#and of course south america

[youcouldstartacult]

the demand for niall rn is crazy!

it’s the comments under his post about adding more dates all asking him to add more dates to other cities for me

[thecurioustale]

The "Middle West"

I was recently watching Trump speak (not something I typically do 🤢), and the most interesting thing he said had nothing to do with anything he was actually talking about: It was that he used the term Middle West to refer to that generally north-central part of the United States, centered on the Mississippi River, that is neither the South nor the Northeast (nor the Mid-Atlantic, but that's really just a subcategory of the Northeast that Northeasterns use to not get lumped in with each other).

We all know it today as the Midwest. But in times past it was much more commonly known as the Middle West.

(Tangent: It is also one of many geographical region-name reminders of our national East Coast beginnings, as America has like six different kinds of "West": the Midwest, the Southwest, the (Pacific) Northwest, the Mountain West / Interior West, the West Coast / Pacific West—and that's not counting the deprecated terms (such as "Far West," i.e. distinguished from the Midwest) or the old Northwest (which would've referred to places like Ohio and (what we know as) West Virginia)!)

Over the course of the 20th century, "Midwest" became an increasingly common form of the term, eventually overtaking "Middle West" in popularity and, by our lifetimes, completely replacing it. The only people who still use "Middle West" today are very old. I'm only aware of the term's existence because I'm a fan of midcentury media and if you go watch (for example) old Dragnet episodes from the 1950s you'll hear the term used.

I was looking at the Google Ngram Viewer to get a sense of the relative usage frequencies of these terms, and I noticed something interesting: Not only has "Middle West" been driven almost extinct from active usage, but "Midwest" itself has also declined precipitously in the 21st century. People today are not calling the Midwest the "Midwest," at least not with the frequency and relevancy they once did. I was curious if this was another permutation of the usage, so I also looked up "Midwestern" (which I included in the link above), thinking that maybe people nowadays are calling it the clunkier "the Midwestern states" / "the Midwestern US," but the adjectival has declined in step with "Midwest." It really does seem to be that people are just using this geographical category less often.

Perhaps unsurprisingly: the sociopolitical cohesiveness of the Midwest has significantly diminished over time. I think most Midwesterners would still recognize and affiliate with the term if you applied it of them to their faces, but increasingly I think many of them do not think of it in their daily lives as a personal or cultural identifier. Which has many fascinating implications that I'm not going to get into.

(Another Tangent: I feel like I've talked about specifically this "Middle West / Midwest" thing on Tumblr before, but I feel that way about half of everything because after all I've been writing down my thoughts for over 20 years and I've been having thoughts for considerably longer than that, and it's often not clear to me what I've talked about publicly and where.)

Anyway, this entire post is really just me scratching the itch of verbal brain noise about the orange guy using a term in a public address that I never hear people use in the present day. A little piece of lost language, hearkening back to a completely different era and world.

[alexanderpearce]

it’s only since properly deciding when i’m going to leave that i’ve started feeling intensely how remote this island is. i love it desperately here but i drive down the highway and through town and i look at the sandstone buildings and i think tasmania is at the bottom of the world. i’m so far away from so much. i’m on an island down south of a big southern country and i’m surrounded by water so so so far away from every other continent and i’m at the bottom of the world.

[kitratre]

n, nyo sk x america nyo sk x america please, im thirsty and i have 53 children to feed

Children you say? should take them to disneyworld like Alfred does.

Often.

[boyruggeroii]

I Need to go to Scotland

[go-to-the-mirror]

a south african could never be a streamer. because of loadshedding.

[petr1kov]

I just wanna thank you for your post on the Mandela Effect as a South African! I get the whole effect people are trying to describe but calling it specifically that out of all the weird collective-memory incidents is weird af because that wasn’t even a global thing like the berenstain bears seems to be (I get that ‘cause my childhood memories are berenstein too) + it wasn’t even a phenomena in the region concerned + the people who coinedthat term didn’t seem to have actual exposure/connection/proximity to the events surrounding it.

No one who was actually in or near South Africa remembers him dying because the whole movement to free him was such a big deal it was truly inescapable. You’d have to live under several rocks of wilful ignorance to not know about it. There were a few Black freedom fighters, peers of his, that did die in jail or under police custody, notably Steve Biko, that were publicised during that same time period. I honestly do wonder often if American/European people just heard news of some notable Black anti-apartheid activist in Africa dying in jail and assumed it was him because they’d mashed all those guys together in their minds? Was it a news report about events in a far away country with bad information?

it’s could very well be because of their status as Black activists that got arrested; people in the western world often talk about Mandela as a MLK-esque figure who single-handedly ended apartheid and its flattens the whole history into a narrative about a messianic figure - the sheer determination of a special individual - when in reality he worked with a collective with many Black people and ANC members who did the same acts of resistance and even went to the same prison as him. He actively did try to push back against this narrow, individualistic idea of his role in history when he was alive. Many of these freedom fighters and political figures often get written out of history when the story is told internationally because of this, and their contributions to the movements (along with possibly one of their deaths) may have been subconsciously misattributed to Mandela.

So being from here, everyone I’ve talked to thinks it’s the weirdest thing it’s called the Mandela effect because it seems more like people living far off not taking in the news properly more than a true mass misremembering or… case of collective inter-dimensional travelling.

yes, exactly! this is what truly bothers me about the mandela effect being called that. regardless of whether or not people use it to mean the silly parallel dimensions theory or simply to refer to the mass misremembering of something (as most people tend to do today), which i do find kind of fun and interesting on it's own, still keeping it named after mandela is just incredibly tone-deaf.

no matter which version you look, every definition of this term is based around the fact that those supposed changes in people's memory vs reality are always small, mundane and inconsequential enough as to go unnoticed by someone not paying attention, and like. mandela dying during the apartheid in the 80s is the absolute OPPOSITE of an inconsequential or unimportant event that nobody would pay attention to for years. it's the sort of thing that would bring massive consequences to the history of an entire country, which in turn would also affect the world at large in different ways, most obviously when it comes to black liberation movements.

seeing this term get used to refer to actual silly and inconsequential things such as the berenstain bears misspelling or pikachu's tail not having a black tip is just crazy to me. it's hard not to see it as a dismissal of mandela, as if he is some sort of fictional character from a fictional country, whose impact in real life is on-par with monopoly's mascot not wearing a monocle. and i just know that nobody would so easily accept such a ridiculous conspiracy/concept getting thrown around like this if it were about an US or european president 🤷‍♀️

[davidtennantpussytulpa]

this website is not beating the piss poor reading comprehension allegations

[gunthermunch]

Argentina fans on twitter are being racist to Saudis calling them slaves, calling Brazilians monkeys, disrespecting Mexicans, etc. like... misinformation? your country has always been known for being racist and proud of it 🥴

oh yeah im not letting this one pass. guess what? there are horrid bigots everywhere (check the USA) and sadly argentina is no exception yet you can't grab an entire country and call them racist, would you like us to do the same to you? want to talk about operation paperclip? plan condor?

[chaoticsoft]

i hope my thirties are filled with traveling all over the world. i've felt increasingly frustrated/restless with the isolation of being in the states, especially over the last year. and having my sister-in-law (who lives in seoul with her korean husband) staying here just cements that feeling for me even more, just knowing in my heart that the world is vast and there are so many, many places i haven't seen yet. there is so much still to see, to taste, to touch, to love. they've been here like 4 days and have already introduced me to so!!! much new music and little sprinklings of korean :') it's been so regenerative to me but also it's given me such focus, like okay, i remember who i am now. i've always been a person with a passion for collecting languages, someone with an international heart, someone who loves and wants to see more of the world.

[exsqueezememacaroni]

Little Mike anecdote for you, no clip exists AFAIK: Peeping Tom concert in Milan - a city where there are two fiercely rival soccer teams: AC Milan and Inter FC - the audience is kinda quiet, just chillin'...

Mike is giving 100% on stage, but getting little back - he stops the show to scream at the audience "Qual è il problema? Qual è il problema? Siete interisti?"

["What's your problem? What's your problem? Are you all supporters of Inter FC?"]

Mike then turns to explain to his own band, in English, what he just said - sadly the audience doesn't react even to this very tongue-in-cheek provocation: "Che pubblico di merda!" ["What a shitty audience!"]

I guess you had to be there, IDK, but it was absolutely insane - 100% Mike Patton Original.

Milan's too cool to fall for that Mike trick 😂

Omg, but I love that he was just straight up like...what a shitty audience. For real a 100% Mike moment - thank you so much for sharing!

I was hoping that maybe the Patton Bootlegs person might have come through...but sadly no...doesn't look like it...bummer.

[ausetkmt]

(NEW YORK)— PEN America responded today to the removal of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ acclaimed memoir Between the World and Me from an advanced placement course in South Carolina, calling it “an outrageous act of government censorship.”

As reported, earlier this spring students in the Chapin High School classroom reported a teacher for including Coates’ memoir and two related short videos in her argument essay unit. The unit, designed in preparation for the AP Language test, which is accepted for credit by many colleges, included questions such as: “Do you think racism is a pervasive problem in America? Why or why not?”

Several students wrote to the school board about the class, saying it made them feel “ashamed to be Caucasian” and “in shock that she would do something illegal like that…I am pretty sure a teacher talking about systemic racism is illegal in South Carolina.” South Carolina passed an educational gag order last year that banned “divisive concepts” related to race and sex.

In response, Jeremy C. Young, freedom to learn program director, released the following statement:

“This is an outrageous act of government censorship and a textbook example of how educational gag orders corrupt free inquiry in the classroom. In a course designed to be taught at the college level, students complained that a teacher assigning a National Book Award-winning volume about race was “illegal in South Carolina.” Instead of defending the teacher’s right to teach this material, the school board sided with the students and censored the curriculum.

As with the AP African American Studies course in Florida – which also involved the politically-motivated removal of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writings – government attempts to limit discourse and expression in high school classrooms have spilled over into early college programs. Educational gag orders in South Carolina and elsewhere are doing exactly what they are designed to do: censor teachers who dare to discuss race and gender in class. Anyone who believes these laws are harmless, or are designed to prevent indoctrination, should look no further than the Lexington-Richland School District to realize what these laws truly are: a license to silence students’ education.”

PEN America has been at the forefront of documenting and defending against the unprecedented rise of school book bans nationwide as well as the spread of educational censorship legislation to nearly half of all states. Collectively, these bills attempt to put certain ideas and concepts out of bounds in K-12 classrooms, and even in college classrooms. Texas, Florida, and Missouri lead with the most books banned. Depriving students of literary works flies in the face of basic constitutional freedoms, and PEN America is suing Escambia County, Florida, over its book bans.

Black and LGBTQ+ authors and books about race, racism, and LGBTQ identities have been disproportionately affected in the book bans documented by PEN America in the last year and a half. The wave of book banning is worse than anything seen in decades, with PEN America counting more than 4,000 book bans since the fall of 2021.

About PEN America

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. To learn more visit PEN.org

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, STrimel@PEN.org, 201-247-5057

[ladysophiebeckett]

they’re gonna give him a slap on the wrist and thats it. theyre gonna get away with it like they always do. 

[donuts4evry1]

Portuguese person from portugal hello 🥺 I loved your portuguese little meme doodles omg

Its always fascinating to me when ppl seem interested in our language, even if its the brazilian Portuguese

// Ok but in all seriousness, I'm glad you enjoyed them :)!

It's been a real blast learning about Brazil and Portuguese (though now that I think about it... I think I just broke my streak in duolingo lol), and @nautilus-that-eats-hyacinths has definitely made things so much more fun :)

[naylor]

i had never seen fans recriminate an artist for giving priority to their home and primary market the same way swifties do

[fleetsofsnow]

I always feel strange seeing things like this because East Asia includes the country with the current largest population in the world, South Asia has the countries with the 2nd, 5th, and 8th largest population in the world, Southeast Asia has the country with the 4th largest population in the world. I'm not doing the math but I'm pretty sure combining Asia-Pacific like that would render the population of Asia Pacific larger than multiple different "regions".