#black family structure

[bluejay-makes]

Magnanimous

[odinsblog]

We’ll take the 40 acres, you can keep the mule.

[sukibenders]

Looking back at Girl Meets World, it will forever irritate me especially for how they handled/treated Angela. Oh this show really hated black women because how do you not only 1.) describe her, one of (correct me if I'm wrong) only few black and MAIN characters of the og show, as a "concept" 2.) have characters show obvious disgust at the small mention of her name 3.) depict her as a homewrecker for a new relationship that, really, shouldn't have ever happened 4.) have her old friends treat her like dirt and her old lover like she is the root of his problems, when there was nothing but positive love there 5.) reuse all the concepts from said previous love story just to elevate the new ship with a yte woman and 6.) compare her to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes that caused significant numbers of death, harm, misplacement, and trauma to people, largely of whom were black? Mind you, all these points I mentioned were toward the only main black character of the OG show before the spinoff, and the only, from what I can remember, black female character of the spinoff who didn't even stay long. Not even getting into the racist drama with some of the members on set, but you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that the way the show handled Angela, her story, and her relationship with the other characters + Shawn wasn't fucking disrespectful, you can't because I won't believe you.

[dwreader]

when the show slaps you in the face with something but apparently not hard enough!

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

i feel like this site leaning heavily into the "pedophilia and incest and rape kinks are good" angle lately can be attributed to the mass expulsion of sex workers and black ppl on here ngl

[mummer]

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Random funny thing to me is when people insist that two characters are basically siblings to each other and it's so weird to ship them (because they're connected in some way through a member of their family)

And the truth is that yes they can technically be considered family (in the nuclear family way) if you want them to be, but not because they're siblings. You actually have at least a miniscule argument here and yet you've lost arguing that they're basically siblings😂

[unikornu]

LotML - Sceneries Collection, p2

[EU] Unikornu

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

I don't understand why TLM 2 tried so hard to emphasize and clarify how much Ariel is like her mother in terms of personality when she is, in the movie, quite frankly, written to be more like Eric in character. She was really primarily introverted, shy, awkward, tomboyish, mild-mannered and more serious, which is more like her father. I guess it was her impulsive, curious, rebellious and reckless nature that made the characters in the movie go, "Ow, she is so like her mother!", but I don't know, whenever I see Melody, I see her as closer to her dad. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who sees it this way. I don't believe for one second that NO ONE in that universe was able to notice the similarities she had with her father. C'mon, she even has his doggone smile! 😂

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

Cecio & his fathers family

Cecios' father is an old noble of Andoran, from a family who made the smart decision of backing the rebellion. Taking in his bastard son was a double edged move, on one hand, he's displaying the ideal that everyone is equal, while also displaying the pedigree & faith of their lineage by having an Aasimar son. 

His father mainly pulled this move because rumors were getting loud about how the family had not fully changed to the nation's new beliefs, and were merely paying lip service to them.

His family is made up of four, his father, the patriarch, a noble turned merchant, who does the bare minimum of lip service towards the current principles of Andoran. He's not particularly corrupt, and by the standards of the previous regime, would have been a gracious lord, but his lack of care towards what used to be the lower classes and particularly his bastard son is a stain on what would be an average merchant lord. 

The eldest son, a man who did his time in the eagle knights, and is now working his way up in the government, hoping to take over his fathers role as the one in council seat, a cold and distant man, one who failed to shed his noble air, and thus only has friends among the nobles, neutral or unpopular among most people.

The youngest son, a shirt chasing fool who is currently a squire for a suffering knight, but one can suppose that the coin makes up for it, he's completely unfit for command and will probably spend the rest of his life wasting his father's coin on cover ups and fine food and clothes

The deceased wife, Cecio's stepmother, a woman who was understandably uncomfortable with the proof of her husbands infidelity under her roof, but who took it out on the neglected child, orchestrating the stealing of his finances, leading to Celia needing to fund his training, all as his father neglected him.

The family enjoyed little change in conditions, as they used their power to gain a large share of the artifact and treasure seeking market, not to mention offering their troops to the eagle knights, meaning they have considerable power for a noble family. It seems the new family tradition is the eldest going into government, and the second eldest going into the eagle knights. 

It seems that Cecio will be the one in the eagle knights, as while all three have gone through knight training, the eldest has firmly gone into government, and the youngest is ill equipped to fight on a serious battlefield, let alone take command and rise to the position expected of him. 

So Cecio works his way up through the Eagle Knights, being sent with the knight he's a squire for to the World Wound, and Mendev. He quickly becomes a full knight, and is granted command over a small group of crusaders thanks to his diligent studying. 

He only enjoys command for a year or two, before he wakes up in Drezden on a stretcher. Only time will tell where he goes from there.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

“The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor - both black and white, both here and abroad.” - MLK Jr, “The Three Evils of Society,” 1967

#Repost @workingfamilies with @use.repost ・・・

Every year on #mlkday, organizations and politicians use Martin Luther King Jr.'s symbol to support their own ideologies and agendas — but what did Martin Luther King Jr ACTUALLY say and do? #mlk

[lamia-lmiae]

The thing I hate about anarchists the most is if you say, "Hey, fuck it, you're right--government is the truest evil and must be gotten rid of completely. Let's do it," all that happens is that they start to circle jerk some more and nothing fucking happens.

If you point out, hey, what the fuck, why don't you want to do anything to get rid of government, they get all pissy and say it's not their job to fight a revolution and get shot by cops or whatever.

So even if anarchy is the solution, they don't care if it's implemented. They want no part in removing government. They just want to yell at people who dare think that maybe it's not a good idea and that their arguments haven't been convincing at all. If anarchy happens, it will be without their help, and because they don't care, it won't last, as anyone with more than two brain cells understands.

So I implore conservatives and libertarians to just ignore them. They are utterly impotent and just want to sow division. They are no better than communists with their slacktivism and worthlessness. Let them kvetch amongst themselves and do nothing. It's not like they'll bring about any positive future, whether anarchy happens or not.

[the-moons-mistress-333]

Sometimes, I think of myself as too old to be liking silly things like the marauders or I find myself being ashamed when I get gitty about the Harry Potter films or anything else around that area of interest. I find happiness in them… I guess that is all that matters. At the end of the day, James, Sirius, and Remus have been the one constant in my life that consistently bring joy to my life. Never once have I found myself lacking such pure emotion when I think about Regulus Black. I love the Golden Trio. But hell the marauders bring me more solace than my family at points. I know after my life has been lived and I grow grey and old and the ink from the pen that used to carry my story is beginning to dry, those boys will be in my mind, forever cherished. There will never be comfort characters that surpass because they have been there since day one. And they for goddamn sure will be there on my last. So, never again will I ever think, my love for something as “silly” as Harry Potter is childish and never again will I look else where for something that can simply… never be recreated. I hate how comments from insignificant people make me insecure about my interests.

Rain*

[webfactor]

Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes

Article Text As Follows:

Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes

By Sherry Robinson

Special to The Independent

ALBUQUERQUE — When Lily Gladstone won a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the public recognized a Native American actress. But to Wikipedia readers, she is an American actress whose father was Blackfeet and Nez Perce and whose mother was white.

Three long-time editors at the online encyclopedia argued that even though Gladstone grew up on the Blackfeet reservation, she couldn’t be called Native American unless she was an enrolled member of the tribe. When Gladstone’s uncle weighed in to say she was enrolled, they dismissed his comments. She is still, in Wikipedia’s view, “an American actress.”

In recent years, outside of a national debate in Indian Country over fake tribes, a handful of Wikipedia editors have been deciding who is Native American and who isn’t.

Look behind the curtain of the sprawling site and you will find a network of 265,000 volunteer editors writing and editing within a Wiki universe that has its own rules, language, police and courts but no traditional hierarchy.

Wikipedia’s structure allows likeminded editors to work together, but it also permits editors with a bias to advance their agenda. The site has drawn criticism from media and academics for slanted articles on Blacks and Jews. Wikipedia documents its own systemic bias in an article by that name and attributes the problem to too few minority editors. The typical editor, it says, is a white male.

By Wikipedia's definition, the only real tribes are federally recognized; editors of Native American material denigrate state-recognized and unrecognized tribes and seem preoccupied with revealing fake Indians.

The fakes are out there, and they’re a problem. But there’s a big difference between people who invented a Native ancestry and people who have a long, documented heritage.

For this story, aggrieved tribal members didn’t identify themselves because they fear the site’s size and power – it reaches 1.8 billion devices a month – and some editors’ vindictiveness.

Behind the curtain

Wikipedia is transparent about its process. Click on “talk” at the top of each article and you find the (sometimes endless) debates among editors about an article and see the site’s rules in action.

Editors are anonymous because the Wikipedia Foundation has a strong commitment to privacy, says a spokesperson. However, readers don’t know what expertise editors have or whether they’re Native American.

Editors select their subject matter. With experience they can rise in the pecking order until they gain authority to reverse or eliminate the edits of others. They quote the site’s often arcane rules in Wiki-Speak to anyone who disagrees. While Wikipedia espouses objectivity, neutrality and civility, discussions can take the low road.

On Lily Gladstone’s talk page, a newish editor, user name Tsideh (Apache for bird), asked, “What are your sources supporting the idea that Native Americans are only those who are enrolled in a US recognized tribe?”

A Wiki editor, user name ARoseWolf, answered: “A notable subject can make a claim… but you must have that respective tribal nation’s acceptance as verification through enrollment."

Gladstone’s uncle wrote: “I’m a primary source for Ms. Gladstone’s tribal heritage. Her father is my brother. Through our father, we are both enrolled in the Blackfeet Tribe in the USA,” he wrote. “Our mother is enrolled Nez Perce. So Ms. Gladstone is a direct descendant of both Blackfeet and Nez Perce.”

ARoseWolf shot him down. “We can not use primary sources to verify such information and, you, as a claimed family member have a WP:COI which means we need an independent source.”

WP:COI is the Wikipedia rule on confl ict of interest. Wikipedia forbids primary sources, and yet they’re the gold standard for journalists and academics.

Tsideh challenged the position that only enrollment in a recognized tribe “entitles somebody to claim to be a Native American” as an unfounded, minority point of view that Wiki editors didn’t support with a citation or explanation.

ARoseWolf and others chastised Tsideh for violating Wiki rules on bullying, false accusations and arguing Wiki policy. Tsideh countered that Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t have to prove he was an Italian American, but Lily Gladstone had to prove she was a Native American.

As the back and forth continued, ARoseWolf slammed a new editor who "just happened to find this discussion,” a dig that implies one party enlisted another to join the debate. That too is a Wiki violation.

Bohemian Baltimore, another regular, insisted, “If she’s not enrolled, she may be a descendant, but she’s not a Native American.”

Who is Native American?

Terry Campbell, a Navajo born in Tuba City, Arizona, who lives out of state, has been studying Wikipedia for five months, after friends complained about poor treatment in trying to edit Wiki pages.

One friend wanted to add some facts to an article about a tribe. “These changes were rejected by a handful of editors who cited other Wikipedia pages as sources,” he said, “and I thought that was very, very odd.”

A friend citing sources that prove her tribe survived the Indian wars and received state recognition ran up against Wikipedia guidelines on determining Native American identities that were largely crafted by two editors, user names CorbieVreccan and Yuchitown. Wiki editors used the guidelines to reclassify dozens of state-recognized tribes as “heritage organizations” and removed “Native American” from biographies of prominent tribal members or, worse, called them a "self-identified Native American.”

The implication, Campbell explained, is that the tribe no longer exists and that its members are suspect or even “Pretendians.” Wikipedia has a page for that too.

The same group has shaped many articles on Native subjects. Campbell said he combed through references and found they were misrepresented, taken out of context, sourced from far-right academics, or unreliable.

“The scope of this issue is huge,” Campbell said. “It permeates all the Native articles I checked.”

Campbell recognized talking points from what he called a far-right movement in Indian Country intent on erasing state-recognized and unrecognized tribes. (New Mexico has no state-recognized tribes and six unrecognized groups or tribes.)

Some Native Americans and Anglos, he said, believe that Indigenous people outside the circle of federal recognition should be considered non-Native. They also want to prevent members of the disenfranchised groups from selling their art, receiving ancestral remains, accessing disaster relief or re-establishing their homeland.

Outside Indian Country, it’s not generally known that U.S. Indigenous groups live within a caste system based on government recognition, with 574 federally recognized tribes on top, dozens of state-recognized tribes second, and several hundred unrecognized tribes last.

In 2021, Yuchitown wrote, “The overwhelming majority of ‘List of unrecognized tribes in the United States’ are completely illegitimate.”

There are many reasons why groups aren’t recognized. Some avoided the reservation. Some lost their recognition during the termination era. Some were broken up and scattered during the Indian Wars. Some went underground, practicing their culture secretly while passing as Hispanic. Many simply stayed put.

When Wikipedia editors claim that “Native American” is a political status conferred by the U.S. government, that an individual can only be called a “descendent” until their tribe is recognized, they push this narrative, Campbell said. It’s a contradiction of federal Indian law and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “As a general principle, an Indian is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person’s identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine eligibility for programs and services. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership.”

Extreme points of view

Campbell has contributed to a lengthy report, as yet unpublished, that identifies biased editors. They include Yuchitown, CorbieVreccan, ARoseWolf, Indigenous girl and Bohemian Baltimore.

“It was like a tree with many interconnecting branches that had been created over time by the same small group of people pushing extreme points of view,” Campbell said.

Initially the group made changes slowly, he said, “but they started pursuing their agenda aggressively after November, when state-recognized tribes retained their voting rights in the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Essentially, after the movement to delegitimize state-recognized tribes failed officially, the key players doubled down on altering and controlling the flow of information about Native Americans through Wikipedia.”

Campbell observed widespread violations of Wikipedia standards: “I found evidence that they blatantly misquoted and misrepresented sources to push extremist political beliefs; teamed up to manipulate the consensus system by voting in blocks; exploited Wikipedia rules, such as conflict of interest, to block outside editors from making changes to Native-related pages; excessively cited opinion pieces from fringe political figures, including those accused of racism and anti-semitism; blocked the use of legitimate primary and secondary sources that contradict their extremists beliefs, which violates Wikipedia’s rule against information suppression; posted originally researched, politically motivated essays instead of well-sourced articles; and harassed and defamed Native American tribes and living Native American people.”

Reacting in February to an early draft of the report posted on Google, the editors were incensed that anybody would voice complaints “off-Wiki.” ARoseWolf wrote that “we have been attacked, threatened with legal action and had misinformation/ false claims spread against us.” She and Yuchitown denied being part of a conspiracy against tribes or organizations and said they were just following Wiki rules. Yuchitown accused critics of being “meat puppets” of a person who objected to some Native content and enlisted others to back them up. In WikiSpeak this is meat puppetry.

“Volunteers on Wikipedia vigilantly defend against information that does not meet the site’s requirements,” the Wikipedia spokeswoman wrote. “These volunteers regularly review a feed of real-time edits to quickly address problematic changes; bots spot and revert many common forms of negative behavior on the site; and volunteer administrators (trusted Wikipedia volunteers with advanced permissions to protect Wikipedia) further investigate and address negative behavior. When a user repeatedly violates Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia administrators can take disciplinary action and block them from further editing.”

Inaccurate and insulting

In 2006, Wikipedia established the WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America to improve its Native-related content of 14,000 articles and more than 37,000 pages.

Recently, a hot topic on the project’s talk page was a proposal to change a category name from “unrecognized tribes” to “organizations that self-identify.”

On April 15 Melissa Harding Ferretti, chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, wrote, “The proposed renaming of the category on Wikipedia is not only inaccurate… but also insulting.”

Ferretti is one of the few Natives to take on Wiki editors openly.

Herring Pond was originally listed with other Wampanoag tribes. In 2022 Yuchitown stripped “state-recognized” from the page, even though the state Commission of Indian Affairs regularly engages with them. Last year Yuchitown created a separate page for Herring Pond. Wiki editors resisted attempts to make changes or corrections.

After Wikipedia called Herring Pond a “cultural heritage group" and a nonprofi t that "claims" to descend from Wampanoags, Ferretti wrote in a Wiki discussion, “There is no claim, it’s a fact! Might I add, nonprofit status was imposed upon Tribal nations in the ‘90s because we didn’t have our federal recognition yet.”

Her tribe has a well-documented history. “We still have care and custody of our sacred places, burial grounds and our 1838 Meetinghouse, one of three built for the Tribe after the arrival of the colonizers. Our continuous presence and stewardship of these lands are recognized by historical records, deeds and treaties.”

Ferretti wrote that tribes without federal recognition already face significant hurdles to gain recognition, "and being labeled as 'self-identified' can add to these challenges by casting doubt on our legitimacy.” Mislabeling unrecognized tribes “can lead to the spread of hate, misinformation and further marginalization.”

Some Wiki editors agreed. One wrote that “there are strong negative connotations to saying someone who is Native 'self identifies,' because the inference is that they are Native in name only or falsely claiming to be Native. A change like this will impact countless articles…” Bohemian Baltimore, ARoseWolf and Yuchitown insisted there were no negative connotations. They opposed calling an unrecognized group a tribe because it legitimized groups with unverified claims. ARoseWolf said, “If they had proof of their connection to the original people they would have gotten federal recognition.”

This is a frequent refrain among the insiders, who apparently think the application process is a slam dunk instead of the long, difficult, expensive journey it is.

Yuchitown noted that “all of the editors who actively contribute to and improve Native American topics on Wikipedia have voted to support the renaming.” It’s a remarkable declaration that he and his allies act in concert.

The insiders took even stronger action against Lipan Apaches in Texas.

Late in 2022, Yuchitown changed the entry of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas to say that NCAI recognizes the tribe as state-recognized but the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) does not. In fact, NCSL took down its web page listing federal and state-recognized tribes because it couldn’t verify the accuracy.

In boilerplate that appears on all the Texas unrecognized tribes’ websites, Yuchitown said Texas has no legal mechanism to recognize tribes, citing an online article that in turn cites the discredited NCSL web page.

In 2022, a tribal member and Yuchitown fought back and forth, reversing each other’s edits. In WikiSpeak, it was edit warring. The tribal member informed Yuchitown that the NCSL page he quoted no longer existed. CorbieVreccan told the member she was up against “two experienced editors,” and Yuchitown accused her of conflict of interest and edit warring. His fellow travelers demanded to know if she had an official position with the tribe. She didn’t.

ARoseWolf wrote, “As Wikipedia is not a state or government-controlled entity it can make up its own rules for what content is allowed on its platform.”

The Wikimedia spokeswoman says that in some extreme cases the foundation relies on a trust and safety team that will investigate and may also take action.

Campbell wrote in the report that many Native American communities and people “have been targeted by the small group of propagandists in this complaint… And the thousands of people who make these communities have been slandered and assaulted on Wikipedia through the actions of these propagandists.”

Link to the original article:

[superiorsturgeon]

out of curiosity, why do you like sturgeons so much?

A chance to info dump about my favorite fish…?!

I grew up in the Great Lakes area of North America, where fishing is pretty popular but everyone knows that fish populations aren’t anything like “the good old days” when people took out huge numbers of fish while messing up their spawning sites. I got pretty into fishing when I found out that I could catch bluegill in the surrounding farm ponds, and once in a while my family took me to an isolated fishing cabin for vacation, but for years I never encountered a wild fish bigger than a kilogram or two.

BUT THEN…

I found out about sturgeon! They were HUGE fish that had once lived in the rivers and lakes all around my home, and better yet, fish almost exactly like modern sturgeon had existed all the way back in the Cretaceous period alongside the dinosaurs, and they STILL EXIST TODAY!!! The fact that small numbers of these huge dinosaur fish still existed made them seem almost like a real-life lake monster/cryptid, except that we had proof of their existence!

Furthermore, there’s just nothing else like them. Sturgeon get big. Like, REALLY big. The record for the largest sturgeon was almost 11 meters/24 feet long, which is colossal for freshwater animals. They have armor plates of bone running down their sides, and at the same time they don’t have bony skeletons. They also have a crazy mouth structure, which allows them to actually pop their jaws out like a tube and suck up food. And on top of all of this, the adults are absolute tanks. I’ve seen skin nearly 8mm thick, and it’s so tough that people make leather out of it, and they occasionally lose fins or even entire gill plates and just keep on swimming! (I found out about that last one when I tried to wrestle a big female out of a river and my hand went straight into her gills. She didn’t seem that bothered by it!)

For a long time I filed sturgeon along with Alligator Gar, Giant Mekong catfish, and Yangtze paddlefish as a semi-legendary fish that may still exist, but I was never going to see except possibly in an aquarium, until I enrolled in graduate school. For those unfamiliar with grad school in the US, it typically involves both high-level classes as well as an independent research project the student designs and carries out with help from an experienced professor. When my mentor asked what kind of thing I wanted to study, I tossed out “sturgeon” as one such possibility, expecting to hear that I would probably have to limit myself to more common/accessible species.

I was blown away when she said “Actually, I think I know a guy…”

For the next several years, I got to ride along collecting wild adult sturgeon, gathering eggs, and raising the baby fish in a lab and in a hatchery. I was holding something that I had thought of as a semi-mythical lake/river monster in my own hands! I got to see a river choked with giants as big as 2 meters long, and I got to hold a 5-centimeters mottled baby whose armored scutes were still sharp and possessed the little arrowhead shape and big black pectoral fins that remind me of Mickey Mouse ears! In the video below you can even see a little heartbeat! (Don’t worry, this little guy was returned to the tank soon after to recover from his anesthesia!)

Sadly, I didn’t find anything super groundbreaking in my research, but my experience DID land me a job working in sturgeon aquaculture! If you’ve ever had caviar that wasn’t poached, it probably came from a sturgeon farm, and if you want to see a lot of big fish up close, this is a good place to do it! I probably personally handled more individual sturgeon than there are wild fish in several sturgeon species. In addition, while the wild broodstock I mentioned above might reach 2 meters and over 50kg, the sturgeon I dealt with at the farm would easily double that, and there were a LOT of them! I got to see sturgeon behavior that had never been recorded in field guides, and even a few crazy one-in-a-million mutations like the infamous “ghost” sturgeon!

I even got the opportunity to cook my own sturgeon meat (Yeah, I basically turned into the Touden siblings from Dungeon Meshi except for sturgeon instead of RPG monsters). I got pretty good at making smoked sturgeon, but the meat is also good on the grill or baked, and people have been cooking them in various ways for centuries.

My favorite part of the job was physically wrestling the big fish! Sturgeon are easier to grab than other fish with the right know-how, but a human-sized fish often has its own plans for the day and won’t always cooperate. I was pretty good at moving the adults by the time I left that job, but it was still a wild rodeo every time!

Even more exciting was how we spawned each new generation of sturgeon. In the wild, they form massive spawning runs in big rivers that in the past would be enough to tip small boats, but in a lab or farm we have to use other means. I’ll spare you the details, but I am one of a small number of people who have surgically extracted eggs from a live sturgeon and sutured them back up to swim another day.

The tldr of this essay is that sturgeon are a big, crazy-unique fish that have been around a long time, and I’ve spent a lot of my career handling and working with them. There’s just nothing like them for a fish nerd and they’re damn cool!

(Clip art not mine, I think @sturgeonposting drew or shared it!)

[oddbookreport]

ALSO no fucking city could exist without rural farm communities, which produce, ya know, Food? It's possible to grow supplemental crops inside city limits but there has never been a food independent urban area, not even when people were relocating to the city after having been farmers and had all the necessary skills.

Native agriculture was incredibly advanced, and a lot of those skills were actively or accidentally destroyed by colonists looking to starve out native populations. Early Europeans in north America rode through orchards spaced widely enough to ride a horse at full gallop and thought that they had rediscovered the garden of eden because white supremacy made it impossible for them to conceptualize that the natives had planted and tended those orchards over generations. Things like the Chinampas in Mexico City literally turned desert lakes into some of the most productive, highest quality soil on earth, capable of growing practically anything. Once the Chinampas fed the entire city: Now the lake is running dry and barely a square mile of chinampas are left.

The culprits are the greatest travesties in modern land use. Commercial monoculture farming and suburbanization, which are working together to destroy soil quality, indigenous communities, municipal governments, and local ecosystems.

First, large commercial farms strip the topsoil ecology of particular nutrients by planting the same crop over and over again, which repeatedly drains all of specific chemicals from the soil. They can usually afford to buy up their neighbors' rival farms because they're flooding the market with cheap produce, driving down their ecologically responsible competitor's revenue in the process and forcing them out of business. Leaving the fields fallow or intentionally planting things like clover for grazing animals could restore the topsoil, but that doesn't make money. You know what does? Selling the land to developers to put in soulless car dependent levitttowns that the DOT is obliged to build roads to at 6 million per mile even if the property taxes don't cover a quarter of that.

Once the land is stripped of its ecological productivity, it is sold to white flighters trying to "get out of the city because it's no place to raise a kid" who then pollute the cities with noise and smog and cars on every street, while bulldozing low income housing for highways and parking garages while having the gall to complain that the city is too expensive even though it's their lifestyle that's causing it.

Many of the farmers who become internally displaced or homeless are black or indigenous, as are many of the people living in low income neighborhoods that become highways, but whether they are or not is only part of the point: Overwhelmingly white suburbanites have their incredibly wasteful lifestyle paid for by both urban and rural people, even as the suburbs are "rich" and rural and dense urban areas are "poor."

Real cottagecore is practicing sustainable ecology and supporting your neighbors, especially when they've been fucked over by the state/prison industrial complex/white supremacy.

Now for a comment on Online Discourse, which is going to be a windfall for the "pissing on the poor" crowd I'm sure, but i'm saying it anyway:

"Cottagecore" was right about marginally more things than y'all think.

It's not much. The tradwife stuff is bad, the thoughtless idealization of "homesteading" is bad, the romanticization of an imaginary "simple life" in the Past is bad, and all of that stuff attracts fascists—and the totally unrealistic "aesthetic" is, well, annoying.

but listen.

Farming land isn't inherently more linked to colonialism than doing anything else on land, and living in a rural area isn't inherently more linked to colonialism than living in a city.

Wanting to be connected to the land you live on, wanting to grow food for yourself, wanting to experience the natural world—these are, in themselves, good things. They are very fraught if you live on stolen land. But it seems way worse to live on stolen land and try to distance yourself from that land, while it not only takes care of your every bodily need, but needs you to reciprocate.

I am honest to god really worried about how many people are either 1) wracked with guilt over wanting a rural life or 2) convinced that rural life shouldn't, like, exist.