#and majority don’t even watch her survivor history

[cjcdeeezy]

Me when a Cirie hater pulls up and say she’s woman hater…

[extasiswings]

Ok there is something I’m really lost on. I was looking through tags in the post that 911bts posted about that girl who showed up in that ep where her and her bro may or may not be incest, lol, and I saw something. And I’m just so lost but they mentioned how if Kristen is the show runner, buddie ain’t happening. And like.. that confuses me a lot and I don’t understand that sentiment. Where does it even come from? Do we watch the same show?? 😂

It’s misogyny and revisionist history, plain and simple. Kristen has been responsible for writing (and then in 5B and S6 overseeing) some of the best moments of their love story and respective character developments: she threw down the opening salvo showing there had been a major sea change in their relationship that the audience didn’t see over the hiatus between S2-3 in 3x01, she wrote 3x18 with JCC, she wrote AND directed Survivors (including the shooting aftermath and the guardianship scene), she wrote the queerest breakup scene in the history of breakup scenes between Eddie and Ana in 5x03, and also both 5x17 (with them being domestic af in Christopher’s room + all of the lovely Eddie growth and healing in Texas with his dad) and 5x18 (Buck’s breakup with Taylor). And in S6, she’s overseen and signed off on everything even as the signs have gotten more and more explicit? She’s made some awkward comments in interviews, sure, but imo nothing even close to the way Tim used to loudly insist that they were like Band of Brothers and have the same relationship as Chim and Hen (which isn’t even touching his obsession with Taylor which is the reason we had to suffer through MW’s bad acting for so long). And there’s zero reason to think she’s homophobic, especially since we only finally got a Henren Begins/an entire episode fully dedicated to black lesbian love story, after she took over as showrunner (since Tim had refused to do one iirc). Anyway, it’s all bullshit but people love to hate women.

[beardedmrbean]

Oh sorry I for the back to back

Actually tv was airing reruns of good times once so my mom put it on and I watch a couple of episodes. I mentally went OH NOOOOOOOO halfway through the trailer when realizing what it was sequel about

THERE A FUCKING REASON IM MORE EXCITED ABOUT PLAYING AS YASUKE IN A HISTORICAL FICTION THAT CENTER AROUND A ILLUMINATI WAR AND MOST GODS ARE ACTUALLY MISREMEMBERING OF A HIGHLY ADVANCED CIVILIANIZATION THAT CREATED HUMANITY FOR SLAVE LABOR 75,000 YEARS AGO

Ugh sorry for the detour, but for why Ghettos now means bad neighborhoods. I remember something

So in 7th grade , a daughter of two holocaust survivors told her parents stories. She mentioned that they immigrant to Chicago

So my theory is that when holocaust survivors was telling how they were treated prior to the Final Solution. That people especially black Americans might have started to see parallels to how African Americans were treated in America

Of course not 1:1 but we all know how Jim crows America was

Oh and that pos racist urban planner Robert Moses that lead to the huge race issues of neighborhoods

And the projects, yeah the crime ridden place that was intentionally there to keep my community as animals

Of course not every black person live in it. But there a reason why a lot of black Americans including the lunatic Kanye in his songs, reference Chicago as Chiraq

Oh sorry detour, but remember the OG candyman? I seen people ask why it focus on a white woman…holy fuuuuuuuck

🤔

Could been that a lot of middle classic Americans especially fans of the horror genre wouldn’t know about the terrible situations of the Chicago projects so they made a stand in for the majority white consumers?

Ugh don’t get me started on the remake…where they tackle police brutality… in Chicago… a Democrat and heavily black politicians voted city.

Source: I live in the Chicago area and one it suburbs. I can see the Sears tower (I will call its Willis when I’m dead) in the distance when I use the backroads

Sorry now it remind the issues with the black panther movies. Yeah it was made by race obsessed people but also it was written as a Black ™️ movie

A prime example is Killmonger backstory, yeah it was wrong for the wakandans to abandoned to the streets of Oakland….

But the problem is the vast majority of MCU consumers were white middle class people and even I had to explain some shit to a Indian mutual

Coogler forgot that media intentionally turns a blind eye to black on black crime now and how horrific black inner cities still are. So most people wouldn’t know how crime ridden Oakland was. Okay okay they would, but a lot of the intentionally markers wouldn’t

But they sure as hell remember how evil the cia iiiiis!

Tangent, but why are black creators acting like the shitty made, poorly run projects integral to our communities?

They forced upon to use when we had very limited access to jobs and such. The whole guns, crack, and welfare system was created by racist politicians to ensure we ran back to arms for votes.

Shiiit, now I’m think about, the projects should been seen as modern plantations. Made to keep us away from the others. And so many black kids who could have been doctors, lawyers, and more. All gun down in crossfires or force to join gangs in order to survive….

Oh sorry I for the back to back Actually tv was airing reruns of good times once so my mom put it on and I watch a couple of episodes. I mentally went OH NOOOOOOOO halfway through the trailer when realizing what it was sequel about

Ya, Jeffersons, Good Times, and 227 were all great shows that need to be left alone, Sanford and Son too, they're trading on the name without actually honoring the place it came from, it's a shame.

You're sort of right on Ghetto

How America's Ugly History of Segregation Changed the Meaning of the Word 'Ghetto'

Short short version is the black community adopted the term since it matched up well enough to their circumstances with forced segregation looks like as early as 1910

Oh sorry detour, but remember the OG candyman? I seen people ask why it focus on a white woman…holy fuuuuuuuck

Never saw it, but I will take your word for it on all that stuff

Sorry now it remind the issues with the black panther movies. Yeah it was made by race obsessed people but also it was written as a Black ™️ movie A prime example is Killmonger backstory, yeah it was wrong for the wakandans to abandoned to the streets of Oakland…. But the problem is the vast majority of MCU consumers were white middle class people and even I had to explain some shit to a Indian mutual

Didn't see that one either, but I did gather that it was not quite what it should have been, unfortunately there is only so much time in a movie so gotta leave it up to the viewers in places I guess, also I imagine there were plenty of people that didn't care anyhow they just wanted to see the people fighting and all the cool gadgets and such.

Coogler forgot that media intentionally turns a blind eye to black on black crime now and how horrific black inner cities still are. So most people wouldn’t know how crime ridden Oakland was. Okay okay they would, but a lot of the intentionally markers wouldn’t

You should look up the angry reviews about that one episode of Family Guy, lot of people upset at the 'family guy 'nobody cares about black on black crime' line at the end.

Tangent, but why are black creators acting like the shitty made, poorly run projects integral to our communities? They forced upon to use when we had very limited access to jobs and such. The whole guns, crack, and welfare system was created by racist politicians to ensure we ran back to arms for votes.

because people continue to consume it so there's not much motivation to change the formula, need to bring back George and Weezie, Jefferson's was a good show, Sinbad was a good show, hell even Martin wasn't half bad.

They'd hate The Jefferson's now because meritocracy is bad somehow, but how else are you supposed to move on up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky, at least most people have to work for it, especially if they started at the bottom.

Can't tell people that they have some responsibility for where they land in life now it would seem.

Shiiit, now I’m think about, the projects should been seen as modern plantations. Made to keep us away from the others. And so many black kids who could have been doctors, lawyers, and more. All gun down in crossfires or force to join gangs in order to survive….

See above about The Jefferson's and previous comments about 'crab in a bucket/work 3 times as hard'

You want a media conspiracy there you go.

[themaresnest-dumblr]

OK, have now watched that ‘Max’ episode of Stranger Things, Season Four, Episode Four, and it is by far the most overrated and ludicrous of the lot. It’s not bloody bogeymen from the upside down she should be having visions of, it’s jumped sharks.

First up, the premise this hardboiled ginger nut had some secret guilt about Billy’s death.

Oh please!

The p**ck physically as well as verbally abused her every chance he got for years, and we’re supposed to believe she’s all torn up inside because he did one decent thing in his whole oxygen stealing existence?

Real people in the real world don’t behave like that. The only regrets they usually feel is never applying a sledgehammer to their tormentor’s worthless skulls when they had the chance. Eleven’s behaviour towards her tormentors: realistic. Max’s behaviour: baloney.

Besides, Max is someone who treats the people she likes as disposable pick ups and drop downs like toys as it is (especially her supposed boyfriend), and openly admits to her councillor the death of Billy had the bonus of ridding her of her equally violent and abusive stepdad. Does that sound like someone that’s gonna have a moment’s regret over Billy’s fetid carcass going to the Oldest Recycling Centre?

It’s not that she is incapable of caring, but she’s an atypical survivor of a toxic environment, ergo her own needs override just about much else - and that kind of mindset takes years (and more than a few long dark nights of the soul) to change

Finally, the whole dumb arse notion of her being into Kate f**king Bush ... again, history matters.

Skater kids haven’t changed much since the days the slim boards were replaced by the giant sawn off ironing boards more familiar to the current generations. They like fast aggressive music for a reason - when doing a highly physical hobby with some physical risks, you want to listen to stuff that gets the adrenaline pumping, not f**king ‘Clair de lune’ by Debussy!

On the other hand, skater kids wouldn’t want to be into the same stuff as the macho meatheads into heavy metal or hard rock, so ‘old school’ punk like the Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, the Vandals, the Damned and others loved by the counterculture of the day was their bag - later morphing into the likes of Green Day, Offspring, Rancid, etc.

The reality is someone like Max would be more likely to find Kate Bush the antithesis of her sensibilities, a self-indulgent posh bird from England disappearing up her own lilywhite world arse. And the album ‘Hounds Of Love’ is just about the most offensive it would have been possible to get for a skater girl (had she even heard of it - both it and ‘Running Up That Hill’ only reached No.30 on the Billboard charts, and only gained any sort of traction around Ivy League university campuses. The nearest most Americans had to intellectualism in music at that time was Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ ...). It was slaughtered in the American press at the time as ‘something only English ears would like’, with Rolling Stone (at that time still considered the bible of the zeitgeist in the USA) being particularly scathing.

In 1984, after the major financial disaster for EMI caused by the flop of her ‘disappear up my own arse’ album The Dreaming (one result of which being its proposed merger with British Aerospace collapsed when Thorn EMI profits doozied), she’d been presented with much the same diktat CBS have given The Clash under similar circumstances three years earlier - ‘you’ve twelve months to present us with a commercially viable album plus a bonus track for a projected Greatest Hits album to make good on our losses - or your contract’s terminated.’

‘Hounds Of Love’ did the job in spades, even if ‘Cloudbursting’ (the latter with no less than Donald Sutherland in the video) wasn’t the monster global hit EMI was sure it would be, that long sought after next ‘Wuthering Heights’ which would always elude them until, ironically thirty six years too late later.

Bottom line: the idea of Max turning into some secretly sensitive Kate Bush fan is baloney covered in a thick WTF sauce, and a sign the shows writer’s were not merely out of ideas but by season four butt lazily lapsing into self-indulgence. The whole notion of some supernatural alien whatever supervillain killing people after feeding off their guilt is stolen wholesale off the famous Polymorph episode of Red Dwarf, for crying out loud. The whip crack sound of the tentacles that ensnare Max when in her own nightmare is the exact same sound used by the tentacles in the Apocrypha in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dragonborn!

(Come to that, much of that whole nightmare world looks suspiciously like bits of the Apocypha and the Soul Cairn ...)

The first two seasons of this show were great, the third one a curate’s egg, but this last one is starting to wear thin half way through the bingewatch, rather like one of those video games franchises like Far Cry which doesn’t know when it needs to take a break and breathe for a bit.

[fail-eacan]

My parents and their friends were discussing this idea a few months ago. It was supposed to happen at a parade, I believe. I remember my mom’s friend speaking enthusiastically about placing a Palestinian child in a manger surrounded by rubble and I remember being horrified by the fact that she clearly had no idea it was antisemitic.

I spoke to my mom afterward. She’s very anti-Israel- an academic, they both are. I said something like, “Don’t you think it’s antisemitic to use Christian iconography to imply that Israel, commonly thought of as a Jewish state, killed the christian God? Isn’t that one of the most classic examples of antisemitism like… ever?”

She just stared at me for a while and said something about Jews today claiming everything was antisemitic, even when it isn’t.

I went to an event held by Ithaca College’s Hillel last year. It was a Holocaust survivor, speaking about his experience, at the campus center. There was a security officer in full bulletproof gear with some sort of huge gun in his arms, watching the entrance.

My friend told me her Temple was taking volunteers to guard it during services because they were worried someone might come attack them.

I met a Palestinian, once. She wrote a song about violence and generational trauma. There was a choir concert where they performed it. Maybe in Watkins Glen? A few hours outside of town. It was beautiful.

I read about a Palestinian boy who when asked what he would do when he grew up said, “Children in Gaza do not grow up.”

I knew an Israeli. A girl, in my fourth grade class, named Gili. She could hardly speak English. My same friend from before became close with her. I didn’t really notice her throughout middle school- perhaps she went to Boynton, or LACS. But I saw her at IHS. She was just another one of my classmates, until she wasn’t. I didn’t notice that I hadn’t seen her in months until we were discussing war and involuntary military service in my English class. Someone said they knew someone who had been drafted into the Israeli army. I have never felt so close to the war as that moment. I hope she is safe.

I have known Jews all my life. At least while I was there, Jews were a fairly high percentage of the student population at Belle Sherman. My grandmother (a family friend, who became my grandmother when all of mine died in early childhood) is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. She has a wonderful sense of humour, and the most beautiful laugh. She has been a consistent part of my life, but is growing frailer. I can hardly bear to think about how it will be when she is gone.

My friends were mostly Jewish growing up. I knew so many Cohens as a kid I thought it was a very common name even outside the Jewish community. I didn’t realise Judaism wasn’t a huge religion (I conceptualised it as slightly smaller than Christianity) until I was in 9th grade Global History. My teacher showed us a pie chart of world religions. Judaism was hardly even there. We looked at “most common religion by country”. I was shocked that only Israel had Judaism.

I was at an afterschool program in which a few other kids and I made jewelry together out of metal wire, jeweler’s saws, brass sheets and resin. We often had political conversations. This was before Oct 7, years before, when I was in middle school. My instructor was Jewish. We were discussing Israel for whatever reason. She said she didn’t approve of how Israel treated Palestinians, but the idea that there was a place in the world that was majority Jewish was very important to her. “You never know what will happen” she said, “when you look through history we have never been safe, and we never will be. I do not approve of the modern politics of Israel, but it represents a kind of safety to me that I can never have anywhere else. I went there once, on a birthright trip, as a young woman. I remember the potency of being in the majority for the first time in my life.” I nodded, and we discussed it more. This woman, a girl, and myself. Later, the girl’s father was accused of antisemitic remarks. Later, my mother was accused of the same. The girl and I were friends. I heard she was bullied because of what her father was reported to have said.

When I was in elementary school, I was reading a book. One of those “Dear America” or “I Survived”, one of those children’s historical fiction series that I was so fond of. It was about a young girl escaping the Nazis. My mother scoffed at it and said, “they should write one of those about a Palestinian child, there’s already so many books about the Holocaust.” She was right, but she was also wrong. There should have been one about a Palestinian child. There wasn’t one. And also, there being one about a Holocaust refugee had nothing to do with that. She saw them as one or the other. Many people did, I came to find out.

When October 7th happened, posters went up around Ithaca. “KIDNAPPED” they proclaimed in large, bold lettering, “Taken by Hamas terrorists.” One of those posters had a “Free Palestine” sticker on it.

On my walk home from school every day I cross over a bridge. Someone spray-painted “LET GAZA LIVE” on the concrete. Someone else painted over that, “LET ISRAELIS LIVE” if I hadn’t known what it said before, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out the message. Either of them. It was hard to read- all the same colour, faded from rain and scrubbing.

My favourite message is over by the boulevard near Gimme! Coffee, the one that runs along one of the creeks downtown. I was walking home with my friend. We had grown somewhat apart lately. I was relived to walk with them. They stopped, at an innocuous house along the boulevard somewhere. I stopped, too. “We grieve for all Palestinians” my friend read, “We grieve for all Israelis” then underneath, “End the war in Gaza”. My friend nodded. “I like this poster,” said my friend. I agreed. We are all humans looking to live lives free from violence and terror. We are all cast into stereotypes judged on the actions of extremists who happen to share some identities with us. You are Israeli, people say. You want to murder Palestinian children, you want to steal people’s homes. You are Palestinian, people say. You want all Jews to die, you torture Jews and strap bombs to your hospitals.

I wonder what would happen if we in America could see places like Palestine and Israel the way we see our own twisted and beautiful country. Our leaders want us in constant conflict. They make money that way. Our leaders are extremists. They are elected over and over again, no matter how hard we as individuals try to fight against that current. Our fellow citizens are tricked by hateful rhetoric and vote and act against their own interests to feel a sense of belonging. We are Americans and we do not agree with our government’s actions. We are humans.

It is shameful how my community is acting. Ithaca is against collective punishment until they hear that there are some Jews, somewhere, who are hurting people. Ithaca is opposed to terrorism until there is an opportunity to throw stones at a place of worship.

People look for excuses to hurt Jews.

When I look around and see the numerous examples of Jewish lack of safety that surround me on every side, I’m reminded of that afterschool teacher. A safe place for Jews, as she said. A place Jews can defend themselves and be together. Somewhere to go when it gets ugly elsewhere. When Jews are under threat, once again.

She did not agree with Israel’s actions, and she also believed that Israel was necessary. And now when I look at Ithaca New York, my hometown, where I have lived my whole life, a place with more Jews than most others in this country, a place of education and learning, a liberal stronghold, after just a year of intensified American interest in Middle Eastern politics I have to agree with her.

I don’t know what I’m saying, really. Unconnected anecdotes that I’ve been meaning to share but I don’t have a thread to string them all together. I don’t know if they’re even relevant. I am a seventeen year old goy in Ithaca New York.

I'm feeling fucking sweary today. I just found out that some of our local pro-Hamas anti-Israel "Christians" have put up a Christmas "creche" with the baby Jesus wrapped in a kaffiyeh under a sign saying "stop the genocide."

Jesus was a Jew, not a Palestinian. It's quite possible to denounce Israel's destruction of Gaza without resorting to the ancient antisemitic charge that the Jews killed Jesus.

This is what was posted to Facebook today:

[fruitlicense]

It’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day today.

I visited Yad Vashem over winter break. It’s not the first Holocaust museum I’ve been to, and it won’t be the last. I was numb the whole way through, and I don’t even know why. I’ve been hearing about the horrors of the Shoah since childhood. I met a survivor in middle school after spending months learning and discussing my people’s experiences during that time with my peers - I still remember her story about a child’s pair of shoes. If a documentary on the Holocaust comes on TV, my mother will leave it on, as if we are the only ones watching the channel and the story will be forgotten if we don’t. We talk about it, sometimes, in that strange halfway point between history and memory. I don’t know the names of my family members who died, but I know they did - too few of us left Europe during the pogroms.

I’m in college now. My campus is in a liberal area, which I can’t say I dislike - I’m a queer woman of color, and not everywhere in this country is safe for me. But I’m also Jewish, and this campus doesn’t like that. This is a hyper-liberal area, and yesterday when I saw a news story about Israel I felt a moment of fear, because I wear a visible Magen David necklace. My rings are etched with Hebrew words. I debated wearing that necklace today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, because I wasn’t sure if today would finally be the day that campus isn’t safe for me. It’s Shabbat, though - I don’t want to feel like I have to hide my religious identity on my holidays. I’m wearing two Magen David necklaces today, and my Hebrew rings. We’ll see how the day goes. I’ve been safe so far, and hopefully that won’t change. I’m going to synagogue tonight - will tonight be the night that it’s my synagogue on the news?

Why do I live in a world where I have to worry about wearing a Jewish symbol on a liberal college campus? Why does my friend tally a new antisemitic incident that happened to her each week? Why are two of the synagogues that had major shootings in the past few years in communities I have family in? Why is antisemitism on the rise worldwide? Why doesn’t everyone else remember what happened to us? Why doesn’t everyone else notice what is happening to us?

There was nothing new in that museum because I have learned its contents from thousands of miles away as if I was walking its meandering path each week. The Shoah is layered into my bones and my soul and I couldn’t even cry at Yad Vashem because the mourning is so normal to me. But why does it feel like the only ones mourning with me are other Jews?

[puttingherinhistory]

“Covid has unleashed the most severe setback to women’s liberation in my lifetime. While watching this happen, I have started to think we are witnessing an outbreak of disaster patriarchy.

Naomi Klein was the first to identify “disaster capitalism”, when capitalists use a disaster to impose measures they couldn’t possibly get away with in normal times, generating more profit for themselves. Disaster patriarchy is a parallel and complementary process, where men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance, and rapidly erase hard-earned women’s rights. (The term “racialized disaster patriarchy” was used by Rachel E Luft in writing about an intersectional model for understanding disaster 10 years after Hurricane Katrina.) All over the world, patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus to reclaim power – on the one hand, escalating the danger and violence to women, and on the other, stepping in as their supposed controller and protector.

I have spent months interviewing activists and grassroots leaders around the world, from Kenya to France to India, to find out how this process is affecting them, and how they are fighting back. In very different contexts, five key factors come up again and again. In disaster patriarchy, women lose their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed on to the frontlines, unprotected, to be sacrificed. 

Part of me hesitates to use the word “patriarchy”, because some people feel confused by it, and others feel it’s archaic. I have tried to imagine a newer, more contemporary phrase for it, but I have watched how we keep changing language, updating and modernising our descriptions in an attempt to meet the horror of the moment. I think, for example, of all the names we have given to the act of women being beaten by their partner. First, it was battery, then domestic violence, then intimate partner violence, and most recently intimate terrorism. We are forever doing the painstaking work of refining and illuminating, rather than insisting the patriarchs work harder to deepen their understanding of a system that is eviscerating the planet. So, I’m sticking with the word. 

In this devastating time of Covid we have seen an explosion of violence towards women, whether they are cisgender or gender-diverse. Intimate terrorism in lockdown has turned the home into a kind of torture chamber for millions of women. We have seen the spread of revenge porn as lockdown has pushed the world online; such digital sexual abuse is now central to domestic violence as intimate partners threaten to share sexually explicit images without victims’ consent. 

The conditions of lockdown – confinement, economic insecurity, fear of illness, excess of alcohol – were a perfect storm for abuse. It is hard to determine what is more disturbing: the fact that in 2021 thousands of men still feel willing and entitled to control, torture and beat their wives, girlfriends and children, or that no government appears to have thought about this in their planning for lockdown. 

In Peru, hundreds of women and girls have gone missing since lockdown was imposed, and are feared dead. According to official figures reported by Al Jazeera, 606 girls and 309 women went missing between 16 March and 30 June last year. Worldwide, the closure of schools has increased the likelihood of various forms of violence. The US Rape Abuse and Incest National Network says its helpline for survivors of sexual assault has never been in such demand in its 26-year history, as children are locked in with abusers with no ability to alert their teachers or friends. In Italy, calls to the national anti-violence toll-free number increased by 73% between 1 March and 16 April 2020, according to the activist Luisa Rizzitelli. In Mexico, emergency call handlers received the highest number of calls in the country’s history, and the number of women who sought domestic violence shelters quadrupled. 

To add outrage to outrage, many governments reduced funding for these shelters at the exact moment they were most needed. This seems to be true throughout Europe. In the UK, providers told Human Rights Watch that the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated a lack of access to services for migrant and Black, Asian and minority ethnic women. The organisations working with these communities say that persistent inequality leads to additional difficulties in accessing services such as education, healthcare and disaster relief remotely. 

In the US, more than 5 million women’s jobs were lost between the start of the pandemic and November 2020. Because much of women’s work requires physical contact with the public – restaurants, stores, childcare, healthcare settings – theirs were some of the first to go. Those who were able to keep their jobs were often frontline workers whose positions have put them in great danger; some 77% of hospital workers and 74% percent of school staff are women. Even then, the lack of childcare options left many women unable to return to their jobs. Having children does not have this effect for men. The rate of unemployment for Black and Latina women was higher before the virus, and now it is even worse. 

The situation is more severe for women in other parts of the world. Shabnam Hashmi, a leading women’s activist from India, tells me that by April 2020 a staggering 39.5% of women there had lost their jobs. “Work from home is very taxing on women as their personal space has disappeared, and workload increased threefold,” Hashmi says. In Italy, existing inequalities have been amplified by the health emergency. Rizzitelli points out that women already face lower employment, poorer salaries and more precarious contracts, and are rarely employed in “safe” corporate roles; they have been the first to suffer the effects of the crisis. “Pre-existing economic, social, racial and gender inequalities have been accentuated, and all of this risks having longer-term consequences than the virus itself,” Rizzitelli says. 

When women are put under greater financial pressure, their rights rapidly erode. With the economic crisis created by Covid, sex- and labour-trafficking are again on the rise. Young women who struggle to pay their rent are being preyed on by landlords, in a process known as “sextortion”. 

I don’t think we can overstate the level of exhaustion, anxiety and fear that women are suffering from taking care of families, with no break or time for themselves. It’s a subtle form of madness. As women take care of the sick, the needy and the dying, who takes care of them? Colani Hlatjwako, an activist leader from the Kingdom of Eswatini, sums it up: “Social norms that put a heavy caregiving burden on women and girls remain likely to make their physical and mental health suffer.” These structures also impede access to education, damage livelihoods, and strip away sources of support.

Unesco estimates that upward of 11 million girls may not return to school once the Covid pandemic subsides. The Malala Fund estimates an even bigger number: 20 million. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, from UN Women, says her organisation has been fighting for girls’ education since the Beijing UN women’s summit in 1995. “Girls make up the majority of the schoolchildren who are not going back,” she says. “We had been making progress – not perfect, but we were keeping them at school for longer. And now, to have these girls just dropping out in one year, is quite devastating.” 

Of all these setbacks, this will be the most significant. When girls are educated, they know their rights, and what to demand. They have the possibility of getting jobs and taking care of their families. When they can’t access education, they become a financial strain to their families and are often forced into early marriages. 

This has particular implications for female genital mutilation (FGM). Often, fathers will accept not subjecting their daughters to this process because their daughters can become breadwinners through being educated. If there is no education, then the traditional practices resume, so that daughters can be sold for dowries. As Agnes Pareyio, chairwoman of the Kenyan Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Board, tells me: “Covid closed our schools and brought our girls back home. No one knew what was going on in the houses. We know that if you educate a girl, FGM will not happen. And now, sadly the reverse is true.” 

In the early months of the pandemic, I had a front-row seat to the situation of nurses in the US, most of whom are women. I worked with National Nurses United, the biggest and most radical nurses’ union, and interviewed many nurses working on the frontline. I watched as for months they worked gruelling 12-hour shifts filled with agonising choices and trauma, acting as midwives to death. On their short lunch breaks, they had to protest over their own lack of personal protective equipment, which put them in even greater danger. In the same way that no one thought what it would mean to lock women and children in houses with abusers, no one thought what it would be like to send nurses into an extremely contagious pandemic without proper PPE. In some US hospitals, nurses were wearing garbage bags instead of gowns, and reusing single-use masks many times. They were being forced to stay on the job even if they had fevers.

The treatment of nurses who were risking their lives to save ours was a shocking kind of violence and disrespect. But there are many other areas of work where women have been left unprotected, from the warehouse workers who are packing and shipping our goods, to women who work in poultry and meat plants who are crammed together in dangerous proximity and forced to stay on the job even when they are sick. One of the more stunning developments has been with “tipped” restaurant workers in the US, already allowed to be paid the shockingly low wage of $2.13 (£1.50) an hour, which has remained the same for the past 22 years. Not only has work declined, tips have also declined greatly for those women, and now a new degradation called “maskular harassment” has emerged, where male customers insist waitresses take off their masks so they can determine if and how much to tip them based on their looks. 

Women farm workers in the US have seen their protections diminished while no one was looking. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, tells me how pressures have increased on campesinas, or female farm workers: “There have been more incidents of pesticides poisonings, sexual abuse and heat stress issues, and there is less monitoring from governmental agencies or law enforcement due to Covid-19.” 

Covid has revealed the fact that we live with two incompatible ideas when it comes to women. The first is that women are essential to every aspect of life and our survival as a species. The second is that women can easily be violated, sacrificed and erased. This is the duality that patriarchy has slashed into the fabric of existence, and that Covid has laid bare. If we are to continue as a species, this contradiction needs to be healed and made whole. 

To be clear, the problem is not the lockdowns, but what the lockdowns, and the pandemic that required them, have made clear. Covid has revealed that patriarchy is alive and well; that it will reassert itself in times of crisis because it has never been truly deconstructed, and like an untreated virus it will return with a vengeance when the conditions are ripe. 

The truth is that unless the culture changes, unless patriarchy is dismantled, we will forever be spinning our wheels. Coming out of Covid, we need to be bold, daring, outrageous and to imagine a more radical way of existing on the Earth. We need to continue to build and spread activist movements. We need progressive grassroots women and women of colour in positions of power. We need a global initiative on the scale of a Marshall Plan or larger, to deconstruct and exorcise patriarchy – which is the root of so many other forms of oppression, from imperialism to racism, from transphobia to the denigration of the Earth. 

There would first be a public acknowledgment, and education, about the nature of patriarchy and an understanding that it is driving us to our end. There would be ongoing education, public forums and processes studying how patriarchy leads to various forms of oppression. Art would help expunge trauma, grief, aggression, sorrow and anger in the culture and help heal and make people whole. We would understand that a culture that has diabolical amnesia and refuses to address its past can only repeat its misfortunes and abuses. Community and religious centres would help members deal with trauma. We would study the high arts of listening and empathy. Reparations and apologies would be done in public forums and in private meetings. Learning the art of apology would be as important as prayer.

The feminist author Gerda Lerner wrote in 1986: “The system of patriarchy in a historic construct has a beginning and it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course. It no longer serves the needs of men and women, and its intractable linkage to militarism, hierarchy and racism has threatened the very existence of life on Earth.”

As powerful as patriarchy is, it’s just a story. As the post-pandemic era unfolds, can we imagine another system, one that is not based on hierarchy, violence, domination, colonialisation and occupation? Do we see the connection between the devaluing, harming and oppression of all women and the destruction of the Earth itself? What if we lived as if we were kin? What if we treated each person as sacred and essential to the unfolding story of humanity? 

What if rather than exploiting, dominating and hurting women and girls during a crisis, we designed a world that valued them, educated them, paid them, listened to them, cared for them and centred them?“

[elsewhereuniversity]

Why You Should Wear Boots after Picking a Major You Didn’t Want

A university is a place where dreams are thrown away.

Such is the case far too often. It remains Real even between the railroad, highway and train tracks. Even there, people interrogate themselves: ‘This is your dream, but is it realistic? How much is the starting salary? Look at your classmates, elegantly breezing over what you clawed through, tooth and nail. Look at your competitors––’

So many choose to drown their dreams themselves… even though, at Elsewhere University, the dead do not rest quietly. The Wild Hunt is proof of that. Yes, that Wild Hunt, which rides across campus when the fog rolls in. We all know the versions in which they hunt for students unlucky (or unbelieving) enough to be outside when the hounds begin baying. Stay inside, stay quiet, and you’ll be all the better for it, if they ignore you.

What about the other versions, though? What about the versions in which it is best to open your windows and howl back? There are tales like that, too––

Sometimes, those brave enough to shout along with the Wild Hunt will be rewarded with a share of prey or gold. Those kind enough to repair a lost hunter’s sled soon discover this to be the right choice, for upon closer inspection, the hounds are not just hounds. Their bones are laden heavy with wrath.

And sometimes, villagers tell tales of a cloaked rider on a white horse. Horseshoes spark against the night breeze. He will ask you to play an impossible game of tug-of-war. If you are wise, you will tie the other end of the rope to a sturdy oak. The leader of the Hunt likes clever little things. He might even drop a reward in your boot.

Perhaps this is why you see students wearing boots for a while after they declare their majors. Even Magenta (who got her name from always wearing high-heeled loafers of that particular shade) and Ma-Boi-Blanche (who has 17 pairs of white sneakers) wore boots back then. Rumor has it, according to a friend of a roommate of a Forbidden Major, that this footwear will help you abandon your misery.

When the Wild Hunt rides as a group, they come to condemn. The RAs are not wrong in telling you to run for safety when the fog descends.

On the other hand, when the leader of the Hunt appears alone, he comes to test. In this more benign (but not safe, never safe) form, 4% meet a bedraggled man, 2% a king of old, 3% a specimen of demon (the Christian subspecies), 6% a harlequin, and 5% a sledder with a thick Mecklenburg accent.

84% of those who have survived the encounter say that the leader of the Hunt wears a cloak and a wide hat that partially hides his eyes (one of which is duller than the other). He gallops in on a splendid white horse.

95% of those who survived the encounter were wearing boots (one of them was wearing spatterdashes over court shoes, but eh, close enough).

100% of the survivors say that you must be ready to be tested. Be kind, clever, daring. If you are all that––and wary, wise, lucky too––the leader of the Hunt will let you go and stuff something in your boot. A post-it, on which is written the major that they chose, yet hated with every fibre of their being.

Now, put the boot back on and walk. It may be a bit awkward to walk around, what with the paper writhing under your feet, but do so anyway. Every student who has tried it reports that when they got back to their dorms, the paper had vanished from beneath their soles. In its place, they had gained a floating sensation, grafted in their bones.

By the end of the year, Ma-Boi-Blanche and Professor Redd were chattering away like old friends. The Professor had to admit that his student wasn’t very good at dissections, but there was an unmistakable passion for anatomy in his eyes, and he would improve soon. (Very soon, especially with Professor Redd’s talent of acquiring practice bodies, his jaunty hat growing redder with every new specimen.)

On the other side of campus, the law majors learned to listen for the click-clack of high-heeled loafers. Woe betide the unlucky people who faced off against Magenta, who suddenly threw herself into mock trials with gusto. Her opponents gained a Pavlovian fear response to seeing any shade of pink.

This did not go ignored. The Involved went up to the two, in order to warn them.

“The Gentry do not offer things for free,” they said. “And intelligence isn’t cheap. What in Morganwode did you pay?”

To which the ones who met the Huntsman merely laughed, because they weren’t any smarter. The only difference was that now, they were interested in the subjects they found so odious before.

In the old tales, a satisfied rider of the Wild Hunt will reward a human with meat. The person will walk back home in the dark, one shoe on and one shoe off, the boot growing heavier with every step. Once home, they will see that the raw, bloody meat has transformed into gold.

There are a few who still receive this, not always in the payment of gold, but in blessings. (Childe House’s oldest RA is one of them, which explains why the once-every-305-days evacuation has a 100% success rate, even when half a dozen residents don’t understand what a “mandatory house meeting” or a “fire drill” is.)

  Which begs the question: why does the leader of the Hunt help so many?

Rewards are meant to be given to the exceptional few. Yet the unhappy are not part of these few. Given the number of students with newfound rapture in their eyes, one does not need to be exceptionally kind, clever, or daring to transfer their passions. Just wary, wise, and lucky are enough.

When asked, the leader of the Wild Hunt proclaimed that such a spell is child’s play. We’ve already provided the ingredients: two subjects and a passion. The price is low because all he needs to do is to sever the interest from one subject, then attach it to another. Simple work, he said. He would never think of charging so much for something he could do before breakfast. It is not befitting a warrior. Think of it as a favour from a father to his children, he said, then laughs as if there is a joke here that no one else understands.

There are more people who understand than he might think, for the more competent members of the Forbidden Major have another theory. Anyone with passing knowledge of folklore would be able to recognize this person at a glance, they say (quietly, and never to the Huntsman’s face). He is the amalgamation of ghost, fae and old god.

The first rider of the Wild Hunt might be, depending on the amount of fertilizer on the campus lawn and the moon phase, the oldest warrior poet. There are less battlefields for him to watch over now, but still he is song and madness. Still, he is overcome with fury when he sees yet another soldier buckle before the fight has begun.

This child would have made a fine skald. That child could have become a brilliant shield-maiden. This one had the makings of a king, yet they chose to push these futures away, he said through clenched teeth. These children began to think there was nothing left. They started to look at the pond and that single eighth-floor window which could open all the way.

This is not a battlefield, but… to give up before the horn sounds, under his watch?

Unforgivable, he said, with an unblinking smile, all teeth and lone glittering eye. To despair is to slander my hundred names.

So the leader of the Hunt casts a few spells here, a little trickery there, and coaxes the bright frenzy back in their eyes, or so the Forbidden Majors whisper. The price is only low because of who and why he is. He helps them so they can die more valiantly, another day.

  Think of it as a favour from a father to his children, he says, then laughs as if there is a joke here that no one else understands. This is despite the fact that half the Forbidden Majors and a fifth of the Literature Majors know who he is.

(Not that they would reveal that, ever. The all-father’s wrath is a terrible thing.)

  Addendum:

Statistics unavailable for those who encountered the Wild Hunt’s leader alone, while not wearing boots. Mythological references, as well as the Sword-House valet’s intuition, imply it is better not to know.

[Author’s Note]

I did not intend “Why You Should Wear Boots after Picking a Major You Didn’t Want” to be so long. Do pardon me.

There is much debate over the identity of the Wild Hunt’s leader. My personal favourite theory is that the leader is Odin, or some variant of him, which this submission is based on. Still, I couldn’t resist hinting at the others:

“Bedraggled man” = multiple stories, in which the Hunt’s leader is any hunter who preferred hunting to going to church, or else slandered a certain god

“King of old” = Arawn

“Harlequin” = in Vitalis’ Ecclesiastical History Vol. 2 (1140), Hellequin/Herlequin is the herald of a Wild- Hunt-esque procession of tortured souls. There is also King Herla.

“Sledder with a thick Mecklenburg accent” = Frau Gauden

-Louis

[brotrustmeicanwrite]

Ooooo I like this one. I’ll use my OC Moon for this.

(Quick summary bc my TikTok and Tublr audience have zero overlap: she’s one of 22 creator gods who ended up in a big fight with 10 of them dead. All of the survivor’s bodies, including hers, are decaying corresponding to how much damage they’ve done to the world and their domain. Whether they wanted to do the damage or not. And she kinda technically a tiny little bit a lot helped enslave a bunch of people and made them into monster soldiers so the other gods wouldn’t kill her. Totally not the majority of the population noooo.)

If you had a YouTube channel, what videos would you make?

Doll making. Or… well, prosthetics…technically. But I think they can count as dolls when they’re for the entire body. I don’t think anyone would want to watch it though. Everyone always says my dolls are creepy.

Have you ever dyed your hair or got a radical haircut?

………

What exactly do you mean by radical? I’ve had to cut all of my limbs off… since they decayed, you know…. That’s radical. Can a haircut even be radical…?

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?

… to be honest… I’ve never read any. And I regret that immensely. Books are something humans used to make in order to record their history, their culture and their memories. I often thought about reading some but then never did. I always thought I can still do that tomorrow.

….

But we destroyed everything.

And now there’s nothing left.

If I could back in time… if I could go back I would read every book in the world, no matter how good or bad. Everything thas ever been written.

Aaaaallrighty and now to brighten the mood back up a picture of her :D

And now your questions:

What’s your favourite video game?

What’s that one embarrassing memory that you remember whenever you’re trying to fall asleep?

If you had to hold a 30 minute presentation on the spot without prep time, what topic would you choose?

Tagging @stellar-man-ia @caxycreations @velvethopewrites @sleepywriter00 @revenantlore @vi-timepiece @aziz-reads @infinnative @lexiklecksi

I’m gonna hop on the open tag from @illarian-rambling for the OC question taggg

Honestly it jump scares me sometimes to remember that I don’t actually post much for my ocs, my brain kinda assumes that everyone lives inside my head and knows all about my babies. I might have to actually start talking about them…

In other words, I’ll be using Cassie from the (place holder name) fic TVDeeznuts

My questions

What’s your shower routine?

Do you like makeup?

Is there any scent you associate a memory with?

What’s your shower routine?

Given the number of vampires with super hearing who regularly break into my house, I tend to shower pretty fast and with at least three signs on the door refusing entry while I’m showering. While Elijah and Finn are perfect gentlemen and will usually leave as soon as they realise I’m not ready for company, Kol and Rebekah have no sense of boundaries, and Nik insists he’s seen it all before and that there’s nothing I have that would surprise him. Other than that… shampoo and conditioner I guess?

Do you like makeup?

I love wearing makeup when I can, but given that at least something is trying to kill me at least once a week I don’t have much time to practise. Rebekah picked up most modern day makeup techniques pretty fast, so I let her do my makeup for any big events.

Is there a scent you associate a memory with?

A memory? As weird as it sounds, burnt toast is the best memory I associate with a smell - Jenna, my aunt, always managed to burn it in the mornings when we were all in a rush… she’s dead now, but whenever someone burns something I think of her…

Your questions:

If you had a YouTube Channel, what videos would you make?

Have you ever dyed your hair, or got a radical haircut?

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?

Tagging: @brotrustmeicanwrite @cssnder @caxycreations @hyperfixation-tangentopia @lexywrite @rkmoon for this, and an open tag!

[imreallyhereforkataang]

You ever think about how rare Air x Water relationships probably were, even before the war? Like, I haven't read the Kyoshi Novels yet, so idk if they ever mentioned an Air x Water pairing, but I'm not surprised to hear about an Air x Earth pairing. Cause ofc the Air Nomads would be traveling around, going to visit different locations big and small (not sure if that's how Kyoshi's parents met specifically, but regardless), and I'd imagine the Nomads' voyages would be pretty reserved to the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. Those are the "mainlands" of the Avatar universe.

Meanwhile, unless for some specific reason, I wouldn't really expect that the Air Nomads headed over to the Water Tribes too often. Because of geography and climate and maybe even the amount of supplies they'd have to bring along, since it seems the majority of Water Tribe food is caught. I also think of Aang’s initial reactions to Bato’s setup in Bato of the Water Tribe. 

Likewise, I'm not sure how often people from the Water Tribes would've left their homes to travel other parts of the world. The Water Tribes are known to have a deep sense of community that strengthens their ties to the land and the people living there. The NWT seems like it stayed completely out of the war unless to hold off invasions. Idk, they just appear to be usually isolated communities when they can help it. And for those who did leave their homes, as I’m certain some did, I'm not sure how likely it would’ve been for them to cross paths and fall in love with an Air Nomad.

Part of me suspects that Aang hadn't even been to a Water Tribe before he froze himself. I know his near-immediate line "Will you go penguin sledding with me?" suggests that he’d done it before, like how he might've ridden the elephant koi of Kyoshi Island before, but consider how Aang didn't question the fact that he recognized no one from the Southern Water Tribe. He didn't appear to wonder why the heck the village of the same location from where it'd been 100 years ago had become so small since the last time he was there. And maybe it's just me, but asking "Do you guys live around here?" the way he did sort of gives off that he himself was unfamiliar personally with communities in the South Pole. Like, I think he'd figure they came from the once-large village, if he visited there before, even if he didn’t recognize them. So I'm skeptical Aang traveled to the SWT despite not living too far from it.

Also, I wouldn't call this evidence, more like support, but Aang didn't know how to catch penguins, either. The apparently common tactic was to have a spare piece of fish on you, and I don't imagine Air Nomads would have caught fish for penguin sledding. Maybe they would've accepted fish like how Aang did from Katara, or used some other method, but Aang asked if Katara would "teach" him how, which sounds like he really didn't have any prior knowledge from watching other people do it.

So, after all, maybe Aang had only ever heard of penguin sledding. Maybe going with Katara was his first time. Again, since he didn't live too far from the SWT, I'm sure somebody would've mentioned the penguins to him. Or maybe the above paragraph is null and there's an explanation I don't know about, but my point is that it's very possible he never met someone from the Southern Water Tribe in the era before the iceberg.

And then it’s pretty clearly shown that Aang had never been to the NWT. The NWT probably doesn't look exactly how it did 100 years ago, but given how long-standing and traditional it was, older than the SWT, it wouldn't look so unrecognizably different, and Aang seemed pretty in awe when he went there with Katara and Sokka. Also the fact that, before he knew 100 years passed, Aang said to Katara, "There's another Water Tribe up there, right? Maybe they have waterbenders who can teach you." Obviously that sounds speculative.

Aang mentions in The King of Omashu and The Blue Spirit how he used to "always" visit his friends Bumi and Kuzon, from the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. But he never mentions a friend from the Water Tribes or what the Tribes looked like in the previous era. Thus, if Aang had gone to the Tribes, it was few to no times, and it seems the Air Nomads didn't make trips there like how they did to the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.

That's all to say, Air x Water probably wasn't a common relationship. And it's kind of cute to me to think how Aang very likely had the first set of grey eyes Katara ever saw, and, with the aforementioned in mind, it's possible that Katara had the first set of blue eyes Aang ever saw. But what’s much greater is how this realization about Air x Water’s rareness makes their coming together all the more significant, the joining of these two cultures through Aang and Katara, survivors of genocide, that much more powerful. Because even though they probably wouldn't have met under normal circumstances, fate had something different in mind for them.

The Water and Air cultures and how they went about day-to-day life appear drastically different. Water Tribes mostly hunted, Air Nomads grew and gathered. Water Tribes stayed mostly to themselves, Air Nomads traveled the world. Water Tribes are like one large, heavily-connected family. Air Nomads sought detachment and free spirit. But even when they have such contrasting traditions and approaches to life, their values have more in common with each other than at first glance. They're both loving, spiritual cultures, embodied in beautiful, fluid, life-giving elements that probably didn’t bend together often, but when they do, they work in synchrony, in equal amount to make something more. 

It gets to me so much how the cultures Aang and Katara come from turn out to be so valuable and fulfilling to each other. Both of them have an anomalous inclination to the other person’s culture. In Aang's case, through Katara especially, the Water Tribes are like his second home. He lost everything he’s known, and the Water Tribe just seems like such a perfect community to welcome him with open arms, deem him a member of their resilient family, and encourage his connections with the people he’ll be protecting as the Avatar. For Katara, the Air Nomads lived a lost way of life, representing a peace within the world and themselves, that she’d been hoping and fighting for from a young age. Through Aang, that perspective and lifestyle is breathed back into this era, and he shares it with her firsthand. Really, it’s like there’s a bit of Water inside Aang, and a bit of Air inside Katara.  

They lived such different lives at such different times, but they both came from the South, which would allow for Aang to keep close over the next century. Despite living those different worlds, they were nearer than they realized. Their cultures involve such different customs, but resonant essences. They’re more complementary than they appear, like Aang and Katara, and they keep balance that way, accepting each other wholly, not discouraging either one’s beliefs or history but instead learning and growing from those. 

Air x Water feels so special to me, so representative of Aang and Katara and them joining forces to change the world, to confront their pain, to find their personal triumphs despite the tragedies unleashed on their cultures that few others can relate to. And after the war, they’d rebuild those cultures. Make new memories, start new legacies. Have a family together. Their relationship is SO important and meaningful. They found each other out of their harsh pasts, an Air and a Water meant to connect when their ancestors often did not, meant to help each other when they’d lost so much, and created something totally new, unique, and beautiful.  

[tastydregs]

New AI tools let you chat with your dead relatives

Creepy or cool? New products that let people keep relatives "alive" via AI are proliferating — offering, say, an interactive conversation with a recently departed dad who took the time to record a video interview before he passed.

Why it matters: As interest in genealogy and ancestry proliferates, these tools let families preserve memories and personal connections through generations — even giving children a sense of the physical presence of a relative who died before they were born.

The tools are also being used to record the memories of noteworthy people: celebrities, Holocaust survivors, etc.

One such tool, StoryFile, was notably used at the late actor Ed Asner's memorial service, where mourners were invited to "converse" with the deceased at an interactive display that featured video and audio he recorded over several days before he died.

"Nothing could prepare me for what I was going to witness when I saw it," Matt Asner, the actor's son, told Axios.

The "Lou Grant" actor had used StoryFile to record an oral history; the product then employs AI to enable "conversations" based on subjects' answers to myriad questions.

At Asner's memorial, "many people just stopped by and asked a question or a couple questions," including Jason Alexander of "Seinfeld" fame, said Matt Asner, a TV and movie producer who now runs the Ed Asner Family Center, a nonprofit for people with special needs.

"Actually, you can't just ask one question," he observed. "That's the great thing about it, is it draws you in — because the personality is there."

Ed Asner, a former head of the Screen Actors Guild, had "covered everything — his childhood, work history, political history, family life," his son said.

While a few mourners were "a little creeped out by it," the conversational video was "like having him in the room," Matt Asner said. "The great majority of people were just blown away by it."

The actor Ed Asner appears on screen at his memorial service. Photo courtesy of StoryFile

The big picture: StoryFile is perhaps the most robust of a growing number of tools that help people create interactive digital memories of relatives. Many of them don't require the relative to be alive during setup.

Amazon recently showed off an experimental Alexa feature that can read books aloud in the voice of a late relative, extrapolating from a snippet of that person's recorded voice.

MyHeritage, the ancestry-tracing site, now offers "Deep Nostalgia," a tool for animating old-timey photographs of your relatives.

HereAfter AI lets you record stories about yourself and pair them with photographs — so family members can ask you about your life and experiences.

Microsoft has obtained a patent to create "chatbots" that mimic individual people (dead or alive) based on their social media posts and text messages, per the Washington Post.

How it works: With StoryFile, a user sits for a video interview and answers a series of questions.

The company produces an archive that can be watched sequentially or used in a Q&A format.

When a question is asked, the AI technology retrieves relevant video content to create an answer, picking out clips from the available footage.

The company was co-founded by oral historian Stephen Smith, who used to run Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation and specializes in preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors.

"In its most optimal state, the idea of StoryFile is you should be able to speak to anyone, anytime, anywhere that you wouldn’t normally have access to," Smith tells Axios.

"Maybe you don’t have access to grandma because she’s passed away, but you can still learn her story, feel a sense of connection to her."

StoryFile is also building an archive of public figures who have sat for interviews. (Try asking a question of very-much-alive William Shatner.)

Between the lines: These types of programs are already growing familiar through deepfakes, science fiction, and rock concerts that use holograms to bring back dead performers like Buddy Holly.

In the Netflix series "Black Mirror," a woman converses with a chatbot version of her late fiancé — and a grieving Canadian man did something similar with his dead girlfriend in real life, the San Fransisco Chronicle reports.

Other examples: Carrie Fisher being brought back to life as Princess Leia; chef Anthony Bourdain's AI voice being used to narrate a posthumous documentary about himself.

What they're saying: "When we learn about some very sophisticated use of AI to copy a real person, such as in the documentary about Anthony Bourdain, we tend to extrapolate from that situation that AI is much better than it really is," said Amit Roy-Chowdhury, who chairs the robotics department at the University of California, Riverside.

"They were only able to do that with Bourdain because there are so many recordings of him in a variety of situations."

"In the future, we will probably be able to design AI that responds in a human-like way to new situations, but we don’t know how long this will take."

The bottom line: These kinds of memory-preservation programs "might change the way we collect history," as Smith put it.

"We all have amazing stories to tell, and one of the big discoveries I’ve had in founding this company is how few of us truly understand the importance of our own story," he said. "We’re quite self-deprecating."

[stranger-rants]

The problem with media literacy nowadays is that you see the phrase “insert character was complex” and you have a fit because you can’t comprehend characters doing both morally and ethically reprehensible things and also having depth. An abused character who isn’t nice or “good” is still a complex character if we’re shown nuance within their narrative - something that is completely missed by you, because why would you compare Billy as a survivor to survivors of abuse who didn’t experience the exact same thing as he did? Especially if you’re expecting the same outcome? Even when a writer creates an intentionally racist character, especially if they’re a major antagonist, they will add complexity to the character because people can have depth no matter what they look or act like. The metric for complexity isn’t based on your personal interest in them. If you don’t like consuming media with characters like that in them, then I might suggest you go watch Teletubbies instead.

Ironically, the racist plot line in Stranger Things is the least complex and thought out element that was added to Billy’s character simply because they didn’t think about or care about the implications of his actions nor the setting in which they placed their black characters into. For example, outside of that single incident which was created solely for the purpose of the show runners paying lip service to the struggles of “interracial relationships,” it is never overtly addressed ever again - other than for Max to say that Billy has become acutely violent because of the move, not ever addressing why Lucas was targeted in any meaningful way. That carelessness doesn’t suddenly negate all the other elements of his story that flesh out Billy’s character such as the circumstances of his abandonment, his lack of support systems in comparison to aforementioned characters, the conflict within step families including Susan’s lack of intervention on his or her daughter’s behalf when it came to Neil’s abuse.

You don’t have to like him to understand that his story as an abused child is complex and therefore resonates with other people who’ve been abused in similar ways with similar lack of intervention and resources. Hell. There’s many characters I vehemently hate who I can still admit have a very complex story to tell. Racism and other ills don’t spawn from nothing, so I can appreciate when a narrative explores that in an honest way even if - especially if - the antagonistic characters within those stories are complex. Billy’s racism is the least complex thing about him, though, because as I’ve said it’s unresolved and random. We don’t know why he randomly “cares” about Max possibly dating Lucas when all characterization otherwise points to the fact that he doesn’t care about Max. Thus, we’re stuck speculating as to why that’s even included in the story beyond The Duffer Brothers wanting to address racism once. I’d love to see that explored in detail, but it simply isn’t. What is explored in detail whether you like it or not is just how complicated his history as a survivor is.

“Billy Hargrove was ‘complex”

-being a racist asshole that abuses his little sister and Happens to have daddy issues does not make you complex it makes you a racist asshole.

You know what does make you complex? Having depth beyond ‘oooooh hot bad boy upset by father lashes out.’

You know who else got abused by their father? Jonathan Byers. WILL Byers. Max Fucking Hargrove.

You know what none of the characters did? Became a racist asshole.

I don’t care how dark your backstory is, if it’s not Interesting and worth my time it’s not complex.

[hopelesshawks]

History of Us Part 18- A Nightmarish Memory

Summary: Once upon a time Todoroki and (y/n) were best friends. Now they haven’t spoken in years. When (y/n) is forced to transfer to UA, will she and Shoto reconnect or will their troubled past keep them apart? A childhood friends to enemies to lovers hybrid fic.

If you don’t want to see History of Us content blacklist #hopelesshou

Warning for mention of non-major character deaths

Masterlist Kofi

By the time you leave Shoto’s room to go back to yours, you’re pretty exhausted from the day’s events. The movie night distraction had certainly helped but you still keep thinking back over Rei and Endeavor’s conversation as you change into your pajamas and climb into bed. You know you’d never betray Shoto. Having him back in your life has been one of the best parts of transferring to UA. Your mind wanders back to earlier when you’d caught him staring at you. You’d brushed it off as disbelief that the two of you had finally hashed things out but even still you must admit butterflies had filled your stomach when you’d caught his gaze. You shake your head as if doing so will physically dispel the image and force yourself to close your eyes. Eventually you drift off to sleep.

Instead of dreaming you find yourself in a nightmarish memory. You’re eight years old again at your kitchen table eating breakfast when your father comes in already in his hero costume. “You’re coming with me today,” he announces in a tone that brooks no argument. “She’s a child, there’s no reason for her to go to work with you,” your mother protests. Your father levels a murderous glare at her but before he can berate her you pipe up “It’s ok, I wanna go.” Your mother gives you a sad and skeptical look but you insist “I mean it! I’m a big girl I’ll be ok!” “See? She says she can handle it,” your father tells your mother before turning back to you to command “let’s go.” You desperately want not to but little you hops out of your seat and follows after your father.

The contrast between your father at home and your father at work is extreme. At work he’s the charismatic Black Storm, the counterbalance to Endeavor’s grumpy and standoffish image. “Aww this your little girl?” one of the sidekicks asks, kneeling down to your level. “Yep! My pride and joy. Isn’t she the cutest?” your father gushes with an amount of care in his voice he’s never had for you at home. “What’s your quirk sweetheart?” the sidekick asks you. “I can heal stuff with this hand! And, uh, use dad’s quirk with this one,” you explain. “Dang a perfect hybrid? That’s rare,” the sidekick whistles. “Nuh-uh, my best friend is just like me,” you counter proudly, which only makes the sidekick chuckle. “And who’s your best friend?” “Sho-chan!” you beam. The sidekick sends an amused glance to your father as he explains “She means Endeavor’s kid, Shoto.” “Like father, like daughter, huh?” the sidekick laughs, ruffling your hair good-naturedly before rising. “Well meeting should be starting soon, Endeavor just got back from patrol. I’ll meet you in there!” the sidekick says before waving goodbye and going off to the conference room. Your father kneels down next to you before grasping hold of both of your arms. From afar it may seem like the gentle touch of a loving father, but his grip is tight, a silent threat. “No matter what happens in there you are not to look away. I want you to watch every minute of it. Got it,” he instructs. You nod obediently although his tone scares you. “Good. Let’s go,” he declares before grasping your hand and all but dragging you to a conference room.

Your father seats you at the head of the conference table while he sits to your right, a fact his coworkers find adorable. The meeting begins as soon as Endeavor arrives, closing the door behind him. It’s supposed to be a boring old briefing. Endeavor summarizes his patrol before handing it off to your father who begins by showing footage of a neighboring city on a large screen at the front of the room. You barely pay attention until you hear gasps of shock. You look over to see fires raging as explosions go off throughout the city. The look of glee on your father’s face is a stark contrast to the looks of horror and fear on the others in the room. “What’s the meaning of this?” Endeavor asks, rising suddenly. Your father doesn’t respond, instead he turns to his friend, eyes completely black with an unsettling grin on his face as multiple villains storm the room. As violence breaks out, your father lunging for Endeavor, you quickly scramble to hide under the table. You’ll be in so much trouble for disobeying your father’s orders to watch but you don’t care as you scrunch your eyes closed and cover your ears against the screaming and shouting.

You jerk up in bed, chest heaving. “It was just a dream. It was just a dream,” you tell yourself like a mantra to try and calm your racing heart. It’s been a long time since you’ve had a nightmare about the day of your father’s arrest. Endeavor and your father had been the only other survivors of that meeting aside from you. No one had even found you until medical teams came in to recover the bodies of the fallen sidekicks. Your father was carted off to Tartarus along with the other villains who’d assisted him, leaving you and your mother to deal with the fallout alone. The next day, while your mom was at work, you left the house in spite of her warnings, desperately seeking out the comfort of your one and only friend. You’d already been on the verge of tears when you arrived at the Todoroki household and began pounding on the door. Endeavor loomed tall above you, his gaze filled with disgust and rage. “C...can I see Sho-chan?” you had asked timidly. “No, he doesn’t want to see you,” Endeavor told you. “Why not?” you asked. “He’s afraid of you. He doesn’t want to be friends with a villain,” he replied before slamming the door in your face.

It was all downhill from there.

You had spiraled further and further down until your mother had been forced to move you away. The memory alone is enough to make you want to cry. You pull your knees to your chest and bury your face in them as you try and fail to banish the painful memories from your mind. Your heart aches for that younger version of you whose heart hadn’t yet hardened and learned how to protect itself. After a while of sitting there in misery, not daring to fall back asleep, you remember you’re not alone anymore.

You don’t move from your position on the bed until you hear a soft knock at your door. When you open it Shoto is stood on the other side looking sleep mussed in his pajamas, hair slightly wild. It’s a cute look on him, one you may have appreciated under different circumstances. “I’m so-“ “Don’t. I’m happy to be here for you,” Shoto cuts you off quietly but forcefully as he slips into your room and shuts the door behind him. Without another word he climbs into your bed and then looks at you expectantly. “Are you going to join me or are you just going to stand there the rest of the night?” he asks. You feel your eyes water as an almost overwhelming feeling of relief and gratitude crashes over you. You immediately join him in bed, curling up against him as he holds you tightly.

Black tendrils of smoke curl off the right side of your body as you let yourself cry into his shoulder. For the first time since you were a child you allow yourself to fall apart, knowing that Shoto is there to hold the pieces together until you can assemble them back yourself. You grieve for the last of your innocence that your father ripped away from you that day. You cry for the lonely child whose mother had to work all day and whose only friend was kept away. You allow yourself to well and truly release all the pain you’ve held onto for so, so long until your sobs finally dissipate to sniffles and eventually to silence. “Do you want to talk about it?” Shoto asks quietly. “Yea... Yea I think I do,” you admit before confessing exactly what had happened all those years ago.

Shoto listens, face impassive even as his own emotions wreak havoc in response to your story. Guilt for not being there when you so desperately needed him. Rage at his father for being the reason the two of you were separated for so long. Disgust with your father for dragging you into his massacre. Frustration that, despite being his first victim, you’ve been treated like you were your dad’s accomplice. Shoto has never wanted to fight both his father and yours more, but he knows that’s not what you need right now. You don’t need him to go fight the Big Bad. Frankly, you’d probably be offended by the notion you need defending. So instead he just holds you through it until you’ve shared all that needs to be said. “Thank you,” you finally mutter as you reach the end of your story. “I’m always here for you. I always will be. No one and nothing is going to separate us again,” Shoto asserts determinedly. “Promise?” you ask. “Promise,” he swears.

A/N: (y/n) never uses the 🥺 emoji because she thinks it’s too soft, but for Shoto she’ll make an exception ❤️

Taglist: @sorrythatspussynal @miss-bakugo-writes @pixelwisp @larkspyrr @sokkaandzukosimp @akkaso @sunaispretty @mindofess @todoplusultra @oliviasslut @lapysllazuly @immah0e4fictionalmen

[jewish-privilege]

It’s my first year of university. I’m sitting in my first lecture for the semester, watching my professor sell a career in Journalism with a slideshow. Suddenly, piles of dead Jews flash onto the screen. I see my own eyes reflected in theirs. My family’s faces replace their indistinguishable ones, which have molded into one unanimous cry of pain. I suddenly find myself in my grandma’s living room, sitting on her cream carpet, which is discolored and damp from decades of tears. She was crying again. She was crying for her family. She was crying for the six million dead. My cheeks are stained with her tears — they’re the only thing I have left of her.

We need trigger warnings for the Holocaust.

I’d understand a lack of trigger warning if my professor had never used them before — and if my course specifically dealt with the Holocaust. However, I major in journalism, and in the same lecture, my professor had used trigger warnings for war and suicide. It seemed that my professor, like many in the non-Jewish world, was apathetic to the suffering of Jews. She didn’t understand why I would need a trigger warning for a genocide that I didn’t experience and that happened over seventy years ago. She was unaware of the effects of intergenerational trauma. She was unaware that the Holocaust, for some of us, is never-ending.

So I told her.

I told my professor how the memory of my grandma’s tears are seared into my brain and how I drown in them every night. How her frail frame wracked with a hurricane of sobs at any and every mention of the Shoah. I told her the pain my grandma experienced shedding her Jewish surname in 1940 — just as her family had changed their name when escaping anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe a generation before.

I told her about my father, whose drawers are bursting full of old birthday cards, newspapers, and bills, each of which, he treats with the carefulness one does with water in a drought. How for him, throwing away a possession is a betrayal to those who came to Britain before him with nothing but their Judaism. I told her about the boxes of Judaica from family long gone which he still can’t bear to look at. How he flinches at being called a Jew, and how he leaves the room when the Holocaust is mentioned.

I told my professor about my room. How it has nothing but a mattress on the floor and a clothes rack because I don’t know when I’ll have to run — because I’ve run before. I told her about my dreams. How, after reading the Diary of Anne Frank in sixth grade, I was trapped with her in the annex every night for weeks.

I told her how an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor became a grandmother figure to me after I escaped child abuse. Every Friday evening, as I walked her home from synagogue, she told me the horrors of her childhood — and every Friday night I would join her horrors in my dreams. I told my professor that I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. But I can remember that Treblinka was burning 12,000 bodies at a time, with only 50 survivors out of 897,000. A kill rate of 99.9%.

I told her about how I was assaulted last year on my walk home and how I laid motionless. Just as my ancestors had laid motionless. A generational relationship with the dirt beneath our feet. I told her that I was beaten for the same thing my grandfather was beaten for, and the same thing his grandfather was beaten for, and the same thing his grandfather was beaten for — the crime of being a Jew. After that assault, I knew any post-Holocaust ‘glow’ was over, and I had to run.

One consequence of universalizing the Holocaust over the past seventy years is that the non-Jewish world has become desensitized towards the greatest disaster in modern Jewish history. As the living memory of the Holocaust fades and as the post-Holocaust guilt age comes to a close, apathy towards the Holocaust increases. Anti-Semitism becomes normalized.

My lecturer used a trigger warning the next time she spoke about the Holocaust. Others should, too.

[itsclydebitches]

Hi Clyde! I know this might be a bit late to the conversation but I just wanted to ask if you think M&K are writing Yang through a male lens? Not in the sense she's hyper-sexualised, but in the sense she lashes out at her allies without consequences (Fiona), has little empathy for female survivors of abuse (Salem and Blake) and gives her loved ones the cold shoulder when she doesn't agree with them rather than trying to reach an understanding (Blake and Ren).

Hi there, anon! No one is ever late to the conversation around here, not when I'm forever answering months-old asks lol

On the whole I would say no, simply because - as many others have pointed out in regards to other posts - this behavior is by no means seen solely in Yang. Ruby is out there lashing out in Volume 6, Jaune was giving Ren the same cold shoulder, no one else has expressed any empathy for the abuse survivors lately (though Yang might actually have a point in her favor there, given her talk with Weiss in Volume 5, when she learns about her mom's drinking). My point being, pretty much everyone is written with this classic masculine lens right now, where being angry, violent, and dismissive are framed as the correct way to approach problems, whether we're talking about Weiss shoving her weapon in Whitley's face, or Nora coolly brushing aside Ren's concerns. The exceptions being, to my mind, Ren - who learned this season that considering a kinder, more strategic approach is wrong - and Oscar who is embodying the archetype of the innocent child so fully that it allows him to forgive/grant absolution outside of the bounds of the story's internal logic and gendered expectations. Him reaching out to Hazel, Emerald, and even Ozpin is less a commentary on gender and more an extreme upholding of his status as the youngest and, comparatively, most innocent (which, as said previously, bumps up against Ruby's same, former status). Think Harry Potter, destroying evil with the love in his skin as an 11yo by merely touching Quirrel's face, not an older teenager hurling a dark curse at Malfoy while overflowing with rage. Oscar is still very much in that initial stage of being the young, baby-faced character who is not yet jaded and is thus able to overcome evil purely by wishing it so. Yet everyone else, including Yang, gets by on lies, secrets, violence, and anger - no matter how much the story wants to dress it up as heroics. So Yang is by no means alone in that.

What does interest me regarding Yang characterization right now is not, strictly speaking, about Yang. Rather, it’s about the presumed relationship with Blake and how changes to Blake’s character have reflected back on Yang. I won’t go into a full, eight season analysis of it here, but suffice to say, Blake’s personality has taken a sharp dive lately, most notably in the most recent volume. She used to be an opinionated, outspoken woman, the kind of person who marched up to Weiss in the middle of the street to denounce her family’s slavery, fighting for her people with as much intensity in a conversation as she gave on the battlefield. This is the woman who stormed off in anger at Weiss’ racism, demanded a solemn oath from Yang if she was going to believe her about the Mercury fight, rallied an army to defend Haven, set her own house on fire to defend her parents... I could go on. Blake used to only be quiet when it came to settling down with a good book. Now she’s far more meek and submissive. She’s been reduced to blushing prettily at Yang’s praise, begging Ruby to save her, going along with Yang’s plans for betrayal because she’s scared about killing again, clasping Ruby’s hands to assure her that she’ll save them all, etc. I use the term “reduced” intentionally because, on their own, there’s nothing wrong with any of these traits. If anything, Blake should be a more well-rounded character for being able to collapse crying over Adam, or go tongue-tied at a compliment. The problem lies in replacing her original personality with this new one: softer, less confrontational, less skilled, no longer as determined, no longer as angry, keeping to the background to play at comic relief or the damsel in distress. I bring all this up because - within the comparatively slim queer rep we’ve gotten in media - there’s a long history of writing them so that one is clearly the “man” in the relationship and the other is clearly the “woman.” This extends from visual markers like dividing them between assumed masculine and feminine clothing preferences - who wears dresses and who can pass for a boy in a baseball hat and sweats? - to caching in on equally assumed personality traits - who is the calm and compassionate individual; who has the temper and is constantly itching for a fight? To use two examples, think of couples like Sapphire and Ruby, or Kurt and Blaine. One is a cool blue in flowy dresses, always working to be sensible, while the other is an angry red in a sensible shirt and pants, easily pissed off. One is practicing a version of Beyoncé's “Single Ladies” in a sequined leotard, framed as the lady, whereas the other sings “Teenage Dream” in a suit at the piano, a song meant to appeal to the teenage girls watching, no matter the character’s sexuality. I’m simplifying a LOT here, including the context for the times (Glee) and the ways in which this divide is sometimes flipped (Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding), but my point is that whether authors realize it or not, they often force their queer characters into the gender binary, even while they’re supposedly meant to be challenging those norms. Blake and Yang, to get to a long-winded point, are becoming a part of that trend, wherein the closer they get to becoming a canonical couple, the more classically feminized Blake becomes. That, in turn, positions Yang as the “man” of the relationship. Already embodying some of those assumptions with her tough personality and brawl fight style, Blake’s regression into someone in need of rescue, someone less likely to speak up, someone who is visually positioned as less confident and in need of emotional care (think of her drooped ears and inability to make eye contact in “Ultimatum)” only increases that reading, especially given arcs like Yang’s insistence that she doesn’t need anyone protecting her, morphing into her becoming Blake’s protector instead. Yes, the dialogue states that they protect each other, but we all know RWBY struggles to show what the characters claim. Scenes like Yang arriving on a badass motorcycle to fight the majority of the battle against Adam, ending with her cradling a sobbing Blake who promises to never leave her side, or confidently taking Blake’s cheek in hand to comfort her after their not-fight, a moment of confidence and (unneeded) forgiveness... this all speaks volumes of something RWBY doesn’t think is there. So I don’t believe it’s intentional and, as said, there are a lot of complexities to take into account here, but I nevertheless don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve lost so much of Blake’s original personality right around the time the show got more serious about their relationship. As a presumed queer couple, there’s an instinctual desire to figure out which is the “guy” and which is the “girl” in the relationship, with Yang being positioned as the former the more Blake changes to fit the latter. 

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Why Dany’s Motivation for Abolishing Slavery is Not “Condescending Compassion”

Anon: Someone I know irl keeps who’s a Dany anti keeps saying that they don’t like Dany because she has “condescending compassion” for the slaves she freed. I really want to argue back because I know they’re wrong, but I can’t articulate why. Could you give me an example of what condescending compassion really is, and explain why that’s not what Dany is showing?

Whew, it’s been a while since I got an ask about Dany, but I’m always open to defend her. This one was long and interesting for me, so I put it in post form rather than just answering the ask. I hope you don’t mind, anon. 

Dany’s attitude towards the freedmen and the slaves she wants to free in the future is far from “condescending compassion.”

“Condescending Compassion is when a person feels magnanimous enough not to hold someone's 'faults' against them openly. They can't help being a commoner, idiot, mutant or simply wrong so it would be rude to treat them badly because of it. Instead, they resort to the much better idea that they should be sympathetic or even friendly to that lesser being, but of course, they won't really take them seriously.”

Source

This is not what Dany does. Here’s an actual example of condescending compassion. Under the cut for length and Fate/Grand Order spoilers, even though I really don’t think any of my followers know about or play it except for my constant spamming. Also, I will warn you that I ended up talking more about Fate/Grand Order than Dany because I was trying to explain the example, so... sorry about that. Also I got carried away

Someone who really exhibits a serious case of condescending compassion would be Goetia, the main antagonist of Fate/Grand Order Arc 1: Observer on Timeless Temple. Goetia is one of the seven Evils of Humanity, the Sin of Pity, which is, in essence, the embodiment of condescending compassion. To explain: 

Goetia was essentially the collective consciousness of the 72 Demon God Pillars, who were familiars of King Solomon, the founder of magecraft. Solomon made a spell to manifest said collective consciousness as Goetia, so the Demon God Pillars could continue to protect humanity after his death.

As Solomon’s familiar, Goetia shared Solomon’s ability of Clairvoyance, which, in Solomon’s case, enabled him to see all of the past and all of the future. Over time, Goetia became enraged that Solomon refused to do anything about the constant death and suffering of humanity despite being an extremely powerful mage who could see all the hardships that had occurred and were in store (thanks to his Clairvoyance). Thus, after Solomon’s death, Goetia possessed Solomon’s corpse, obtaining the majority of his powers as well as nine of the ten rings given to Solomon by God, which was the source of a good bit of Solomon’s abilities. The tenth ring, however, was sent into the future by Solomon on God’s command, so Goetia wasn’t able to obtain it. That’s an important plot point for later.

Goetia waited until modern day (2018 I think?) and then used measures he had put in place to wipe out all of humanity. Not just the humans living in the present, but all of the humans who had lived in the past were killed, too. So think of it as everyone who exists, ever existed, or will exist, dead. The only survivors were the protagonists of Fate/Grand Order. 

After incinerating humanity, Goetia planned to convert all of the destroyed mankind into magical energy, which he would then use to travel back in time to the planet’s creation. He wanted to start Earth all over again and establish a new humanity. However, this new humanity would be different from the old humanity; they would be unchanging, deathless organisms with no biological or emotional flaws, much like Goetia himself. 

The thing is, Goetia loved humanity in his own way and wanted what he thought was best for them. It essentially goes like this: Humans know so little, while his knowledge, through his Clairvoyance, borders on omniscience. Humans turn on and hurt each other for their own self-interest, while he is capable of thinking and acting on a much wider scale. Humans have to die eventually, unlike him who’s immortal, and so everything that every single human ever did, in Goetia’s mind, was for nothing. Why would it have meaning, if their only possible option is to die eventually? 

Poor things, right? He has to help them. They came out wrong. They’re so weak and hopeless, so he’s going to destroy their existence and their history and create them anew, the right way. (Aka his way.)

The way he loves humanity is belittling. No one wants help from someone who thinks of them like that. This quote is a pretty good summation of his love for humanity, borne of a legitimate case of condescending compassion.

“Do you think being forced to watch the lives of humans is an interesting task, one worthy of me!? I’m sick of it! No matter what happens, they just disappear, and only fear remains! Every human’s life is a story of hate and despair! It’s a terrible thing to watch!”

He invalidates all of humanity’s struggles, every single human’s life, because he’s not human himself. It’s not true that death means that everything that one ever does is pointless, but Goetia, being an immortal being unfamiliar with the concept of death, someone who doesn’t have to worry about an end ever coming to him, doesn’t understand that (for now). This is displayed in the multiple times he asks the protagonist and Mash, the deuteragonist, why. Why do they keep fighting, knowing that they can’t beat him? Even if they somehow could – why do they keep fighting, knowing that they’ll all die one day? Why do they keep fighting, when it’s so pointless?

But then, the basis of Goetia’s immortality is destroyed when Solomon reappears, having actually been one of the protagonist’s main allies disguised as a doctor. Remember that tenth ring that Solomon sent to the future under God’s instruction? Although Goetia has the majority of Solomon’s powers now that he possesses his corpse and the remaining nine rings, the tenth ring was something he never obtained. As it turns out, the real Solomon retrieved that ring, which was used as a catalyst to summon him, when he manifested in the modern era. 

Solomon now uses the power of the gathered ten rings to perform his trump card – The Time of Parting Hath Come, I Am He Who Surrenders the World: Ars Nova – to return all of the powers God gave him back to God. In essence, he ��closes the curtain” on himself, everything he has ever done, and everything he’s ever created, including Goetia. Ars Nova removes Solomon entirely from existence (rip), but it also removes Goetia’s immortality, and then the protagonist manages to land a fatal blow on him.

A little before Solomon uses Ars Nova and vanishes, he explains to Goetia why he didn’t try to change humanity the way Goetia did, despite seeing all of the past and future and consequently being exposed over and over again to how inevitable humans’ deaths were. 

“That’s what you fail to understand, Goetia. Of course nothing is eternal, and pain awaits us all in the end. But that doesn’t make life a story of despair. Not at all. It’s a fight against death and separation in what precious little time one is given. It’s a repetition of meeting and parting, despite knowing there’s an end. ...Humans’ stories are dazzling, brief journeys, like the twinkling of the stars. They are stories of love and hope.”

At first, when he was still immortal, Goetia refused this logic, saying that it’s “deception” on Solomon’s part. Now, though, with Solomon having used Ars Nova and the protagonist having landed a fatal blow, Goetia is dying. For the first time, he’s confronted with the possibility of an end to his existence. He has no way, absolutely no means, to prevent his death now. Yet, when the protagonist attempts to escape the now-crumbling dimension in which Goetia made his temple, Goetia says this. (And I cut out a lot, because this is a long-ass monologue.)

“We finally understand each other. I’m not going to let you leave alive. You will die here with me. ...My dream is in ruins. Everything I did here in this temple, all the time I spent planning... All of it, for naught. [...] No matter what I do here, now, I cannot redeem my failure. Killing you will change nothing. ...This is a meaningless battle. This would have been an unthinkable choice for me before. But...

...Yes, indeed. I also have my pride. Or rather, I do now. I now understand human mentality. Now that I have a limited, mortal life, I finally understand. [...] My name is Goetia. I am the one who used humanity to destroy humanity. The one who strove for what lay beyond. A climax with no one around. ...I strove for an empty wish that none truly wanted. I am born now and I shall perish now. This battle may be without resolution or reward, but I shall put my entire being on the line to crush you. ...My sworn enemy. My hatred. My destiny. I want you to witness this. This brief moment is now my story. This brief but precious time has given the creature called Goetia true life.”

This quote is so poignant. Although Goetia attempts to pull a “taking you with me” on the protagonist, this is a rare example of the trope that is not meant to paint the villain in a final negative light, as a petty sore loser. Rather, it’s an indication that Goetia finally understands Solomon’s view on humanity, why humans strive so hard despite their lives being so short, and why the protagonist and Mash put their everything into fighting him despite knowing that they’ll inevitably die no matter what the outcome is. Humans’ time on earth is, in Goetia’s own words, “brief but precious.” He actually echoes what Solomon said about humans’ stories being “dazzling, brief journeys”, despite having so vehemently rejected it when he was immortal.

There’s no point in Goetia killing the protagonist. Just like he once believed human life to be meaningless, it should be meaningless whether he wins or not; he’ll die no matter what, and his plans are already foiled. When he was immortal, he never would have thought like this.

But Goetia isn’t immortal now. He has a finite lifespan; in fact, he’s about to die. There’s nothing he can do to save himself. Yet, he still wants to take the protagonist down with him, simply because he “has his pride.” And what’s more? Even if he loses, he wants the protagonist to witness his end. He asks to be seen, acknowledged, and remembered, despite all his work having been for nothing.

Both of those desires are human things. Goetia now knows what it’s like to be human. His case of condescending compassion is closed; he no longer looks down on humanity, because he understands them. He empathizes with them. He experiences being human. 

But Dany? She never once looked down on the slaves she wanted to free. She doesn’t think, “Oh, poor things. They can’t possibly help themselves, not with how frail and simple they are. They’re so vulnerable, so delicate, so abused. Let me save them.” No. 

Dany always understood what it feels like to be owned. She was abused by her brother for years, with no means to protect herself from him. Then she was sold to a man more than twice her age and made into a glorified sex slave, again with no way to defend herself. She’s already experienced something very much like what the slaves she strives to free have gone through. And even though she later gains agency and power, she never forgets what being owned, being unable to fight back, is like. 

As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, until it was all she could do not to scream. She was afraid of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and monstrous, as if they were beasts in human skins and not true men at all. She was afraid of her brother, of what he might do if she failed him. Most of all, she was afraid of what would happen tonight under the stars, when her brother gave her up to the hulking giant who sat drinking beside her with a face as still and cruel as a bronze mask.

A Game of Thrones – Daenerys II

"There speaks one who has been neither." Dany's nostrils flared. "Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I ... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?"

A Storm of Swords – Daenerys II

Safe. The word made Dany's eyes fill up with tears. "I want to keep you safe." Missandei was only a child. With her, she felt as if she could be a child too. "No one ever kept me safe when I was little. Well, Ser Willem did, but then he died, and Viserys … I want to protect you but … it is so hard. To be strong. I don't always know what I should do. I must know, though. I am all they have. I am the queen … the … the …"

A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys II

More than anything else, Daenerys always understood that her brother sold her as a bargaining chip – his own sister, and he uses her like some animal hide to trade off. She understood that she could do nothing to defend herself when she was with Viserys, and later, with Drogo. If they wanted to hurt her, no one would have stood up for her, no one would have protected her, and if she tried to protect herself, she would have been punished. She was in the same position as an object; no rights and no guarantees of basic decency. Dany experienced that fear and dehumanization firsthand. She empathizes with the slaves she wants to free in the way that Goetia, only at the end of his life, empathized with humans.

That’s why she wants to abolish slavery. She went through that horror firsthand, and she doesn’t want anyone else to have to go through it again. She wants to protect people from it, because she knows how awful and disgusting and traumatic it is. 

TLDR: It’s a complete and gross mischaracterization to write off Dany’s motivations for abolishing slavery as “condescending compassion”. It’s spitting on everything that she suffered from Viserys and from Drogo. It’s empathy, not condescending compassion, that motivates her.