DEAR READER
#extradirty
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@theartofmadeline
Origami Around
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
ojovivo
if i look back, i am lost
$LAYYYTER
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
JVL
Sade Olutola
🪼
Stranger Things
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Acquired Stardust
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oozey mess
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seen from United Kingdom
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@horizonproblems
Just so we’re all clear on where I stand: Black lives matter, trans women are women, trans men are men, nonbinary people are beautiful, asexual/aromantic folks have a place in the LGBTQ community, Queer is not a dirty word, and being “anti fascist” is a moral position, not a political one.
Art by Luo Li Rong
Stunning!!
Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.
It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.
It's rude.
why do europeans hate their diasporas so fucking much lol
“irish americans aren’t irish” “italian americans aren’t italian” what the fuck else are they and why do you think you’re allowed to gatekeep a fucking ethnicity?
europeans will act like their concept of ethnicity is the only concept of ethnicity and throw a fit when euro-americans feel attached to their heritage. yes they’re americans first and foremost but idk how to tell you that “american” is not an ethnicity. euro-americans have european heritage and acting like they don’t because it pisses you off is fucking childish and eurocentric af.
Ich glaube, es ist hauptsächlich die Sprachbarriere und die Identifikation über Anteile der Verwandtschaft. Außerdem haben sich die Kulturen inzwischen anders entwickelt, auch wenn es minimal erscheint.
Für manche erscheint es auch so, dass Amerikaner sich über uns lustig machen. Ich kann jetzt nicht über Iren sprechen, aber zum Beispiel wenn ich über Oktoberfeste in Amerika höre fühlt sich das wie eine Parodie auf Deutschland an. Vor allem da ich durchaus in amerikanischen Filmen und Serien solche schon gesehen habe, manchmal bösartigen, manchmal nur lustig. Da fällt es einem schon schwer, zu glauben, dass es ehrliche Identifikation mit uns ist.
Look in theory I know Europeans will use literally any excuse to be racist against people who don’t share their exact ethnicity. But in practice it still hit me like a shit ton of bricks to see the argument “The fifteen million members of the German American diaspora aren’t really German because of Oktoberfest”
That's a very bad faith reading of what was said. It's talking about how Americans treat European cultures as the theme park version in extremely insulting manners, and, in that case, lose a degree of connection with German culture as they assimilate into American culture (to say nothing of St Patrick's Day and how the stereotype of Drunk Irish is propagated). And as part of that, Europeans are treated as stereotypes by Americans in general, so there's a degree of irritation that comes back to that. It's not an "excuse to be racist", it's basically saying, "No, the people back here in Europe kinda feel a bit angry when we're treated like props/fantasy beings by Americans, even if they're related to us, and here are a bunch of examples of how that treatment expresses itself."
Sue me, I humorously paraphrased what I felt was the most egregious talking point because I didn’t feel like running through every single fallacy I found in the full response. But if you want it, here’s my full breakdown:
“Außerdem haben sich die Kulturen inzwischen anders entwickelt, auch wenn es minimal erscheint. / The cultures have evolved differently, even if it appears minimal.”
I think this is a wild thing for a German to say. Yes, certainly, German Americans have evolved a separate culture from Bavarians, but Bavarians also have a separate culture from Berliners and Westphalians and Holsteiners. The idea of a unified German identity is only about 150 years old, and an actually unified German nation in is current form isn’t even 40 years old. Germans have been evolving differently from each other in minimal and not-so-minimal ways for centuries. The country already has a huge amount of sub-cultural diversity, even predating a West/East divide that can be seen in every data-driven map of the nation and can literally be seen from space. What’s the issue with accepting the German-American diaspora?
“Für manche erscheint es auch so, dass Amerikaner sich über uns lustig machen. Wenn ich über Oktoberfeste in Amerika höre fühlt sich das wie eine Parodie auf Deutschland an. Da fällt es einem schon schwer, zu glauben, dass es ehrliche Identifikation mit uns ist. / For many of us, it seems like Americans are making fun of us. When I hear about American Oktoberfests, it feels like a parody of Germany. It’s difficult, then, to believe that they’re actually identifying with us.”
The above is a paraphrase of the second paragraph, which is in its entirely the Oktoberfest point. And oh, G-d, there are so many things wrong with this, mostly to do with the hasty generalization and slippery slope fallacies. Not all German Americans participate in Oktoberfest. Some German Americans participate in it because, despite being a parody, it’s the semblance of actual cultural connection they can get— it’s not like your average American can spend much of their free time in Europe. Some German nationals participate in it because they believe the parody is in good jest and they want to be in on the fun. And none of that actually, substantively prevents German-Americans from being able to connect to their German heritage.
Plenty of Oktoberfests, including the one in my city, are run by local German heritage groups and completely devoid of parodies. I promise you that if you compare photos of my city’s Oktoberfest against, you know, Munich’s, the actual German Oktoberfest is gonna look a lot more like a tasteless parody. And let’s not pretend that not a single German from another cultural region goes to play dress up in Bavaria when September rolls around.
I think there are genuine concerns expressed in the original reply— there is a language barrier. Plenty of German Americans do only get exposure to American media, which does not always portray Germans in a positive light. But those are issues that also affect every other diaspora population in the world. That’s what a diaspora population is. Jews and a whole continent of native Africans and hundreds of indigenous groups around the world are usually able to look past those things and encourage good-faith attempts to reconnect with one’s culture and heritage.
It is completely understandable on its face to look at American Oktoberfest and feel as though German culture is being mischaracterized and flattened out into a stereotype. That’s not my issue here. My issue with that response is that it, in turn, uses a singular event to mischaracterize millions of German Americans and flatten them out into a stereotype. Which ranges somewhere between not being very sporting and being actively xenophobic.
I think there are two arguments going on here. One is about ancestry, the other is about culture.
What is getting conflagrated/misunderstood here is, exemplary, an American-German saying "I'm American-German (ethnically)" and a German saying "American-Germans aren't German (culturally)".
Many (western) europeans don't have a problem with the ethnicity aspect of it (in my experience), and they will assume you're mostly/completely culturally American. But if you claim to be culturally European (and saying "I'm American-<insert European country here>" gets often misinterpreted as that, because to white western Europeans the ethnicity of white USAmericans is pretty irrelevant in the face of cultural disputes), most Europeans would like you to back it up with some actual knowledge of the culture, especially language (the most significant marker of cultural belonging), or you will get made fun of. And as a third+ generational USAmerican, you probably have, culturally, more in common with every other third+ generational USAmerican than with any European.
And prev is right that it's not easy to hold up cultural traditions in diaspora, and that many western European countries are at best very indifferent to these attempts at cultural connection in USA. I'd hazard a guess that it's because USAmerican hegemony is so omnipresent in Europe that there's a lot of resistance in accepting diasporic cultures as good faith attempts of reconnection and not a USAmerican reinterpretation of the European culture in question.
“knowing how to write effective AI prompts will be a valuable skill in the future” and what if I skip all that and write the email myself in under 30 seconds drawing from my very own biological database of language and rhetoric (my brain)?
lie to me
I think it's funny world-building how like, so at the center of Life we've got Water. Arguably The most important resource. Colorless transparent substance that molds to any container and we die without it and quickly. And all organic functions of society hinge on its availability. Could fight a ton of wars over this thing.
And well beyond organic life, modern society's great human invention is the Electronic Magic. Our greatest minds invented the Electronic Magic and it sends information around the world instantly. Our infrastructure our economy our modern life, minute by minute by minute, hinges on utilizing the great Lighting Technology.
BUT ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️ DO NOT. DO NOT EVER. get the magical Elixir Substance of Life and Living and Healing, Water, IN the Electronic Device. The water keeps you alive critically but it KILLS the Electronic Device instantly and catastrophically. This Says something.
and this Says something...
The beautiful art of Thomas Blackshear II
i went to his website and saw even more great art! sharing some more which i particularly appreciated
Be not afraid! For this Witch Hat Monday I bring you the most blursed creature of all, Biblically Accurate Brushbuddy 👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️
A regular part of my job is trying to reach out to people who have been quietly trying to make their community a better place; the volunteers, the teachers, the fucking. People who rehabilitate injured wild owls in a Quonset hut in the woods, and to a one this is the kind of person who immediately reviles at recognition. The kind of person who immediately says that they never got into this to get praise for it, and that they’d infinitely prefer to quietly plug away at this anonymously forever.
And from this I’ve always drawn two conclusions:
To always distrust Mr. Beast and his ilk who always want their acts of charity done on film, because the people who really want to do good and have no motives to do it besides the doing it never want recognition for it, and
That there are, in the dark, in the quiet, always people who are doing good, and the reason you don’t hear about it is because they’d rather die than receive recognition for it, but they’re real; they do exist. And you are never alone
I agree with most of this but I also am reminded of that one story about the guy who does charity acts and feeds hundreds of children and suddenly goes to a monk and says he wants to stop because "I'm clearly only doing this to get praised for it, I should stop" and the monk goes "do you think these kids care about why you're doing it"
Though I'll never defend Mr. Beast, I follow this one guy on Instagram from my birthplace who does acts of kindness for the poorest of the poor. People who can't afford huts can't eat can't sleep don't have running water and he digs wells and films them and his entire following base supports them by sending money and often also finds other people to support them financially and otherwise. I think in the current socio-political and capitalistic climate it's a pretty big advantage of getting to film and garner attention, though the idea of poor and sick people being captured on film in their worst moments does disgust me a little bit. But we do what we can.
sword and shield
tip jar!
A little Brushbuddy 🍊
Anyone who's ever done anything creative needs to fucking see this.
If you come across anyone who starts off with "Scientists don't want you to know..." you need to understand that they're lying. They're completely full of shit and working a grift.
Because they've never met or spoke with a scientist.
Scientists WANT YOU TO KNOW. Scientists want you to know SO MUCH. Scientists would be THRILLED to teach you EVERYTHING they know in EXPLICIT DETAIL. Scientists LOVE to share information and their findings and their theories. They don't want to hide anything, ever. They are SO HAPPY to share.
take me with you, or let me follow
tip jar
Every so often I catch a glimpse of the book drama going on over on the Insta/Threads sphere of the Internet, and it makes me so glad I’m considered too Tumblrina to sit at their tables.
What do you mean an author is railing against people using libraries/the Libby app because it’s “free” (it’s not. you as the author get money from the library purchasing the digital lending license) and meanwhile their book is on Amazon for free to try and get readers??? Hello????
“But if people read it for free they might like it want to buy the rest of my work!”
You mean like how people read books at libraries, and end up buying them if they like them?
“That’s not the same 😡”
Correct! Because again, libraries pay us. You putting your books up on Amazon for free means you get nothing.
