Where do I even begin? I'm appalled. The Canadian government living up to its roots in colonial-settler violence... this is beyond criminal. Contact your MP's. This erasure and anti-Palestinian racism is unacceptable.
For anyone reading this on or after February 26th, 2024 -here is more information/updates:
hc that roxy like, keeps preparing rose (and everyone else) food post canon and rose notices that she doesnt make any food for herself and she asks why and roxy doesnt know what she's talking about but rose the ever so skilled psychologist finally realizes ooOOHHHHH ITS A PTSD THING and cries herself to sleep.
Here's a lovely 1925 home in Atlanta, GA. It's serene and tastefully decorated upstairs, but if you feel like getting funky, you can go down to the basement where it's a whole different world. 3bds, 3ba, 2,880 sq ft $895K.
This home, in the colonial style, has a nice living room with a brick fireplace that they painted a dark gray to "update" it.
And, it has a lovely dining room that opens to a deck.
This kitchen has been updated with stainless steel appliances and there's also a door to the deck. A modern tile backsplash is on the sink/stove wall, but the counters are laminate.
The kitchen's not very large, and you can see that it's a bit crowded. Nice little cookbook shelf next to the fridge, though.
Off the kitchen is an updated powder room with a cute pedestal sink.
In the family room, the brick fireplace has been painted white.
The primary bedroom is open to the family room. Not a fan of that.
Either this wasn't meant to be a bedroom, or it's a suite, but the stairs come up to an open doorway.
Small den.
Plus a large, updated shower room.
Outside the shower room there's a closet for the w/d, and a closet/dressing room that was converted from a small sun porch.
Then we take the spiral stairs to the lower level. Have you ever seen so many disco balls?
There's a full kitchen down here that also serves as a bar.
Here's a bar area and a small dance floor.
I'm wondering if the disco balls and chandeliers convey.
Back here, by the rear entrance, there's a 1/2 bath and a shower.
Behind the house, the deck is an elaborate 2 tier deck plus a screened-in porch.
There's also a lovely garden back here.
And, there's no garage, but there's a car port under the deck.
Between 1970 and 1973, rent strikes erupted in towns and cities throughout the Republic of Ireland. These were organised by local tenants’ associations, most of which were affiliated to the National Association of Tenants Organisations [NAoTO] [...], an umbrella organisation for local associations established in 1967. [...] [O]rganisers claimed that at its peak almost half of all council tenants in the state, or approximately 50,000 households, were withholding their rents. These localised campaigns coalesced into a state-wide movement in late 1972 with [NAoTO] declaring a “national rent strike” which lasted until August 1973. At this point, the government conceded to [NAoTO]'s demands including revisions to the B scale differential rent system, a rent freeze for those on fixed (non-differential) rents, [and] better terms for tenant purchase [...]. [T]he long-term consequences are more ambiguous [...]. Nonetheless, it was described in an article in the Irish Times as “undoubtedly the most dramatic [...] victory ever achieved in this century by tenants versus landlords” [within Ireland]. [...]
Despite the scale and significance of these rent strikes, before this project started there was effectively no information available about them. The [Community Action Tenants Union Ireland] CATU rent strike history project aimed to address this situation, which we understood as an important gap in the collective memory [...]. The project set out to leverage the history of the rent strikes to engage people and involve them in the contemporary housing movement by providing an example of the power of collective action and building connections [...]. The project has been ongoing since late 2021 [...].
---
Gray (2018a, 2022) argues that, beginning in the 1960s, the urbanisation of capital created a new [...] working-class struggle in Italy, [...] characterised by divisions related to suburbanisation and geographical fragmentation. [...] Clare's (2020) analysis of [...] clandestine textile workshops in Buenos Aires highlights the importance of the spatial dimension [...] by describing how workshops are located according to a distinct socio-spatial strategy that divides the workforce and minimises outside interference, thus ensuring access to cheap, vulnerable labour. [...]
There are [...] connections between political decomposition and the loss of memory and knowledge of struggle, such as in the case of workplace restructuring after conflict to prevent the transmission of knowledge and experience between different generations of workers [...]. Responding to this situation, there has been a growing interest in recovering forgotten or suppressed histories of housing and urban struggles [...].
---
The background to the CATU rent strike history project is the so-called “housing crisis” in Ireland, which, contrary to the idea of a specific moment of crisis, has been a continuous feature of Irish society since at least the 19th century [...]. A persistent challenge faced by CATU and other similar movements is that of overcoming a pervasive sense of disempowerment and persuading people that it is worthwhile to engage in collective action [...]. [T]he [housing] crisis [is not necessarily] a unique moment of dysfunction in the housing system [but is] rather [...] a persistent feature of Irish, and increasingly international, capitalism [...]. [L]and and housing have been deeply interrelated with anti-colonial struggles including the Land War of the late 19th century, the civil rights movement, and anti-internment rent strikes in the 1960s [...].
---
27 oral history interviews were carried out with people who participated in the rent strikes in the 1970s [...] from various towns and cities across the Republic of Ireland [...]. Approximately 2,000 relevant articles published in local and national newspapers between 1966 and 1973 were identified and subject to close reading [...] Further data was gathered through a review of 161 articles about the rent strikes in radical newspapers [...]. Previous analyses have emphasised the atomisation of new suburban council estates and how these were part of a concerted effort to undermine working-class radicalism (McManus 2003). Beginning in the late 1950s, suburbanisation was further accelerated by the state's policy to attract [...] speculative investment in commercial office space and the displacement of working-class communities, in particular from inner-city Dublin [...]. However, [...] that fragmentation was countered in the late 1960s and early 1970s through the widespread, rapid formation of tenants’ associations organised around shared interests [...].
The interviews and newspapers produced by local tenants’ associations demonstrated the organisational density and array of community organisations [...] that fought to improve the conditions of everyday life [...]. Some of the forms of organisation that existed across many areas included collectively built and managed community centres, women's and youth committees, sports clubs, social activities for elderly people, and food cooperatives, amongst others. Illustrating the scale of community organising, in August 1973 the [NAoTO] newspaper reported that the West Finglas Tenants Association was running regular outings to the seaside that were attended on average by 2,000 people transported in 20 double-decker buses. [...] As described by [P.], a rent strike organizer in Ballyfermot:
"Street committees didn't just run the rent strike, they also ran summer programmes. If there was old people to come around at Christmas, we'd arrange for someone to cook an extra bit of dinner. It was more a living thing. It wasn't just a single issue. [...]"
---
All text above by: Fiadh Tubridy. "Militant Research in the Housing Movement: The Community Action Tenants Union Rent Strike History Project". Antipode Online Volume 56, Issue 3, pages 1027-1046. May 2024. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]
In preparation for Dawntrail, my apartment received a makeover inspired by the Age of Exploration and private bungalows in the Amazon Rainforest. Open for visitors on Zodiark, Lavender Beds, 8th Ward, Room 36!
They regularly ask me to let them in the other's enclosure so they can cuddle. When Sakura thought I was pestering her sister she put herself between me and her; incredibly brave of her as she is still afraid of human hands (but much better than she use to be.)
When Sakura gets frightened she'll run to her sister and often hide her head under her.
Both enjoy exploring and doing their enrichment activities together. Seeing this on a daily basis, and the bond these little ones have with each other (and me) I think more research needs to be done regarding the current belief Hognose snakes are incapable of emotion or bonding, and are completely solitary. While both go to their individual dens after socializing, both seek each other out and cuddle together. (They are only allowed together while I'm there watching as sometimes snakes will eat each other, and they seem to enjoy having their own home space when it isn't play/cuddle time.) Sakura benefits so much being with her sister, just being near her she's exponentially braver and far less jumpy, and will watch her sister with great interest learning from her.
Bela/Cassandra/Daniela, trying to be flirtatious: "Would you love me if I was a worm?"
Reader, deadpan: "You're literally a swarm of flies."
Bela/Cassandra/Daniela, now pouting: "You didn't answer the question."
Am I a radical because I think people should be paid fairly?
Am I a radical because I think Heathcare is a right ?
Am I a radical because I think the unhoused are from a failure by the state to provide them housing and support?
Am I a radical because I think all people should be treated equally?
Am I a radical because I realize equality don't mean the same thing for everyone, it means giving people what they need to be on the same level?
Am I a radical because I think that food and drink are a right?
Am I a radical because I want peace?
Am I a radical because jobs should be what you love, not what you are forced to do?
Am I a radical because I think colonization is bad?
Am I a radical because I don't ignore the benefits I have had from being a White, Straight, Male?
Am I a radical because I don't ignore the benefit I have the totalitarian policies of the US in relation to the world?
Am I a radical for speaking up against the horrors of capitalism?
Am I a radical for thinking that a single country should not determine the worlds safety?
Am I a radical for think war is bad?
Am I a radical for thinking civilians shouldn't be killed?
If that's what defines a radical, then that's what I am. And I'm proud to be one.
if you watch one video today, please let it be theirs.
"capitalism requires poverty to function and for people to struggle"
"let's not pay for housing. let's not have rent. let's get rid of landlords because that was not even a thing anywhere else besides europe"
Expanding on my Irish Clawthorne reading; That just adds to the whole story and the colonialism aspect and how the Wittebanes are of British descent, and the British colonized the Irish while declaring them 'savages' and the like, sound familiar?
Big orange hair is such a thing for the family; Eda's hair can store objects in it, Lilith's was curly. And I dunno just; It's not just the angle of white folk colonizing America, it's also the Irish and we have Caleb learning to love Evelyn, whom people like to portray with orange hair. The consensus is that Dell, a ginger, is their direct descendant.
So there's also something to be said about Lilith as someone who was made to assimilate; In the Emperor's Coven, she was deliberately cut off from her family. She was 'taken in' by an older relative ashamed of his brother's fraternizing, who resented Lilith on multiple levels for her identity and for eventually scarring his face (in retaliation to manipulation and attempted murder).
Lilith was so blatantly abused in the Emperor's Coven, and there's a sick joke in how she wanted to be a historian, yet was made subordinate to Flora, who bastardized history on Belos' order, and also belittled Lilith. Lilith was constantly made to feel inferior and with how she was always more of a desk job than a field agent, unlike the coven heads, and it really feels like she was elected as a stunt, a prop to show off with; Look, see! Even a common wild witch like Lilith can rise to the top!
But Lilith still had to assimilate, she had to conform; People like her can still fit under the coven banner, so long as they fit the mold and cut away those 'ugly' bits. So she straightens and dyes her hair a dark blue, cuts it down. Lilith hides herself, even her own Palisman is forced to constantly stay in staff form; A reminder that nature can only be allowed to exist as a tool, nothing else!!! And that's also dark because the Clawthornes are palismen carvers.
So yeah, we have Lilith trying to engage with her past and heritage, yet being deliberately blinded from it, made to participate in her own ignorance and erasure. Forced to hide physical aspects of herself to blend in, mistreated as more of a prop to show how any wild witch can be 'tamed', to prove a point to Belos himself. His own sick victory against Evelyn; A trophy seized from the locals, separated from her family and trying to pull them in with her because that's the best Lilith can have, even as she belittles them and thinks she was improved herself.
Lilith obviously has personal agency and thus blame regarding the curse, and the finale's themes do assert that, as does Lilith’s effort to atone; But it was Belos' coven system that helped pit Lilith against her fellow witches and even family members, and estrange herself from them. Lilith WAS legitimately interested in magic, too... But because of the system, she cursed Eda.
And Lilith didn't use any old curse, she used one created by the Archivists, who came from another world to 'tame', that itself had reduced another wild, native creature to just a prop. That curse was used to dehumanize and delegitimize Eda's stance against the system. It reduced her connection to her bile magic, something also important to witches and Clawthornes, and especially Eda who loved and was great at it; And to mitigate the curse and take responsibility, Lilith also lost her bile magic.
But at the same time, she and Eda re-established contact with glyphs, thanks to Luz; And Lilith made the breakthrough of rediscovering glyph combos! So there's an ancient practice, older than even the Deadwardian Era she obsessed over, that Lilith found and brought back, for a time at least; But that will still apply once King's glyphs so in full-swing. And Lilith even got to visit the Deadwardian Era, scar her abuser after he scarred her and so many others, and come to a better understanding about her own ancestral past, something that continues with Lilith’s self-actualization as the historian she always wanted to be; So now she’s helping everyone better understand their past and origins!
Lilith and the Clawthornes as a whole are still cut off from knowing about Evelyn and Caleb, and they may never know; But at least they got back Hunter, whom Lilith was also pitted against in the Emperor's Coven, which really divided Caleb and Evelyn's descendants. And what tops it all off is Lilith having parallels to Philip, what with the Wittebanes and Clawthorne sisters; One more open-minded and outdoorsy, going against society, while the other is bookish and bitterly insecure and absorbs prejudice to feel better about themselves. Even their names are structured similarly!
They both wear blue coats and hurt a sibling they cared for but also resented... But Lilith grew beyond all that. She went above the hatred and jealousy. The system was more prevalent in her life, yet Lilith still chose to go against it, taking the chance to stop when it came and work for real happiness. She stopped needing to put down others to feel better about herself, Lilith made a friend with someone as strange as Hooty, who was once connected to the Titan and also forgot his past, but is now connected to Dell's old tower; Abandoned but given new life by Lilith's sister Eda. So the past is still lost to some extent and unrecognizable even, but it still lives on anyway.
Anyhow, Irish Lilith Clawthorne who is a victim of assimilation by British colonialism and that tried to erase her Irish features and make Lilith conform by cutting her off from her heritage and feeding her a bastardized, demonized version of her own past, while turning against her own people and culture and thinking herself superior for climbing up the ladder she left others at the base of; A promised justification of imperialism. But then Lilith breaks free from all of it and reconnects and re-embraces everything she lost, including her family and heritage, and just gets to be weird with other weirdoes like herself, so there's both blood and the covenant (not THAT type of coven tho).
House Targaryen is an allegory for colonization. From the very start of their line they have taken things that aren't theirs. Whether it be people, land, kingdoms, and lives. Until Aegon I, Visenya, and Rhaenys came around and waged war against everyone in Old Valyria and the neighboring kingdoms, House Targaryen really wasn't all that important. They weren't even the most powerful house in the kingdom because it wasn't their kingdom until they tore it away from the rulers and killed the people who disagreed. Same with what they did with Dorne for years. House Targaryen is full of colonizers, blood purists, and terrorists of all kinds. While this is not me saying I hate every Targaryen character, I am saying that it's important to know that they are a realistic representation of colonization because:
They came in > They stole the land and the throne > They killed the people that disagreed or tried to defend themselves > Their families took over until their house finally died out.
This 1926 Spanish Colonial in Los Angeles, California looks like a fairy tale house. 3bds, 4ba, $2.2M. Love everything but the taxidermy.
Isn't this amazing? The red ceiling is a stunner. Love the fireplace and shelving, too.
It has a large dining room with fairy tale cottage windows.
The kitchen is large, and look at the cute Dutch door. Love the floor.
The primary bedroom is so cozy. It doesn't look big enough to fit a piano, but it's deceiving.
You don't see many red bathrooms. Very nice. I can't decide if I like the uneven tile look.
Cute alcove is a great place to read, but the small desk looks good in here.
Absolutely love the library. It reminds me of a treehouse.
Bedroom #2 is a child's room. It's pretty big, b/c it accommodates some large furniture pieces.
This bath is cool- burgundy subway tiles.
Bedroom #3 with large sliders to the garden, is being used for an exercise space.
The house has several Juliet balconies and a turret tower.
This is a lovely roof top deck.
The garden is so pretty.
Interesting waterfall and pond.
Not much of a driveway, but there's a double garage. The property is very angular and small, 5,299 sq ft lot, but it's in the expensive Hollywood Hills.