do you guys remember when pokemon black and white came out and people thought that the desert route was where 9/11 happened since the region was based on new york
“i just wanted to bring it up so we could have a tasteful and productive conversation about 9/11 and pokemon”
Look, this post has been wildly more popular than I thought it deserved, apparently at least in part because “don’t burden others; be independent” is far more ingrained in people than I realized. So here’s the thing: society works when people help each other. Helping others gives people a chance to know each other, and gives them an investment in the people they help. Helping creates bonds. People enjoy helping, and you are doing a good by letting them help you if they so wish.
Offer help; accept help. You will be a part of creating a helping culture. Which, incidentally, weakens capitalism and the fractionation between people that benefits those who would use us.
Saw an op-ed that was on the surface a complaint about kids not wanting to take on family heirlooms but read like an elegy to dying traditions. The hardest part was the anxiety without recognizing that they didn’t pave the way for the decisions they assumed their kids would make.
(This is written entirely within the dominant white/western culture - about traditions that have neglectful stewardship rather than those actively suppressed)
The anxiety makes sense. You’re seeing, too late to do anything about it, that there’s no foundation - no space - for the traditions you expected to pass on. Your kids _can’t_ take your mom’s fine china. So now instead of enjoying what you have you worry about its future.
I see a pattern in these op-eds though - a pattern in what’s left unsaid. There were responsibilities tied to these traditions. You collectively assumed they _would_ be passed along. So collectively, what did you do to ensure those traditions _could_ be passed along?
Op-eds never speak for everyone, but it’s worth acknowledging the pattern in what speech is deemed worth sharing widely. And in this particular pattern, there’s an answer: that answer looks like “nothing.”
You want the china passed down but your kids have no room in their rentals. You want grandkids but your kids don’t have the financial stability. You want that cross-country RV neverending road trip but you’ve had decades of wanting lower taxes more than you wanted infrastructure.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them.
The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?
I kinda think that world-defining assumptions are always gonna break without maintenance. So rather than getting mad at whoever’s next for not carrying on the norms we didn’t do upkeep on, when it’s my turn, I hope I’m introspective enough to help instead of externalize & blame.
This.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained
foundations for them.
The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed
about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give
up or re-prioritize?
I follow a Facebook group of “Memories of …” for my hometown - a rustbelt community that has gone from a thriving hub of industry to a much-less-thriving place.
The group is a collective lament. Decades-old pictures of well-kept churches. Aerial shots of the main intersection downtown, lined with big cars. Scanned advertisemetns from local stores featuring pictures of their interiors. These alternate with the drumbeat of news: the Catholic diocese is closing churches. Selling them. Tearing them down. STores downtown are closing. The traffic light has been replaced with a four-way-stop.
“That’s the church my parents were married in!” “How could they tear down that beautiful building. Such memories!” “All the businesses are closing. It must be the taxes.” ”They’ve sold the old lodge downtown.” “They’re not opening the skating rink this year. We always used to go.”
And sometimes I chime in.
“Do you attend that church? Do you give? Or do you just want the building to look pretty for you? “ “Do you volunteer at that park? Why not?” “Did you vote for that recreation bond issue?” “Are you a member of that Lodge? Why not?” “Do you shop downtown? Or did you start shopping at Walmart and Amazon to save a few bucks?”
If you feel something is worth preserving, why do you not participate in its preservation?
Community is not a spectator sport.
Community is not a spectator sport
The thing that gets me on the nostalgia pages I see is when there’s a picture of something that’s been replaced by something objectively better and people are still bitching about it.
We have a state of the art children’s science museum in my city. It used to be downtown, in its original spot, in a much older building. It was rundown, it needed updating, it lacked capacity. They had the chance to move to a much larger space, expand, and update.
But when people post pics of the old one, everyone’s like “Oh the old one was so much better!” WHY? Because that’s the one you remember as a kid? By any objective metric the new one is better.
Like, people seem to prioritize their nostalgia and false belief that the past was Somehow Better over the fact that some things are now, in fact, better.
“We came here based on the map published by the Israeli army,” he continues. “They told us to go to the Tal al-Sultan area, and here they are bombing us and bombing our food sources.”
Nidal says that he and his family were sitting in their tent when they heard four missile strikes. He later learned that the missiles had directly hit the clinic, the water well, and the adjacent tents in which some food and cooking utensils were stored. Nidal and his neighbors in the displacement camp rushed to rescue the injured, but when he arrived, he was surprised by the horror before him.
“We arrived at the place quickly, and the fire was still burning in the clinic and the neighboring tents. There were dozens of bodies and dead people, but we could not distinguish them from one another,” he says. “We did not know who had been burned. The bodies were completely disfigured and dismembered, and we were walking over the fire and the bodies in an attempt to get anyone out who was still alive.”
Nidal insists that the bombs that targeted the encampment were not normal, but American-made weapons that “Israel is testing on Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” he says.
“We did not find anything,” he adds. “There was nothing that would require bombing. All we found were dismembered children, charred bodies, and scattered organs. We put them in blankets and took them out.”
“This is a terror zone. It isn’t a safe zone, as the Israeli army tells us,” Nidal says.
Tumblr has been showing targeted ads for “FTM binders” off Amazon. They look like this:
ALT
Do not buy these.
A binder is a piece of medical equipment. If you use one incorrectly, or use a poorly made one, you can really fuck up your ribs. This article from the Cleveland Clinic talks about how to bind safely.
A $14 binder is guaranteed not to be safe. There’s a reason reputable companies charge more- sometimes a lot more. They have to carefully design binders so they don’t crush your ribs or make you sick.
You know how everyone says Don’t Bind With Duct Tape? Don’t bind with Amazon binders.
There are so many unintended consequences to well-intentioned actions. It feels like a game you can’t win.
#CHIDI WAS RIGHT
The Good Place really went with making their new Point ‘there is no ethical consumption under capitalism’ and I respect that
And then went on to say “blaming individuals for all of this is absurd and evil, as is locking them up for punishment instead of rehabilitation” and I respect that
Also, “consequentialism is a fundamentally flawed branch of ethics”
Amazing how embarrassed I get whenever I get into something popular… like yeah :/…. I like this ip that makes millions or something every year…. it’s really popular and most everyone has heard of it casually…. I’m so ashamed… kicks a pebble or something.
if i was a tiny mouse, i think i’d die in a tiny mouse duel and have a tiny funeral that none of my mouse friends would attend because the directions are too tiny for anymouse to read. such is the life of a mouse like i
everybody just latched onto “terf = enemy” and then never again put any thought into why that is, and what transmisogyny is, so they just make a big deal out of being an anti-terf instead of understanding the problem in the first place
We’re at the point where any transphobe is called a terf now. I’ve seen conservative men who think women shouldn’t be in the workforce called terfs. Words mean things and if you just blindly jump onto which labels are Bad and treat them all like an interchangeable soup without understanding the actual problems then that habit is not going to lead you anywhere good. Some people don’t care about unerstanding harm and protecting people from it, they just want a group to gleefully hate and don’t care why.
forever thinking of the time i just wanted to know how long i could go without sleeping and google autofilled it to “in minecraft” without me realizing. you can imagine my shock and horror until i read the website title
People who have spent the last few years crying about how “THE WOKE IS INDOCTRINATING OUR CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS” are incredibly funny in a country with the Pledge of Allegiance
For any of my followers outside the US who may not know what the Pledge of Allegiance is:
Basically, every morning in public school, everyone has to stand up, usually placing a hand on one’s heart, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which is as follows:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
Now, you might be thinking “what the fuck?” and you’d be right to think that! A few things that should be added are that in most states, it isn’t legal to FORCE someone to say the Pledge, or punish someone who refuses, and there have been a number of court cases where people who have tried, and the courts don’t rule in their favor (so that’s good). But in 47 out of our 50 states, there are laws that do require the recitation of the Pledge, although many of these states have exemptions (the full breakdown can be found here)
Another thing that is of note that has been mentioned before, but bears repeating, is that the “Under God” part was added in 1954. Totally awesome from a country founded on separation of church and state.
So yeah. I don’t think the recent college grad with they/them pronouns are the most blatant example of indoctrination.
[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers ‘There’s a petition to ban conversion therapy in the EU’ to Cas’ 'I love you’. /End ID]
If you are a citizen in the EU please sign this petition:
Joking aside, the Millennium Falcon is not the space fantasy equivalent of a busted-ass old panel van.
The Millennium Falcon is the space fantasy equivalent of a busted-ass old panel van that’s inexplicably been hot-rodded to have a top speed of 300 miles per hour, which is substantially funnier.
ALT
ALT
