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Waiting for his turn

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For the Americans—

The palpable anger here is a little soothing. Good writing over at Defector.

What is skepticism? In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known "skepticism" to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and "common sense." A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They're the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob.

[…]

At any rate, "vaccine skeptic" certainly is nicer and less contentious than calling Kennedy a motivated bullshitter, a peddler of antiscientific garbage, the type of dogshit-brained imbecile who will stiff-arm all that can be learned from centuries of medical research and practice because he preferred what he learned from a 25-second TikTok video made by a spiral-eyed homeschool casualty who'll be hospitalized next month with an illness that hasn't sickened a human being since the Bronze Age.

[…]

So much of what has brought us all to this unutterably bleak moment in American history—with eradicated diseases on the rise, the biosphere sweltering to death, a 34-times-convicted felon and twice-impeached rapist and bigot swept back into the presidency on a promise to exacerbate the real problems and fix the imaginary ones, all the levers of power in the hands of a tiny number of giddy sneering fascists, a shattered society eagerly transforming what's left of itself into a casino—seems crystallized in the decision to call a guy who thinks vaccines make your organs transparent a "vaccine skeptic," in an article about how he'll pretty soon be taking over what remains of the United States's woefully degraded public health apparatus. Wimpy deference to sneering bad actors and moneyed crackpots; slovenly ignorance and poisonous half-literacy; reflexive retconning of whoever and whatever attains power into the established forms of seriousness; and the narcotizing glaze of illusory continuity slathered over it all. It all comes together in this, in the cowardly refusal to see reality for what it is and describe it truthfully—to value skepticism, that is to say, and all that it demands.

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Tell me a soft memory

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Page of Cups

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if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

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TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)

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😳

What the actual fuck?

Trauma and Pain: Live action

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6/3/23 Work in progress. Started a new color that looks very much like the orange in Margeaux’s fur.

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6/2/23 Work in progress. Oh, good lord. I got so much done tonight because I got hooked on Shiny, happy people on prime. It’s fucking terrifying. 😳

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I am really glad Janet Jackson saw this masterpiece. 🥺

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Awww The Janet Jackson song that started it all. 😭

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5/31/23 Work in progress. The s is fixed, but this bitch has a headache, so that’s all for tonight.

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5/29/23 Work in progress. Well, it seems that bitches also make mistakes and will be frogging that S tomorrow because it’s one row too far over. 😬