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Hans Op de Beeck (1969-) "Sleeping Girl" (2017) Polyester, aluminum, coating

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OP: why we don't trust a narrated video

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Went to the Aboriginal artifact exhibit in Chicago. And it’s interesting. How many blankets and masks and totem poles say ‘unknown source’, because every five seconds my mom would stop and point to something and say. “Pauline’s grandmother made that,” or, “That belongs to Mike’s family, I should call him” because. It’s all stolen

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it doesn’t have to be good it just has to be done

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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)

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Tamsin Abbott (look at the little dog barking!)

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remember how utterly inescapable how i met your mother used to be with the memes and references and barney and bro code and wait for it... and then the finale was so hated it vanished overnight

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“Never Forget Srebrenica / 11 July 1995” 26 years has passed since Europe was shaken by the genocide of more than 8000 muslim boys and men in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica, at the hands of Bosnian Serb troops during an operation of ethnic cleansing, witnessed by UN peacekeeping troops who failed resoundingly in their protection mission. Since then, limited justice has been rendered by international tribunals, and the repeated denial by several government officials of what happened reminds us of the still pressing need for the international community to support efforts to obtain truth, justice and reparation for victims and survivors. In the midst of the conflict in the Balkans during the 1990’s, the small city of Srebrenica, in Eastern Bosnia, was established as a “safe area” by the UN for civilians fleeing fights between Bosnian government and separatist Serb forces, during the breakup of Yugoslavia. On 11 July 1995, Serb forces attacked Srebrenica lead by Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić, conducting a ten-day operation to take over Srebrenica and subject it to ethnic cleansing. More than 8000 people were killed, mainly Bosnian muslim boys and men. The reality of the genocide in Srebrenica was officially recognized in 2007 in a judgment delivered by the International Court of Justice. But countless Srebrenica survivors remain awaiting truth and justice. On 11 July each year, newly identified remains are buried at the Srebrenica memorial cemetery at Potočari. Organisations like Mothers of Srebrenica or movements like Women in Black advocate to continue the search for the missing persons and to identify those who were involved in and responsible for the massacre and bring them before local and international courts. Yet, the government of Bosnia & Herzegovina still lacks resources and a comprehensive strategy to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed. Moreover, the communities are still deeply divided, and both the governments of Serbia and Republika Srpska continue to deny the reality of what happened at Srebrenica.

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He is in despair this summer

rus ver ⬇️

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Ahmed Moustafa (Egyptian, 1943) - Horses Frolicking (1993)

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I wish to purchase goods and services without entering a blood covenant that entitles the provider to email and text me forever and also store a bunch of my personal data that they’re going to apologize for exposing in a breach in the next five to ten years

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Happy Dot in the I Day to all who celebrate

Today is Tuesday and also July

But sometimes never

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i miss when tv shows could write a slow burn relationship and not worry that they'd get cancelled before it could even really start to begin to burn

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The quickest way to start a fight with me 

Watch the full video on YouTube! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqezY6YE4A4&t=6045s

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KWON EUNBI @ WATERBOMB (fancam cr)

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"You could get up early and do it before work" I could also wait for a magic beanstalk to start growing in my living room LMAO. Let's focus on things that happen in the real world