#annoying everybody

[morlock-holmes]

@onecornerface linked me to this paper, which I mostly agree quite a lot with, and lays out some thoughts that I've been having lately in a much more coherent, far less fundamentally angry form than I have. Particularly the fact that the American racial culture wars are primarily waged between rival groups of middle-to-upper-class whites and that the distinction between de jure and de facto segregation is actually important and worth focusing on.

I'm trying to think how to put certain thoughts in order, but over the last few years I have been increasingly fixated on the fact that de jure segregation and affirmative action have both been resolutely defeated in the law here in the US.

The defeat of segregation has been the quicker and more complete; I cannot bring to mind any attempt to revive Jim Crow or repeal the Civil Rights act.

Affirmative action, in contrast, has not been completely excised from the US but it seems to be well on the way out.

My followers will know that I like to piss people off by asking for a legislative or court victory for Affirmative Action that happened in the last half century. I think the closest I've gotten was a California ballot measure that didn't pass and maybe, like, one Supreme Court decision that was kind of a mixed bag rather than being entirely restrictive from the early 70s.

Both these situations strike me as incredibly weird, and people hate when I say that, because they sense a kind of dismissiveness lurking behind the assertion that these total legal defeats are weird.

Which frustrates me because it makes them incapable of even admitting that anything happened.

I cannot name any other important culture war issues like this. Roe V. Wade dates to very close to the Civil Rights Act, and American conservatives never once stopped working at overturning it through the courts and legislatures, and, as we know, they finally succeeded.

The same kind of continual push for legislation and court victories can be observed for every other culture war battle I can think of. If I asked you to name one legislative or court victory for anti-gay activists in the last fifty years you could probably name several off the top of your head, e.g. Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. If I asked you to name similar victories for pro-gay activists you'd cite Lawrence V. Texas and the Respect For Marriage Act.

Gay rights battles have been fought in the courts and legislature and continue to be fought up to the present day, just like battles over Abortion, drug use, gun rights, etc.

But the same is not true of Segregation or Affirmative Action. For example, current Supreme Court precedent bans the use of official racial quotas in college admissions. Affirmative Action advocates could pass trigger laws requiring such quotas, which would go into effect as soon as they could get friendly court judges to overturn current precedent. The same is true of white supremacists who want to bring back the bad old days.

But they don't.

When I point this out people get very angry and say, "Just because something isn't done by the courts or legislature doesn't mean people don't still do it. Here's an example of some private citizen doing something really egregious! Everybody knows that you don't get results by going to the courts or the legislature anymore! Please ignore all the states that are now banning abortion!"

I disagree. If something is a huge, controversial culture war flashpoint, but only one side has won any legal victories in a half century, that's actually so anomalous that I genuinely cannot come up with a third example after Segregation and Affirmative Action.

I think this is related to a conviction that destroying segregation and affirmative action are held (By different political groups) to be the key to achieving racial harmony.

It may look like segregation was defeated so thoroughly that nobody could possibly advocate for it seriously anymore, but that hasn't led to an end of racial strife. Since racial strife is caused by segregation, if it's still around that means segregation and race hatred must have somehow gone underground. Those feelings must be as strong as they were in the 60s, but now they're hiding and we have to do more and more psychological work to figure out where they're hiding.

And an essentially exactly analogous process happens for affirmative action.

Essentially, on the left the feeling is that if we had actually rooted out race hatred from the white psyche, we'd have racial harmony and equality.

We don't have racial harmony and equality, therefore the white psyche must still be riddled with race hatred, and we need to find it. It must be expressing itself through white chefs that want to cook soul food and tourists trying on kimonos, and we need to treat people who do those things as the racists they are.

On the right, the feeling is that the psychological problem is the ability to conceive of race at all; the way to racial harmony is colorblindness and particularly color-blind policy.

We don't have racial harmony and equality, therefore the affirmative action mindset must be heavily embedded in the left-wing psyche, and we need to find out where it is hiding. People hide it behind innocent-sounding phrases like "diversity" and "inclusion" and we need to run anybody who uses those phrases out of town on a rail.

Our whole approach to race in this country is devolving into increasingly hysterical attempts to force (white) people to have the correct attitudes about race.

Step back for a bit and the fact that we are trying to make it illegal to cause a white person to feel guilt about history has a sort of bizarre, 1,001 Nights fairytale quality about it. Like some fairy story where it is illegal to remind the Emperor that he will die someday.

I think I am coming around to the idea that racial strife in the US is no longer caused primarily by defects in the individual (white) psyche, and that our efforts to keep finding those defects are kind of the same mindset that convinced Soviet leaders that all failures were caused by sabotage.

[absentmoon]

cord is so funny

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Tech Support: Part 3

[1-2-3]

Yes, this was a real thing we had to help with once.

Even though he complains, Donnie feels a lot of pride being looked to as the family expert for these things, I’m sure. For all that Splinter probably doesn’t know the deep intricacies of computers, I’ll bet he knows the basics. Could there be a deeper meaning to his confusion?

I personally headcanon that Splinter is the one who introduced computers, phones, and appliances to his sons way back in the dumpster diving days, and probably showed Donnie how to fix his first toaster or something. However, the special interest kicked in hard and pretty soon Donnie could run circles around Splinter when it came to fixing and engineering stuff. Perhaps, this is a way Splinter can find time to partake in Donnie’s interests and boost his confidence despite being way out of his depth on technical know-how himself.

When you don’t have a lot, it’s important to be resourceful and handy with a quick fix. Donnie had to have started building stuff somewhere!

It makes it all the more bittersweet if they were really close only to have Splinter struggle to bond with Donnie when he’s a little older. Don’t worry though, they’ll figure it out :)

[minhosblr]

Minho playing with kittens for 12 minutes straight (aka the kitten interview)

Bonus

[goooooooody]

𝘕𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸

[b0wi3sgir1]

Marauders and Reg group chat

Remus: who the fuck added me to the group chat?

Sirius: >:O language.

Regulus: yeah watch your fucking language.

Sirius: OKAY WHO TAUGHT REGGIE TO SAY THE FUCK WORD?!

Peter: ‘the fuck word’

James: You guys use the f word all the time??

Regulus: Merlin’s beard you don’t have to censor it.

Peter: say fuck James.

Regulus: Do it, James. Say fuck.

[eggcats]

(separating this into its own post bc I need the validation of the radiostatic enjoyers)

Alastor absolutely believes that everyone else ALSO thinks that Vox is the most charming and attractive demon in hell, it's just an objective fact - just like how Vox is an annoying clout-chaser constantly trying to upgrade himself towards more and more validation

--

Like imagine, for whatever reason, Vox is at the hotel and he's bitching about Valentino, and Alastor is nearby because he doesn't like or trust Vox alone in HIS hotel.

Vox: And then the fucker said that he only sleeps with 10s AND Vox! That absolute bitch, how DARE he?! After everything we've built!

Alastor, confused: The distinction makes sense. I fail to see how THIS is the thing you take fault with, considering everything else lacking in the moth.

Vox, mortally offended that his rival-crush ALSO thinks he's ugly and trying to pretend he doesn't care about it: uh, FUCK YOU?!

Alastor, now both confused and offended: If he included you in the scale, no one else would rate a 10? Although I suppose it is true about what they say about television rotting the brain, if your offense is taken at a rare show of consideration and NOT the publicized and continuous cheating. Ha ha!

Vox is so caught off guard that his screen immediately glitches, and it's not until he does a full system reboot that he can even RESPOND to what Alastor just said.

Alastor is making fun of his flimsy technology when Vox comes to.

Angel is cracking up in the background, watching this entire thing go down.

Vox has no idea where to go from here.

[morganbritton132]

Steve sees that Jonathan and Robin have a lot in common and get along really well together, and is just like, “Hmm, I think not. Steal someone else’s best friend, Byers.”

[alexandriaellisart]

nap time

[uncanny-tranny]

Hey, if you have speech impediments, you are so amazing.

If you stutter or have a lisp or misspeak easily or you have a flat affect or a limited verbal vocabulary or if your voice is AAC or if you just have a difference in your vocality, you are so incredibly important and amazing.

Just know that your voice is yours. Nobody will ever be able to truly take it away. Your voice is part of you, and you deserve to make it as true to you as you deem fit. I hope you have the space to grow with your voice and whatever about it makes it unique.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Finally signing up for piano lessons after a solid two years of talking ab doing it one day really is SO surreal . Neurosurgeon by day pianist by night this is the plan for me

[sassypantsjaxon]

Sometimes I wonder if Cora ever met Dragon or if the Monkey family being annoying skipped a generation

[opossumanon]

So I was always a little confused by the definitions of whiteness to the point where one of my friends had to try to explain it to me in the most opossum-friendly translation available and I was still going "???" because it made no sense, right?

Well for the past couple days I've been having that same confusion again, because the entire globe is acting like one coin infinitely twirling in the air, where heads is "jewish people are white" and tails is "jewish people are not white" and whichever side it lands on (Even though it'll technically never land) is solely whichever one can be used to make tHe jEwS look like satan's minions.

Gee, I wonder why...

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

Daryl sign language compilation

[backpackingspace]

Okay but do you think the people who were really close to odysseus during the Trojan war had a running bet for when odysseus claimed to have a vision from Athena if it was true or not? Because half the time he was just lying about that.

[yuwuta]

yuuta exhibits such previously abandoned, recently adopted dog behavior. incredibly anxious all the time, even though nobody’s out to get him or leave him behind. waits for you to return home or from school or from work excitedly, just to see you when you walk through the door. follows you around senselessly, hovering in your space just for the sake of companionship. initiates affection in prodding ways—starts off next to you, then a hand on your thigh, then deems it safe to lay all the way down, then slowly pushes his head into your lap. gets up whenever you need to get up, and resumes his position as soon as you’re ready. brings you gifts as a sign that he’s thinking of you, and maybe because he likes the affection it brings out in you, maybe because he likes the gentle affirming touches of a hand in his hair or a pinch to his cheek. rests his head on your stomach or his chin on your shoulder when he’s sleepy, stays there, immobile, and will not move unless absolutely necessary. sometimes he gets surprised when he hears you calling for him, there’s a moment of disbelief as he thinks “me? really? you need me?” but it’s very quickly overshadowed by this compulsive need to show up, to please, to do anything for you, which is why he always answers when you call. he doesn’t realize that he has puppygod eyes, especially when he’s excited or confused, but he does and it’s incredible endearing. very reluctant to share your space or attention after a while, considers that to be sacred and he won’t risk being let go or lost again, so as a safety precaution, he keeps himself right by you, waits for you always.