Thoth Provoking

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[ithelpstodream]

[orpheusdoctor]

Pretty sure that generation has been dead for awhile but ok, pretend one thing has something to do with another

[systlin]

The end of Jim Crow laws was in the 1950′s. The first black student to attend a formerly all white school was Ruby Bridges in 1960. 

Here she is being walked to school under the protection of Federal Marshals because angry white people were ready to harm or kill her. 

Here she is in 2010, eight years ago. 

The generation that enforced segregation is not dead, fucko. They were our fuckin grandparents, and it was not that goddamn long ago. 

Google is free. 

[prismatic-bell]

Grandparents?!

I’m 31.

My MOM was born the year before school segregation ended.

She was NINE when MLK was shot.

She remembers race riots in her school over school segregation ending in our home state.

My MOTHER lived through this. She’s 61 years old–which means while her own health is shot, people from her generation will be around for another twenty to thirty years.

1956. This is not colorized. IT WAS SHOT IN COLOR. Look at that–segregation was still ongoing in the age of neon lights.

Same exhibit. 1956. Banana splits, poodle skirts, and the ability to get “colored” drinking water only from the white folks’ backwash. You can see the pipe connecting the white tank to the colored fountain behind the little girl in the light pink dress.

Less than ten years later. That’s Martin Luther King, Jr. in the middle. Have you ever seen him in a color photograph before? There are many, but for some reason … maybe because black-and-white makes things look old … nobody ever uses them.

Look at the bank logo in the back. Colored squares like that were a thing in the mid-to-late 1960s. The slicked-down hair on the Black girl in front says we’re not yet to the mid-1970s, and since these signs all say “Honor King” it’s quite likely this is 1969-1970. You know what else was happening in 1969? Not Woodstock, not the moon landing, although both of those things happened. No, something we think of as being much more recent.

THE INTERNET STARTED.

1969 was the launch of ARPANET, which would later become the Internet. BLACK PEOPLE WERE STILL MARCHING FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS WHEN THE INTERNET WAS STARTED.

This picture was taken sometime between 1956 and 1958. I don’t have a precise date on it, but the sleeveless sundress says later 1950s, the hair on Orange Plai says this was after Elvis, and the stars on the flag say that’s not a modern 50-star flag, which was first used in 1959. (We had a single year, 1958, with 49 stars.)

Ah yes. It was so long ago. Let’s get some more perspective:

Donald Trump was eight years old when school segregation was declared illegal in 1954. He was nineteen when the police beat and shot at peaceful Black protest marchers in Selma, Alabama and twenty-two when MLK was assassinated by the FBI for trying to encourage desegregation.

Hillary Clinton was seven when school segregation was declared, eleven when it went into effect, and eighteen when Selma happened.

Bernie Sanders was thirteen when the integration ruling occurred, 19 when Ruby Bridges started going to a formerly all-white school, and twenty-four when Selma happened. Joe Biden is only a year younger than Bernie.

Elizabeth Warren was eleven when Ruby started her new school, fifteen when Selma happened, eighteen when MLK was shot.

You will notice that all of these people are running for President, or were rumored to be running for President, this year. They’re not just alive, they’re thriving. And they were all alive for desegregation–in fact Trump, Clinton, and Sanders were all old enough to either endorse or oppose what happened at Selma.

But let’s keep looking, because they’re probably outliers, right?

Hm. Three of MLK’s children are still alive. They’re between 56 and 62 years old. (His elder daughter died of unknown causes; her family suspects an undiagnosed heart condition.) In fact one of his siblings is still alive, and she was born before him! She’s 96.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Yeah, she was 21 when school integration was made the law of the land. And she’s still serving on the Supreme Court.

But tell me again how long ago it was.

I’m sure the people from those generations are all dead, after all.

[bwitiye]

my father was graduated from high school when the civil rights act was passed and was in his last semester of college when MLK was killed. i was born in the 2000s

people who remember segregation are very well alive

[alpine-insurrection]

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. — Ursula K. Le Guin

[politijohn]

Get his ass

[xipiti]

[guerrillatech]

‘Death to (mild inconvenience)’ is a huge 2020 vibe

[princesschubbles]

And believe me, foreign policy analysts, the cia, the government- they know this. They have access to native speakers and cultural experts! But it’s more convenient to spread the orientalist myth of hateful, violent Iranians, so that Americans feel ‘threatened’ enough to excuse killing thousands.

[averyterrible]

Language Log » Marg bar ___

Furthermore, the “down with ___” chant as it is used today is not about a violent overthrow or physically harming the people of a nation. The phrase became popular during the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), when political activists would chant “zende ba ___” (“long live ___”) in support of a policy or leader, or “marg bar ___” in opposition. These two phrases became entrenched within Iranian political discourse, and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, swarms of protestors took to the streets chanting “marg bar Shah” to express their dissatisfaction with Iran’s monarchy. “Marg bar ___” and “zende ba ___” have continued to live on as colloquial phrases incorporated into political chants, and they have been appropriated to express opposition to or support for any number of subjects.

[quasi-normalcy]

Remember when the NYT quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that Israel “shoukd be wiped off the map” and then it turned out that the idiom doesn’t even exist in Farsi?

[wolkenstrahl]

Also Allahu akbar. It’s a mild curse really. They say it all the time, in all kinds of situations. My Syrian friend will say it when her 3yo decorates the sofa with Nutella. It really doesn’t mean anything, especially not “I will kill all infidels right now, exploding next to you!”. It literally means God is great, and they use it in a similar way that we would use “Jesus!” or “good Lord!” etc. 

Don’t let the war-mongerers talk you into fearing words, just because they are a different language.

[asciiheart]

The nuclear family is probably the greatest enabler of child abuse, ever.

Putting two people in complete control of another person (who is particularly vulnerable and has few legal rights) and then having no oversight for the whole arrangement is the absolute worst idea.

Families are garbage.

[libertarirynn-deactivated202006]

Hahaha wtf

[yourownpetard]

I wouldn’t even know where to start with this. omg.

[amal-wa-ahlam]

OP, what would you propose as an alternative to families?

[asciiheart]

communal child raising

less isolated familial structures in general

children being made aware of how they should and shouldn’t be treated

Some form of child protection services that don’t just believe the parents and assume a child is lying when they report abuse

more legal and counselling services made available to children

[tracyalexander-deactivated20201]

I don’t get people that are like “lol, what? that’s so weird, lets laugh at the very notion that traditional families are abusive”.

[itsfridaybutimstillaro-deactiva]

communal child raising is the traditional family. 70-100 years ago 4 generations lived together in the same house, having 4 grandparents, 6 aunts and 15 cousins around every day was normal.

[queeranarchism]

Things that should be mentioned:

- These communities are not necessarily connected by an biological ties. In a lot of these multigenerational ‘families’, including people in the family who are not relatives or married into the family is totally normal. This has always created a lot more space to support people without families, support people who do now want to partner up and to create communities in which couples who can not have children (like some queer couples but not all & other couples too) can be a part of child raising. 

- Having a lot more young people around often means young people learn from each other. In many cultures young people form a non-hierarchial group that learns together and can do a great deal without adult supervision. 

The nuclear family doesn’t just facilitate abuse, it facilitates hierarchy. It’s a training school for obedience to authority. 

Now, which system would push such a training school strongly so it could get docile obedient citizens? Which system whould push the nuclear family. 

I’m not saying it’s capitalism but it’s capitalism. 

And then there’s the fact that the 2 parent, nuclear family can be most easily pushed into the pattern where one adult works an extremely exhausting job many hours a day that leaves that adult hardly capable of doing anything else, while the other adult takes on all the other things that adult would otherwise have done: care for children, clean the living space, prepare food, prepare clean clothing, etc. for free. What we know as traditional gender roles. 

This way capitalism gets one intensely loyal worker who feels ‘responsible’ for ‘supporting a family’ while all the work to keep that worker going is done for free by an unpaid worker in the home. 

And, you know, communities need a lot less stuff. A community of 50 can do just fine with one or two hammers. 25 nuclear families need 25 hammers. The nuclear family demands a huge amount of commodity purchasing. 

[dollsahoy]

(hooboy that last point)

[heartmindalignedspirit]

Damn. What a breakdown…

[ladyshinga]

Communal living is fantastic for the disabled and elderly folks, as well.

[official-lucifers-child]

i would be very unapposed to this communal family, this sounds actually amazing and v nice

[iratetreasure-deactivated202310]

[justsomeantifas]

capitalism without regulation allows corporations to simply buy out corporations that do what they do better until they are no longer held to higher standards

an example of this would be when youcaring got bought, it was a website that allowed people to donate and it wouldn’t take a cut like kickstarter does, now it doesn’t exist and all of these similar websites are just as fucking garbage now because the competition was bought out

when we don’t regulate this shit we allow corporations that are bigger to simply purchase corporations that do what they do and do it better… and get rid of them

monopolies and oligopolies are bad because what they don’t necessarily want to be innovative or offer you the best product, they want to offer you the product with the least effort.

if someone is actually putting effort in that can hurt them, and because of the way our economic infrastructure is designed, they can fight that by destroying innovation they don’t want to pursuit. 

[meshkwahkihaki]

if you are descended from colonizers and you are living on stolen land, you are a colonizer. colonization is still happening. land theft is still happening. refusing to acknowledge it doesn’t make it go away.

[ecology-of-the-inhuman]

Acknowledging it also doesnt make it go away, unless your acknowledging is a starting point for working against colonisation it is ultimately performative (see Trudeau acknowledging genocide while pushing through pipelines and not funding clean water programmes on reserves, or universities doing land ackmowledgments as a way of showing their progressiveness while investing in companies which destroy land and lives)

[meshkwahkihaki]

reblog this version actually

[mysharona1987]

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[wilwheaton]

Fuck Trump.

Fuck War.

[themarysue]

A High School Girl Was Expelled for Defending Herself Against Boys Staging Anti-Trans “Protest” In the Women’s Bathroom

At a high school in Alaska, a female student has been expelled for defending herself against a group of boys who had cornered her in a girl's bathroom.

[terfslying]

[dntfdpltcxgone-deactivated20190]

They wanted to protest a trans boy using the boys bathroom, so a group of cis boys went into the girl’s restroom, and when a girl tried to get away from them they wouldn’t let her out and blocked the doorway, so she kneed one in the balls to get him out of her way so she could run. And she got expelled for that. She got punished for them threatening her. SHE got expelled, they got nothin.

[criticallyalexandrite]

It’s almost like these people are projecting their predatory behavior onto trans girls/women.

[sumikatt]

my favorite post about the us military “defending freedom” is the one like, “how tf my freedoms get over to iraq?”

[sumikatt]

this tweet is two years old

[repotting]

the answer to ‘guys won’t hug their friends cos they don’t wanna seem gay’ isn’t ‘remove the stigma by declaring it Acceptably Straight Behaviour’

it’s ‘get straight people to give up the homophobia that makes them treat gay people with such repulsion that they’ve built an entire culture around the violent disavowal of anything even tangentially related to gay people’

getting homophobic straight dudes to express affection for one another while leaving intact the homophobia that made them avoid it doesn’t solve the core issue

which is that straight dudes are such violent homophobes that they will literally cut themselves off from necessary emotional support in order to more effectively identify and isolate/attack gay men

the problem here isn’t just that straight guys don’t get enough hugs

[ramenuzumaki]

This post needs to be shared in all the blogs.

[whitepeopletwitter]