🇧🇷anonymized *PERSON* of the global south🇧🇷

Hi, I'm Óscar | 20's | He/Him | tme | 🇧🇷 brazilian 🇧🇷 | previously fourtimesleo | intro post | brazumon tipo raro: sulista comunista | 🇵🇸 from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸 | anything rebblogable is ok to rb | eu organizo o @correio-elegante

[softnwonderful]

me di cuenta que este país sudamericano tiene problemas de racismo estructurales 😒 al igual que todos los países del mundo 😔 podría investigar de dónde vienen estas actitudes y asegurarme que estos estereotipos sean verdad y no propaganda 🤔 pero tengo una mejor idea que definitivamente va a solucionar el problema ☝️🤓:

[bugbraiin]

One thing im uncomfortably woke about is bugs. And im actively trying to get more uncomfortably woke. By this i mean i DO believe the normalised fear of bugs stems from both government and business propaganda. The start of household pesticide sales coinciding with the boom in insect related horror movies. The promotion of anti intellectualism and anti enviromentalism. If you're scared of bugs, you wont care about saving them. If you dont care about saving them, you wont care about saving our home, since without bugs it cannot be saved. If you dont care about saving our home, the rich can do whatever they want with the chunks of it they continue to destroy.

I WILL calmly and kindly try to help anyone who is afraid of bugs. I will show them my finds, i will explain their importance, i will tell them just how sweet and gentle and friendly they are. And I WILL shoot down any immature loser who believes senseless killing is the only possible response to not liking something.

Get woke. Love bugs.

EDIT: this breached containment. My usual like count is like 5 😭 i want to clarify i mean people who conflate fear with hate are the ones who wont care about saving our planet, like people who threaten to kill peoples pet bugs or actively kill bugs outside for no apparent reason. Not people who run away from a bee.

[drdoomscrolling]

Speaking as someone who loves insects, actively participates in several entomological societies in my country and is currently also doing a PhD in biology, I can't say I fully agree with you here. The fear and demonization of insects is far from a modern phenomenon and is arguably much more driven by older and deeply entrenched cultural beliefs than any intentional modern propaganda. While I don't think that entomophobia is biologically/evolutionarily innate, it IS both ancient, widespread and not entirely irrational. At the end of the day, insects ARE one of the most significant vectors of disease transmission (both for animal and human diseases) and major agricultural pests. There's a reason why one of the biblical plagues of Egypt involved locust swarms (and another one involved flies) and it's not like that problem is exclusive to the ancient world - around 2020, East Africa experienced devastating loss of crops due massive locust swarms, leading to food insecurity for several million people. And while viral, fungal and bacterial plant diseases mostly look more like an abstract blight with an unknown source, insect pests could be much more directly and obviously connected with your crops dying and thus represented a more tangible and visible "enemy" (you can't see the tomato yellow leaf curl virus - but you can see a Colorado beetle). Insects also have a long history of being associated with death, rot and decay - think of fly maggots appearing on corpses and rotten food. As a result, they are one of the oldest religious, literary and artistic symbols of corruption and mortality, especially in western/christian tradition (in paintings like Bosschaert's Dead Frog With Flies, or the depictions of Beelzebub, demonic Lord of Flies). This also ties into classist ideas of the poor as infested with lice, fleas and bedbugs (as those parasites can more rapidly spread in cramped living conditions), marking these people as "unclean" - a trope that is especially common in 19th century literature, when the industrial revolution both created stark class divisions and forced the lower-classes into overcrowded and poorly-kept urban homes. A lot of aversion to insects also originates from the perception of arthropods as the ultimate "other" - unlike mammals (but similar to reptiles) they have few traits and behaviours that humans can readily anthropomorphize and relate to. Historically, they were often treated more like semi-living things than true animals, going as far back as Aristotle - the spontaneous generation theory literally posited that insects are so "thing-like" that they can spontaneously emerge from inanimate matter.

Yes, WW2 definitely saw an uptick in propaganda campaigns with negative depictions of insects, but their actual goal wasn't to make people hate insects, it was to eliminate insect-borne diseases (especially typhus and malaria) that were negatively impacting military troops. These campaigns were effectively identical to other health campaigns of the era, like those against venereal diseases, tuberculosis and malnutrition. The need to control insect vectors of typhus and malaria however did lead to the first creation of highly effective synthetic insecticides like DDT. The reason why 1950s saw such a boom in pro-pesticide fever isn't because the powers-that-be wanted the world to suddenly turn against insects, it's because that was the first time in history that effective (and seemingly safe) pesticides were broadly available. Pesticides were and are obviously a massive contributor to ecological degradation and species loss, but they were also a crucial part of the third agricultural revolution of the mid-20th century that ensured higher and more reliable crop yields. They are, unfortunately, still a core part of modern agriculture to this day - the previously mentioned locust swarm outbreak in 2020 was in large part a result of the COVID pandemic halting the delivery of insecticides to the region. Because some insect species genuinely do present a very real threat to food production, they were obviously often a target of various agricultural campaigns - such as the (ultimately disastrous) Four Pests campaign in China or the mass campaign against locusts in 1920s/1930s Soviet Union. The latter is also interesting because it reframed the locust as a foreign invader as a political tool to unite the still fractured country against a common enemy and justify mass mobilisation of troops into contested territories. During the cold war, Warsaw pact countries similarly launched a massive and ideologically driven propaganda campaign against the Colorado beetle under the belief that the USA intentionally introduced the species in order to destabilize potato production in the region (my grandparents were actually mobilized to pick Colorado beetles in a similar campaign in Yugoslavia). Yes, insects were used as a tool of political propaganda in all of these cases, but not because the promotion of the hate against insects was a goal unto itself, it's because insects already had widely held negative connotations that could be exploited for other propaganda purposes. And these negative connotations in many cases stemmed from people's actual lived experience of crop failures and disease.

(The 1950s boom of giant bug horror movies was also arguably more driven by anxieties surrounding the rapid progress of science, especially atomic energy, in the post-war era (the same thing that drove a surge in popularity of pulp sci-fi novels and more science-based silver age comics). Arthropods were commonly used not to intentionally fuel anti-insect propaganda, but because people already had pre-existing aversion to them (and because simply magnifying an actual animal was a cheap way to have mostly realistic looking giant monsters)).

Just so no one can misunderstand or misrepresent what I'm saying here: I strongly believe that the conservation of insect species is important and that widespread negative sentiment against them hinders that goal. I am not shilling for pesticide corporations or think that we should kill all insects, nor do I think insects should be equated with pests, vermin, or carriers of disease. The hate against insects is largely not based in fact and should not be condoned. Bugs are cool. What I am saying however, is that the fear and dislike of insects is a complex and multifaceted topic and putting the blame on some sort of intentional anti-insect conspiracy is reductive and ultimately unproductive.

[bacchianas]

@smutneczwartki

[fuckboyzuko]

Don't worry, mutual with a zero-note post. I've added your post to my queue. So, in 6-8 business weeks, we're going to do big numbers! Such as, 1.

[tetrafelino]

both of the games today I'll only keep an eye on to be a hater so that'll be fun

[kitfreeman]

por fin el resto de los latinos se está despertando a eso de que argentina es lo peor es cosa de la CIA. fueron MUY exagerados esa fue su falla

[origami-dragons]

se olvidaron que en latinoamérica si estudiamos historia

[kitfreeman]

se olvidaron que todos odian a los gringos tmb

[ispyspookymansion]

to be honest, kitten doesnt know how many more “ok 💗 yay 💗”s they have left in them

[spidersinmysoup]

Me mata que acusen a las selecciones de paises latinoamericanos de comprarse a los árbitros JAHJD somos animales salvajes muertos de hambre o tenemos toda la plata del mundo??? decidaaaannnn dios son insoportables

[dj-hyperbaedel]

E também usamos "artes sombrias" contra os europeus

[spidersinmysoup]

Bueno eso yo personalmente sí lo estoy haciendo

[hungwy]

some of the oldest evidence of winemaking comes from georgia; some of the most ancient wheels come from georgia. it can be said that the first drunk drivers were likely georgian

[amanitaphalloides]

I worry a little bit that people who refuse to learn about ai as a part of their anti ai position are going to be extremely unprepared to understand what’s actually scary about it and already have their digital literacy at risk tbh

[amanitaphalloides]

not that I am some genius in this regard but if you follow ai developments even slightly you might change the things you are most worried about. do people know the extent to which ai is already eating itself and how meaningless this is making swaths of the internet. do people know that there are plenty of random mid-sized companies today buying their employees’ likenesses to create digital clones and using these to make hundreds of videos. I am so much more worried about labor and surveillance and abuse than people becoming lazy about writing emails. and idk man I sort of like and respect people who are willfully ignorant about it as a way of minimizing its force in their lives and I am in some ways jealous but also when I see posts that basically still boil down to “chatgpt will never fool me” I am like 😭😭😭 for one thing not the only thing to be concerned about, for another thing I am really sorry but I don’t think you’re right

[tetrafelino]

tipo. literalmente.

[bluedesertbruja]

i told you guys, the switch up is real. alliances change quickly and dramatically.

[cumbiamurguera]

Colombia hagamos un pacto de sangre

[deoxoid]

his wife has filled THEIR house with ANTIQUES. to AVOID DAMAGING HER VALUABLES i fuck him on the floor

[falseknees]

[hinasho]

Louis is so intertwined with Claudia, he did not realize that his “companion for myself now” needed to apply to her too. Not just his romantic relationships, not just those still alive. He still doesn’t even think of them as two people. “Companion for myself” only works if you actually have a “self”.

God, he’s still carrying her. Him dragging her charred body across the floorboards. All this time, decades after she died, a century since she was turned, and he’s still dragging her.

[greytune]

#you know in those nature docs #how some animals are unable to comprehend death #so they end up dragging around the corpses of loved ones for days weeks after they died #that’s what he’s doing #he knows Claudia is dead but they are still so enmeshed #‘Claudia is dead. I was dead’ #his identity is still tangled with Claudia #and he’s seeing her everywhere bc he can’t. comprehend the need to separate #especially with no one to hyper focus on now #he’s going to drive himself mad looking for the other half of his identity in somebody who’s dead #I’m sick

[hinasho]

I think about this comparison literally all the time @hoziersredguitar it’s been 80 years and he’s still carrying the corpse of his child. And no one can take her, they are attached at the skin. It has to be Louis himself to let Claudia go.

[intercal]

leaving a bad review of The Art of War on Amazon so my enemies don't buy it

[finalgirlianthe]

the popular western idea of buddhism being known as the peaceful religion is genuinely so dangerous. it's a kind of audacity that basically says "wow, you must have done something REALLY bad to piss off the peaceful BUDDHISTS" which is not only deployed in defence of sri lanka's genocide of tamils but also to be islamophobic about rohingya muslims being persecuted by buddhist myanmar

[finalgirlianthe]

sinhala and burmese buddhists regularly form alliances on how best to ethnically cleanse their minorities surely you can recognise this