#the nearly 300 people who contributed

[badassindistress]

A year ago Ariel from Hazariel Atelier asked people to send in scales so she could make the Thierry Mugler Chimera dress. I immediately made some scales and sent them in:

And now the dress is done and it is Showstopping! I've seen the scales I made pop up once or twice and it's just the most wonderful community project. And so shiny!

[myrebelancestorsdiedforme]

Life Spa Resort, under the inspired leadership of African American founders Allen and Melissa Brown, proudly announces the launch of a fundraising campaign to raise $12 million to open the Poconos' first Black-owned hotel spa resort. With a proven track record as successful entrepreneurs holding nearly $2 million in commercial real estate assets since 2021, the Browns are poised to transform the Poconos into a premier destination for health and relaxation.

Embarking on a Groundbreaking Journey

Allen and Melissa are currently in contract and looking to close the acquisition of the resort property by mid-September. Development will commence immediately thereafter, including the installation of state-of-the-art social wellness hydrotherapy pools that can accommodate 200-300 people at a time.

Transforming Wellness in the Poconos

The focus of Life Spa Resort is to establish a hydrotherapy and spa facility that is unparalleled in the region. Hydrotherapy, known for its significant health benefits, will be the cornerstone of their offerings. The resort will cater to up to 200 guests daily, providing treatments that promote relaxation, rejuvenation, and healing in a serene setting.

Support from Early Backers

Life Spa Resort invites early backers to join this transformative project by contributing as little as $10. Backers can gain lifetime memberships and enjoy benefits including spa treatments at discounts of up to 80%. This unique opportunity allows individuals to be part of a pioneering wellness community from the ground up. Moreover, lifetime early backers will be able to use their benefits at any and all locations that Life Spa Resort opens in the future, ensuring enduring value across a growing network of wellness destinations.

Investor Opportunity

Accredited investors are sought for this venture under Regulation D, Rule 506(c), which allows public solicitation of a private offering to those who meet the SEC's criteria for accreditation. The Private Placement Memorandum, available for detailed review on Life Spa Resort's website, presents a compelling investment opportunity. Investors can expect projected returns of 12-15% annually, emphasizing the robust financial model and growth potential of Life Spa Resort. The Memorandum includes clear investment terms and extensive plans for facilities such as hydrotherapy pools, specialized sauna rooms, and a comprehensive suite of wellness services.

About the Owners

Allen and Melissa Brown have been pivotal figures in the hospitality and real estate sectors since 2021, managing multiple successful properties and building a strong financial foundation. Their commitment to creating a legacy of health, relaxation, and financial prosperity through innovative projects like Life Spa Resort is poised to redefine industry standards. They have also maintained Airbnb Super-host status for three years, further highlighting their commitment to excellence in hospitality and guest services. Visit LifeSpaResort.com for more information.

Also, be sure to follow the resort on Facebook and Instagram.

[hearthfire-heartfire]

a brief history of forced assimilation and language loss in japanese american (nikkei) comumunities

[image description: the words "a brief history of forced assimilation and language loss, reflections from kintsugi 2024" appear over a composited photo of a japanese american man with children all wearing their camp ID tags and children with their hands over their hearts as if reciting the pledge of allegiance. the background is the camp barracks with an american flag flying in front.)

kintsugi 2024 was a conference for nikkei folks to talk about generational trauma and repair. denshō, the organization that archives our history related to the ww2 incarceration, released this series of infographics on their instagram page (shared with permission).

[image description: text reads, "in the early 20th century, a wave of nationalistic, anti-japanese sentiment began to rise in response to growing japanese american communities in hawai'i and the US. news articles and publications inflamed anti-japanese racism and created widespread stereotypes of japanese people as 'treacherous' and 'unassimilable' aliens.

as racism and discrimination toward issei and nisei increased, from legal policies like immigration bans to physical forms of violence, japanese families felt the pressure to assimilate and become american by shedding their culture and their ancestral language."

a news clipping from the seattle daily times april 24, 1900 is included with the headline "the japanese tidal wave." all text appears over a posed group photo of nikkei people from the turn of the 20th century. end ID]

"issei" means first generation, the original immigrants, and "nisei" is the second generation.

[image description: text reads, "as issei established japanese communities in hawai'i and the mainland US, many nisei children began to attend japanese language schools. by 1920, there over 163 japanese language schools in hawai'i alone, educating nearly 20,000 students."

the text is above a photo of an early 20th century class of the seattle japanese language school, elementary school-aged children smiling and holding up hoops and jump ropes. end ID]

[image description: text reads, "however, japanese language schools soon became embroiled in controversy as they became associated with labor movements, issues of loyalty and national allegiance, and growing local and national anti-japanese sentiment.

as a result, bills were passed in both hawai'i and the mainland US to restrict the operation of language schools. eventually, japanese language school teachers and principals would be among the first to be apprehended and incarcerated during world war 2, and the war would officially lead to the closure of all remaining schools."

text is superimposed over a photo of japanese americans of various ages in 1920's western wear as well as traditional japanese garb. end ID]

[image description: text reads, "the loss of culture and language continued through ww2 incarceration, especially among the younger generations. a key site of forced assimilation and cultural erasure included the camps' WRA-run schools.

these schools enforced american customs and practices, such as mandatory recitation of the pledge of allegiance, and students were prohibited from speaking japanese or learning about japanese history and culture. these WRA-run schools thus contributed to the state's 'americanization' efforts to turn japanese americans into loyal citizens who could eventually be reintegrated into society after the war."

the text appears below a photo depicting incarcerated nikkei children in 18th century colonial american costume holding up a recreation of the original 13-star betsy ross flag. end ID]

WRA is the acronym for the war relocation authority which oversaw the forced removal of nikkei people from so-called 'military exclusion zones,' aka anywhere within 300 miles of the western coast of the US.

[image description: text reads, "while the removal and imprisonment of japanese americans offered the state an immediate solution the the 'japanese problem' at the beginning of the war, the incarceration gave the government a unique opportunity to refashion the incarcerees into a 'model minority' via state-engineered assimilation programs.

the WRA and state officials therefore began to develop and push what they called 'resettlement' - an initiative for moving 'loyal' issei and nisei from camps into mainstream american societies."

the text appears to the left of a photo of a four person family. the parents wear smiles and hold a toddler in each of their arms while an american flag flies above them in the background. end ID]

[image description: text reads, "WRA leadership believed that dispersing japanese americans and integrating them into white mainstream society would prevent them from becoming dependent on the government for social and economic welfare.

in order to garner support for their vision of 'resettlement,' the WRA distributed highly staged photos among the camp incarcerees, depicting japanese americans living as happy american citizens outside of camp. although many incarcerees remained skeptical, they would eventually be given no choice but to leave camp and start life anew once again."

the text is superimposed over a photo of two people in white garb shaking hands with someone through a train window. two WRA propoganda photos to the left of the text show a japanese american couple at home, the wife sitting on arm of the husband's easy chair while he reads a newspaper and smokes a pipe, and a japanese american child in the middle of a football huddle with eight other children, all of whom are white. end ID]

many nikkei families were terrified to leave camp following the war knowing that americans saw them as the enemy. the people who were lucky enough to return to the communities they had lived in before the evacuation found anti-japanese signs on their neighbors houses and vandalization of any property that remained to them. my great-grandfather's farmhouse was burned down, confirmed arson. i can't imagine going back there and wondering which of your neighbors did it.

[image description: text reads, "after leaving camp, japanese americans would continue to face immense pressure to assimilate - much of it from WRA leaders and officials, who repeatedly emphasized that they should 'avoid segregation at all costs,' avoid speaking japanese and engaging in japanese cultural activities, and join white churches, clubs, and professional associations whenever possible.

the pressure for japanese americans to become fully american and to leave behind japanese language and culture thus started before the war and continued long after."

the text is superimposed over an image of nikkei people in 1940's western dress boarding a train. end ID]

[image description: text reads, "despite this long hisory of racial discrimination, cultural oppression, and forced assimilation, the past few decades have witnessed a rise of japanese americans seeking to reclaim their culture, language, and history:

-empowering survivors and descendants to tell their stories in oral histories.

-preserving and sharing family history through resources like the denshō digital repository, names registry, denshō encyclopedia, and sites of shame.

-retrieving koseki (family registers), the most important genealogical documents for tracing your ancestry in japan

-community healing and repair led by organizations like tsuru for solidarity and the japanese bilingual bicultural program."

text is superimposed over an image of nikkei protestors in the 1980's campaigning for the redress movement, a national coalition of survivors and descendants of the incarceration camps. end ID]

these are some of the specifics related to nikkei assimilation, but it's important to note that this happens to varying degrees to all ethnicities under the american colonial project.

[m3t4l-cru5h3r]

Hello dear friends!

❤🤍💚🖤🇵🇸🇵🇸

All the positive words cannot express how generous you are, especially in sharing my posts to inform other donors about the people of Gaza who are still suffering from the terrible conditions caused by the unjust war on Gaza!

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the support you are giving to help Palestinian families stay safe and alive. ✌✌

✌🖤💚🤍❤🇵🇸🇵🇸

We collect such donations to provide the minimum basic needs of life and help find safety and peace for young children who do not deserve to live in such horrific situations. Thanks to your contribution, my family is slowly approaching 1/2 of the way to reach the goal. Every form of your help makes a difference to the free people who have been struggling and paying so much for almost 300 hard days.

✌✌✌🖤💚🤍❤🇵🇸🇵🇸

Please continue to support the most just cause in the world either by donating directly or by sharing the link to let others know. Don't hesitate to help people in difficult and miserable times until the dark days are over.

https://gofund.me/e7c7528a

They're nearly 40% away from their goal (7/28/24)! Please donate, share, and boost! Thank you so much.

see other vetted fundraisers on my blog here!

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I am absolutely stuck on the dynamic between Brighid, Arthur, Alfred, and Jack rn. They're both Arthur's sons, but Jack was hers to raise first and she contributed to Alfred's upbringing too, and they may as well be hers with all the people they're getting from her, and that's happening because of Arthur's policies. And Arthur, for his part, parents them based on vague memories of his mother - but you've said a lot of those are actually Brighid.

Point of all that being, would you mind expanding on the early part of Arthur and Brighid's relationship, before he became a colonizing shithead? What are these memories with her that he's attributing to their mother? How did that relationship influence his parenting (both the things that he's aware were Brighid and the things that he thinks were mum but were actually Brighid?)

Okay so just to preface this so no one starts reading this like they do my more modern things where I can usually have a basis in fairly accepted and confirmable fact, we’re going so far back that not only is this not chronologically accurate, its only archaeologically plausible. This is the literary version of saying, "it's for ceremonial purposes” on the label of an artefact anyone with courage would call a prehistoric bong. There’s a big trend for “History of X in 100 Objects” right now. In my personal collection is a 'History of Ireland in 100 objects.' I’m not saying this is accurate or realistic. However, it is based on historical themes that lend themselves to what is ultimately a historical fantasy as plausible as I can write it. That said, let's crack this can of fuckery.

So, to start out, this is all pre-1066, which is when, after the Norman invasions of England, Wales, and and Southern Scotland, the history of the British in Ireland begins. Before that, we’re talking about a world where Irish raiders are a menace on the Welsh coast, and the Dál Riada is the result of an Irish migration, where the peoples on the Irish Coast brought Gaelic culture and eventually merged with and overtook the Pictish culture already occupying the area. The balance of power is very different in this world. This is not the 18th and 19th century when Brighid is firmly under the heel of a British jackboot and even when the British government was willing to concede slightly on empire, the British army nearly revolted when it was even considered to maybe, perhaps, rein in unionist violence in nineteen-fourteen just months shy of WW1. Winston Churchill was also behind that, in case you need more reasons why he's an allmighty cunt.

I give them all Celtic roots. Brighid is probably 300-500 years older than Alasdair, and then political solidification in Wales brought Rhys along and then Arthur as the reorganization of Celtic Britons in Roman Britain. This might be a hot take, but while the Anglo-Saxon ‘invasion’ in the 400s-500s brought Germanic rule and language to England, the Cumbrians and other Celts were not wiped out. Mostly it's a cultural shift. So he’s born as much a Celt as his siblings and experiences dramatic changes earlier in his life than they do. However, if you get to the root of English culture under all of the bullshit of empire and all the German royalty who built up their legitimacy by reviving Anglo-Saxon memory, history has more Celtic elements than someone might think.

In Northern England, Southern Scotland, Eastern Ireland, and the maritime fringes of Wales, there was an Iron Age tribe by the name of the Brigantes, whose name was taken from the northern goddess Brigantia, which means either ‘the exalted’ or ‘highlanders.’ Either way works for me because it is the root word of Brighid’s name, the Welsh word for prestige, honour, dignity and power, all things connected to fire, power and elevation. As all modern knowledge of her comes from 8 inscriptions and some statuary material, and her name is so goddamn appropriate, I’m running with it. It’s so close to Brittania. According to Strabo, writing about a now-lost account of a Greek sailor and explorer Pytheas, it comes from a feminine name likely from the Celts itself.

In the tradition of Catholic patron saints of specific places, Brigantia seems to have been a goddess associated with lakes, rivers, and coastlines. Saint Brighid, from the same name base, is the patron saint of Ireland, bastard children, babies, children, midwives, sailors and poets. Me, hitting a bong in 2021; yeah, that sounds like mother and daughter to me. Eirian, whose name is a version of the Welsh name for King Arthur’s mother because I’m ✨original✨ ruled her own kingdom directly. She was a queen regnant in a culture that saw that crop up often. She was a product of the Iron Age, a warrior culture where swords and a hierarchy of militancy ruled society. Brighid was her firstborn child, and very much her mother’s daughter, sharing that long, beautiful hibernian gold (think rose gold) hair down to her waist. She was tall and gorgeous, with a head for politics as well as martial talent, but Eirian was as much a goddess of the hearth as the sea and war; she still took her tributes in blood, and treasure. She ruled directly with iron and faith.

Brighid, however, while just as capable of that, had a personality that found early Christianity very appealing. It’s hard for us to imagine now, but 1,500-2,000 years ago, Christianity was, in many ways, a much gentler religion than some flavours of what we now call paganism. And while just as capable at every aspect of ruling as her mother, I do think Brighid has aspects to her personality that were kinder, a bit softer. She was an artist in the scriptoriums, a weaver, all these things in her golden age. And she was grown, or near it, by the time Arthur came along. And the gentlest things he remembers about his mother are usually Brighid. An image of a woman weaving, red hair pouring down her back as her fingers fly over the shuttle and her feet work the treadles. That is Brighid. Another of a woman’s elegant and quick fingers on the spindle, fitting the handle into a clumsy child’s hands, laughing when he gets frustrated. Also Brighid. Picking him up and giving him a raspberry even when he kicks to be let down because he wants to run everywhere, is also Brighid. Teaching him to put his knife into the kidney because he’s young, and that's the highest he can reach? That’s his mother. The two images, his powerful mother and his bright sister swirl together when Arthur gets into a strange mood.

He'll yammer away in Cumbrian and hum the tune of the songs who's words he cant remember. When she died in the 5th or 6th century, they scattered as their various regions expanded and solidified linguistically as Common Bythronic became Welsh, Gaelic, and Cumbrian (Scotland’s native Celtic language is actually extinct, replaced by Irish Gaelic in late antiquity.) England imploded under the pressure of the Germanic migrations, so I picture Arthur kind of wandering through his numerous kingdoms most of the year. Brighid may have, too. It was common for high-status people to go on progress and stay with the nobility from time to time in various European societies. However, I can also see her with her own mini-kingdom inside the Gaelic system of ranking kings, over kings and high kings. Arthur would usually spend the winter with one of his siblings. Usually Rhys, but he would have been welcome with Brighid for a long time, even as the wee cuckoo, half-German bastard that he was. He may have even lived with her for long periods. But once, she was power, and once she loved him and once he wasn't the cause of all the horror of her years. It was a different world before the Vikings came.

[pinksilvace]

Generative AI can most capably produce 2D images that managers in cost-squeezed studios might consider “good enough,” a term AI-watching creative workers now use as shorthand for the kind of AI output that’s not a threat to replacing great art, but is a threat to their livelihoods. Some clients care more about cost than quality, after all. Tasks like 3D animation and programming are, for now at least, much harder to automate in full. Games have, to varying degrees, used automation for years. They rely heavily on “AI” programs that control enemies, environments, and nonplayer characters. That’s not what people are talking about when they discuss AI now. In 2024, they’re typically talking about generative AI produced by large language models (LLMs), and the related systems that have been unleashed by the latest boom. A recent report from the consulting firm CVL Economics, commissioned by entertainment industry trade groups, found the gaming industry already relegated tasks to generative AI more than its peers in TV, film, or music. According to its survey of 300 CEOs, executives, and managers, nearly 90 percent of video game companies had already implemented generative AI programs. Gaming, CVL found, “relies heavily, more so than the other entertainment industries, on GenAI to carry out tasks like generating storyboards, character designs, renders, and animations. In fact, by some estimates GenAI may contribute to more than half of the game development process in the next five to 10 years.”

Support indie developers and studios who value their employees. Game developers are paid while they are developing games; once a game is released, all profits go to the studios, who often lay off swaths of employees hired for only specific projects. Boycotting games affects companies and executives, first and foremost, and NOT devs. They'll pay attention to where the money goes.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Just because you don’t hear about something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Because tragically, too often, boys and men suffer in darkness.

There is perhaps no better example of this than the horrific actions of Boko Haram, and the countless boys and men they have taken, without trace, and to very little outrage.

For it is not just the education of women and girls that the group are implacably against, Boko Haram are against all Western education, for all people, including men and boys.

For years they demonstrated this through enacting unspeakable war crimes onto innocent Nigerian men and boys, often releasing women and girls, and for years they were ignored by a disinterested world.

Boys disappeared. Men were killed. Nobody said anything.

And certainly nobody especially important.

Then things changed in April 2014, when nearly 300 Nigerian girls were taken, and the world woke up to what was going on.

Celebrities marched the red carpets, political leaders spoke up, Michelle Obama fought for justice, god damn, we had China and America working together for once.

#bringbackourgirls rang out, as it should, and the much awaited outrage and long overdue horror finally took flight.

Most of the girls were saved, and the world went about its business as usual…

The following three years saw not 300 boys taken, or 500… but 10,000, and as before, silence reined supreme.

So who will speak for these forgotten boys?

Who will bring back all Nigeria’s children?

~

Study: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/20829/4320

Patterns in Making Victims’ Gender Visible or Invisible in News Media Reporting of Boko Haram’s Massacres and Kidnappings

Boko Haram, a terrorist group based in Nigeria, has systematically conducted gender- based mass kidnappings and killings throughout its history, and these gendered crimes have included both male and female victims. This research examined newspaper articles on Boko Haram’s gendered crimes reported from July 2013 to February 2021, with a focus on the relative visibility of the gender of the victims. The genders of male and female abductees were clearly identified; however, the gender of male massacre victims was relatively invisible irrespective of whether they were men or boys. A failure to report the gendered nature of the massacres may contribute to lower awareness and, thus, reduced security resourcing needed to address such severe human rights violations.

--

The name Boko Haram can be loosely translated as “Western education is sin” (Sergie & Johnson, 2014, para. 4). The group has strongly advocated radical social and educational reforms throughout Nigeria (Bello, 2021), aiming at eliminating all Western influences and replacing Western education and standards with “undiluted” Islamic laws and procedures that are identical to Sharia. Boko Haram might have deemed offensive any consideration of improving women’s empowerment through education instead of seeing it as a key issue of human rights and development. Thus, in April 2014, the group gained international notice and notoriety for the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls and the subsequent #BringBackOurGirls campaign promoted by the then First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. The crime garnered international outrage and support to seek the return of the girls, of which at the time of publishing, 90 were still missing (Lewis, 2023). Boko Haram also used female kidnapping and suicide bombers as part of its strategy to increase its media coverage (Zenn & Pearson, 2014).

The gendered nature of Boko Haram’s tactics was used before and after the Chibok kidnapping. Boko Haram has committed gender-selective kidnappings and executions against adults and children throughout much of its history. This insurgent group is believed to have kidnapped up to an estimated 10,000 boys and men to be forcibly conscripted or enslaved (Hinshaw & Parkinson, 2016; Topol, 2017) and kidnapped hundreds of women and girls for pressured conversions to Islam, to marry Boko Haram combatants, to be used for sexual and domestic enslavement, or to be used for tactical strategy (Amnesty International, 2015; Omilusi, 2015; Zenn & Pearson, 2014). While Boko Haram has also engaged in bombings where the killing has been more indiscriminate or done based on religion or engagement in secular education, a significant portion of the abductions and killings were gender based.

Academic literature to date has addressed Boko Haram’s gendered crimes with an almost exclusive focus on women, girls, and children. Barkindo, Gudaku, and Wesley (2013) report on Boko Haram’s violence against Christian women and girls, defining gender-based violence as that conducted by males or male institutions against women and girls, thus definitionally excluding recognition of boys and men as victims. Pereira (2018) and Zenn and Pearson (2014) directed their attention to female victims of Boko Haram’s violence and briefly mentioned that insurgent violence is also directed toward men and boys. Pogoson and Saleh (2019) focused on female vulnerability to violence in Nigeria and argued that Nigeria’s security forces needed to prioritize the protection of women from violence. When discussing Boko Haram’s and al Shabaab’s1 tactics, Matfess (2020) omitted any mention of men and boy victims and compared the violence toward women with violence against civilians, thus comparing female gender identity with noncombatant identities. A report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2015) on Boko Haram mostly excluded recognizing men and boys as victims of this gender-based violence while also acknowledging in other parts that men and boys were specifically targeted to be murdered or kidnapped. Likewise, Boukhars (2020) identified Boko Haram’s gendered crimes as being solely about the kidnappings of women and girls. In an edited book titled Boko Haram and International Law (Iyi & Strydom, 2018), a section containing three chapters focused on the welfare of girls and women in the conflict while the entire book mentioned the word “boys” a total of three times in reference to incidents of their victimization. The Boko Haram academic gendered victim discourse and analysis relates almost exclusively to females and tends to exclude males. To date, there appears little attention and acknowledgment of the civilian male victims in the literature or discourse.

==

"Male privilege" is when nobody noticed or cares that you're dead or missing.

[akumajodraculas]

Hello dear friends!

❤🤍💚🖤🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

All the positive words cannot express how generous you are, especially in sharing my posts to inform other donors about the people of Gaza who are still suffering from the terrible conditions caused by the unjust war on Gaza!

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the support you are giving to help Palestinian families stay safe and alive.

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

We collect such donations to provide the minimum basic needs of life and help find safety and peace for young children who do not deserve to live through such horrific situations.Thanks to your contribution, my family has come almost 1/3 of the way to reach the goal. Every form of your help makes a difference to free people who have been struggling and paying so much for almost 291 hard

days.

✌✌✌🖤💚🤍❤🇵🇸🇵🇸

Please continue to

support the most just cause in the world either by direct donation or by sharing the link to let others know. Don't hesitate to help people in difficult and miserable times until the dark days end.

https://gofund.me/e7c7528a

help mohammed and his 5 children rebuild and sustain their life in gaza!

mohammed ayyad has reached €12,133 out of his €35,000 goal to restore his family's life in gaza. he needs as much support as he can get— a little can go a long way!

for nearly 300 days, mohammed and his children have been surrounded by terror and suffered intense tragedies. due to the ongoing genocide in gaza, he's lost his home, his job, their access to education, and his mother from the lack of medical assistance.

if you're like me and unable to donate, please do as much as you can to share his gofundme and spread the word via reposting + sharing. no one deserves to live in fear, and the people of palestine deserve freedom and peace. do not turn a blind eye to genocide. from the river to the sea 🍉❤️🖤🤍💚

[lawlznet]

State of the Meme 2023

Content Warnings: Depression, Death, SH, Hatred, a lot of self deprecation What follows is an explanation and also rant about why I haven’t been online for this entire month. If you’d just like to skip down to what I’m planning to do in 2024, scroll all the way down to where the line break is.

---

Hey everyone, Lawler here. This is the “State of the Meme” for 2023 and for the purposes of this post, I will be speaking out of character; as myself, not the vtuber.

This has not been a good year for me and it is with bated breath that I look forward to the next one. As some of you may be aware, my father fell ill in late September, suffering cardiac arrest and other diagnoses besides. His chances of survival, much less recovery, were slim given his age and the extent of his complications, but in a series of miracles that I hope to not take for granted for the remainder of his, and my, natural life, he recovered enough to be transferred to a nursing home, and then back to our home. Few of his complications remain and we optimistically foresee him returning to his “pre-accident” state sometime halfway next year. In the days since he returned, around the week of my birthday in early December, he has already recovered enough to move around the house on his own- to feed himself (via a tube connected to his stomach), to prepare his own medications, and to slowly retake ownership of household duties that had fallen to me in the months passed- paperwork and such. Prior to this blog post, it was nearly impossible for me to find time away from assisting him; even our previously late evening streams or early morning and afternoon were not a sure bet, and in fact I had to cancel my participation in a stream on my birthday for this reason.

It is with cautious optimism that things may stabilize enough in my household, to where I could possibly return to vtubing with the regularity I afforded before.

But before that can happen, I have a number of things to talk about first.

I feel like I’ve walked with death all the course of my life, and that does not just include attending one too many funerals for family members, both young and old, or that of friends and acquaintances whom either had theirs taken, or had taken their own. I generally treat the concept as the great unifier of all people, regardless of race, creed, sexuality, or any other descriptor we may use to divide ourselves from one another. It is the one great certainty and on some level, I like to think that I give the concept more weight than most.

Then I find myself spending hours doomscrolling, consuming thread after thread of outrage over strangers I had never met, and only learned hours before. A-drop-in-a-bucket hot celebrity name does something immensely stupid, either intentionally or unintentionally, and I join the lamentation that someone with so much apparent wealth and status can afford to be so flippant. Sometimes I’ll even repost OP or bits and pieces of the thread, telling myself that these individual statements, crammed into 280 or 300 characters, are somehow so poignant so as to redeem the discussion; and that by not mentioning their names, I am somehow not adding to the problem.

The problem of using my platform to further magnify people who we spend a whole lot of words discussing as “evil...” and for what?

Is it fun? Do I feel better about myself? Does anyone, besides the subject, benefit from my “contribution?”

No.

I was depressed before I burned those hours away. My employment is shaky and in a side universe I might have been laid off. I rarely have time for myself anymore that isn’t in the wee hours before getting out of bed or the minutes before falling asleep from exhaustion. And I chose to spend it on reading about how someone I claim I don’t care about did something “horrible,” or at least mildly uncomfortable- about how a country somewhere is doing bad things to people they claim are bad, or “as bad,” or, nowadays, without any sort of justification- and when I’m not doom-consuming, I complain to myself that I don’t have enough time for anything.

That I hate everything.

And well,

I’m not wrong.

But I’ve had this conversation before. I’ve complained about it before, online and on social media and in private discords, and I’ve even, in my continuing hypocrisy, chided others about it. I might try to make myself feel better by telling myself, “oh, well you see...”

“Social media is a ‘necessary part of my job.’”

“You *must* expose yourself to constant, attention grabbing toxicity, and participate in its accumulation- its dissemination, its detached, virtue signaling, people pleasing, mock-outrage generating content creation.”

As opposed... to someone who just, reads reddit, screengrabs accounts with sub two digit readership with obnoxiously bad takes, watches political discourse tiktoks and uncited youtube video essays; yes, you see, surely these people and their misery are entirely *self* inflicted, as opposed to myself, who is “mandatorily” victimized, right?

It’s bullshit.

I hate it.

And so it follows that I must *also* hate myself.

Because I participated in it.

So,

I’m going to try to stop.

Prior to this I never publicized, but internally created some rules for how I interact with this “content” and the people who produce it. Most, I believe, are not intentionally malicious. We are just the successful products of an inherently evil industry; living proof that everything is working exactly as intended.

The only way out is to break the cycle, and in order to do so... I almost always avoid, and if necessary mute, or block, anyone who:

1) Makes generalizing, sweeping statements of an entire group of people,

2) Issues ultimatums on their public facing social media accounts,

3) Anyone who regularly disparages any group of people, especially people whom they are supposed to be a part of- e.g. anyone who regularly harps about “how terrible the vtuber community is,” without the slightest bit of introspection.

For the sake of my own mental stability and to gradually wind down my own involvement in making the internet a worse place, I have decided that beginning in 2024, I will:

1) Reduce or completely eliminate reposting, replying to, or commenting on, any political or negative thread of which I am not directly or indirectly involved, or are not a subject matter expert or hobbyist.

2) Remove all feeds, block or ignore all search terms, and avoid discussing or entertaining any of the above subjects in any capacity outside of private conversations.

3) If necessary, mute, unfollow, or block accounts which only seem to exist to further spread the above content.

As some of you know, I am a cyberpunk influencer and consider myself a “cyberpunk” outside of my online personas. I’ve also recently dipped my toes into the world of Linux and am eager to dive into the worlds of cybsec and opsec beyond browser addons and lists of FOSS programs. I’ve been into this subculture for the majority of my life and I don’t see that changing anytime soon; nor will I censor content that I deem directly or inherently related.

There’s a sheer cliff of difference between merely complaining about celebrities and a toxic online culture and explaining not just how, but *why* it is in your best interest to avoid or defeat these things. Within weeks of a certain major social media website’s fall from grace, a number of user created addons were developed to make said website’s use tolerable (OldTwitter by Dimden as an example); Youtube’s attempts at forcing adblock users to turn off their extensions ironically vastly improved these extensions (uBlockOrigin), and both of these addons, in addition to their “obvious” case use, have further ramifications for the end user than simply complaining about Former Billionaire 9000 and The Evil Company.

For one thing, it’ll save you money in the form of not clicking on malicious advertisements or shelling out a monthly subscription for something you could have gotten for free. But I digress.

These changes are a long time coming, and I apologize to the people whom I long promised I would “avoid” these things... only to return to them when it was convenient, or when I told myself that “this is a special exception,” or when I didn’t care, when I should have. You know who you are.

I’ll most likely fuck up again and find myself having this conversation with myself or in the illusory safety of a chatroom.

But you see... I’m in my mid thirties. And while its true that I have these conversations with myself and others, all the time, and I regularly beat myself up and hate myself for my participating in the “culture,” the truth is... every day, I am more and more grimly reminded, of what little time I have to do things I actually want with my life.

Of how my perception of time seems to be speeding up. Of how little potential time I fear I might have. I don’t just mean the possibility of the Four Horsemen riding and causing such an orgy of misery that will make the last ten years look like Christian cis heteronormative missionary with clothes on and the lights off. I mean the fact that it is atypical for my household to travel to family gatherings in individual vehicles, and that on that evening in September, it was only through sheer chance that we decided to attend my niece’s birthday party individually- that my mother had to be hospitalized for an illness herself, and that I, for reasons I don’t even remember, chose to drive on my own. If this had been any other evening, my father may have had a heart attack while we were all together in the family SUV. On a highway.

And as spooky as that scenario is, every time I get on the road, or even walk down my own street, I think about the possibility of dying. Maybe someone’s in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention while merging onto my lane. Maybe someone’s drunk. Maybe someone needed a twenty and thought they’d rob this weirdo walking around the streets at night and weren’t expecting a fight. Even when you set aside all the political, worldly garbage that trad-media constantly shits down the throat of an unwilling (and sometimes masochistic) boomer populace, you aren’t guaranteed whatever illusion of stability and peace you have right here and now. It could change as easily as the wind blows. And I think I am so tired... of burning so much of my life on shit that has done little for me except to make me upset, when I could have so much, much more to be upset about in the next few minutes.

I walk with death every minute of my life.

If possible, I’d like my last memory to be doing something I actually give a crap about. Or talking with, or about someone that I admire or care about. I don’t think I ever thought those experiences were a waste of time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading this far. And now, for changes that actually apply to my “real” content moving forward... (as in, actually applies to you because last I checked, I’m a vtuber, not a vtweeter or a vskeeter or whatever the shit they call it these days...) I’ve worked in corporate for too long. Even if it’s a long shot or doesn’t make that much money, I really feel like a career in the entertainment and art-space is a better occupation to strive for than pushing paper in the universally and permanently depressing healthcare industry.

I’ll keep streaming video games and fighting games will always be part of that routine, but for reasons I don’t understand, I’ve neglected first person shooters. That changes now. (I hope the kind of Doom y’all like are the video game kinds.)

I am in the process of dipping my toes into youtube short form videos and will be uploading some cringey garbage to just about everywhere except Twitter, because of changes to their terms of service which potentially gives total ownership of my IP to the website. Fuck that.

I miss virtual reality.

Those vroid comics take a ridiculously long time to make but god do I enjoy doing it.

I am greatly reducing my usage of Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon, aside from announcement posts. Twitter is nearly unusable even with a subscription and unlike Bluesky and Mastodon (which... are basically the same thing) are bereft of the tools necessary for curating my experience and Making Me Less Wanting To Kill My Self. So yeah, Fuck Twitter. But what else is new.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I designed this blog the way I did and by the time you read this, I’ve probably reset it to be a lot easier to read on the eyes, at the cost of not looking as “cool.” I’m going to be making fiction writing a priority again. I have some vtuber tabletop campaigns to write up and then to run.

If I don’t successfully finish in time for Christmas and New Year’s, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I don’t have a timeline of when I’ll be able to stream consistently again. Thank you for your patience with me.

Love,

Lawler Hix

[abhishekpandey123]

Elections in India

India’s national election will take place in phases over 44 days. Here’s why it takes so long

Nearly 970 million people or over 10% of the global population are eligible to vote in India’s general elections. The mammoth exercise is the biggest anywhere in the world and will take 44 days before results are announced on June 4.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aiming for a third consecutive term in office. He is set to compete against a diverse yet faltering coalition of opposition parties who are finding it difficult to counter his popularity. The majority of polls forecast a comfortable victory for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, solidifying his position as one of the most prominent and influential leaders in the country.

WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG?

Two primary factors contribute to this situation: the vast expanse of India, the most populous nation globally, and the intricate logistics required to enable each eligible voter to participate in the electoral process.

Over the years, the duration of voting has wavered. It took nearly four months to complete the vote in India’s first elections in 1951-1952, after it gained independence from British rule, and just four days in 1980. In 2019, voting took 39 days, and this year’s election is the second longest.

With 969 million registered voters, the size of India’s electorate is bigger than the combined population of the 27 European Union member states. This includes 18 million first-time voters, and around 197 million who are in their 20s.

The vote to choose 543 lawmakers for the lower house of Parliament takes place over seven phases. India’s 28 states and eight federal territories will vote at different times. Each phase is one day, with the first held on April 19 and the last on June 1.

Some states may complete their voting process within a day, while others might require more time. For instance, Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India with a population of 200 million, equivalent to the size of Brazil, will conduct voting over seven days. This extended duration of the voting process in India's general elections has been criticized by Modi's opponents, who argue that it provides an advantage to the prime minister in terms of campaigning and travel, particularly in states where his party is not as strong.

EVERY VOTE COUNTS

The Election Commission of India is responsible for ensuring that a voting booth is accessible within a 2-kilometer radius of each voter. Chakshu Roy from PRS Legislative Research emphasized the extensive efforts election officials must undertake to enable every voter to cast their ballot. Around 15 million election officials and security personnel will travel across deserts and mountains, utilizing various modes of transportation such as boats, walking, and even horseback riding, to reach all voters.

It can be especially arduous. In 2019, when India last held elections, a team of polling officers trekked over 480 kilometers (300 miles) for four days just so a single voter in a hamlet in the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, could exercise their right.

Officials also traveled to a village tucked away high up in the Himalayas in 2019 to install a booth at 15,256 feet (4,650 meters), the highest polling station anywhere in the world.

This time too, polling stations will be installed in remote places, including one inside a wildlife sanctuary in southern Kerala state and another in a shipping container in western Gujarat state.

TIGHT SECURITY

Security is cited as a significant factor behind the multi-phase elections in India, according to experts. In order to ensure safety, a large number of federal security forces, who typically guard borders, are mobilized and work in conjunction with state police. Their primary responsibilities include preventing violence, escorting electoral officials, and transporting voting machines. Previous elections in India have been marred by deadly clashes between supporters of rival political parties, particularly in West Bengal. However, the presence of heavy security forces has contributed to a decrease in such incidents over the years, resulting in relatively peaceful voting. The geographical diversity of the country, with its rivers, mountains, snow, and jungles, poses challenges for the movements of security forces. Despite these obstacles, the chief election commissioner, Rajiv Kumar, has emphasized their commitment to ensuring a smooth voting process by going the extra mile for the convenience of voters.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc.

The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country’s first Jewish president, too.

Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the left-wing Morena party, which has been led by the country’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Since then, her momentum has only grown — a poll taken by the El Pais newspaper has 47% of voters supporting her, while Gálvez, her closest competitor, notched 30%.

If elected, Sheinbaum would join the ranks of the few Jews outside Israel who have been elected to their country’s highest office, including Janet Jagan of Guyana, Ricardo Maduro of Honduras, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Here is a primer on Sheinbaum and how her Jewishness has become part of the campaign.

She is a respected scientist and political liberal who has beaten back crime.

Born to two science professors in Mexico City, Sheinbaum herself studied physics and became an engineering professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her research focused on, among other things, energy usage in Mexico’s buildings and transportation system. Along with a group of other experts, she contributed to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which would go on to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

As Mexico City’s head of government, Obrador appointed Sheinbaum as his environmental secretary in 2000. She became a close ally and joined his new left-wing Morena party (named after the country’s Catholic patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe) in the early 2010s. In 2015, she was elected mayor of Tlalpan, Mexico City’s largest borough, before becoming mayor of the entire city in 2018. She stepped down as mayor this summer to enter the presidential race.

Like the term-limited Obrador — whose approval rating of over 60% has been one of the highest in the world — Sheinbaum’s platform includes fighting Mexico’s deeply rooted corruption, continuing cash transfers to Mexico’s most vulnerable populations and developing Mexico’s energy sovereignty. But Sheinbaum will likely be more pro-environment than Obrador — while the current president has bolstered Mexico’s oil industry, Sheinbaum has said most of the country’s future “has to be related to renewable energy.”

As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum led the city through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Obrador appeared to minimize the threat of the virus, Sheinbaum advocated for masks and increased testing early on. And in a country plagued by violence, she has reduced her city’s murder rate by nearly half.

But some controversy also brewed during her time as mayor. Despite ​​expanding public transport, there were at least a dozen accidents, some deadly, in the city’s subway system. Critics say she hasn’t done enough to fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure.

Sheinbaum also faced controversy involving infrastructure disaster as head of Tlalpan. In 2017, during an earthquake that killed more than 300 people in total, an elementary school collapsed in Sheinbaum’s district, killing 19 children and six adults. An apartment had been built on top of the school, destabilizing it, and some criticized her for allowing district officials to approve the construction permits. She apologized for what happened, but some parents of the deceased children still hold her accountable.

Her Jewish identity is more political than religious.

Sheinbaum had Ashkenazi grandparents who immigrated from Lithuania in the 1920s and Sephardic grandparents who left Sofia, Bulgaria, in the 1940s to escape the Holocaust. She has said that she celebrated holidays at her grandparents’ houses, but at home, her family life was secular.

Sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018 that Sheinbaum feels connected to the history of Jews in political activism, but not as much so to the religion or its traditions. Like many secular, leftist Jews in Mexico, her parents moved to the south of the city to be closer to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a hotbed of political activism. She told a group of Jewish women voters during her mayoral campaign in 2018 that she was a proud Jewish woman.

She also hasn’t made any public pronouncement about Israel or spoken as a member of a minority, even though Jews make up less than 1% of the capital city’s population. It is not known if she belongs to any synagogue or other Jewish institution.

“In Mexico, most of the [Jewish community] is affiliated to one of the five or six major communities,” said Daniel Fainstein, the dean of Jewish Studies at the Hebraica University in Mexico City. The country is known for being home to multiple tight-knit Orthodox communities, many of whom don’t mingle much. “I don’t think she’s affiliated to any of those communities. … She’s not seen as, let’s say, one of us. … I think that she’s seen as someone from Jewish origins that is developing her work as an academician and then as a politician.”

Sheinbaum’s Jewishness is shaping up as a simmering issue in the race.

Even though Mexicans are generally devout Catholics, according to Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a Mexican sociologist at the University of California San Diego, the country has a strong history of separating religion from politics.

“Mexican politics has actually been quite secular,” he told JTA. “So the religion of the president and the religious practices of the president are never discussed.”

In a break from that unspoken tradition, former President Vicente Fox called Sheinbaum a “Bulgarian Jew” in an apparent attempt to minimize her candidacy. “The only Mexican is Xóchitl,” Fox added, referring to Sheinbaum’s opponent.

Fox later apologized, and Gálvez condemned Fox’s comments. But since announcing her candidacy, in only a few months of official campaigning, Sheinbaum has already released her birth certificate on Twitter — twice — and published campaign ads emphasizing her Mexican identity in the face of attacks about her origins.

Pardo-Guerra said he didn’t think Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity would play a major role when the votes are counted next year. But he said it can be difficult to distinguish “stupidity from antisemitism” in Mexican political discourse.

“What has been said about Claudia Sheinbaum on some occasions is very close to antisemitism,” he said. “Most of it is ignorance, but I wouldn’t say there isn’t some other position out there.”

Tabea Alexa Linhard, a comparative literature professor at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches courses on Mexican and Jewish Diaspora cultures, also said Fox’s tweet had “a little bit of both” antisemitism and ignorance.

“Different forms of antisemitism endure in Mexico, as they do elsewhere,” she wrote in an email. “It is hard not to see echoes of the conspiracy theories involving Barack Obama’s place of birth. It is a political ruse, but in the U.S., this certainly had important consequences, and this kind of dog whistle may also be consequential in Mexico.”

Most Mexican Jews probably won’t vote for her.

The average Mexican may not care about Sheinbaum’s religion, but the average Mexican Jew is probably not voting for her. Like most other Latin American Jewish communities, the majority of Mexico’s Jews lean conservative politically. Sheinbaum’s platform is not radically left-wing when compared to other leftist leaders in Latin America, but Gálvez, who founded two tech firms, may be more appealing to conservative-leaning Jews, many of whom are business owners.

“I think that most [Mexican Jews] will vote for Xochitl Galvez,” said Fainstein. “[Their decision] is not related to the Jewish or non-Jewish origins of the candidates.”

He added that most “upper middle class” people vote against Morena, not just Jews. However, he did mention that “there are other groups of Jews who are active in Morena and support Morena also.”

Linhard also said the Jewish vote will not be dependent on the ethnic background of the candidate.

“Mexico’s Jewish community is very diverse,” she said. “Some will identify with Sheinbaum, others will not. But the vote of Jewish Mexicans will likely depend … on her and her opponent’s platform.”

[jonfarreporter]

Charmian London, a remarkable woman few people really knew.

When taking a walk around the grounds at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen it’s easy to be awestruck by the natural beauty of what was once the famous author’s home. Yet what few people know is that behind London and his vision was his 2nd wife, Charmian Kittredge London.

“She was instrumental not only in ensuring his legacy but also in helping and contributing to his writing,” said poet/historian Iris Jamal Dunkle.

Dunkle’s recent book, ‘Charmian Kittredge London, Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer’ speaks of a woman who was a part of her times and yet ahead of her times.

Dunkle’s work inspired the officials and staff at JLSP to shift the spotlight from exclusively Jack London to highlight Charmian as one of the 20th Century’s most under-appreciated women of significant influence and accomplishment.

As noted when she spoke recently with The Sonoma Valley Sun. “I had never even met a writer until the day I walked into the museum at the House of Happy Walls at Jack London State Historic Park, back in the sixth grade.”

“Suddenly, walking through the exhibits, said Dunkle, I saw how one could spend a life traveling the world and writing about it.”

I fell instantly in love with Jack London and vowed to read everything he had ever written,” said Dunkle.

Dunkle was impressed by London’s insightful writing and his way of capturing the essence of people and perspectives.

Yet it was when Dunkle came upon a collection called, ‘Our Valley of the Moon in poems and pictures,’ which included an iconic photograph of Jack London riding on horseback on Sonoma Mountain. “And to my surprise, beneath it was a clear attribution, said Dunkle. “Charmian London.”

Intrigued, Dunkle had a quest set before her. “When I reached out to several scholars to see if they knew Charmian had been the photographer, each of them gave me the same answer: they had never even thought to ask who had taken this famous photograph!” Exclaimed Dunkle.

In her six-year endeavor of research for the nearly-300 page biography, Dunkle was both surprised and dismayed at what she uncovered.

“From far away, London was an individual genius writer. But up close, in the extensive research I did says Dunkle, the ugly truth, the brushstrokes, that made that illusion so beautiful from afar are fully visible.”

“Each adventure London sought and experienced, said Dunkle, each book he wrote was aided by another force of nature: his second wife, Charmian Kittredge London.”

Charmian Kittredge was unique among the women of her time in that she was college educated. “Not a finishing school or a ladies seminary,” said Dunkle but a progressive college for women, Mills College in Oakland,” added Dunkle.

Despite the fact that Charmian lost her mother when she was little, her father insisted she be educated and have skills. Learning stenography, (shorthand) Charmian worked her way through school in the Mills College administration offices. “She became extremely efficient and invaluable,” said Dunkle.

The most upsetting aspect to Dunkle’s lengthy research was the fact that “Charmian was maligned by London scholars and biographers like Irving Stone who painted Charmian as someone who was an overbearing disruption than a helper,” said Dunkle.

Yet what Dunkle uncovered was a remarkable woman who traveled the world, had a high-paying job. “Charmian worked at the largest shipping firm in San Francisco before she met Jack in 1900 and started dating him in 1902,” said Dunkle.

Illuminating important disregarded if not overlooked facts, Dunkle said. “Charmian began her own writing career in the 1890s publishing non-fiction essays in Sunset magazine and The Overland Monthly.”

“One of my most important discoveries, added Dunkle, however, was that Charmian was not just Jack’s secretary (as had been previously assumed). Charmian helped write several of Jack’s books and acted as his editor beginning with his novel,’The Sea-Wolf.’”

With this revelation, Dunkle became undaunted even when resources at Huntington Library in San Marino, CA was missing important bits and pieces.

Referring to her exhaustive research as “clandestine,”

Dunkle surmised. “After being granted such access, Irving Stone’s betrayal with his unfair biased view in the biography he wrote about Jack London, Charmian became more guarded. Most likely, Charmian burned letters, documents, etc.”

Pointing out how much harm is done when facts are distorted or dismembered, “Charmian more than deserves to be honored,” said Dunkle.

“Charmian refused to adhere to the gender norms of her day,” said Dunkle. “She was an avid horseback rider who thought riding side-saddle absurd.” “Charmian was an equal to Jack, (they were definitely soul-mates) unafraid, athletic and adventurous,” added Dunkle.

Volunteers at Jack London State Historic Park like Mary Oswald are pleased with the new focus on Charmian. “As the old saying goes, behind every great man there’s a woman.”

“I agree,” said Sonoma resident Jude Cameron, who stopped in at the exhibit. “Perhaps in this situation with Jack and Charmian, it was more about a woman beside him as an equal.”

To learn more about the exhibit of Charmian at Jack London State Park in Glen Ellen, visit the JLSP website.

Praised by the Jack London Society, and Sonoma State University’s former chair of the Communications Studies Department, Jonah Raskin said of Dunkle’s work.

“Riveting…this biography sets the record straight as straight as it can be straightened…Despite her flaws, or perhaps because of them, Charmian is indeed the kind of woman whom one would love to have known.”

To learn more about Iris Jamal Dunkle’s biography: ‘Charmian Kittredge London, Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer’ visit her website.

[ausetkmt]

Photo courtesy of “Environmental History in Detroit” University of Michigan

In Detroit, there are two precious historic places that have been lost to us: Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Resembling famous epicenters of African American culture, history, and enterprise like New Orleans’s Bourbon Street and New York’s East Harlem, Black Bottom was a significant stronghold of Detroit’s African American population from the 1920s all the way to the 1960s.

So what exactly was Black Bottom and what happened to it? Black Bottom was an enclave located on Detroit’s near east side, bordered by Gratiot Avenue, Brush Street, Vernor Highway, and the Grand Trunk railroad tracks, with its main commercial strips on both Hastings Street and St. Antoine Street. Although primarily Eastern-European during its early years after World War I, Black Bottom began to become shaped by African Americans who participated in the Great Migration of Blacks escaping persecution in the South for economic opportunities in the North. Fueled by Henry Ford and his newly offered promise of five dollars a day for his workers, Black Bottom became an important destination to African Americans seeking higher wages, which permitted many to reach the middle class for the first time in generations. Because of the strict discriminatory laws that were aimed at keeping neighborhoods in Detroit segregated, Black Bottom became the place where African Americans could feel safe.

Hastings Street in Black Bottom is renowned for being a hub of bustling commerce and social institutions like independently owned businesses and hospitals, since African Americans were not allowed to conduct business at places frequented by their white counterparts or go to designated “white hospitals,” a result of the zoning and licensing laws of the time.Hastings Street once was home to as many as 300 black-owned businesses, a number that is even impressive by today’s standards, let alone for a segregated community.

Paradise Valley also contributed a great deal to the African American community of Detroit, being hailed as an entertainment center with its lively nightclubs and prominent hotels where African American superstars like Jackie Robinson and Duke Ellington went to stay when in town since African Americans were not allowed in most of the city’s hotels, which were reserved for whites only.

Paradise Valley’s music scene is of particular interest, as not many people are aware of the fact that jazz and big bang legends like Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, and Ella Fitzgerald regularly performed in the local bars and clubs in the area. Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, before periods of civil unrest and heightened racial tensions, were tauted nationally as examples of integration between whites and blacks. Many whites would frequent the Paradise Valley entertainment district on their night on the town and would intermingle with African Americans, before soon returning to their neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were both targeted for demolition and renovation in the 1960s, as urban renewal programs were implemented within the city of Detroit. City officials wanted to develop the area and also sought to address the housing concerns of the Black Bottom residents, who often resided in substandard, cramped living conditions without adequate kitchen and lavatory facilities. Peaking at nearly 1.8 million, the city experienced a population boom that created a housing crisis. The 1960s also marks when suburbanization became the norm, and houses started to become abandoned for more affordable and spacious opportunities outside the city’s boundaries. Part of that suburbanization was the building of freeways.

Now I-75 and I-375 occupy what was once Black Bottom and Paradise Valley; drivers in and out of Detroit may or may not have any knowledge of the historic space they pass daily.

[shizukateal]

Hello dear friends! ❤🤍🖤💚

🍉I am Mahmoud Ayyad, a Palestinian from the besieged and destroyed Gaza 😭😭, coming from an extended family of young children, women and elderly people ❤❤ who have been suffering😭😭 for 300 difficult days from an aggressive war.

Our lives are harsh because we lack all the basic necessities of life. Everything has become scarce and unattainable. There is no food, no water, no medicine.

So, I ask you to help me keep my family safe and alive, especially after we had lost all our sources of livelihood.Please do not leave my family to struggle and suffer these difficult days alone. You can support my campaign by donating whatever you can or by sharing my posts to reach others who can help us survive the war to safety and peace. You are helping the lives of many people with your small contribution. Every donation makes a difference in our very difficult lives. But this is a legitimate campaign and has been checked by 90-ghost.

https://gofund.me/31c5cbe3

€10,997/€55K nearly 1/5th of the way there, donations are trickling in slow. Help out if you can.

[yetisidelblog]

Trump is back and he’s bringing out of touch billionaires like Elon Musk along for the ride to push his dangerous United States Postal Service privatization agenda. Their plan? Tear apart the USPS and hand it over to greedy corporations that care only about profits -- not people.

We’ve seen this playbook before. In 2018, Trump’s administration tried to privatize the USPS, and together, we defeated him.

This time, the stakes are even higher.

The USPS is essential to rural communities - including hundreds of tribal nations and millions of Indigenous peoples -- seniors, veterans, small businesses, and millions of families with no other affordable option because their community isn’t considered profitable. Privatization would mean higher costs, reduced or no access for some, and devastating threats to service for those who rely on it the most.

That’s why we’re leading the Save the Post Office Coalition, a group of over 300 organizations committed to protecting this beloved institution. Our coalition includes national groups like the ACLU, NAACP, Public Citizen, and Indivisible, as well as grassroots champions like the National Farmers Union, RuralOrganizing.org, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Robert ,

Trump is back and he’s bringing out of touch billionaires like Elon Musk along for the ride to push his dangerous United States Postal Service privatization agenda. Their plan? Tear apart the USPS and hand it over to greedy corporations that care only about profits -- not people.

We’ve seen this playbook before. In 2018, Trump’s administration tried to privatize the USPS, and together, we defeated him.

This time, the stakes are even higher.

The USPS is essential to rural communities - including hundreds of tribal nations and millions of Indigenous peoples -- seniors, veterans, small businesses, and millions of families with no other affordable option because their community isn’t considered profitable. Privatization would mean higher costs, reduced or no access for some, and devastating threats to service for those who rely on it the most.

That’s why we’re leading the Save the Post Office Coalition, a group of over 300 organizations committed to protecting this beloved institution. Our coalition includes national groups like the ACLU, NAACP, Public Citizen, and Indivisible, as well as grassroots champions like the National Farmers Union, RuralOrganizing.org, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Together, we’ve fought to protect the USPS before, and we’re ready to do it again. Please make a donation right now to protect the USPS from Donald Trump's privatization plan.DONATE

Privatization would be catastrophic for rural Americans, who often have no alternatives to the USPS for affordable mail and package delivery.

For veterans and seniors who depend on the USPS for essential medications. For small businesses that need reliable shipping. And for workers whose jobs and wages would be slashed in favor of corporate profits. The Postal Service has long been a source of good middle class jobs -- the USPS workforce is nearly 30% Black and 45% women.

We can stop Trump’s privatization plan, but only if we act quickly.

Our coalition is gearing up for a massive public campaign to raise awareness, mobilize grassroots action, and pressure Congress to protect the USPS. But we need your help to make it happen.

Chip in $5 or more now to help us stop Trump’s USPS privatization plan.

The USPS is a lifeline for millions of Americans and a cornerstone of our democracy. Together, we can ensure it stays that way.

Ends midnight 12/31!

@upontheshelfreviews

@greenwingspino

@one-time-i-dreamt

@tenaflyviper

@akron-squirrel

@ifihadaworldofmyown

@justice-for-jacob-marley

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@thebigdeepcheatsy

@what-is-my-aesthetic

@ravenlynclemens

@writerofweird

@bogleech

[riddlebanshee]

Hello dear friends ! ❤🤍💚🖤🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

All positive words can't show how generous you are, especially on the side of sharing my posts to let other donors know about the people of Gaza who are still suffering the horrible circumstances resulting from the injust war on Gaza! 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤🤍💚🖤

Thank you from the deepest bottom of my heart for the support you are showing to help Palestinian families stay safe and alive.🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Despite the various colours of sufferings and tortures we are undergoing at the moment, your brave stances and support greatly ease and relieve us . Your loud voices and your heroic acts make a great difference to our Palestinian cause. 🖤💚🤍❤🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

We are fundraising such donations to have the least basic needs of life and to help find safety and peace for the little kids who don't deserve to lead such horrific situations.

Thanks to your contribution, my family is on its halfway to reach the goal. All forms of your help make a difference to free the people who have been struggling and paying much for almost 300 hard days. ✌✌✌🖤💚🤍❤🇵🇸🇵🇸

Please keep supporting the fairest cause of the world either by directly donating or sharing the link to let others know. Don't hesitate to help people in tough and dire times till the black days end.

They're at nearly 90% of the goal!!! Please donate if you can!!!