#read this article

[outraged-honk]

Trump escalates attacks against Smithsonian museums, says they focus too much on ‘how bad slavery was’ | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against museums and alleged “WOKE” exhibits on Tuesday, saying “everything” is centered on hig

Heres your "Leader of the free world" saying quote: there too much focus on how "bad slavery was". Wants to "remove the woke from the Smithsonian"...

No shit, it was horrible.

That's the point, Trump...

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - (1905-1906) by George Santayana

[rotzaprachim]

In this war, Palestinians in Israel are trapped between two painful realities

One moment I’m receiving harrowing news of mass death and expulsion from friends in Gaza. The next I’m sick with worry for my kidnapped Isra

A friend from Bil’in, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, called to check on my wellbeing, because she heard that Hamas rockets had also reached us and that settlers were threatening revenge attacks against us. “Poor people over there, the Arabs in Israel,” she told me. “You are being attacked by all sides. Whatever you do, you will be hit. Come to me with the children for a few days.” A Palestinian woman from Ramallah offers refuge to a Palestinian woman in Israel out of fear that she will be hit by Hamas missiles or by angry Jews with whom she lives.

I am surrounded by these thoughts about this cursed and complex place we were born into, and about the wretched leadership on both sides that is leading us — a human fabric so rich, so sad and so vital at the same time — to nowhere. My heart and mind declared a complete stop, a standstill. I can’t anymore. I just need silence.

[palmtreepalmtree]

"Soros-backed": The GOP’s favorite attack on the man prosecuting Trump, explained

How billionaire George Soros was dragged into the Trump indictment debate — and why many are saying it’s antisemitic to have done so.

Anyhow, this is for that guy I already blocked who tried to tell me that "Soros-backed" is a legitimate criticism of a billionaire's outsized influence on politics and tried to shame me for calling it antisemitism.

No question that the outsized influence of money in politics right now is fucked up and no billionaire gets a pass because of who they are or what political positions they take.

But if you think the Governor of Florida using "Soros-backed" in the unnuanced space of a twitter statement without providing any actual context for that criticism isn't an antisemitic dogwhistle you are naive at best and an apologizer at worst. You're dangerous. That's not a dogwhistle, it's an air raid siren. Get a brain.

[martinnecas]

Someone on the Athletic wrote an entire article on Matthew Tkachuk’s love for hockey and THIS is what I signed up for

[galaxykhaleesi]

Me:

[gerec]

Why the X-Men Don't Belong in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Despite fan reactions to recent reports of a Disney/Fox deal, the X-Men aren't a good fit for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“The implicit appeal of X-Men from one generation to the next is it celebrates “the Other” and allows any marginalized youth to find power in their differences and individuality. In short, the X-Men are often allegorical stand-ins for persecuted minorities, whereas the Avengers, especially in recent Marvel Studios films, are mainstream icons to be as celebrated onscreen as they are off.”

and

“In many ways, the losses of putting the X-Men in the MCU are a microcosm of what is wrong with a potential Disney/Fox merger. As the resources of Hollywood studios consolidate, the chance for competition in the market drastically shrinks. Consumers lose the opportunity of larger diversity, and everything starts looking the same. There cannot be anything more antithetical to Charles Xavier’s dream for a better future than that."

[teylors]

When Martinez read his decision after a deliberation period of more than 2 hours, Swift’s lawyers smiled and shook hands. She [Taylor] eventually started to smile once she realized that she was no longer accused in the suit and that many of the claims against her mother and manager had been dismissed. Then, she stood up and hugged her primary lawyer, Doug Baldridge, and the rest of her family.

(x)

[othernotebooksareavailable]

It was on the advice of her courtier John Dee that Queen Elizabeth took to the seas in the 16th century to create what would become, for better or worse, the ‘British Empire’. Dee was a mathematical genius whose expertise in astronomy steered England’s navy. He was the first person to rely on Euclidian geometry for the purposes of navigation; he also cast horoscopes for the royal family, practised alchemy, was rumoured to have raised the storms that helped defeat the Spanish Armada, and conversed with angels in the Enochian language. The black obsidian mirror that Dee deployed to summon spirits is now held by the British Museum in London, along with a crystal ball and several magical discs made of wax. Dee was also the primary inspiration for the eponymous characters in plays such as William Shakespeare’s Prospero and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. If we take Dee at his word, ritual magic was a catalyst for colonialism.

‘Here be Woodcuts’ on Aeon

ritual magic as a catalyst for colonialism.