#but of course it was.....

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

At the center of their [the secessionists'] strategy was a highly orchestrated effort to appeal directly to nonslaveholders by casting the decision over secession as one in which their future (and not just that of the planters) was at stake. To that end, old moderates-turned-fire-eaters built their own propaganda machine, an organization called the "1860 Association," formed in September 1860 by the Charleston merchant, Robert Gourdin, and a handful of men from the wealthiest planter families in the low country. They were a propaganda group functioning as a revolutionary club. The purpose, they boldly announced, was to prepare the South in the event of the "accession of Mr Lincoln and the Republican Party to power," and, specifically, to prepare, print, and distribute tracts and pamphlets "designed to awaken" the people of the slave states to a conviction of their danger and to urge the necessity of resisting Northern and federal aggression. The 1860 Association aimed, that is, to unify the public opinion of the state and the South behind secession as the proper response to the election of a "Black Republican" president. By the fall of 1860 every newspaper in the state, including the traditionally moderate Charleston Courier had fallen in line. The Association published and distributed all over the South some 166,000 pamphlets, all within the few months surrounding the presidential election. Tellingly enough, they specifically commissioned a pamphlet on the problem of the nonslaveholding voter.

Tract No. 5, James D. B. DeBow's The Interest in Slavery of the Southern Nonslaveholder, met the challenge head-on, offering an aggressive argument about how nonslaveholders "were even more deeply interested than any other in the maintenance of our institutions and in the success of the movement now inaugurated ... [for] the political independence of the South." The value and dignity of white men's labor in a slave society formed the crux of DeBow's appeal: "No white man at the South serves another as a body servant, to clean his boots, wait on his table, and perform the menial services of his household. His blood revolts against this and his necessities would never drive him to it." But just for good measure he finished with a threat, offering a dystopian image of the post-emancipation South as a scene of sexual and racial degradation that the rich white man would escape by emigration, but that nonslaveholders and their families would have to endure. DeBow's pamphlet was a virtual handbook for politicians and editors crafting the populist appeal, and it was recycled heavily through the fall of 1860 in local newspapers and speeches.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south

[some-pers0n]

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[3liza]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/theyre-not-human-how-19th-century-inuit-coped-with-a-real-life-invasion-of-the-walking-dead

Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.

“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.

And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.

Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.

“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.

Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.

“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”

Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.

By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.

“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.

The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.

“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.

The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.

But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.

The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.

When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.

Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.

Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.

“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.

But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.

The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.

The seals were untouched. Instead, the men had eaten each other.

[nando161mando]

[kenapiece-main]

Can you believe I'm having to make this meme even after successfully finishing up taxes and applying to job

[mythtakens]

“these characters should be mentally healthy before they get together 😌” ummm no I actually think we should smash their mental illnesses together like clumps of play-doh and see what colors it makes

[circusclownproductions]

“Can I be mean for a second” I would not care if you killed the bitch in front of me. Now what’s bothering you queen

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Some spins on the "mostly male team with a token woman" trope:

The woman is trans and stayed in her old circle of bros even after transition

The woman is the only one in her circle of "girls" who didn't turn out to be a trans man

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[teaboot]

When I was a kid one of my moms would call her period "moon time" or "her monthlies" or shit like that and my other mom straight up stealthed it, but when I'm a dad I think I'm gonna go straight down the middle and call it Werewolf Week. Like sorry kids, dad can't roughouse right now, it's Werewolf Week

[runawaymarbles]

the "is it ok to have sex when your kids are in the house" thing is so funny to me because like. if you have lived with both of your parents at the same time there's a 99.5% chance they have had sex while you were in the house. if you co-slept then your parents probably had sex while you were in the same bed. this is the gender neutral bathroom debate all over again.

[redvelvetwishtree]

[whaledocboi]

ai generated images make me increasingly sad and tired the more i see them in more and more casual contexts. i dont know how to explain, but it just fills the world with a bunch of nothing. no matter how visually stunning the pictures might be, there's nothing behind it for me. no dedication, no emotions, no feelings, no hard work or creativity, nothing i can truly think about, admire or enjoy. i dont think thats how art is supposed to be

[dduane]

A meeting of dragons.

[shoomlah]

I have a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head There lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed You fascinate me so

You Fascinate Me So, Blossom Dearie