#cw: source typical racism

[puckpatti-and-co]

A lead by the harbor? What, like an investigation? Or are you trying to be some sort of dock hand now? A pirate?! Puckpatti piracy?!

“Like, a job lead! I overheard some folk talking about it the other day. It sounded interesting, so.. You lose all the chances you don’t take, right? Plus, they’ll hire any race!”

“Sailing jobs tend to be dangerous for half-foots.. A lot of ships are required to have one aboard in case of sirens. It’s a one way trip, going overboard- but it warns everyone else because we’d hear the song first.”

“As much as I’d like to go sailing someday, it just isn’t safe with current regulations. Most dwarven ships use song birds though!”

“Imagine if I got to sail with dwarven pirates.. That’d be so cool!! I bet it’d make Fler jealous! Hehe.”

[pontevoix]

EVERYONE    KNOWS    ME    NOW    ?          a    man    is    but an    empty shell.               i.               private    & selective    multimuse     featuring     animanga muses from     SHINGEKI     NO     KYOJIN,     HAIKYUU,     JUJUTSU     KAISEN,     &     more.               ii.              written     by     hale,     21+,     she/hers.          iii.               𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴.    𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘴.   𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵.          iv.           rules    &    roster    below.    𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒    𝐈𝐒    𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐗.   

FORMAT  -  i  typically  use  small  font  &  iconless,  but  i'm  deeply  thinking  about  abandoning  small  text.  granted,  tumblr  makes  no  sense  so  .  .  .  things  change.  that  being  said,  i  typically  just  try  to  keep  my  threads  tidy  for  my  own  sake  of  mind.  please  cut  threads.  all  fine  by  me!  accessibility  is  my  top  priority,  so  if  there's  anything  that  you  need  -  please  let  me  know. 

WRITING  -  in  theory,  i  prefer  paras.  i’ve  been  working  over  the  past  few  years  on  cutting  down  my  writing  &  making  it  more  concise,  so  please  forgive  me  if  i  don’t  match  length.  that  being  said  --  please  don’t  feel  obligated  to  match  length  yourself.  it’s  going  to  take  me  a  while  to  get  a  reply  out  in  general,  but  that’s  just  a  head’s  up!  to  be  honest,  i  largely  anticipate  that  most  of  my  written  content  will  be  styled  as  drabbles  or  headcanons.

SHIPS-  generally  speaking  (  unless  it’s  canonically  based  )  .  .  .  i  don’t  really  like  to  begin  threads  with  established  relationships.  if  we  talk  about  it  ahead  of  time,  of  course  then  --  it’s  fair  game!  beyond  that,  i’m  pretty  flexible  when  it  comes  to  ships  -  so  long  as  it’s  chemistry-based.  this  honestly  shouldn't  have  to  be  said,  but  if  you  support  a  ship  where  characters  meet  when  one  is  a  minor  &  the  other  is  an  adult  ?  please  soft  block  me.  furthermore, 

NSFW  -  nsfw  content  on  this  blog  will  be  scarce,  if  present  at  all.  although  i  am  much  older  than  eighteen,  i  do  not  want  to  write  or  post  smut  on  my  blog.  nsfw  mentions  may  pop  up,  in  which  case  i’ll  tag  it  as  cw  nsft.  if  it  is  appropriate,  then  it  may  come  up  in  discord  -  i’m  okay  with  that  so  long  as  all  parties  do  so  respectfully  &  are  of  age.  also,  i  do  not  support  aging  up  characters  for  nsfw  material. 

MAINS/EXCLUSIVES  -  i'm  currently  affiliated  with  @mindsafe,  @herkn1fe  /  @deiikara,  @chaoslulled, & @w4rche1f.  some  ship  priority  goes  to  these  fabulous  people  because  we  talk  like we can't stop yapping,  but  honestly  ?  i  don't  mind  following  duplicates  for  the  sake  of  community  even  when our  own  writing  is  impacted.  truthfully,  i  struggle  to  articulate  myself  here.  apologies  !

TRIGGERS  -  while  i  don’t  have  any  specific  triggers,  i  do  thoroughly  appreciate  content  warnings  on  especially  violent  content  (  i.e.  assault,  abuse,  drug  abuse  ).  likewise,  i  will  tag  material  that  i  think  of  as  sensitive  –  usually  as  cw  ___.  if  there  is  something  that  you  specifically  would  like  tagged,  please  let  me  know.  i  am  happy  to  accommodate  you!  also,  don’t  perpetuate  gross  things  like  underage  stuff,  transphobia,  homophobia,  &  racism.

REBLOG  KARMA  -  i  don’t  necessarily  believe  in  reblog  karma,  but  i  will  usually  try  to  reblog  memes  from  the  source  rather  than  the  blog.  i  am  a  big  fan  of  sending  in  memes,  anyway  so  it  all  works  out.  that  being  said  -  feel  free  to  reblog  stuff  from  me!

STARTERS  &  MEMES  -  generally  speaking,  all  prompts  &  opens  are  for  mutuals  only.  you  are  welcome  to  send  in  requests  for  more  than  one,  of  course!  i’m  open  to  it  all.

THE  WRITER  -  okay!  i’m  hale  (  formerly  georgie  ).  i’m  twenty-seven,  &  i’m  psychology  graduate  student.  i'm  currently  doing  research  in  gambling  addiction.  i  have  a  tendency  to  dissociate  from  my  messages,  apologies!i  move  at  snail’s  pace,  but  even  if  i  don’t  show  activity  on  this  blog  for  literal  centuries  .  .  .  i  am  still  here!  plotting  to  return!  also  please  feel  free  to  reach  out  &  say  hi  whenever  -  i’m  happy  to  chat  out  of  character!  though  i’m  also  terribly  slow  (it  may  take  me  weeks)  with  dms,  so  don’t  be  discouraged!

haikyuu    tsukishima    kei,    tanaka    ryuunosuke,    lev    haiba,    ukai    keishin,    shirabu    kenjirō,    ushijima    wakatoshi,    yahaba    shigeru,    koushi    sugawara,    kageyama    tobio,    tendou    satori    

my    hero    academia    bakugo    mitsuki    

fullmetal    alchemist    edward    elric,    alphonse    elric    

attack    on    titan    erwin    smith,    mike    zacharias,    marlo    freudenberg,  tom  ksaver,  farlan  church,  connie  springer,  jean  kirstein  (private),  armin  arlert,  uri reiss, who  knows    

blue    lock    itoshi    rin,    mikage    reo    

jujutsu    kaisen    shoko    ieiri,    todo    aoi,    gojo    satoru,    nobara    kugisaki,    yu    haibara    

tokyo    ghoul    takizawa    seidou,    hanbee    abara

hunter x hunter leorio paladiknight, hisoka (private)

[wordofgodcast]

Episode 74: 8.1 "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and 8.2 "What's Up, Tiger Mommy"

New season, new showrunner... Let's get into it!

Previous | First | New episodes go up on Wednesdays

This week’s episode is available on Podbean HERE!

Check out our listen page or go to our pinned post to find a list of platforms you can listen on – don’t forget to follow, rate, and review if you can!

Sources for references made this episode:

the post that sparked Sam/Kermit memes, by @nonagesimus with additions from @cryptidmax (CW: minor spoiler for later s8)

war crimes anime girl gif

article about the naked Mona Lisa

Content warnings for this episode can be found here, under the cut, and at the start of the episode:

Animal injury

Trauma

Public masturbation mention

Show-typical weirdness about sex work

Death of family

Racial fetishism

Burns

Possession/stolen identity

Anti-Asian racism

[heartinhands]

hi and welcome to my lowkey multimuse. who knows how active it will be, not me! rules under the cut.

ren, 24, white, they/he, i work full-time

no freaks! no racism, shipping adults w children, incest, and the like.

i am not anti-callout. if it feels important and needs to be shared, i will share it. this is different from drama that can be privately resolved and excessive negativity

i am not the fastest writer these days, sorry :(

contrary to the above if something catches my eye, i might reply very very quickly. please don't worry about it and please take your time to reply, i understand!

w muses and muns who are of age nsfw content or discussion might feature but i really can't say how prominently. it will be tagged as "nsfw" if it does though.

feel free to ask if you need anything tagged. my tagging system follows "cw word" guidelines

largely iconless unless i have the icons already from a previously existing blog! i've gathered a few free-to-use iconsets from blogs across tumblr and have left them unedited if they are free-to-use. as such, the icons vary in size depending on source.

i prefer longer, more literate replies. note that all this means is that i don't tend to engage as much with the short jokey ic rp posts. don't worry about matching my length in threads!

i try to match other people's formatting; personally i use small text and occasionally bold and italicize font. if my partner doesn't use small text, i won't either. for the umineko muses i write, red and blue text will feature as it is a canon aspect of the game, but outside of that i don't use colored font.

i love verse making! i will gladly write a verse to write with your muse, or do crossovers, etc. etc. give me your oc, give me duplicate threads, let's goooo.

typically i am multiship-exclusive on my blogs but since this is primarily a friends-only multimuse i am moving this to be purely multiship here! *with an exception, namely that vergil is singleship with fer's oc cam

muse list here.

[songoftrillium]

NPC Profile: Anton "rutgers65" Casale

CW: Implied Homophobia and Racism rutgers65 is a sorta classic mid century tech school professor, with messy, dark wavy hair, and a shallow chin, along with a pair of thick reading glasses for viewing screens. "Dad Bod" is the term for his build, with mild love handles from a bit too much sitting, and a bit too many cherry pies. Wears the typical corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows. In 1965, the professor held an esteemed position teaching computer science in Rutgers' math department. His initial theories on protocol laid down some of the contributing groundwork needed to connect to the Arpanet in the future, and by extension, connecting the Umbral Pilots, the Glass Walker camp of which the professor was a member. Within the camp he held high esteem as the co-inventor of the umbral CB in cooperation with Miriam "WKA9Y" Borowski, one of his esteemed students at the school. His tenure both as a professor, and an elder in his tribe, came to an abrupt end with a hostile takeover of the pilots' internal organization, with blackmailing campaigns surfacing from seemingly nowhere. Revelations that he was suppressing his wolf nature, and carrying on a relationship with a local amateur journalist by the name of Taylor Altman surfaced among many of the allegations while willingly sharing secrets about the tribe. Confronted first by the pilots, and then by the school administration with photos from an "anonymous source", he was forced to quietly resign from the school, and behind the scenes, be punished and stripped of his elder rank, as well as ejection from the camp. The aftermath would set back Rutgers from joining Arpanet until 1973. WKA9Y also left the umbral pilots in protest, speculating the camp may have been sabotaged from within by the Wise Guys. Together, they joined the random interrupts, seeking to speak truth to power. Leaving their old lives behind, the trio found themselves in league with the garou alumni of Evergreen College, and together they formed the Elk Prairie Sentinels pack with Esme, Julie, Seb, and Caeli. His primary drive that brought him to Seattle, and then Trillium, was to follow his partner's drive to document the lumber protests over old growth logging in the area. When the news of a possible veil breach hit the news from Trillium, that set in motion the actions that would eventually lead him to settling down beside Dead Mountain in 1969.

[baeddel]

in the recent post you reblogged ... maletofag said “by acknowledging that a woman is "trans" you're basically stating that she was born a "man", but now performs the roles of a woman in that society” ... do you think that means that in a society with no roles for women (a truly non sexist society) there could be no more trans women? Or does “role” include “not having a dick” so it would just become only those who want to alter genitalia?

i think your question is good, and i'm flattered you went behind Clara's back to ask me instead. anon is asking about this post, for the folks at home.

[1.8k words - cw: racism, transmisogyny, intersexism, etc.]

Clara chooses to phrase this in terms of gender roles which a person can, and might be expected, to perform. talking about gender roles is quite typical today. i wanted to find out where the term gender roles, or sex roles, comes from, and it turns out that it was coined by John Money in 1955 to support his butchery of intersex children (who, it would later be revealed, he was molesting) (source, although they don't mention the gory bits). Encyclopedia.com doesn't mention Money but writes that,

Because the external body can be ambiguous (for genitalia are not always clearly male or female), twentieth-century science turned to internal markers such as chromosomes, hormones, and genes to understand and secure biological sex differences. However, these internal markers are also highly ambiguous; for instance, a person with certain chromosomal abnormalities could be judged male even if that person had breasts and a vagina. "The intensity of the search for an infallible marker of sex difference, and the uncertainties in most 'biological' markers, have indicated to many scholars that cultural notions are certainly influencing science in this area, and that 'gender' may actually determine 'sex' rather than the other way around" (Wiesner-Hanks 2001, p. 3)

which sounds very enlightened until you remember how that research played out in reality, ie. extremely widespread medical abuse of intersex children, the capture of transsexuality by a hostile psychiatric establishment, and so on. the turn towards socialization and social construction resolved theoretical difficulties within medical discourse posed by the karyotype. it didn't challenge gender but rescued it. gasp! bipower! necropolitics! one's hands tremble at this reversal of expectations. enjoy for a few moments the aesthetic experience of sublime horror which only the victim of dialectics can appreciate! but once it has cleaned itself up—here, have a tissue—my victim cannot quite make out the point. where was i going with it? alright then—i peel off a latex glove—the truth is this doesn't tell us very much. in fact, both the concept expressed by the term and the ambiguity it was meant to resolve are both much older.

Otto Weininger (an antisemitic jew and homophobic homosexual who believed that women were not humans or even animals but a kind of plant) makes the point in his 1903 book Sex and Character that "Sexual differentiation is never complete. [...] The characters of the other sex occur in the one sex in a vestigial form", for example, "[even] the most womanly woman has a growth of colourless hair known as 'lanugo' in the position of the male beard; and in the most manly man there are developed under the skin of the breast masses of glandular tissue connected with the nipples." and Margaret Meade in her 1935 book Sex and Temperament does not, as far as i could find, use the term 'sex roles' until the 1963 preface, yet in that book describes how societies "raise a superstructure" out of an "accident of birth." but she uses this phrase to discuss the concept of the 'first-born son' which various societies have attached importance to, in order to prepare us to consider the sexual differences discussed in the book no less arbitrary and no more important. in that curious 1963 preface she opens with a criticism of "women in the United States" who "have come to rely more on the definition of themselves in terms of sex, and to lay less emphasis on finding themselves as individuals." the context in which she uses the term 'sex roles' is to admonish us for the "extreme emphasis [we put] upon sex roles"!

her argument is not awful. i generally don't use the term 'sex roles' or 'gender roles' (hereafter gender roles) for a similar reason. there are two things about gender roles to remember: 1. roles are actually just ideals present in cultural material and don't necessarily ever obtain in real life, and 2. not all roles in society are gender roles. while it's hard to imagine a social role that isn't gendered in some way, gender rarely completely determines a role, and no role completely determines a gender.

to take the classic example, it was once considered ideal for a woman to marry, give up work and devote herself to housekeeping and child-rearing. but how often did this really happen? there are women who did not marry, women who did not have children, and women who still worked after marriage. for some women the role was impossible to fit: they were too poor to refrain from working, or lived rurally on a plot of land that required her labour to manage. she might have been infertile and thus unable to bear children, and she could have a serious disability that kept her from doing housework. thus, onto the second point, this ideal role was not necessarily even expected of poor women, rural women, infertile women and disabled women, for whom it wasn't on offer. there are other roles associated with, say, rural women (the 'farmer's wife'), disabled women (the 'hysteric'), and so on. thus the 'housewife' role acquires womanhood as one of its conditions but equally important are class, geography, fertility, and ability. in America you necessarily found it in a racial context (the ideal for white women was the fertile 'housewife', the ideal for black women, within white society, was more like a sterile caregiver, the 'mammy', which likewise was not on offer within black society), while here in Ireland it was more universal. women in Ireland could not lawfully work while married until the mid-70s because of discriminatory laws which the Catholic Church lobbied for, which i interpret as both a kind of class war and a bid for the organization of the domestic unit.

the ideal role i give for disabled women, the 'hysteric', is maybe a bit unintuitive because it's a bit of a prejudicial role. it's like saying that an ideal role for schizophrenics is the 'lunatic', who speaks in tongues and thrashes and needs to be locked away and sedated. but i believe the literature today 'role' and 'stereotype' seem to be used interchangably (see eg. Martin 2019 pg 1). when we say ideal we don't mean 'very good' as opposed to 'reality, which might be bad' but 'figure of discourse' as opposed to 'empirical reality as we might find it.' taking Meade's example, the 'first-born son', which is a high status role, also makes 'second-born sons' who occupy a lower status role. so we must think that just as much as 'Mammy' was a gender role for black women, 'Jezebel' was too. thus we must understand that 'role' is not actually a 'role in society' (the way that, say, bryti was a kind of slave in early medieval England) but a discursive role which is essentially rhetorical. i think this is important for understanding the kind of roles that exist for trans women. what roles do we actually find for trans women today? the 'autogynephile fetishist' in sexological discourse, the 'marginalized queer woman' of liberal discourse, the 'bathroom predator' of TERF discourse, the 'man in disguise' of heterosexual discourse, and so forth. but there are gaps and spaces which these roles leave open. as Clara says some of them presuppose a former identification with 'manhood' (conceived on a continuum of casab and childhood experiences taken to be salient), and a present identification with 'womanhood' (conceived on a continuum of psychological profile and biological configuration). but the model of the subject differs between roles, it doesn't always fit cleanly with empirical reality (the nature of which is not entirely settled anyway), and further, they can be cashed out in different ways. roles can implicate a group that is narrower than what i mean by 'trans woman' (roles in transmedicalist/HBSer discourse, for example) or one that is wider (many will include male crossdressers, femboys, even performers, etc., who don't consider themselves women at all).

anyway, why go on about all this? well, hopefully clarifying how i understand the concept of gender roles will make clear how i would resolve your problem. as i see it you understand 'sexism in society' to be equivalent to 'the existence of gender roles.' i think this is true insofar as patriarchy must operate through discourse. i don't see how patriarchy could operate without rhetorical constructs. but i also don't see it as being coextensive with them. it has operations which are better understood as the non-discursive reproduction of customs and obligations. likewise, not all roles depend on patriarchy. i think once you really explore how trans women identify you will find roles which are not really essentiatelly gendered but which are contingent on the conditions of transfeminine life. 'stealth' and 'boymoding' are both interesting examples of this: they're about how a person presents themselves outside of transsexual society for reasons of safety or comfort. this is a kind of transgender role only because it responds to conditions specific to transfeminine people, but it's not a role that anyone deeply identifies with or we would rightly call a gender identity. another interesting case (not particular to trans women) would be top/bottom and stone/pillow which are sexual roles which can have gendered significance but doesn't depend on them. it's difficult to imagine how sexuality would function without some kind of rhetorical construction for giver/receiver, passive/active partner.

so: it's hard for me to imagine how 'woman' as a category would exist without patriarchy's help. i have generally understood the abolition of misogyny to be equivalent to the abolition of gender. once you get rid of all discursive roles and customary obligations and whatever else i am not sure what remains of the category 'woman' (if you can think of anything i'd like to hear it!). if there isn't such a thing as 'woman' i don't think there can be such a thing as 'trans woman.' however, identification with 'woman' is often the least important part of a trans woman's autonomous social existence (ie. apart from the social existence society imposes on her), and if we did a very thorough examination of the kind of roles that trans women make for themselves and why they find them satisfying, it's possible that we'd find that many of these are satisfying for reasons that basically aren't gendered and aren't fully reliant on patriarchal domination to derive their sense. but i haven't done this, and i'm not sure it's true. we might equally expect that in a world without patriarchal domination everything will be completely alien to us. i like to say that the communist demand is not that i would like to have my desires satisfied but that i am not satisfied with my desires!

w/r/t 'does “role” include “not having a dick” so it would just become only those who want to alter genitalia?' - i am only aware of one term for this concept, 'post-op transsexual', and i am not sure that this term has ever risen to the level of gender role. this is again something that is customary among trans women (along with, more commonly both today and in history, castration AKA orchiectomy) but isn't really gendered, as counterintuitive as that seems.

[theticklishpear]

Hi Pear! Okay, this is gonna be long, please bear with me. I'm writing a story set in the 1940's about a German pilot. I'm trying to keep information just about as historically accurate as I can, but I've taken some minor creative liberties. Anyways, firstly I was wondering if you knew whether people hosted grand parties in ww2? Secondly I was hoping you could guide me to some links (or from your own knowledge), and give me the basics of flying, and being a pilot, or anything of the sort? Ty

Hi there, Anon! Unfortunately, WWII is not an era of history that I am comfortable giving advice about. You will need to read extensively not just articles you find online through highly targeted searches, but also non-fiction, any first-hand experiences written by survivors, and do some thorough research of your own, with an open mind and an understanding that it was a very racially and politically charged time. You will need to evaluate your sources quite carefully.

I will say, however, that people were still people, so yes, of course there were parties. Remember that rationing was implemented; you’ll need to research when those policies went into effect, how long it took to begin seriously impacting each level of society, and investigate black market endeavors for everything from food to clothing to jewelry to everything in between.

Your research will also need to specifically target piloting in that particular era. Our technology in the cockpit has changed quite a bit since then, as have aircraft building techniques. Seek out interviews with veterans, whether written or video. Their experiences are more important than any clinically written article about it. You’ll need to know exactly which plane your character flies, as well as researching the planes being used with and against them by other countries.

I wish I could be of help, but this is not a topic I’m either particularly knowledgeable of or comfortable with. Good luck and read, read, read.

-Pear

Some places to start that should NOT be your end-all-be-all of research. CW for racism, brutality, and all the typical warnings associated with WWII.

World War 2 Aircraft (1939-1945)

Aviation in World War II

World War II Aircraft

What was it like to fly a fighter plane in WWII? Was it a thrill or uncomfortable?

MariaThePilor: Landing the Spitfire || Flying a real Spitfire like the WW2 Fighter Pilots

The Eighth Air Force vs. The Luftwaffe

Last D-Day Pathfinder pilot flies C-47 aircraft this weekend (U.S.-centric)

65 Years Later, WWII Fighter Pilot Lives To Tell Harrowing Tale (U.S.-centric)

World War II Interviews (U.S.-centric)

Female WWII Pilors: The Original Fly Girls (U.S.-centric)

‘Doing their bit’: The female fighter pilots of World War II (U.S.-centric)

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of WWII (U.S.-centric)

Author Katherine Lanndeck on the Life of a WWII Ferry Pilot (U.S.-centric)

Fierce, feared and female: The WWII pilots known as the ‘Night Witches’

Experiencing War: Wings of War: Stories from the Veterans History Project (U.S.-centric; includes interview videos)

”For You the War is Over”: WWII Pilot Captured by Germans Tells His Story

German Luftwaffe Aces

Interview with World War II Luftwaffe General and Ace Pilot Adolf Galland

Aviation History: Interview with World War II Luftwaffe Ace Günther Rall

The last Interview with Erich Hartmann

The Second World War: The Fighter Aces

Life in Germany during World War Two

Everyday life in Germany during the war

Conversation: Growing Up in Nazi Germany

[pigeonfancier]

This is a really good post! I wanted to add onto this, because the size references here are fantastic for helping people conceptualise how very small this area is in a way I've fumbled on explaining - but also, I've been talking to people about this whole disaster a lot lately, and most people just.. do not know much about pigeons, it turns out, or why, exactly, the Ramsey Loft is fucking up beyond just the size?

CW for animal neglect / hoarding / mistreatment in this post. Nothing graphic, but still a little depressing.

I've been prattling non-stop about this on Discord, but the tl;dr summary for those on my dash who have been spared: The Ramsey Loft is a well-known pigeon keeping blog, who is breeding several varieties of pigeons. As of the last month or so, there has been a significant number of birds lost to a disease within the aviary.. and the fact there's sixty or so birds in residence, many of which were bred intentionally, and, iirc, were not bred with a guaranteed owner in mind beforehand. This, along with other issues with a rescue and, uh, racism in their discord[?!], has been a topic of discussion in the community.

I don't typically touch the pigeon fancier community on Tumblr, so I'm just addressing the coop, because I've been explaining why the Ramsey Loft set-up is horrible to a lot of friends lately. It can be a little hard to conceptualise how much space pigeons need! The ask up top is a great written example, but I'm a very visual person, so here's some pictures to demonstrate:

This is the exterior of a 40-pigeon loft, source (cw animal death in article).

This article doesn't have measurements. But you can see, just from visual reference, that this is bigger than Ramsey Loft's loft in comparison:

source

The size of the loft should allow eight to 10 cubic feet of air space per bird. A well-made loft would include at least three partitions: one for breeders, one for young birds, and one for old birds.

- backyardpoultry, citing what's pretty fucking standard to the business

Keep in mind: the Ramsey Loft has sixty birds, whereas the first one has forty.

For some further context, here's a thread of people discussing loft size on pigeon-talk.biz, one of the larger fancier forums. The OP has an aviary that is ~3 x 6 feet, and people are advising him on how many birds he can keep. That is 4 to 5 birds, because as people tell him:

The reason you should even know how many birds can be kept is so that you don't overcrowd. That is one of the biggest health problems there is. If you put, let's say 10 birds in your aviary, probably no big deal, but put 10 birds in you [sp] loft, and you've got a problem. They do spend their day going in and out but at night and during really bad weather, they are all inside. If there's not enough "air space" per bird, you start running into health problems. So, basically you figure out how many birds you can keep INSIDE your loft. The aviary is just bonus space.

pigeon-talk, discussing loft sizes

One of the posters notes that 15sqft per bird is ideal, but it's not often followed. He advises that the OP can keep 8 birds in his loft, and notes that “he personally [keeps] 3 pairs of birds in a 5x7x6foot sections, with 210sq feet.”

I've never been in the Ramsey Loft personally, but it is pretty clearly too small, especially when you look at it compared to the house next to it.. but also just from the pictures she herself has shared of it:

source

Her nest boxes. In comparison, this is what nest boxes look like in more typical, less horrifically crowded aviaries:

Please note the size difference, the clean floors despite the presence of pigeons within them, and also how the nesting itself is contained within the bowls given for them to nest in.

source

I don’t know the measurements of her aviary, but she has videos up of her within her loft. It is not large.

I’m not going to link specific youtube videos, but she has dozens up on her channel.

This is not just an overcrowded aviary. Ime as a rural fuck, people who breed pigeons specifically for hunting practice still generally keep their animals in larger lofts and less birds, because to do otherwise would be cruel. And to keep this many animals in this small of a space, without them getting sick.. the cleaning needs to be rigorous to an extent I do not think the vast majority of people are capable of maintaining.

For the record, below is a fancier discussing his loft. I’m not entirely sure of what his flock size is, but this is what I’ve always heard of as being fairly routine for commercial aviaries of any notable size, of which over forty birds would certainly qualify:

He cleans his “Cary’d Away Loft��� once a day in the mornings and then feeds and waters the birds. In the summer, he cleans the loft twice a day. Fans and electricity were installed to aid in ventilation and convenience.

Deone Roberts, the Sport Development Manager for the American Racing Pigeon Union, says that a well-designed loft consists of a floor, four walls, a roof, external fixtures (landing board, trap, ventilators and turbines, and aviaries), internal fixtures, a storage area for feed and other supplies plus an infirmary. The loft needs to prevent vermin, including aerial predators.

- backyard poultry

The Ramsey Loft is very open about her cleaning habits. They would not be acceptable if she only had ten pigeons. To be honest, I wouldn’t find them acceptable if she had two pigeons, because:

source

If you scroll up, you can see how she cleans the mats within her aviary. Keep in mind, this is where she shows her feedbags to be: on the other side of the partition where she’s spraying the mats down.

No new deaths so far.

But there may be more than just salt poisoning going on.

We may also be dealing with crop rot, or an outbreak of coccidia or giardia.

The only bad thing about the Versele Laga blend I feed my pigeons is the paper packaging.

It breaks extremely easily, and a bag split at the loft door trying to get it in a few weeks ago.

Usually, they just sprout and I pull them up.

But it was freezing for those few weeks.

They started to sprout when it got warm before the rain, but as it continued, the shoots drowned.

The result of that will be under a cut, because it’s graphic. If you have a phobia of maggot like things, do not look at the photos.

That patch of literally writhing ground was too big for me to step over, so I bought pavers and made a path yesterday.

But the flies would not have been drawn to lay eggs there if the ground was not spoiled enough to attract them.

Long periods of rain in rural areas also bring out Coccidia and Giardia (the reasons pets should not be allowed to drink from puddles).

They are water loving protozoa that live an inch or less in the soil, depending on the average moisture of the biome.

They are free swimming in standing puddles or muddy yards.

The loft pigeons had access to the porch, where I put my sandals when I come in.

source

So she's spraying the detritus off of her mats into an area that is accessible to the birds. This isn't great, because it has resulted in her feedbags getting moisture damaged. This also isn't great, because it has resulted in one of her birds dying and getting consumed by maggots by falling behind or between them.

6/3/21

Well…

That was fucking horrifying.

I was tidying the porch.

I sweep out from behind the grit container when I refill it.

Normally, I just hold the empty feed bags up and sweep, but there were so many, and after Riddle got trapped behind them in the corner that one time, I’ve been thinking of moving them.

So, after I refilled the grit container, i heave all the bags in the yard and I’m picking them up one by one to stack in the storage building.

Tw. For graphic description of animal death…

I lift one that’s moisture damaged near the bottom of the stack and Jojo’s remains fall from between the bags like a pressed flower from the pages of a book, alive with maggots the ants have just found.

Yeah.

I’m not ok.

I feel pretty sick.

I had to carry him to the fire ant hill we maintain peace with.

source

This is not the way that show and companion aviaries generally work - lofts that lose birds annually are, in my experience, racers who lose them to hawks, or other risks of free-flying birds. But the Ramsey Loft does things differently. Very differently, in some cases, such as feeding their birds on the ground, rather than from feeders -

For large flocks, spreading grit and feed in a line allows the maximum amount of space for the flock to eat shoulder to shoulder, which allows each bird to get what they need without feeling pressure to fight over any.

Eating together is a bonding activity for pigeon flocks, so the less tense that can be made, the less flock aggression you will see in general.

I used to just pour out their measures in a pile.

source

A note here, for those who are not aware: pigeon fancying is a hobby that is very common and most often pursued in the global south, and other areas that are frequently close to or are labelled as third world countries. Pigeon fancying is a hobby that is, in many cases, built around being able to maintain a number of birds for sport, food or companionship, at a low personal cost, while maintaining those birds’ healthiness and happiness.

The majority of fanciers I have spoken to generally just make feeders out of old milk jugs or something similar, because feeding them on the ground is one of the ways you can spread disease rapidly throughout your flock - same as with any other animal, you don't want them eating where they shit. So it is not expensive or difficult to maintain a healthy, clean flock.

But she is not doing so, for whatever reason. She talks about quarantining her birds, but this is her quarantine:

source

It isn’t a surprise that the Ramsey Loft’s pigeons died. It’s a miracle that she hasn’t lost significantly more prior to this, and as someone who’s been into pigeons for over the last ten years, this is not a good set-up for this many birds.

And even if there were less birds, even with the disease aspect of the birds set aside, this isn’t particularly safe - from a human POV of exposing yourself to that much dander, but also for the squabs she is breeding. CW for a wounded squab, but the Ramsey Loft mentions squab injuries at a much higher rate than I’d expect from someone who has had pigeons this long.

At best, this is wildly unhealthy for the birds, and a sign that she was overwhelmed by her work. I do not believe this is the best: given the sheer amounts of squabs that she has bred this year alone, and the previous incidents of animal death in her care, this is just essentially a puppy mill for birds.

And that fucking sucks.

Ramsey DOES hatch control. They get replaced with fake eggs when she has too many birds and has a loft limit of 40.

That sure is crazy considering she still somehow got to 70+ birds while still breeding more. :/ Guess the birds underwent mitosis.

I also cannot stress enough that a 10x10 loft with 40 birds is still overcrowded and impossible to manage properly if you are in very poor physical health. I genuinely think some of you are not grasping how small of an enclosure that is, or what a room full of 40 pigeons looks like. The average guest bedroom in an American home is around 12x14. That is 68 square feet larger than the loft, assuming it truly is at least 10x10. Look around your bedroom. Imagine a single pigeon in that room. Bare in mind a pigeon is a bird that takes up loosely the amount of space as a coconut, give or take a bit depending on breed. Now imagine ten of those lovely coconut sized birds in your bedroom. We can pretend we took out all the furniture you had in there and added perches and anything a bird might need such as nest boxes and bowls of food and water. Those ten little coconuts seem pretty happy, but what if you doubled that? There are now twenty coconut sized birds cooing, flying, pooing, and waddling around. It’s getting a bit crowded in there, you have to be very careful to not accidentally step on any pigeons now since they’re all over.

So what about when you double that again?

Do you honestly think it’s ethical to keep 40 pigeons in a small bedroom? If not, why would it be ethical to keep 40 in an enclosure even smaller than that? Why would it be ethical to ever let the number get up to 70?

[make-c4]

Rules

WARNING!! This blog contains references and the like to the following: blood, death, light drug/alcohol consumption, and Epithet Erased canon typical violence. All of these will be tagged accordingly.

- Bigotry will not be tolerated here. Homophobia/transphpbia, racism, antisemitism, sexism, all of that shit does not fly here. Get the fuck out.

- In a similar vain, PROSHIPPERS FUCK OFF. That shit is disgusting and I will not under any circumstances tolerate that bullshit here.

- DO NOT REBLOG THREADS YOU ARE NOT A PART OF.

- Magic Anons. M!As are well accepted and encouraged! All I ask is that the time limit does not exceed a week just to make things easy on me. If there are any lingering threads after an M!A has ended, they will still be completed so fret not my friends!

- Personals. I do not roleplay with personal blogs, but I understand that tumblr is a bit wonky about sending asks from sideblogs, so please let me know what your rp blog handle is so I can tag you appropriately! My ask box is open to everyone, but lengthy threads are reserved for rp blogs only.

- Ideas and morals are not always a reflection of the mun.

- Reblog the meme from the source. Notifications from rp memes being reblogged from me clogs my inbox, which makes it more difficult to keep track of asks and response. So unless the meme says to reblog from me, please reblog from the source.

- Triggering content will be tagged! I will trigger any content that could be a possible trigger, but please let me know if I miss anything! trigger warning/content warnings will look like this ((tw: [insert here])) ((cw: [insert here]))

- I am fine with shipping as long as it’s been discussed prior. I absolutely adore seeing my muses get into weird antics with possible partners, and if two muses have chemistry I would love to see how their relationship can develop! But I do request you discuss it with me first to make sure the feeling is mutual.

- My activity will vary depending on the day. I have a life outside of roleplay, so I may not get to you right away! Feel free to nudge me if it’s been too long since I last replied. Please wait at least three days before poking at me, though.

- No godmodding. I feel this goes without saying, but just to be safe I’m putting it in.

- Sinday Content. Sinday content is allowed on this blog, but only on Sinday. Asks sent in after will be ignored until the next Sinday. I do not rp Sinday related content with minors.

rules are subject to change

[tmitransitioning]

I’m not gay, I’m a trans woman who likes men, but for some reason this rumor perpetuates trans people too sometimes I think. Why do you think people STILL associate aids being with gay and trans people? I know apparently the cdc has statistics on their website but who gives a fuck. They’re statistics and using them against people further harms people because some people like to associate that with just someone being gay. It’s rediculous, and it’s worse when someone only believes statistics.

cws: death, irl death, mass death, heavy subject matter, hiv/aids -related discrimination

Some of the first isolated cases in the States of what we now call HIV were found in gay men and intravenous drug users. The syndrome we now call AIDS was literally, for a time, called “gay-related immune deficiency”—it was thought to result specifically from gay people having sex. It wasn’t until it spread worldwide, with absolutely massive rates of infection, that the cause started to be looked at as anything else.

To be absolutely clear before I go any further: The association is not due to just gay people having been some of the first reported cases. We didn’t bring this on ourselves.

What it is due to is rampant homophobia (and transphobia, and racism, and ableism, and classism, and discrimination against sex workers) that led people to associate such groups with HIV and AIDS. Disease is immensely and universally stigmatized, and it is often in the interests of oppressive classes to characterize those they oppress as “unclean”. Initial public view of HIV/AIDS as being a “gay disease” both prevented positive people from seeking healthcare, which they often wouldn’t even have access to if they had sought it, and made the medical community unwilling to address its spread. In the States specifically, it also made the government unwilling to address it, particularly while Reagan was in office—his press speaker at one point referred to it jokingly as the “gay plague”, dismissing any concern. His administration’s lack of action, fuelled by homo- and transphobia, was violence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

Those attitudes don’t disappear quickly. Reagan’s presidency ended less than twenty years ago; there are people alive who lived through and survived it. What we typically think of as the “AIDS epidemic”, during the 80s and 90s, was less than a generation ago. People in medical power then often still are in medical power now, and people who heard about the “gay plague” in the 80s are still alive today. Homophobia, transphobia, all of these axes of oppression that existed then still exist now, and still bar people from seeking medical care.

And: There is still a worldwide pandemic. It never went away; roughly a million people died of AIDS-related illness in 2016, while nearly 40 million people were living with HIV. [source] Treatment exists, and is effective, but a whole lot of people who desperately need it aren’t getting it. A lot of people don’t know that treatment even exists. I agree with you that using statistics to fuel bigotry is bullshit. In this specific case, it’s especially bullshit because HIV is not communicable in the same way that, say, the common cold is. It requires, broadly, contact with bodily fluids to spread. So no shit it tends to be more prevalent in populations that often have bodily fluid contact between individuals and don’t have good healthcare. But people will look at those statistics, and they will use them to confirm their pre-existing ideas that because gay people, and trans people, and sex workers, and IV drug users, and all of these populations—they think oh, these people have higher rates of this, they must be filthy and subhuman because clearly they’re all catching the “gay disease”.

Short answer: Bigotry and oppression, and people looking for “confirmation” of their pre-existing hatred.

I also want to disclaim that I was born after the height of deaths in the States. I was not there; I did not live through this. I have read narratives from people who were, but that is nothing compared to lived experience. If this is a subject you as the reader want to know about, please do not rely on my words as the start and end of your knowledge—seek out accounts written by people who lived through the Reagan administration and the peak of deaths in 1995 and the years after. It’s a period that’s horrifying, and vast, and far more complex than I can do justice to.

- Mod Wolf

[moriganstrongheart]

Constantine – Review

Directed by Francis Lawrence 2005, Warner Bros. Pictures 121 minutes

Rating: ★★★★☆

Good: Cinematography, aesthetic, directing Bad: Unfaithful to source material, racism

I have issue with the expression “guilty pleasure” as it applies to media. It implies that whatever the subject is not worth being appreciated on its own merits and that unironically taking enjoyment out of it should be a source of shame to the person consuming the content. I resent this take on things, as I feel we should be able to enjoy media without the threat of immediate judgement—as long as the work in question isn’t problematic, anyways. Constantine once fell into that wheelhouse for me, as I always felt guilty for enjoying it unironically. At first, I was ashamed of the dark, gritty themes, and then later because of how it isn’t faithful to the source material. But after re-watching it recently, I realized that I truly enjoy this movie—with all its faults—and that I shouldn’t feel guilt for doing so. I should instead fully embrace my appreciation for it.

The biggest shock for me vis-à-vis Constantine was when I was exposed to the character Constantine within DC comics. I believe my first real exposed to the “real” Constantine was in the Injustice comics, but I could be wrong.

Regardless, as I was exposed more and more to more faithful representations of Constantine—including the CW show of the same name— began to realize that the Constantine film hadn’t really done the character justice.

Instead of a wise-cracking, British asshole and chain smoker, Keanu Reeves plays as a cynical, no-nonsense action hero, who also happens to be an asshole and a chain smoker. Don’t get me wrong—he plays this role really well. But I can see where a lot of the criticism came from around the original release of the movie. In some ways, I agree with it. Keanu’s Constantine isn’t nearly as interesting as I think Francis Lawrence was hoping, though I think I can meet him halfway since the character was well executed. I just think it would have been better if the movie had not been called Constantine, and had instead had its own identity to lean on.

And I truly believe this movie could have stood on its own two legs. Nothing in it is necessarily relies established lore and mythos from the comics. Characters could have been renamed and the plot re-structured, or maybe even changed entirely since the movie was based on various, distinct Constantine stories from the comics. Because at the end of the day, what made this movie so great for me and why it stuck so long in my mind is the cinematography and its overall aesthetic, and not the story.

From the opening sequences through to the end of the movie, Constantine fully commits to its themes through its visuals. The demons are appropriately horrifying, hell is bleak and oppressing, and every shot is expertly crafted to convey an unnerving sense of unease. The focus is always put on making the audience empathize with the characters, to the point that action sequences pale in comparison to iconic dramatic scenes that stay rent-free in my mind to this day.

Even though it’s easy to empathize with the characters, the casting for Constantine always came off as a bit weird. I’ve already discussed how Keanu plays his role well, but he always feels too much like your typical action hero to me, more akin to his role as Neo in The Matrix than a character unique to this movie. The inclusion of Shia LeBeouf as Chas always makes me smile because...Shia LeBeouf. However, it’s clear that there was more planned for the character, and his inclusion wasn’t really necessary. And while I appreciate how the love interest trope was circumvented, it often seems like Rachel Weisz is phoning it in as Angela.

Constantine’s best characters, though, are its secondary antagonists. Peter Stormare is quite possibly the most interesting portrayal of Lucifer I’ve ever seen—made all the better by the fact that Stormare was the one to design his own costume (source). Tilda Swinton also does a great job as Gabriel, really selling the archangel spurned by God character. Many of the dramatic scenes burned into my memory centre around these two characters.

Perhaps the only major issue with Constantine beyond its deviation from the source material is its underlying racism. People of colour are prevalent from the opening shots to the final confrontation, but are almost universally regulated to non-speaking tertiary roles, or are clear-cut stereotypes. The Latino man who finds the Spear in the introduction and Papa Midnite as a character are the starkest examples of these. The fact that most of the cast is white is problematic, and there were definitely chances to include a more diverse cast.

As I take the time to watch old favourites like this, I’m constantly amazed by the lasting impact they have had on me—even years later. More than nostalgia, my appreciation for movies I grew up with lasts because of what made them great in the first place. For Constantine, I will always love its cinematography and general aesthetic, even if parts of it haven’t aged well. I’d go so far as to say that the way Lawrence directed this movie stands as one of my major inspirations for my own creative endeavours. I may prefer the “authentic” Constantine comics character over the one present in this film, but the movie Constantine will always hold a special place in my heart.

Movie Wikipedia Page

[tauremornalome]

Edna St Vincent Millay 😏

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Do you have a favorite poem or one you can recite?

I can recite a whooole bunch of poems (learning poems by heart, favourite passtime of me ages 12-16), including at least 10 by my boi Juliusz Słowacki, loads of Tolkien’s poems from Polish translation of LotR (some of my favourite bits of LotR are here), and, like, every poem that was turned into SDM song. Among my favourite poems at the moment I would list:

WH Auden, If I could tell you

Juliusz Słowacki, Rzym (no English translation available afaik)

Richard Siken, Little Beast and Snow And Dirty Rain (because I am an useless Siken queer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Jerome Rothenberg, Autobiography 1997: The First One Hundred (aka the best source of fanfic titles, lol)

Bruno Jasieński, Trupy z kawiorem (HORNY CRIMES, also no English transl, cw for early-20th-century-typical lowkey racism :/)

that one poem circulating around tumblr about a two headed animal (EDIT Laura Gilpin, Two-Headed Calf)

and today is a very Bogdan Loebl day, so I’ve been listening to the whole of Maszeruj z chamem SDM album on repeat. 

Thank you!

poets asks meme

[aroacechirrut]

Shout out to cishet inclusionist tumblr reblogging from someone who calls BLM a terrorist group!

The “Black lives matter is a terrorist group” post. KKK and Neo-nazi tw. CW for racism as well, obviously.

@justaphobethings reblogged a post of theirs (rape/stalking/ableism/gore tw). Which doesn’t pair well with her previous joking in the midst of a dialogue about the anti-latinx/black and homophobic Pulse shooting.

@a-spec-space reblogged the same post.

Hey, here’s @simply-aro-and-ace-stories supporting the post.

Famous TERF @uninucleus did too! They straight up celebrated Pulse, so that’s great.

Hey @danni-rants, what’s this? Oh.

It should be noted @Feministingforchange liked it, which you can see on any of the archived posts.

The post they reblogged is literally tagged “sjw bigots” and “i hate sjws” so this should not be surprising for them, since most of them reblogged directly from the source. Just for a shocking rape story.

Rape isn’t a token to throw around. If it were, y’all would hear a lot more about how when a lot of us came into the discourse, the big topic was how an ace blogger had posted audio of herself raping her girlfriend to “prove” it was consensual and how aces couldn’t rape. So, like?

MAYBE if you’re going to talk about how evil exclusionists reblog from bad people, be a bit introspective on why supporting @typical-atheist-scumbag is so important. Especially since they pretty much admit from the get go that their post was an attempt to say fuck you to “social justice warriors” and that they don’t explicitly identify as ace. This happened because they rejected someone’s sexual advances, which happens to non-ace people too.

[radthursdays]

#RadThursdays Roundup 07/27/2017

A dream-like, hallucinogenic image of the Trump family morphed into Muppet parts. The image was generated with DeepDream, a piece of software that uses a neural network to find and enhance patterns in images, “dreaming” strange features into existence based on how the network was trained. Source.

Democracy Sure Is Great

Against Bluexit: “The appropriate question to such a proposal isn’t whether or not it’s legal, but rather what it says about the state of American liberalism when prominent proponents start co-opting the anti-poor rhetoric of the Right to beat on their political opponents and declare they’re essentially giving up trying to affect any political change in whole swaths of the country.”

Bafflersplainer: Win the Future: “Mark Pincus is the co-founder of Zynga, your grandmother’s favorite video game publisher. Reid Hoffman is co-founder of LinkedIn, a networking website that’s harder to escape than a Scientology outpost buried underneath a gulag. These tech visionaries decided they’d had enough of business as usual in politics, put their brains together, and created an exciting new group called Win The Future. Its mission is to influence the Democratic party platform and assist the #Resistance. If you’re skeptical of this project, keep these facts in mind: People in tech are smarter than you are; disruption makes everything better; everybody loves winning; the internet is the future; and the group is called Win the Future. Enough said.”

Why Obamacare Repeal Won’t Die: "Liberals and the left like to highlight the 22 million people who will lose health insurance over ten years, and in recent months they especially like to point out that among those who will be deprived of coverage are many Trump supporters in Appalachia, who may now be rethinking their commitment to the GOP. That’s all true, but Republican strategists also know that the overwhelming proportion of those losing health insurance, especially among Medicaid recipients, are low-income minority people who are either Democratic voters anyway or are simply unlikely to vote. And while reporters and academics like to highlight the white working-class folks who will be deprived of Medicaid in Southern Ohio or Eastern Kentucky, the typical low-income Medicaid client is much more likely to be a Latino family living in East L.A. or an African-American family on the South Side of Chicago. Both districts are already solidly Democratic and therefore irrelevant to the political calculus of GOP strategists worried about 2018 or 2020."

An image of the face of a biometric tracking corporation executive, intended to be turned into a mask and worn in public for anonymity. Source.

Technology

You Can Encrypt Your Face: “You can, in fact, encrypt your face, and your bodies. The more people who do it, the better it works. Although putting a mask on in public on a regular basis is impractical, physically anonymizing yourself in public spaces should become commonsense for navigating contentious political events. The New Inquiry has come up with a novel approach to do this. We’ve devised an algorithm that has culled the faces from 130 executives at leading biometric corporations around the world and transformed them into masks for you to print out and wear. Since they’ve chosen to profit by face-snatching the rest of us, we figured that we would resist by doing the same in reverse.”

Developing Dissident Knowledges: Geert Lovink on the Social Media Abyss: “Our relationship with the internet seems to be on its way to becoming something very similar to the later years of the Soviet Union. The Spanish sociologist Cesar Rendueles formulates this concern when questioning the capacities of technology to guarantee a plural and open space: 'the network ideology has generated a diminished social reality', he claims on his essay Sociophobia: Political Change in the Digital Utopia. Lovink shares the 'healthy scepticism' of Rendueles when elaborating what we could call an 'Internet critical theory'. In Social Media Abyss, he inaugurates the post-Snowden era — 'the secular version of God is Dead'— as the beginning of a general disillusionment with the development of the internet: now we can say that the internet 'has become almost everything no one wanted it to be'. But even though we know that everything we do online may be used against us, we still click, share and rate whatever appears on our screen. Can we look at the future with optimism? Or are we too alienated, too precarized, too desocialized (despite being constantly 'connected') to design alternatives? In the words of Lovink, 'what is citizen empowerment in the age of driver-less cars'?”

Yi-Fei Chen with her 2016 graduation design project, "Tear Gun". She wears the tear gun, a device with a silicon cup balanced under the eye which collects tears that flow into a brass gun. The tears are frozen using a nitrogen cartridge at the front of the gun, and can then be fired at will. Source.

Bodies

Larry Clark’s Teenage Lust, and My Own: “For the first time, I forced myself to pay attention to the boy in the photo. Though the image is black and white, the boy comes across as tan, with sandy hair. His chest is hairless and strong, with ropey muscles rippling over his stomach. Turned toward the girl, his face is hidden from the viewer. We can’t see what it is he’s feeling. The boy’s not performing for us; he doesn’t have to. Without seeing his face, we can believe his feelings are less messy than hers.”

The Tangled World of Bodies: "Daaya Kukafka begins her debut novel, Girl in Snow, by asking her readers to look at a dead female body. Despite how it sounds, it’s actually common, our societal default, to view a female primarily as a physical object, to neglect her humanness and see instead 'her shoulder blades and how they framed her naked spine, like a pair of static lungs,' as one of the novel’s narrators says of the fifteen-year-old Lucinda Hayes. Kukafka attempts to subvert preconceptions, principally of what is expected of the thriller genre, but succeeds more pointedly in destabilizing the biases toward illegal immigration, mental illness, law enforcement, and presentations of sexuality sewn into our country’s fabric."

Waiting on a Bright Moon: "The body arrives during the second refrain. It slaps on the receiving dial with the wet sound of rendered flesh, and the processing officer, a young woman fresh from the originworld, screams."

Graffiti on the side of a house depicts a person sullenly reaching up to clean a window with a squeegee. The window is covered with stars and planets, as if reflecting a night sky. Darkness is left in the wake of the squeegee, erasing the image of the night sky. By graffiti artist muretz. Source.

Issues

What happened when Walmart left: "In West Virginia, the people of McDowell County can’t get jobs, and recently lost their biggest employer – the local Walmart store. They describe the devastating loss of jobs, community and access to fresh food."

From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate: "In just one year, the alt right has gone from relative obscurity to being one of the United States' most visible extremist movements. This stratospheric rise is due in large part to the rhetoric employed during the 2016 presidential campaign, which granted implicit approval to the once-taboo hallmarks of the far right – overt racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, misogyny, and anti-Muslim bigotry. The alt right capitalized on the moment by amplifying those messages while loudly rejecting mainstream conservatism and its followers (often referred to as 'cucks'). You can’t discuss the alt right without mentioning the 'alt lite,' a loosely connected movement of right-wing activists who reject the overtly white supremacist ideology of the alt right, but whose hateful impact is more significant than their 'lite' name suggests. The alt lite embraces misogyny and xenophobia, and abhors 'political correctness' and the left."

An old newspaper headline reads, "Women Anarchists Have Become The Terror of World's Police: Their Daring Crimes Are Said to Have Outstripped the Deeds of Brothers of the Red". Text below it says, "Search for the Woman is Becoming a Safe Rule in Crimes Proceeding From Anarchistic Violence—The Guardians of the World Nearly Always Find a Woman Implicated When a Ruler is Stricken Down—Emotional Women Lose Sense of Fear." Source.

Activism

Revolution in Our Lifetime: Black Cartoonists on Life Under Trump: Comics by Ben Passmore, Shannon Wright, Chris Kindred, Bianca Xunise, Keith Knight, Whit Taylor, and Ronald Wimberly.

[CW: Gore] Know Your Rights: “Strategically, an appeal to human and constitutional rights is appropriate and necessary in the J20 cases. But as reactionary anti-protest repression heightens across the country, we do well to understand the risks and limits of a response framed by a rights discourse, which would only honor the rights of an individual to assemble in a manner deemed “peaceful” by the state.”

When Organizers Are Professionals: “Organizing has become a profession. To rebuild a radical, emancipatory class politics, we have to reckon with that professionalization.”

Direct Action Item

Support Trans People But Not the Military.

A tweet by @urbanfriendden: “Carl Jung coined several archetypes of the subconscious self: the masculine ‘animus’, the feminine ‘anima’, and the gender neutral ‘anime’”. Source.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

[threadbareturnbacks]

The above link is fantastic. @noknowshame​ is amazing for compiling and sharing. It’s really the perfect write up and you should all read it. 

If you read all the above, all the wiki links, and the Republic of Pirates and want more, here’s my list of resources I use for both 18th C. naval and pirate history:

r/askhistorian’s FAQ on pirates and their Pirate Recommended Reading List If you’re unfamiliar, r/askhistorians is one of the best moderated subs on reddit and requires all answers to have primary and secondary academic sources. The questions above include “What was an average day for a pirate like?” and “How did pirates get their ships?”. Amazing resource.  (There is also a two part podcast interview on the Golden Age of Piracy from the askhistorians podcast with two academic historians that have devoted their lives to studying pirates.)

Outside of strict pirate histories, there are some other great sources that tie into Black Sails: Treasure Neverland: Real and Imaginary Pirates - A Jack Rackham special. How pirates became a cultural force and mainstay of storytelling. Well written and covers A General History of Pyrates through PoTC with everything in-between including a whole chapter on Treasure Island. The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates  - A history of early modern econ as explained by pirates and piracy. A really fun read and a surprisingly good introduction to modern economic theory and sociology.  The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy - The show ostensibly takes place just before this era, but it’s probably the best overview of how the British navy in the 18th C. actually functioned.

Gay History & Literature: Essays by Rictor Norton - A very well researched, old school website with loads of primary source information about gay men in 18th c. England. Norton is one of the foremost historians of queer history and the website is a goldmine. Thomas Hamilton would approve.

Three Decks - A fully searchable database for the Age of Sail. Comprehensive to the point of hilarity with 27,109 ships, 44,007 seamen, 1,059 actions/battles to search or browse.

18th Century Notebook - One of the best guides to what actual people were wearing in the 18th C, with loads of links to artworks and extant garments. Organized by men, women, and children and garment type (shoes, buckles, short gowns, shirts etc). Includes links to sewing guides if you want to make your own kits.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (PDF) - Published in 1719, it’s one of the first English language novels and kickstarted interest in seafaring adventures. Still extremely readable and a great intro to early 18th C primary source writing. Gives a good sense of how people spoke/what their internal monolog sounded like at the time. A primary influence for Stevenson’s Treasure Island. (cw: period typical racism/slavery)

Aubrey–Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian or the film Master & Commander - They are set around 1800 but the dialogue and detail is about as accurate as you can get in historic fiction, great if you want to live and breathe naval terminology. Steinberg cites the film as his inspiration for Black Sails and he borrowed quite a few scenes and dynamics whole cloth.

I hope this helps and isn’t too obnoxiously long or pedantic. I have no chill when it comes to my interests and I’ve spent the last 4 years or so immersed in 18th C history and it’s fun to see it come back into the fore.

hi! as a black sails veteran you probably have some posts / link compilations on the general history of the golden age of piracy? ofmd is great bc it just gives us permission to Not Care about historical accuracy, but as a nerd i think i'd appreciate some reading material for inspiration

This is a tad embarrassing, but I actually don't! I don't know hardly anything about historical piracy besides what I've gleaned from various educational posts that have crossed my dash now and again and I don't personally have a compilation of those handy.

I'm sure someone who follows me does tho so @ people with an interest in the Golden Age of Piracy, can anybody help? @noknowshame @'ing you in particular because I know you just did that really cool model UN thing but with historical pirates and so might have some good resources handy!