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was talking to my mom about how white people ignore the contributions of poc to academia and I found myself saying the words "I bet those idiots think Louis Pasteur was the first to discover germ theory"

which admittedly sounded pretentious as fuck but I'm just so angry that so few people know about the academic advancements during the golden age of Islam.

Islamic doctors were washing their hands and equipment when Europeans were still shoving dirty ass hands into bullet wounds. ancient Indians were describing tiny organisms worsening illness that could travel from person to person before Greece and Rome even started theorizing that some illnesses could be transmitted

also, not related to germ theory, but during the golden age of Islam, they developed an early version of surgery on the cornea. as in the fucking eye. and they were successful

and what have white people contributed exactly?

please go research the golden age of Islamic academia. so many of us wouldn't be alive today if not for their discoveries

people ask sometimes how I can be proud to be Muslim. this is just one of many reasons

some sources to get you started:

but keep in mind, it wasn't just science and medicine! we contributed to literature and philosophy and mathematics and political theory and more!

maybe show us some damn respect

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I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

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Can't repost this without including this.

star trek is about. .,the sixties

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Ryan Coogler explained in an interview that Remmick was partially inspired by the character Death in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), noting both his eyes and demeanor.

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My friends who own the building I live in wanted to put in new lighting into the stairs leading down into the backyard, but since they're artsy goths they decided they wanted to make an art installation of it. Anyway, there is an upside down skeleton's sitting room there now and it's rad as fuck

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if it sucks hit da bricks <- litany against sunk cost

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism

now say something beautiful and true <- litany against irony poisoning

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Everyone, everywhere fails at gender at some point in their life because the rules are made up.

Part of the reason why I took so much joy in the younger generations than me who actually started to play with gender, as you should.

And it's part of the reason why I rage so hard at the chucklefucks (like Joe Kitt Rowling and the entirety of the Drumpf Regime) with their "gender essentialism"; it's like insisting on the rules for Chutes and Ladders when the rest of us are playing poker.

"The nonbinary afab who goes by she/her, dresses femininely, and uses a push-up bra when I—" when you what? What's wrong with her?

Is she not nonbinary enough for you? Is the way she experiences her queerness and how she presents not perfect enough for you? Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny, right? So why is she the exception? Why does she have to hate herself to appeal to your standards? Why is she any less trans—any less worthy of respect—cause it's "not visible"? Queer solidarity my ass. Don't spout this bullshit on Pride, man.

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So this would be the difference between a Secretary of Defense and someone cosplaying a Secretary of Defense.

This really does feel like a group of white supremacist school children were asked as a high-school project to pretend like they were running the U.S. government and somehow, through the magic of, oh... I don't know... some fucked up racist angel or mysterious Fortune Teller machine in an abandoned amusement park ended up in charge of the real U.S. government.

20 Signal group chats???

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You know the thing that me, Gen X, remembers most of all? That the people of older generations were, for the vast amount of ones I knew, all alcoholics. Mostly "functional alcoholics". The men prone to tracking their upcoming retirement. The women just exhausted.

Everyone on drugs but also bitching about the evils of drugs.

Yep, houses owned, retirement savings, and the ability to actually vacation every year was part of their lives, but they treated it as if those things were so flimsy as paper. They angrily protected these things against anything they thought was a threat... and those threats were everyone and everywhere.

And most of the ones I knew who worked in factories were absolutely dying to get out. Hell, my entire introduction to computers is because my Dad wanted me to work an "email job" (as the tweet above names it).

Watching the current admin work has driven the point home that this Golden Age not only never existed but was also set up to protect completely mediocre--if downright incompetent--"white" men. And I'm putting white in quotes because even in the 80s, Scots, the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Spaniards weren't considered white.

That changed in the 90s. And the Italian stuff was partially rescinded with Luigi Mangione.

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love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded

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Hey Jumblr I want to let you in on a secret that has made some of my worst days bearable

Blame the Romans

Have some freakish Ashkenazi malady…

Blame the Romans- you wouldn’t be a lactose intolerant with terrible sinuses if it weren’t for genetic bottlenecking caused by Roman slavery

Can’t eat fava beans…

That’s probably the Babylonians fault but YOU KNOW WHAT if the Romans hadn’t destroyed the temples then maybe your ancestors would have returned home and not developed a genetic mutation that causes deadly intolerance to a bean

Your boyfriend turned out to be an antisemitic weirdo and took all your friends in the break up by telling them you were an evil Zionist…

Those people were never your friends AND blame the Romans for renaming the land Syria Palestinina and confusing defiantly very anti colonial college students the world over

You feel like you have no sense of unique culture or identity and your antisemitic brain worms are tell you that you are a leech that produces nothing for society but CO2…

Blame the Romans for intentionally killing and robbing your ancestors of their indigenous land and disrupting cultural transmission

That hot Israeli girl won’t text you back because you don’t know enough about winter barley cultivation…

If it weren’t for the ROMANS you would be disappointed that a HOT JUDEAN GIRL wasn’t texted you back and you might know more about barley if Jewish society had remained agrarian in nature

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What is Hopepunk?

Wild laughter from ragged throats

Flowers growing choked from crumbling asphalt

A warm bed after a long, hard journey

Your partner’s hand cupped in your own

Bright graffiti on cracked tunnel walls

The chains falling loose to the stone floor

A glint of silver beneath a century of tarnish

A long rain after a blistering wildfire

Just one more step, and then another

A single candle flame joining the stars against the night

A loved ones voice calling your name after hours lost in an unfamiliar place

A hand taking yours, just when you’d given up on reaching out

Smiling, laughing again, when you thought you’d forgotten how

Knowing, despite everything, that humans are inherently good

It’s not simply blind optimism, or naivety. It’s choice. It’s taking the human race by the hand and saying, “I will love you, because I am you”. It’s facing a world dripping with cynicism and fashionable hopelessness and saying, “no, I will not give in”. It’s putting kindness out into the world, knowing you might not get it back, knowing you may be scorned for it, knowing it might not change anything, but with a certainty that kindness is what the world needs the most.

It is choosing hope

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Jackie Ormes, the first Black American woman cartoonist

When the 14-year-old Black American boy Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, one cartoonist responded in a single-panel comic. It showed one Black girl telling another: “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject… but that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!”

It may not seem radical today, but penning such a political cartoon was a bold and brave statement for its time — especially for the artist who was behind it. This cartoon was drawn by Jackie Ormes, the first syndicated Black American woman cartoonist to be published in a newspaper. Ormes, who grew up in Pittsburgh, got her first break as cartoonist as a teenager. She started working for the Pittsburgh Courier as a sports reporter, then editor, then cartoonist who penned her first comic, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, in 1937. It followed a Mississippi teen who becomes a famous singer at the famed Harlem jazz club, The Cotton Club.

In 1942, Ormes moved to Chicago, where she drew her most popular cartoon, Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, which followed two sisters who made sharp political commentary on Black American life. 

In 1947, Ormes created the Patty-Jo doll, the first Black doll that wasn’t a mammy doll or a Topsy-Turvy doll. In production for a decade, it was a role model for young black girls. "The doll was a fashionable, beautiful character,“ says Daniel Schulman, who curated one of the dolls into a recent Chicago exhibition. “It had an extraordinary presence and power — they’re collected today and have important place in American doll-making in the U.S.”

In 1950, Ormes drew her final strip, Torchy in Heartbeats, which followed an independent, stylish black woman on the quest for love — who commented on racism in the South. “Torchy was adventurous, we never saw that with an Black American female figure,” says Beauchamp-Byrd. “And remember, this is the 1950s.“ Ormes was the first to portray black women as intellectual and socially-aware in a time when they were depicted in a derogatory way.

One common mistake that erased Ormes from history is mis-crediting Barbara Brandon-Croft as the first nationally syndicated Black American female cartoonist. “I’m just the first mainstream cartoonist, I’m not the first at all,” says Brandon-Croft, who published her cartoons in the Detroit Free Press in the 1990s. “So much of Black history has been ignored, it’s a reminder that Black history shouldn’t just be celebrated in February.”

Source

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People are trying to bring back 1880s-era anti-ASL sentiment. Worst timeline.

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“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ‘em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.“

–Elizabeth Gilbert