seth studies

Manila | training anthropologist

[epilepticsaints]

[rumade]

Ooft ouch

[nando161mando]

[guerrillatech]

[nativenews]

[blackjame]

This is why the brushing aside of colonization because “well that was my ancestors not me” doesn’t work. You still benefit from it. You still perpetuate the effects of it. If white people weren’t like their ancestors? They would give these people their land back and let them decide how to move forward. 

Denying them housing on their own land? Being in a position to do that? Is certainly as colonizer as it gets. You are living your ancestors dreams.

[sethstudiees]

Should also consider class, especially the class identities of those white board members. Are they owners of property development firms? Owners of commercial establishments and residential housing that cater to higher-income tenants in that particular community?

There are white people who have more immediate institutional powers, more interest to benefit off of these kinds of moves than others. That affordable housing is denied not only signifies their ethnic biases esp to those groups who need it, but also their biases towards housing that should be profitable instead of being a basic right.

[thedevorak-deactivated20201227]

source

[ginazmemeoir]

wHY DOES THIS HAVE JUST 308 NOTES???? THE ENTIRE WORLD SHOULD BE SHARING THIS. CHINA IS LITERALLY COMMITTING THE HOLOCAUST, ONLY THIS TIME ON MUSLIMS AND Y’ALL ARE SILENT?

i have 495 people following me right now, including several mutuals. i better see y’all reblogging.

[metrotitans]

People might not be reblogging this because the first tweet makes unnecessary (and untrue) Holocaust comparisons. Taken from @nat_slay on Twitter (I don’t know the original source):

The “ways to help” info seems good afaik but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong there too.

[rainbowlack]

As a Jewish person, I appreciate those saying that this is not okay and that it is misinformation. No, 6 million Uyghur Muslims have not been murdered.

And, as a Jewish person, I know that 6 million very well could be murdered. This is not another Shoah, but it very well could become another. As a Jewish person, I feel we must say “never again.”

Never again.

“Never again” does not mean “this event was so uniquely horrible, it could never happen again.” It means “this event was horrible, but not unique. We have to make sure it never happens again.”

Never again.

The Uyghur death count isn’t 6 million, that is misinformation. But “never again” means we have to make sure it doesn’t become 6 million.

If you are not Jewish or Romani, do not draw comparisons to the Holocaust. All that provides is shock value and misinformation. What you can do is support Uyghur Muslims.

The link to the original post doesn’t work—here are other sources:

Source from The Silhouette

Source from Business Insider

Source from Middle East Forum

Source from India Blooms

Source #1 from Jewish News

Source #2 from Jewish News

Groups to donate to:

Charity Right’s Food for Uyghurs

Uyghur Human Rights Project

Petitions to sign:

Petition 1

Petition 2

If you have more relevant resources, please share them. Petitions are likely meaningless in contrast to the Chinese government.

For those who are able to, take action. For those who are unable to take action, please share.

[sethstudiees]

https://mobile.twitter.com/rodericday/status/1287411708374454273

[fandomsandfeminism]

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

[wondermumbles]

#love seeing discussions about this#because everyone wants to see western conservation as infallible#without realizing that it’s still built on white supremacist and colonialist beliefs

- @finding-my-culture

[quousque]

i feel like there’s this huge underlying idea, in all of these conversations that i see, that humans and the ecosystem are two fundamentally separate things. Even phrases like “humans are totally capable of existing in an environment without harming it” or “humans can interact with the ecosystem without damaging it” are conceptualizing humans as totally separate, like we’re space aliens who just dropped by or something. and i guess that’s a cultural artifact of european colonialism or something because, looking at like, every non-colonialist human society, they are just as much a part of the ecosystem as grass and deer and trees and wolves or whatever. We belong here! Humans are a vital part of ecosystems all over the planet, and if we want to repair our damaged ecosystems, we need to remember that. Humans do things like keep prey populations down, prune certain plants so they grow better, and do controlled burns that are some plants need in order to drop their seeds. We didn’t just show up one day and reach into ~the ecosystem~ and start poking things, ecosystems evolved with us, and we evolved with them. Remove humans from the ecosystem, and you damage it just as much as yellowstone was damaged when wolves were hunted out. and the humans who are best suited to any given ecosystem are ~surprise~ the ones who have been living in that ecosystem for thousands of years. anyway idk where im going with this , this has just been going through my mind

[neechees]

On the topic of Native oral history not being deemed reliable, but like this is so common for Western Academia to trest Indigenous knowledge this way. And its really weird bc most of our cultures already place such importance on accurate information that when we'd tell stories, sometimes we'd track it down from who told you to who told them all the way back to the original teller. Our cultures valued accurate word for word info so much that often times it was a whole respected job and prestigious title and life's work of people to be historians, knowledge keepers, and storytellers. But academia still treats us as if we're lying or spreading misinfo. Its just really weird for White academia to see Native cultures that put such importance on Oral history, not believe us about our own history, and then still make the shocked pikachu face when Western science or archaeology or history proves what we'd been saying was actually true

[mango-habanero-autism-deactivat]

This reminds me of one of my fave political cartoons/illustrations:

It's referring to Delgamuukw V. British Columbia, a landmark case in Aboriginal Title brought forward by the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en Nations regarding jurisdiction over their territory. In the appeal of the case (it was initially dismissed) the judge ruled that oral tradition/oral evidence should be given the same weight as written, that is, that it should be “placed on an equal footing with the types of historical evidence that the courts are familiar with, which largely consists of historical documents.”.

People who think there's no weight to Indigenous oral history just suffer from being legally, culturally, and epistemically illiterate.

[thecollectibles]

Art by Liu Qing

[alligatorpoem]

when arundhati roy said her character had infinite tenderness but also the reckless rage of a suicide bomber I felt that

[amouthfulloflove]

Sick Woman Theory is for those who are faced with their vulnerability and unbearable fragility, every day, and so have to fight for their experience to be not only honored, but first made visible. For those who, in Audre Lorde’s words, were never meant to survive: because this world was built against their survival. It’s for my fellow spoonies. You know who you are, even if you’ve not been attached to a diagnosis: one of the aims of Sick Woman Theory is to resist the notion that one needs to be legitimated by an institution, so that they can try to fix you.

Sick Woman Theory, Johanna Hedva

[studylizziee]

Personal Statement Advice

*let me amend that title to ‘some quick tips for writing personal statements that I have accumulated, but don’t take my word for it because I have no idea how good mine is!’

General

give yourself time - it takes a while to write your personal statement, what with drafting, editing, sending to other people, and having time to sit on it before going back to work on it. You can’t cram a personal statement! Especially for early entry apps, people tend to do a first draft over the summer of Year 12. I really wish I had because I started in early September and was quite stressed out

keep it 100% focused - admissions tutors want to hear about 2 things: 

motivation: why you love your subject and want to study it for 3+ years

suitability: why should they choose you? What skills do you possess that mean you will cope well with studying at university level and succeed in your field

before you start, do your research

know which universities you’re applying to - different unis want to see different things in a personal statement. The classic example is that Oxbridge don’t really care about your extra-curriculars, and just want to know about your academic interest in the subject. It’s worth researching this before you apply so you can try to tick the boxes for all your unis

balancing different unis - if you’re applying to Oxbridge, generally the guideline is to make your personal statement 80% academic at least. Don’t get too hung up on that though - they only look at it at the interview stage, whereas other unis use it to shortlist, especially if they don’t interview!! So ironically it’s more important to try and appeal to your other unis

What to include

structure for each paragraph - okay this may sound a bit basic and take you back to the horrors of gcse english, but a really useful way of making sure you fully explore all your points is using the PEE paragraph. I appreciate this is too formulaic for some people, but it doesn’t have to be in this exact order. I just used it as a guide to make sure each paragraph I wrote covered these elements

Point: motivation (why subject) or suitability (why me)

Evidence: thing you’ve done (list of examples below)

Explanation: what you learned and link it back to your point. Be reflective!!

okay now on to content - let’s split this into academic and extra-curricular

academic - this is the example section of your PEE, where you get to talk about all the amazing things you’ve done that demonstrate your passion for the subject

reading you’ve done, podcasts you’ve listened to, lectures you went to, work experience you did, societies / clubs you’re part of that are relevant to your subject, summer schools etc

extra-curricular - okay so you definitely can include extra-curriculars, but always link back to the skills you’ve learned from them (and possibly why that will help you in your subject area) e.g. being a captain of x team sport has helped me develop both my leadership and team work skills, because I must raise the morale of my team and delegate roles efficiently

here I have tried to give some examples of things that this person does in their role to develop the skills they mention

also, if you talk about an interest / hobby, try to quantify it - if you do a team sport, are you captain? If you play an instrument, what grade have you reached? If you run, have you done any significant distances e.g. a 10K? It just gives some evidence that you genuinely do your chosen hobby

Actually writing it

where to start - I found it really difficult to start writing that first draft, and essentially only got going when I had a school deadline to meet in early September… I was really freaked out by that blank Word document, but my dad basically sat me down and we did a huge messy plan to create a structure

by the way for me the struggle wasn’t ‘omg idk what to write i have nothing to say’ but more ‘omg i have so much to say but no idea how to express it’. If you fall into the former category I recommend making a list of all the academic experiences you have (see list above). Once you get brainstorming you’ll realise you’ve done more than you thought!

the first draft - use your plan to attempt your first draft. Completely ignore the character/line limit! It doesn’t matter if it’s rubbish, just focus on getting it all out - keep going until you finish writing everything you want to say

feedback - it’s really important to get a fresh pair of eyes to read your personal statement. When you’ve read it so many times it can be hard to spot errors and see where things don’t flow etc. The 3 most important things to remember when asking for feedback:

1. do it at intervals - my head of year read my first draft, then I asked a doctor I had shadowed to read my 4th draft, my head of year re-read it at my 5th draft, and then I finalised it with my parents for the 6th and final drafts (yep I did 7 drafts)

2. re-draft (lots ugh) after you get feedback - decide which bits to incorporate, but don’t be afraid to disagree with the advice you are given! It’s your personal statement

3. don’t ask too many people - they may give you conflicting views which will just confuse you rather than help. As you can see, I stuck to 2 ‘outsiders’ and my parents

the beginning - most people find this the hardest part. The best advice I’ve heard is basically not to start with the start! If you’re struggling, do the middle paragraphs first, and these might give you inspiration for your intro. Try to think of a moment, an experience, or a person you’ve met that really influenced your decision to study your subject, or encapsulates why you love your subject

the ending - okay you’ve given all your evidence so don’t introduce anything too new. Try not to repeat yourself but this is essentially a summary of 1) motivation / why subject and then close it off with 2) suitability / why me

Useful Posts

UCAS Personal Statements by @briefblazeunknown 

Top Tips for Your Personal Statement by @muststudy 

How to Write a Bomb Ass Personal Statement by @joolshallie 

A Guide to UCAS Personal Statements by @jenniestudies 

How to Ace the UCAS Process #4: Personal Statement by @penandanotebook (the rest of this series is really good too so definitely check it out!)

How to Make Your Personal Statement Suck Less by @hstudies

Good Vocabulary to Use in Your Personal Statement by me 

Medicine specific

Top Tips for a Medicine Personal Statement by @help-im-a-medstudent (I actually requested this post and I’m so grateful because it’s amazing!)

Applying to Medicine: How to Write Your Personal Statement by @quilavastudy 

Writing Your Medicine Personal Statement by @conquertheuniversity 

Personal statement advice and qualities that Medical Schools are looking for by @dxmedstudent  

[aarianas]

okay not to be a downer but petitions won’t do anything for lebanon, reading a carrd by a westerner who has literally no clue what is going on apart from what the western media has told them won’t do anything for lebanon so it’s better if you read what an actual lebanese person has to say (their views on current political parties do not reflect every person from lebanon’s views, but at least it isn’t feeding into us imperialistic propaganda). signing petitions isn’t helping. please donate. this twitter thread explains why USD donations are important in this situation and provides links to many gofundme’s / other methods of donating. one of them leads to the Lebanese Red Cross app, and this explains in more detail on how you can donate. it isn’t a government organization, and according to people in the replies, the red cross is the best option and though the red cross in other countries have a bad reputation, this is apparently not associated with any other foundation. donating to individual people in lebanon might not work because their currency has been losing its value over the past couple months, so the best option is donate to organizations like Global Impact and the Red Cross, food banks, and gofundmes where the person will make sure the money is converted themselves (not through the website), also i would considering checking this account, they are part of an independently owned Lebanese media/news site and is actively updating their account / setting up new fundraisers and providing resources. make sure to check who you are donating to, you don’t have to donate to EVERYTHING you see but if you actually want to help, do not just sign petitions. donate to people or at least get others to donate if you currently don’t have the means to do so.

[kymeira]

August 1, 2020 - After federal agents left Portland, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) renewed their commitment to police brutality. A peaceful march took place in a Portland suburb and was immediately met with police violence. PPB were filmed dragging protesters, beating them, slashing tires, busting car windows, and targeting street medics. Several reporters on the scene were pepper-sprayed from point-blank range and threatened. Additionally, PPB had a riot cop who’s sole task was filming protesters – an act that is illegal for the PPB to do.

National news wants you to think this story (and every protest pushing back against the police) is over. It’s not. Link to Twitter footage.

[sethstudiees]

Been stuck on chapter 1 of Steele and Bramblett but dammit I’m almost done!

[babyanimalgifs]

A kind person found a tired red-tailed bumblebee and offered her a bit of lavender 

(via)

[sethstudiees]

I aspire to have this energy.

But for now, I am the tired bumblebee.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

People who are in self quarantine really have no idea how weird it is to be a base level essential worker through this whole thing. I don’t mean a doctor or a nurse or someone else working round the clock to put a stop to it or find a cure. I mean a truck driver or a gas station attendant or a retail clerk. Because everything is basically normal, only a little bit off, and then again not as off as it should be.

Every day I get up. I go to work. I sell people things. There are fewer people coming through and they’re buying more because they’re stocking up or they haven’t been shopping in a month, but there are still lines, like always. There’s plexiglass between the cashiers and the customers, and no dividers, and we have to continually yell at people not to put their items on the belt until we’ve finished the previous transaction, and they ignore us or argue with us, same as always. The more rules we have, the more rules there are for people to ignore. And the longer it goes on, the more normal it gets. Pretty much no one thanks us for coming in to work anymore. People are starting to act like we should never, ever run out of an item. It’s just blanket assumed that we will have hand sanitizer and soap and toilet paper and people are shocked when we say we’re out.  But there are still ads on the TV in the break room telling us all to stay home and the more the customers ignore social distancing, the more management puts pressure on us to set a good example, until we’re expected to follow standards that are physically impossible.

The longer this goes on, the less ‘essential’ I feel.

And then I come home and get online as always and there are all of these people asking what you’re doing while you’re stuck in quarantine and coming up with fun things to do when you’re in quarantine and talking about what you’re going to do when this whole thing is over and you can finally, finally leave your house. Everyone just seems to assume that you, the person reading their words, are in quarantine, because everyone’s in quarantine. It’s like this big, international, universal experience that you’re not a part of.

It feels like fifteen years from now everyone in the world will be looking at each other and asking “Remember what it was like to be cooped up in the house? Wasn’t it awful?” and I’ll just be sitting there going “…….no, I don’t. I didn’t do that.” And people will look at me and wonder how I could not know.

[frawgs]

if ur rich send me money i’m not even kidding wtf are u going to do with it? buy another kitchen island fuck you