#place of usa

[mysharona1987]

[thebrilliot]

So, not my state right now but I just spent 6 years there, Utah is banning books left and right. They've decided that they can ban anything "pornographic or indecent" which they've decided applies to many books that talk about LGBTQ+ topics but of course does not apply to any religious texts. They also just passed a law that says that the government cannot and will not do anything for DEI. Now public schools and employees cannot do anything to help excluded or protected minorities (I mean ANY minority - race, socioeconomic background, ability, religion, sexuality, you name it) if anyone can say that help is targeted. They can't even talk about or post educational materials, even if they are about women's history or black history. I don't know if you can see how backwards it is to call Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts exclusive and unfair. Thousands of students in Utah are going to go without help, and it already has such a high rate of suicide among LGBTQ+ teens.

This is what radical Republicans will do if they hold power. They do and will restrict education. They can and will do everything to make a white Christian population comfortable and ignore everyone else.

Please get out and vote this November. Boot them out.

[butdaddyilovehimmm]

Mike may be a puppy, but sometimes Harvey's just a guard dog off his leash.

[frogfacee]

i’ve been seeing some talk about how “this propaganda is so bad” and “they must think everyone’s too stupid to think” and stuff like that, and i just wanna say be careful not too internalize these thoughts so much.

yes, sometimes propaganda is easy to spot. there are things you see and immediately go “what the fuck, who’d believe that” and that’s GOOD. that means you’re noticing tactics, you’re questioning things, you’re practicing critical thinking.

but not all propaganda is so easy to spot. sometimes propaganda really is good, by which i mean skillfully done. convincing, even when you’ve practiced spotting propaganda. and that can be really dangerous!!

so, really what i’m saying is don’t get passive about propaganda. remember that, very often, it isn’t obvious. you need to do some digging, some thinking, and that thinking is WORTH IT. so worth it! you’re gonna find things you didn’t notice at first, and now you can point those things out. you can start dialogue about them.

keep pointing out the propaganda you do see. talk about it. be upset about it. recognize that you can be misled and that there’s no shame in correcting yourself. please keep thinking, analyzing, questioning, discussing, etc etc

remember that phrase “you are not immune to propaganda”? it will always, always ring true.

[maureen2musings]

Wander out West

nev.in.color

[missmisnomer]

Orange County SoCal Miku coming in hot!!

🛹🌴🌮🌅

[hilacopter]

I find it ironic that western leftists demand israelis leave israel because we're all white colonizers in their eyes (regardless of the fact that even if jews really weren't indigenous to the levant, which we are, over half the population is middle eastern anyway), but when we do leave israel for other countries we get hatecrimed. it would be bad enough if we had people telling us "good on you for going back to where you came from" or some shit but no they really just view us as inherently irredeemable and evil no matter where we are. almost feels like they're trying to lure us into being harassed overseas.

[zombilenium]

"Stuck In Time"

Abandoned home in Connecticut

[bsof-maarav]

"[L]ate last month Rutgers required its RAs, whose job is to supervise students living in on-campus housing, to participate in a “bystander intervention” course aimed at training them to identify antisemitism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. Several of the RAs, however, abruptly left the session after a Jewish speaker explained that Hamas’s antisemitism and desire to destroy the world’s only Jewish state precipitated the Oct. 7 massacre, which resulted in the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.

The paper added that the RAs took issue with the program’s citing a definition of antisemitism offered by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). After walking out, they reportedly contacted Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which proceeded to author, on the RAs’ behalf, a series of Instagram posts denouncing the antisemitism trainings as racist and upholding white supremacy.

"The mandated training program organized by the Office of Residence Life requires RAs to learn about DEI, restorative justice, community engagement, and more — all of these are inspired by Indigenous practices meant to unpack systems of white supremacy,” SJP said. “On the contrary, this specific session worked to perpetuate Zionism, racism, and white supremacy.”

SJP’s post included comments from the RAs who involved them in the controversy. One of them, who claimed to be Jewish, said, “I am tired of the word antisemitism being used to talk over genocide, I am tired of antisemitism being inflated.” The RA added, “I fear that when the Nazis and radicals come once again for the Jews that no one will believe us … it will be your fault.”

Another who took issue with the Israeli nationality of one of the course’s presenters said, “One of the facilitators even identified as ‘Israeli’ and made mention of this multiple times. He justified his authority on the topic by citing his 12 plus years spent in ’48 Palestine, going so far as to call ‘Israel’ [sic] a ‘beautiful land.'”

A milieu of extreme anti-Zionism at the school has resulted in at least one death threat against the life of a Jewish student since Oct. 7. In November, a local news outlet reported, freshman Matthew Skorny, 19, called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as an Israeli, saying on the popular social media forum YikYak, “To all the pro-Palestinian ralliers [sic] … Go kill him.”

Similar incidents at Rutgers have occured frequently. In the past few years, the school’s AEPi fraternity house has been vandalized three times. In one incident, in April 2022, on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a caravan of participants from a SJP rally drove there, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting in the direction of fraternity members. Four days later, before Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, the house was egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims.

In March, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched an investigation of Rutgers’ handling of antisemitism, responding to complaints that it has, for years, allowed an open season of hate against Jewish students."

[peacefulandcozy]

Instagram credit: greykins

[archivequinn]

Joseph Quinn for L'Officiel Hommes, photo shoot.

[wanderlustfuldays]

Flamingo Hotel Las Vegas, USA

[heartshapedcaskett]

St. Christopher’s Church - Elizabethtown, NC

[oldnorthcarolina]

Old, abandoned gas station in North Carolina by Carol M. Highsmith

[wingsofhcpe]

actually there's a huge difference between queerbaiting/"Hey guys look how gay these two are haha they're definitely gonna end up together, give us views uwu oh- never mind oops they're going to superhell" and "Hey it's 2004-2012 and there's no way we can get away with having our protags/main couple be two gay men but we really want to show these two are soulmates so we'll do it through subtext and underlying messages and by literally telling you over and over again their relationship is the most stable and important in the entire show, and the ending will imply they lived and died together", and it's insane that some of yall don't see how these two are not the same fucking thing.

[arc-hus]

Southampton House, Hamptons, USA - Timothy Gobold