I knew I’d never get it. I was a high school drop-out with nothing but food service, assembly line and “freelance cable access camera person” on my application. It was the original location of the chain, the ur-store that all the others across the world were based on. It was staffed by original employees of the indie store it had been, unreconstructed pro-labor anti-corporate problem-causers. They still had a “book test” then, which was about two dozen titles and you had to write in the authors name, or as close as you could recall. (This was later made illegal.)

I don’t know how, but I managed to score the fourth of four positions. My family were all very excited, maybe there was a chance I wasn’t a fuckup after all (they were wrong.) I attended a week of training in the nicest pants and shirt I had. It was a wonderland. The pay was better than any restaurant gig I’d ever had, I didn’t have fish juice or backwashed coffee in my socks when I got home, and they all had a good laugh at the end of my first shift when I asked about brooms and emptying the garbage. (That was just part of every job, right?)

And all day, every day, it was books. Books on subjects I’d never heard of. Books by amazing people I hadn’t even known existed. I was assigned a section to maintain, one that nobody else wanted (religion & spirituality) and I devoured it. I borrowed and spent time with all the big sellers, and then branched into the books those books had recommended. I talked to the people who came in to browse those shelves, and I learned what they shared. I took on a second section (humor & occult) and began cross-shelving. I shared smokebreaks with choreographers and cartoonists and organizers and musicians and so many lost souls searching for their doctorates and people from my age to 80.

And while a lot of the customers were, you know, customers, sometimes people would come in with quests. This was pre-search-engine, pre-Wikipedia, and if you needed to know everything about the US Naval Academy or the childhood of president Taft or the migratory habits of the swallow, you went to the library or the bookstore. And while I certainly didn’t know any of that stuff, I learned how to find out.

At the end of the season I was let go with thanks. There were three permanent positions and four seasonals... soooo... so I went back to the deli and asked for my barista gig back. A week later I came in to pick up my last check and the on-desk AM was frantic. “They’ve been looking for you! There’s another position open and they want to hire you! But your phone doesn’t seem to work?” (The phone didn’t work because I didn’t like paying my phone bill and constantly abused the voice mail system with five-minute long outgoing messages from various unconventional books.)

I stayed there for about three years, and it was my education. I jumped around from section to section, department to department, gobbling down books and music and film like a black hole, like Pantagruel, like the toxic forest. It shaped me in so many fundamental ways.

And I learned about corporations. I learned how easy it becomes to shrug and say “I’m just a cog! What control do I have?” I learned that if they can fuck you for another dollar, they’ll do it. I learned about contracts and distribution and logistics, I learned that it’s easier and cheaper to destroy books than store them, when you can just reprint. I learned about waste and shrink and volume discounts and how selling the hot new title at a deeper discount than anyone else could afford would guarantee shoppers would always come to you first. I learned that it’s “good business” to lose money and wreck the industry for whatever you could grab. I learned about corporate toadies who would go into other book and music shops and ask to see merchandise that was behind a sale date, so they could contact the publisher and get the indie store fined, or blacklisted. (I never did this, and I bullied the managers who did.) I learned that a CEO could take all his compensation in stock, hire all his buddies and pay them in stock, drive up the price and then all quit on the same day and cash out, tanking the benefits of tens of thousands of employees, costing people their homes and their children’s educations.

I started shopping exclusively at co-ops and small businesses and owner-operated shops. I might have started to forget to charge customers for their purchases. I may have started leaving locked display cases for high-end items unlocked. It was a long time ago, it’s hard to be sure.

Eventually I quit. I loved being there, among the co-workers and the customers, the thousands of books and albums, but I just couldn’t keep taking their checks while my friends at the indies were getting ground into the dust. I took a job assembling patio furniture and glazing windows, and later moved to the city where I had some other book and publishing and printing adventures, but I’ve always wished I could go back and visit that place, the way people go back to visit their old schools. It was a splendid moment that we won’t see again.

The takeaway is that while I treasure the time I spent there and the education it provided, I also got to see a preview of where capitalism leads and how glaringly unsustainable and cruel and stupid and short-sighted the whole goddamn endeavor is. A*mazon isn’t some cruelty inflicted on us by aliens, it’s a totally predictable outcome of the “must grow at all costs must dominate must wipe out every other competitor” mentality.

So fuck the algorithm and fuck the voluntary surveillance state and fuck making it easier for them to categorize you and quantify you and profile you. Don’t cooperate.

shubbabang

happy 420 and day i reserve a spot in hell

shubbabang

its that time again folks

oct2pus

@shubbabang

(Source)

tregzero-deactivated20210615

So i was chillin in the car, listening to "mIrAcLeS" by Toby Fox and i realised something

One specific, seemingly minor character in the comic who has almost NO content centered around him turns out to be one of the most important characters in Homestuck.

Who is this character? he's none other than...

GAMZEE'S LUSUS.

At first this may sound really strange, but here's some things to keep in mind:

• Lord English is the main antagonist of Homestuck

• His components include: Caliborn, Lil Hal, Equius and HALF OF GAMZEE.

• The purplebloods, along with Gamzee, worship Lord English.

• Had Gamzee not gone sober, half of his cadaver probably wouldn't have been sucked into LE [as he probably wouldn't have been chainsawed in half by Kanaya]

• Had Gamzee not killed Equius, ARquiusprite probably wouldn't have existed, further preventing the creation of Lord English, as Caliborn no longer has his components helping him out.

Now, you may not see where exactly i'm going with this; what does Gamzee's lusus have to do with him becoming sober?

Well, here's the thing.

Most trolls were raised by their lusus, who is obligated to raise them the way a human parent would. However, Gamzee's lusus was out at sea most of the time, and this was during the period where Gamzee was still extremely young.

Due to his lusus's absence, Gamzee was oblivious to the fact that SOPOR SLIME WAS NOT MEANT TO BE EATEN.

We all know that the brain develops ALOT during childhood. [at least for humans, but hey we can assume the same for trolls since their intellect is similar to that of a human's] Gamzee's addiction was very likely to have started at a young age, which messed with his brain plenty.

So, what makes Gamzee's lusus's absence so significant? It's the fact that his very absence led Gamzee to develop a terrible addiction to sopor slime. This, in turn, not only made sopor slime a PRIVILEGE for Gamzee, but a NECESSITY. Having lived most of his life on the slime, going cold turkey for him would be considered unnatural by his body, as it was already accustomed to consumption of the substance. The body would go into withdrawal...blah blah blah...

But what's important here isn't whether Gamzee went sober or not. What's important was the fact that he EVEN STARTED EATING SOPOR SLIME IN THE FIRST PLACE. Some people claim that Sober Gamzee is the "real" Gamzee, while others say that Stoned Gamzee is. My take is that any possibility of there being a "real" Gamzee: a Gamzee COMPLETELY unaffected by sopor, is impossible in this particular timeline. The damage done to his brain by the sopor slime is IRREVERSIBLE. Sober Gamzee isn't really sober, as his brain was already damaged by the slime sweeps ago. A true "Sober" Gamzee would be one who had a caring lusus who was actually there for him, and who would actually teach him that trolls shouldn't be eating slime in the first place. Let's call this Gamzee Alt Gamzee.

I'd like to imagine this guy as someone who's personality shares SOME traits with that of Sober and Stoned Gamzee, but overall has a very different nature compared to the both of them.

Moving away from Alt Gamzee for awhile: let's focus on what caused Gamzee to go mad in the first place.

1: Going off sopor slime

2: Dave insulting his religion

3: Staring into the eyes of Lil Cal, who told him to kill all his friends

Now, in this alternate timeline where Alt Gamzee never gets stoned, case 1 would never have taken place. I think most of us can also agree that case 1 influenced cases 2 and 3 to an extent. Stoned Gamzee probably wouldn't have reacted in the way Sober Gamzee did-and Alt Gamzee probably wouldn't be as affected by that as Sober Gamzee. This would ultimately prevent Gamzee from going crazy, which in turn, would prevent him from going on his killing spree, [which would prevent Equius's death and also prevent LE's creation] WHICH IN TURN would prevent him from getting chainsawed in half by Kanaya, WHICH IN TURN would prevent the creation of Lord English; PARADOXICALLY THIS WOULD MEAN THAT ALT GAMZEE WOULDN'T HAVE A RELIGION-Oh wait! This also prevents the creation of Lil Cal, since Gamzee and Equius are both parts of him.

As we can see, Gamzee's lusus being present and preventing him from starting sopor slime both paradoxically and unparadoxically prevents the creation of Lord English!

After typing all of this out I've started to wonder even more about this little clown and his dad. What interesting characters...

benepla-deactivated20180521

“the world has become such a soft safe space where you can’t speak freely” is a good way to reveal you spend a majority of your time on the internet. a customer came in today and told me that the illuminati framed bill cosby and it was my fault and i just had to be like OK sir cash or credit