BastardGM

Random almost-thoughts from a grumpy history geek.

[legalkimchi]

Knowing when not to speak

When i was in 3rd grade, a friend of mine, my neighbor, was doing the old "finger eyes" asian mocking thing while saying "ching chong wai!" at another student on the bus. after we got off the bus, i told him that doing that was kind of racist (i wasn't as confident about speaking as i am now).

He told me it wasn't. He was italian.

that is my first memory of a white person telling me something isn't racist when i brought it up. It was not the last. here i am, over 30 years later, and folks are still saying it.

It is because he had never experienced racism of that nature before. he had no reference points. his radar wasn't up for that.

Mine was. Most PoC have had their radar up their entire lives. Since even before they knew what that was. it comes naturally.

it is frustrating because when white americans want to but in with their opinions, PoC generally say, "your opinion doesn't matter."

but i want to be clear. It isn't because you are white.

It is because you lack the experience or education to speak on these things.

Like if i met a white person who grew up in korea, and faced xenophobia in korea, then they would have some experience. Hell, my brothers and i faced some of that racism in korea just for being mixed koreans. But if a white person had that experience, then they could have a nuanced opinion on subtle racism.

However, and i cannot stress this enough, there is a limit to what you have experience with even in that situation.

Take me for example. I have experienced racism due to being hispanic, being asian, and for being mixed race. So i can speak to my experience on all three of those vectors and subtle racism in general.

You know what i don't shove down other people's throats? My opinion on racism that black people experience. Or anti-semetism. because even my experience does not reach those topics. I'm not white. So you cannot blame whiteness for my exclusion from having my opinion listened to. It is because of my lack of experience.

so please, excluding white, inexperienced voices when we discuss racism is not, in an of itself, racism. it is simply a judgement call based on experience.

So please, know when you SHOULD NOT speak.

[soberscientistlife]

He has an excellent point.

[netherworldpost]

Jane Austin Powers

Working on a paper for a client discussing low-to-moderate leisure class elven society (marriage, social climbing, petty squabbles, modest crimes)

[theforcesource]

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)

[the-quasar-hero]

Crazy to think that this is all Ronald Reagan’s fault

[lordmeowdemort]

I dont care what you're referring to. You are right.

[ruffboi-mags]

hey now, that's not fair. some things are Margaret Thatcher's fault.

[jbt7493]

“Before You Embark On A Journey Of Revenge, Dig Two Graves”. what a stupid fucking quote. I’m killing way more than two people idiot

[karvinacorp-deactivated20220224]

[fluffygif]

Dreams come true for this lovely cat

[tales-from-the-library]

[brunhiddensmusings]

they do this so that they can prove people use the library, figure out what books are popular so they can make sure to get more like it or further entries in a series, and to figure out what times the library is more buisy while ive never killed a person in a library (yet) i do sometimes unshelve additional books to boost the statistics thus resulting in increased funding for the library, however small

[crumplelush]

librarians being a-ok with murder but draw the lines at reshelving books is painfully on brand

[whitepeopletwitter]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[sem-boi]

I know it’s kind of suggesting it but this is exactly why businessmen (people) should not be politicians. Running a country is to benefit the people running a business is to benefit shareholders. Their “skills” are not interchangeable

[flipocrite]

Framing the USPS as a poor business rather than a public service is propaganda.

[raccooninthedaytime]

My hot take is that actually food allergies are a disability and more people need to realize that. The amount of research people with food allergies have to do when they want to go visit places but arent sure if they’ll have access to any food there is insane. Allergy friendly food is almost ALWAYS incredibly expensive in stores bc of all those fucking fad diets that like yoga instructors and middle age soccer moms make popular. And on top of the price, it is so hard to FIND! Almost evrry grocery store ive been to has a tiny ass allergy section that is almost always near empty. Plus what about people who don’t have the money to pay 10$ for a loaf of bread? You go to starbucks and non-dairy milks are like 70 cents extra? People are definitely out there buying and eating stuff that is destroying their digestive systems because they have no other choice. I am begging people to stop pretending that catering to people’s food allergies is elitist and not worth is. We need to make these options openly available.

[untouchmyhair]

[earthlydreams-deactivated201709]

This is so cool! But what country are they from? “Africa” is really vague.

[nonhoration]

Their names are Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola and they’re from Lagos, Nigeria. There’s a neat video about them here.

[dontdierobb]

#when will people start giving names to young non-white scientists??#bc that shit is getting old

[jaythenerdkid]

boost the fuck out of this, and make sure you include their goddamn names and country of origin.

[molothoo]

☝🏾

[randomslasher]

Again: that’s not disrespect, that’s journalism. That’s how headlines work. The goal of a headline is NOT to be a substitute for the entire article. It’s to tease the article itself, and generate enough interest and intrigue to get clicks. You only have so much time to capture attention in a headline. If you only have a few seconds and a handful of words to snag someone’s news-scrolling gaze and get across pertinent facts, then you try to make those facts as simple and accessible as possible.

If you started a headline with 4 names no one has ever heard before, most people won’t even read all the way to the pertinent information in the headline, let alone be intrigued enough to click on the article itself. And more people know where Africa is than where Nigeria is. I’m not making a value judgment there, it’s just the truth. It’s a funnel approach: you start by appealing to the broadest or most culturally relevant possible demographic in the headline so people will click on it for more information, and then you start going into detail:

In less than 2 sentences we have names and a location. 

I checked another article about the same thing, with a similarly catchy and vague title: 

And again: names (and this time even ages and pictures) and a location within the first 2-3 sentences of the article, immediately following an eye-and-attention grabbing, snappy and easy-to-digest headline.

This is a basic journalism thing. They ARE named, and in fact their praises being sung–you just have to be willing to read more than a headline before you start judging the content. 

[nudityandnerdery]

Valid justification not to include the names in the headlines- it wouldn’t fit, obviously- but there’s not really an excuse to just say Africa over Nigeria. You’d never see a headline that referred to kids as European instead of French or Italian or what have you.

[afloweroutofstone]

Honestly I was kinda on the fence about outright vaccine mandates outside of schools + flights and a few other places. But after seeing all these cops and soldiers share their resignation letters which read “I don’t want to carry a loaded gun around anymore because the Satanic communists are trying to poison me,” I think we should have vaccine mandates for every single position of authority that exists

[anagramofbrat]

Boy howdy if there was anything MORE telling that most cops aren’t in it for the so called Public Good is having a chunk of them resign over vaccine mandates and the rest of them not running the resignees out of town on fucking rails.

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine losing your phone (or having it stolen, nobody's entirely sure) but you've got the location thing on so you can check from your computer where the phone is when it's turned on. You try to map out where the fuck it is, but it's been wandering around in places that don't have maps and people shouldn't access. It turns out that no matter who stole it, a fucking raccoon has it now, and you're pretty much run out of battery. You need this phone so you try to fervently figure out how the fuck you're going to get it back.

Okay, it hasn't been moving in a raccoon-like fashion for a while, so you're pretty sure that it's not being carried around by the raccoon anymore. Oh, it looks like it's been found, someone turned it on and charged it! A notification pings on your computer, someone has sent a message from your phone!

"23rqrferq233rqrw434r". The phone is moving on the GPS again. It has been picked up by another fucking raccoon!

...And that is roughly how I picture Sauron feeling when the Ring was once again carried by another hobbit.

[guerrillatech]

[redshift-13]

Prediction:

1. 30 countries will move toward this within the next 5 years.

2. It won’t even enter American political discourse for 5, 10 or 15 years from now.

3. If it’s proposed it will incite a moral panic, as the usual suspects raise the alarm about the specter of communism, a lazy labor force, etc.

4. Measures of lifespan, health-span and well-being will increase in the countries that adopt it.  These same measures will fall in the U.S. and virtually no one will notice.

5. The usual rhetoric about American exceptionalism and USA #1 will carry on as usual.

[northernlib]

I would say your prediction is dead-on.

[dzamie]

I am respectfully asking goyim to stop saying “well what about this innocent explanation?” when they ask me to explain an antisemitic dogwhistle.

Yes, that person COULD have been born in 1988.

Yes, that person COULD be saying that it was specifically corrupt “religious people” who crucified Jesus.

Yes, that person COULD be honestly confused about how dual citizenship works.

Yes, that person COULD think that (((these brackets))) are just another silly internet joke.

You aren’t the first to bring it up, and you won’t be the last. But “I can’t hear anything” doesn’t mean the dogwhistle isn’t making any sound. It just means you’re not a dog.

[dzamie]

Leftists can and should reblog this. You’re not immune. I’ll see someone brag about being able to spot terfs a mile off, then scroll down and see they reblogged a cat picture from from user oyveyzegoyimknow or something.

[sexynbabyarethesmartones]

For those who (like me) have never seen the triple parentheses:

[dzamie]

Ah, right, I should probably explain them:

H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so “88″ signals “heil hitler.” It’s not actually used as a proper abbreviation like people use FYI or ASAP, but it signals to other neonazis that they’re “in on the joke” (the joke is xenophobia). Think of it like how terfs sometimes choose usernames like “radical-womb-lesbian”

“Jesus was killed by religious people,” and it’s more obvious sibling, “Jews put Jesus on the cross,” stirs up antisemitic thoughts - Jews are bad because Jews killed Jesus. This is most common in evangelical Christians. It’s inaccurate and wouldn’t be good logic besides, but the important thing is to signal to your fellow Christian antisemites that you think “those Jewish fellows are Evil and Jealous of our Perfect Ideology.”

Israel offers citizenship to Jews. This is intended to be so that, if a country decides to restrict Jewish rights or revoke our citizenship, we have somewhere to go and be citizens. Antisemites see Jews have dual citizenship and think “ah, now I can claim that they’re acting in the interests of a foreign power!” This leads into “Jews with political power are traitorous Israeli agents who don’t have Real [nationality] Interests in mind!!”

(((These things))) signify that whatever’s in the parentheses is Jewish, or Jewish-controlled, and also that being Jewish or Jewish-controlled is bad. For example, if you see someone say “the (((RNC))) fucked up again,” you can tell that they believe that Jews are puppetting the Republican Party around, and that they’re antisemitic. I don’t know what they sound like to screen-readers, so I apologize if you just had to hear “left parentheses” more times than reasonable.

[dovewithscales]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I knew some of them but not all of them. The thing about parenthesis was new to me. If you think of any other antisemitic dogwhistles people should know about, I’d love to know exactly what to look for.

[zediina]

Also be careful with the sun cross and the black sun as well as flags with black white and red horizontal stripes or similar.

[dovewithscales]

This is on my dash again so I’m reblogging it again because this shit is important and I think it’s getting more important.

[angrycryptic]

I’ve seen several Twitter users putting the ((())) on their own name. Is that a reclaiming thing?

[ingdamnit]

that’s from an effort to signal jam nazi’s on Twitter who were using it as a search term

[thatonenewdungeonmaster]