iwrotesomeofitdown

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

Remmick, Ryan Coogler's vampire in Sinners, is written so well. You have a white, Irish vampire from the time of the colonization of Ireland by the english who is trying to deal with his own loss and 'hunger'. He wants to use Sammie. He wants to take away Sammie's music, his tradition and to use it for his own gain.

We have one more white oppressor who presents himself as a saviour. He inflitrates a black community, coming with the promise of... equality, community and freedom from death. But those promises come to fruition in a very specific manner. Remmick is the leader, for all the equality he promises. HE is the one who sets the tune the rest are singing. HE is the one whose pain is felt by every member of this 'community'. Every person that is turned connects to him in a hive-mind of collective memory and experience that HE controls and is able to use to his own convenience. Moreover, this is a collective that does not exclude the KKK-alligned family that was part of the plan to slaughter an entire black community.

Remmick represents a seemingly politically correct, predominantly white globalization. He presents himself as well-intended. He may even BELIEVE that he is. But what he offers is the death of individuality, of culture and tradition.

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

"No miseries worth complainin' about."

WUNMI MOSAKU as ANNIE SINNERS (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

SINNERS 2025, dir. Ryan Coogler

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

"There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future." SINNERS (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

"The existence and consumption of coffee has many advantages in human society, but perhaps the lesser reported advantage is what it can offer the environment.

There is arguably no other monocrop so capable of thriving in an intact, natural ecosystem, and in Ethiopia, where coffee is a major export, the adoption of climate-compatible and conservation strategies among coffee growers recently proved a major success, with over 5,000 acres of land reforested, 45% increases in household income, and a 70% increase in exported coffee.

Coffee is a major lifeblood of Ethiopia’s economy (we’re talking about a quarter of the whole), accounting for around half of the livelihood of 15 million people, 95% of whom are small landholding growers.

In the ecologically critical Ilu Ababor Zone of nation’s western region of Oromia, where Coffea arabica is native, Farm Africa led a project on sustainable agriculture among coffee growers inside 19 local forest management cooperatives totaling around 4,000 people between 2021 and 2024.

The results were better than a hot cup of coffee on a cold early morning, as the residents took to the skills, incentives, and even stakeholder meetings with great interest and dedication according to a report on the project entitled Coffee for Conservation.

Of the project aims regarding forest management and conservation, the objective was to instruct the landholders and growers in ways to get everything they needed from their forest homes without felling too many native trees.

For example, locals were shown how to cultivate fast-growing trees optimal for firewood in small plots, as well as methods on how to maximize the growth cycle of these fuel trees. Six tree nurseries were opened and staffed by around 60 people taught to sell seedlings for reforestation of native woodland in the area.

By the end of the project, over 300,000 seedlings had been planted over 5,000 acres of forest, and they enjoyed a five-year survival rate of 85%. Climate-smart practices such as cultivating bamboo for making the mats on which the coffee beans are dried, removed the need to truck in bamboo from other regions, while 66% of homes were able to be convinced to switch to energy-efficient wood stoves to reduce fuel consumption.

Most of the landholders growing coffee or managing the forest had plots for vegetable and fruit production to feed their families and those of their communities through trade. Percentages of these Ethiopians who adopted climate-smart farming techniques increased from 49% to 76%, while 10% more began growing fruit and vegetables. Income generated from the increased production amounted to around 280% more than what was made before the project, adjusted for inflation.

Coffee production, marketing, and returns, have all improved. 73% more coffee from the Ilu Ababor region is now export-quality than in 2021, and 44% meets the standards for specialty grade, which is up by 20% from 2021.

Connections with national financing intuitions have allowed some of the co-ops to buy proper equipment for drying and storage, as well as support by city marketing agencies who could work directly on behalf of the Ilu Ababor growers to carve out a space in the national and international markets.

“Prior to the project, our limited knowledge meant we had to sell our coffee to local traders at lower prices,” said Abde Musa, a member of the Abdi Bori forest management cooperative. “Now we’ve taken control and are the ones negotiating and determining the coffee prices.”

Co-op leaders received training in business management, quality control, and certification processes, which majorly improved their incomes. One of the 19 co-ops in particular grossed $58,500 on their coffee sales.

Project wide, incomes and access to financial services almost doubled, with the latter now reaching almost 100% of the community.

Lastly, deforestation plummeted in the area to just 0.08 acres a year.

There’s so much good news to read in the report on the project’s success beyond the headline data, like the Abdi Bori co-op’s incredible rise which saw coffee revenue increase by a multiple of 20 from 2018 to 2023, or Solomon Mekonnen’s story of turning his land into a forest farm that produces export-grade coffee, firewood, and organic honey, or the tremendous involvement of women at all levels of the education and participation.

It’s a document that captures the very real phenomenon that African problems are best solved with African solutions."

-via Good News Network, May 17, 2025

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

my ancestors seeing me shrug off a diarrhea session

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

my ancestors seeing me shrug off a diarrhea session

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

"I am Akram"

that's the post

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

the elephant in the room is actually really important for the feng shui of the place so i’d appreciate it if you left it alone

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

YMCA in Akkadian (Ancient Babylonian), as written by Gilgamesh's exasperated tourism minister trying to attract more gay guys to Uruk to keep Gil distracted from politics:

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Lā tuštamarraṣā- Do not, do not be troubled!

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Lā lā taṣallalā- Do not, do not lie down!

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said young men!

Šunu ina ālim- You are in a town,

Bēt bēt šikārim ḫanbā- Where taverns sprout luxuriously,

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Ina ālim alkā- Go to the city,

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said young men!

Bēt kaspī ul tīšâ- When you do not have money,

Annikīam tuššabā- Here you can dwell,

Bēt napṭirim nīšu- We have guest-houses,

Itti awīlī umtallâ- They are filled with men….

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Amuḫḫūni šaqû! Ziqnūni ītebbū! - Our walls are high! Our beards are shiny!

Nuppušātunu!- You are allowed to breathe [relax]

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Eṭlū šimeanni!- Young men listen to me!

Aqabbi, eṭlū! Agana šimeanni!- Young men! Come on, listen!

Aiālam terrišāšu- You desire assistance,

Shū ali īde- This I know for certain!

Šārqum wērum ul ninaddinkunūti- We will not sell you poor copper,

Eṭlū! Ālum ša Uruk bani- Young men! The city of Uruk is beautiful!

Aqabbi eṭlū! Bālātka tezzibši!- I said young man! Leave your pride behind!

Nušallakkunūti- We cause you to go,

Ina Uruk alkā!- Go to Uruk!

Ūmum anniam iseddūkunūti- Today they will help you…

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Šarrum šitpiṣā! Ittmalûšu ṣālā! - Wrestle the king! Fight with him!

Ittīšu mekkê mēlilā!- Play ball with him!

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

.

Eṭlū! Bilītkunu īde! - Young men! I know your burdens

Amtaraṣ! Ina šinigī- I was unwell, in my village,

Ātanaḫ! Erēšum ezzēr- I was tired, I hated plowing,

Awīlum ana yâšim iṭeḫḫe- A man to me approached,

Inūšu! Awātum awânim- Then! Words were said to me,

Šumašu, Sîn-lēqi-unninni- His name was Sîn-lēqi-unninni!

Ina Uruk alkā! Iqabbi ana yâšim- Go to Uruk! He told me,

Ina Uruk awīlī ūterrešū- In Uruk men are needed…

.

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

Wašābum ṭāb ina - The living is good in,

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K!

Ziquratum elâ! Purattum amrā!- Climb up the ziggurat! See the euphrates!

Šikārum ṭābum šitâ!- Drink fine beer!

.

Eṭlū!- Young men!

Addāniqa tallkānim- Please come

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Inam anniam ezêršu- I hate this job…

Aqabbi, eṭlū!- I said, young men!

Anāku ānḫāku - I’m so tired….

Bēt bēt šikārim ḫanbā- Where taverns sprout luxuriously,

Taḫaddâ ina - You’ll have fun in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA! - U-R-U-K!

(Šarrum lillam ina - The king is an idiot in

𒌋𒊏𒌋𒅗 U-RA-U-KA!- U-R-U-K…)

Ao3 link

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

US conservatives think knecapping and disrespecting 51% of the population is a viable plan. Skyrocketing poverty and plummeting birth rates, be damn.

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

WHAT!!!!

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

as someone with aragorn's kind of face framing layers i just know the front pieces are hanging in his eyes all day every day... "my path is hidden from me" you are 4 bobby pins away from utter clarity.

[iwrotesomeofitdown]

[iwrotesomeofitdown]