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💘 ramadan mubarak, رمضان مبارك 💘

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didnt wanna be the one to tell you this stranger, but we oppress white people 'round these parts. best pack your ao3 dufflebag 'fore it gets dark.

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His First(s).

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Over the past few years, this graph has become a sensation. Developed by Our World In Data and promoted widely by Bill Gates and Steven Pinker, the graph gives the impression that virtually all of humanity was in “extreme poverty” as of 1820 (i.e., living on less than $1.90 per day, PPP; less than is required for basic food). OWID has used this figure to claim that extreme poverty was the natural or baseline condition of humanity, extending far back into the past: “in the thousands of years before the beginning of the industrial era, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today.” In other words, virtually all of humanity, for all of history, was destitute until the 19th century, when at last colonialism and capitalism came to the rescue.

There’s only one problem: the graph’s long-term trend is empirically baseless.  For the period 1981 to the present, it uses World Bank survey data on household consumption.  This is a legitimate method for assessing poverty.  For the period prior to 1981, however, the graph relies on GDP estimates from Bourguignon and Morrison.  The problem is that GDP data cannot legitimately be used to tell us about poverty, because it is not an indicator of livelihoods or provisioning; rather, it is an indicator of commodity production.  Unlike the World Bank data, it does not count non-commodity forms of household consumption (subsistence, commons, mutuality, etc.), which was the dominant form of provisioning for most of history. This is important, because we know that the colonial period was characterized by the destruction of subsistence economies, the enclosure of commons, forced dispossession and mass enslavement, all of which significantly constrained people’s access to livelihoods and provisions.  In other words, colonialism caused poverty to worsen even in cases where GDP was rising. This violent history gets obscured by the OWID graph, and repackaged as a happy story of progress. (For more on this critique, see here, here, and here).    

This critique was articulated recently by Robert Allen in an article published in Annual Review of Economics. In it, he affirms that the GDP data cannot be used to assess poverty, and argues that the matter of long-term trends can only be settled with historical consumption data. Toward this end, he constructs a basic needs poverty line that’s roughly equivalent to the World Bank’s $1.90 line, and calculates the share of people below it for three key regions: the US, UK and India.

His findings reveal a much different story than the OWID graph would have us believe.  

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MCU + sibling duos

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here’s hoping shane and ryan get the rights to BFU in 2020

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[ID: Tweet from monicayk97 reads, "honestly i'm just fucking done and tired with it all. i'm angry that i know the white supremacist shooter's name before the names of the asian women. i'm angry that it's working class asians that are targeted and people wanna erase us all as wealthy. i'm just fucking angry" end ID]

some places to donate (compiled by monica):

advancing justice (atlanta, GA local org)

stopaapihate (aapi women-led)

'i'm ready' movement (aapi women-led)

asian prisoner support committee

apienc (for queer and trans asian people)

source tweet. (edit: includes other orgs to donate to, as well as some additional comments/corrections to original tweet)

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“When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.”

— Louis C.K.

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pandemic or not why do y’all get so close to people in line at the store

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does anyone have the “my wife is home” r/ambien post

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You guys realize you’re interacting with other human beings on here, right?

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Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

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life on tumblr has always been just living in the moment for me, but sometimes i stop and realize that some of us have been part of each other’s lives for. years. a lot of years. seeing each other grow and change, being there for the ups and downs, is comforting. knowing there’s a place, this place, where i can find all of you… it’s nice. i’m very glad i met you, and hope to keep meeting all the other you’s to come

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do you think Bumi and Kuzon went to the air temple to see Aang bc he hasnt responded to their letters, only to find a temple full of week-old corpses? do you think they walked through the temple trying to find survivors, trying to find aang, only to come across monk gyatso’s body? do you think they cried, prayed, and promised to never forget the air nomads?

do you think bumi still lives with that guilt? that he, in his mind, let his best friend and best friend’s nation get wiped out? he would’ve only been 12, how big of an effect would that have had on him?

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You couldn’t just go back to your swamp and leave well enough alone!

SHREK 2 (2004) dir. Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon  Holding Out for a Hero performed by Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother

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everyone around me be like: haha i remember my childhood SO WELL! here's some well detailed funny memories that i have :)

i be like: uh i remember like... the smell of my kindergarten classroom and like.... tv commercials from the early 2000s and the impending sense of doom and overwhelming crushing loneliness.