she's got everything she needs. she's an artist, she don't look back. she can take the dark out of nighttime and paint the daytime black. you will start out standing proud to steal her anything she sees. but you will wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees. -bob dylan-
I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the fieldâs basically just a 100 years old. We donât really know what weâre doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.
Most classroom practice is astrology.
Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.
Weâre still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.
Most teachers perpetuate the âbankingâ model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.
Thus the elite âLyceumâ style of instruction continues even though itâs ineffectual with most kids.
Whatâs worse, the key strategies weâve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents Iâve known flout research.
Some definitions:
Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.
Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.
Things we (scholars) DO know:
-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.
-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).
-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.
Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.
Maintaining the status quo? Nope.
Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.
If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.
They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.
And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.
For what?
It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.
WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.
We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.
The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?
Education is all about capitalism.
"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.
THAT is why modern education is a failure.
Its basic premise is monstrous.
"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"
Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.
I honestly think that the lack of non-sexual nudity in public spaces has done horrific damage to American society.
We deeply struggle to understand the natural diversity of bodies because we only see naked bodies in a sexual context. We are taught that seeing nudity is somehow inherently harmful, especially to children. We struggle to differentiate between sexually suggestive and sexually explicit material.
It fucks up the way people think about and talk about sex ed. It fucks up the way people think about and talk about breast feeding. It fucks up the way people think about and talk about queer folks. It feeds into fatphobia and ableism and is all rooted in this deeply harmful puritanism.
Like, I need people to understand that seeing a bare titty in public is not going to hurt a child. Seeing a man in a banana hammock isnât inherently traumatizing. I would argue, in fact, that adults treating those things as dangerous and gross and scary is going to do way more damage to a kidâs psychology than seeing the nudity in the first place.
Especially in terms of what a normal human body looks like: that their body is good and fine and perfectly normal! That what they see in ads and magazines are deeply unnatural and airbrushed into impossibility.
Iâm a nurse. I see a lot of people naked. They are deeply embarrassed and ashamed of their own bodies, and itâs so sad. Theyâre not at home in their own skin. But so many times it is justâŚa normal body.
Also the sheer number of idiotic men who have asked me/implied how sexy it is to see people naked at workâŚ! No dates for you, blocked, goodbye, please get serious psychological help, you are sick in the morals and the head.
We need more non-sexual nudity, because bodies are just that. Bodies. Not sex symbols. We all have them. We all have flab and scars and moles and wrinkles and body hair. Everything sags the older you get. And itâs fine. Your body is a good body, just the way it is.
1. The Republican Party turns out for EVERY vote. Primaries, local elections, midterms, you name it. Most dems show up once every four year and then get defeatist when things donât immediately change. It took the Republicans YEARS to overturn RvW but it has been a long game goal of theirs. YEARS of voting, and youâre gonna opt out after one vote. Okay.
2. Primaries are when you vote for who you want. Elections are when you vote for who you can. If youâre not voting in the primary, youâre letting the moderate centrist do-nothing candidate win.
3. Local elections affect your daily life. That sherif in Texas who is refusing to enforce the abortion ban? Local election. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, so much of this is trickle up from local politics.
4. Call your damn representatives. Even if it feels hopeless. The gun control reform that just passed (as minimal as it is) was bipartisan because people showed their reps that they wanted change. Get vocal as a voter and prove courting your vote matters.
5. If someone in your area is running for office and needs votes, be a signature for them. Not everyone can afford to pay to run. You want to support better candidates, put your name behind them (only in your district and always read what youâre signing first).
6. The two party system is shit. We know that. But the democrats are a big tent housing a lot of different opinions and trying to cater to them all. Republicans are generally united in one mission of dismantling everything and protecting only their own. This is also why Dems donât have the same type of âsuper majorityâ and canât easily whip the same voting results. And anyone who thinks Obama had a super majority for enough time to codify roe does not understand politics. He had about 18 days of actual in-session time, split into two different sessions.
7. Purity politics isnât going to get you anywhere. The candidate is a bus stop getting you closer to where you want to be. Theyâre not the end goal, and a smart voter knows that.
8. Voter suppression is huge in America. Help other voters register and get to the polls. Itâs not always indifference keeping people from voting. Do something to help disenfranchised voters.
Let me repeat: The two party system is shit. We need to get rid of the electoral college. We need ranked choice voting. We need to get rid of Citizens United. Our country is an oligarchy. Always has been. Not denying that. But Living in these ideals of what we should be without creating any change now isnât going to get you anywhere. Being defeatist and abstaining from the process is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Its saying âthe other team is scoring too many goals, so instead of playing, Iâm just gonna sit on the sidelines. Thatâll teach everyone.â No, youâre just gonna keep losing. Maybe, instead, vote in the primaries and choose better teammates.
Yâall kill me with these âhot takes.â They ainât even half baked.
Now, if you want to talk about the other things we should be doing IN ADDITION TO voting, like general strikes, organizing, etc. Then thatâs a different conversation we should also be having.
Also no, there is no such thing as âone more vote.â Vote every time. Vote consistently. Vote national. Vote local. Itâs the absolute MINIMAL amount of civil engagement you can do. If you can do more than vote, do more, but at least vote every single time.
A lot of people really think democracy is something they only have to do once. It's not. It's something we do constantly - because greedy and power-hungry and malicious people are constantly trying to take advantage of society. Evil never stops, so neither do we.
"Just wash one more dish bro I swear then we won't have to do dishes anymore bro come on just one more load of laundry bro and then I promise all the clothes will be clean ok just trust me bro the chores will definitely be done okay just sweep the kitchen floor and take out the trash this one last time it'll work I swear you'll never have to do chores again I promise."
Grow the fuck up.
Vote in every election. Over and over again until you die. It's a chore. That's how chores work.
Thinking one election/movement/protest or whatever should fix everything and make everything perfect for always and forever is Evangelical thinking. We are not voting for the rapture. We are not voting for an all-powerful avenging god who will bend everyone to their will and immediately fix all the problems. People who have those expectations or who think that way need to sit down and have a hard think about why they approach politics that way when they donât hold that attitude about anything else in their life.
âWe make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!â
Yeah I looked on your website itâs made by the lyocell process, which means-
-wait for it-
Itâs fucking rayon!!
Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. Iâm sure Iâm missing a couple.
But if youâre wondering âhuh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,â 99% of the time? Itâs RAYON.
All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.
The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.
Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.
Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out itâs hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. âItâs all fucking rayonâ appears mostly true but also Iâm finding plenty of claims that itâs more sustainable than cotton anyway.
But thatâs not what this post was actually about anyway so like
the qualities of rayon as a fabric, outside of any other consideration
the environmental impacts
This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It's Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.
But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.
It's all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it's worse than wearing nothing, which is why it's often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo's Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They're warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don't make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I'm not the only one who wears them nearly daily for 3/4ths of the year lol.)
The irony of how often it's compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that's light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It's all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they're made into fabric.
But to get into the environmental stuff:
People get really into which fabrics are more "sustainable."
And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn't specify that it's lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it's viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what's called a "closed-loop" method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It's also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as "ecoviscose" but I haven't looked into it.
(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn't differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called "cuproammonium," and I'm not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it's sometimes called "ammonia silk" which is wild.)
Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:
you can make it out of any cellulose source, and that includes things that would otherwise be considered garbage/waste
it biodegrades pretty fast. Like, faster than cotton.
BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don't cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you're making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there's rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that's machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!
And that's not getting into dying. But if you've ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.
If you're trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:
BUY LESS CLOTHES. Period. End of story.
Buy secondhand when you can.
Make those clothes last: use cold water washes and don't put them in the dryer and don't use fabric softener. Repair them when you can, and use them for rags when they wear out.
"What fiber is it made of" just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.
But most people don't want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is "sustainable."
The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That's it.
annaxmalina
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
