#think north carolina

[callmewhenyougetthis-a]

@sacredpyre // beckett x alena loosely based on this.

It is a humble offering—a gift that can span from generation to generation, and each time it's crafted, it's somehow filled with more love than before. Peach cobbler. But not just any peach cobbler. It's the Boyer family peach cobbler, famous for the extra bit of sugar the matriarch once put in it all those years ago that could send anybody in a rush.

Beckett remembered how much the other blonde loved it, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to cut the tartness with some creaminess. It was the first and only thing he could think of making for tonight's dinner, which was a celebration of reconnecting for the first time since they were 16. They had been under the same roof for about a week or so now, but with busy schedules, things were hard to plan. The wait was worth it, he thought.

He wasn't much of a cook, so the rest of the meal was provided by one of the southern comfort food restaurants in town, but he hoped setting the peach cobbler in a nice ceramic dish in the middle made up for the presentation of it all.

Beckett brushed his hands together and began untying his apron, flashing a warm smile at Alena. "Ready to eat?" he asked, intentionally not mentioning the peach cobbler, which he knew she'd love and be excited over. (Or, at least he hoped.)

"And don't worry, I got your vanilla ice cream in the fridge."

[threefeline]

Like we literally have a sliver of a chance at getting Blue Georgia and Blue North Carolina in this years election and genuinely it feels like people are just willing to throw that out. Hell, even Texas over the past 20 years has had a BIG shift in voting habits.

The last 20 years in Texas ^^^

Georgia ^^^

And fucking NORTH CAROLINA. Look at how close this margin is. This is absolutely batshit insane to me. They are now basically swing states.

Please

Register to Vote

[phytsera]

north carolina miku!

[maureen-corpse]

Spotify seems to have laid off the “maybe this girl needs to listen to Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan for secret spotify reasons” song recommendations lately and it recommended me a bluegrass band singing about organized labor in the northeast which then led me to their songs featuring North Carolina so it’s nice that the music recommendations make more sense now

[odinsblog]

As cold weather sweeps across the U.S., some electric vehicle owners are learning a bitter truth: Low temperatures can stop the cars dead in their icy tracks.

The issue crystallized this week when some Tesla owners in Chicago discovered their EVs' batteries had died in sub-zero temperatures. Drivers also said some of Tesla charging stations weren't working, or if they did work that the stations were taking longer than usual to charge up their vehicles.

“I've been here for over five hours at this point, and I still have not gotten to charge my car,” Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS Chicago. “A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours.”

What happens to electric vehicles in cold weather?

Here's what to know.

Electric vehicles are less efficient in cold weather, with Recurrent's research finding that below-freezing temperatures reduced driving range up to 30% on 18 popular EV models.

An EV with a 200 to 215 mile range may only go 150 to 175 miles in the cold, Recurrent's Case said, while noting even that reduced mileage is often sufficient for most drivers. “The average person with an EV drives 30 miles a day,” he said.

Still, a shorter range in cold weather could be an issue for some owners if their EV runs out of juice miles earlier than expected, potentially leaving to hunt for an available charger or, worse, stranded in dangerously frigid conditions.

(continue reading) ❄️ 🚗​ 🥶

[sappymix1]

now that you mention it I've meaning to ask. What's up with tilvee? Do you think they had something?

[whenthewallfell]

Working on my Everlark-on-the-run fic and trying to plan out their getaway/roadtrip route for ~authenticity~ and it's driving me nuts like

America is so big. IT'S SO BIG. WHY IS IT SO BIG.

It takes me five hours by train to get from Edinburgh to London. That's two whole countries, at almost opposite ends of the UK.

I'M NOT EVEN SURE THAT WOULD GET THEM OUT OF THE COUNTY?????

[doueverwonder]

the more wttt I watch the more i like the 13 being siblings;

Virginia has eldest daughter vibes somehow, he contemplates murdering them all so he can be an only child regularly but also if you dare insult any of them he's coming for you only i can do that 🔫 Also the "stay loyal to the crown" is the same as "Try not to disappoint mom and dad"

New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey & Pennsylvania are literally those families that have a lot of sons and have completely indoctrinated them into toxic-masc so they're always fighting each other and are just generally really loud and messy and very rarely held accountable for shit bc "oh it's just boys being boys :)"

Maryland, New Hampshire and Delaware are splitting the overlooked middle child role, they can do just about whatever they want because no on is paying attention and will either end up the most well adjusted out of everyone OR end up in therapy for the longest amount of time. it's a tossup and we won't know until it happens. (right now tho it’s looking like NH will be alright, and Del and Mary are gonna end up in therapy for 7-9 years apiece)

All I have to say about the Carolina's is the annoyance of an older sibling when the younger sibling won't stop copying them. "no mom, it's not a compliment they're just being ANNOYING"

Georgia just is the baby of the family whether he fits it or not (fr like the first 12 were founded between 1607-1682 and then Georgia wasn't founded until 1732) but also he does have the vibes of someone who has never been told no and also bc Penn telling him 'get out of my house' is the exact same vibes as older siblings telling their younger siblings to 'get out of my room'

[fischiee]

red vs blue season 10 episode 19 "party crasher" you will always mean the world to me

[gaybearwedding]

one of the funniest things about whatever kind of batshit insane horny energy ross has been bringing to dropout this year is that it was Not there before. like when he was first on pibe/make some noise/dirty laundry he was funny and quirky and made silly improv choices and maybe the occasional sex joke but i was not REMOTELY ready for him to come out swinging the way he has this year. after s1 of pibe i absolutely would not have been like yeah that’s a guy who’s going to act out gay sex onstage. or sing a song about dicks and ass. or narrate niagara falls calling someone daddy. or personify a really horny toothbrush. or—

[aturnoftheearth]

i was just minding my business when i got kicked in the stomach with the memory of september 2021 when my sister and i left her apartment at 2am to get to the airport for our first flight ever by 6am bc we chose the dirt cheap option to impulsively go to our first concert ever aka the long lost tour with allison ponthier and we fell in love with her music and i fell in love with all of the other lord huron songs i hadn’t previously really listened to and we were so tired and we had waffle house breakfast and read fanfic in the car in some mall parking lot bc our flight arrived at 8 am and we couldn’t check in until 3 and we were so confused about concerts but we figured it out and got so close to the stage and heard i lied with allison live and it was so beautiful and then we couldn’t find food afterwards bc everywhere in raleigh closed at like 9pm and then we quickly rushed back home on another spirit airlines plane lol so we could both get to class (me online wough) and then the next day i was driving home and i stopped and got a wawa caramel latte (yippee for little $3 drinks rip) and was driving home with the windows down bc it was finally starting to cool off and feel like autumn and it was sunset and i was playing lord huron and it was soooooo beautiful and perfect .. i need to run into a concrete wall

[forestgreenivy]

Thinking about Pisgah.

[dilf-phoenix-rights]

I think more people should be aware of, and talking about, the uptick in anti-mask policies being proposed/passed (or that already existed but rarely enforced until more recently) that have been popping up lately in several states.

Both because of the public health risks it sets us up for and because it’s being used as a way to further punish protesters. Not to mention the encroachment on our right to privacy in the ever increasing surveillance state we live in.

[huntunderironskies]

A Call to Action

Hi all.

I wish I had better news to give. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should share this because I will be functionally doxxing myself when I do. But I've had several days to sleep on it and think about what to do. I've come to the conclusion that this is more important than me. This will be a long post but I urge you to read all of it. I'm afraid I have to be thorough here given the situation.

I think everyone who has been following me for more than a week knows how much I love religious studies as a field. It is my single greatest passion in life.

Unfortunately my school, UNC Greensboro, is trying to eliminate our department under claims of it being "not financially justifiable," among others (including anthropology and all Korean language classes.) These claims are highly spurious. Debunking this in full will take some time but I'll try to cover as much ground as I can in the relatively short space I am given and provide some sources. If anyone needs further elaboration, I'll report to the best of my abilities.

This is all to lead into the fact that I would like to provide some opportunities for people to help us out over here, which I will cover at the end. The shortest possible version is: please signal boost this. I do urge you to read it in full, though.

With the first introduction out of the way...

A Second But Very Brief Introduction to Religious Studies and a Justification of Its Presence in Academia (Given the Natural Bent of this Site is Sometimes Towards Antitheism)

Feel free to skip this if you have any familiarity with religious studies as a discipline, I'm putting it here because I find that it's often confounded with theology and every time I talk about it someone asks me if I'm going to be a priest (no.)

To be clear, religious studies is not theology. It does not purport the existence of any higher spiritual powers or presences. It is strictly the study of religion and spirituality as a force in human culture. This falls under both negative and positive effects, and covers everything from historical impact to individual psychology to macrosociological effects of religion to the simple understanding and study of mythology and folklore.

While internalized cultural norms are of course an issue that must be overcome by any scholar, for a religious studies scholar the Catholic Worker, the Sikh ragi, and the long-dead Sumerian ašipu should all have their beliefs and inner lives treated with the exact same sort of gravity and understanding, no matter how far their own beliefs might be from our own. It is, in my subjective opinion, the most humanizing of all the humanities because we are forced to operate on a deeply personal, vulnerable level.

I wish I didn't have to explain why these sorts of skills are important, especially given the current climate of intolerance that has been growing across the world and the growth of anti-intellectualism. I recognize that I might have to but I don't want to linger on that given everything else I have to cover in this post. Go ahead and ask as I do love talking about my field but I might take some time to answer.

A Brief Summary of Events Beforehand

My school has hired a firm known as rpk Group (lack of capitalization true to actual title) to restructure school funding financially with a focus on eliminating programs deemed to not earn enough for the school. Here is a brief explanation from the source itself. I apologize if the school website's CSS is still broken and it's difficult to read due to the social media icons being about thirty times the size they should be. Apparently they couldn't find the funding to pay a web designer instead of an expensive financing firm.

Those of you who have kept up with news in American academia may recognize this as the same group that forced cuts at West Virginia University. Please keep that in mind as we go forward.

Here are the high points:

Religious studies attained a passing grade under the rubric set out by the school. There have been active attempts to hide the scoring system from anyone but faculty. The spreadsheet in which the data was published has been password protected (source, which also contains several other refutations to the chancellor's talking points.)

For those who wish to keep score, anthropology did as well and our anthropology program is known for being quite good. This is without going into the other benefits the anthropology program provides the school with, which include such things as a community garden.

There were lower scoring programs that were kept. In other words, the decision-making process has been entirely inscrutable.

This is supported by the fact that the administration has been giving out incorrect numbers regarding program attendance to both news outlets and students, with some programs proposed to be cut having their student enrollment off by several factors.

Religious studies had over five times as many students as was originally reported. The Chinese language minor was reported to have zero students when there were thirty-six. To operate with this level of error from alleged professionals beggars belief and undermines any faith I would've had in this process.

The administration has claimed that they used the correct numbers in their rubrics. As they will not publish further data to myself nor the public, I have no evidence this is actually true.

They were going to cut Korean language as a minor. We don't have a Korean language minor. We do have a track of Korean language and I am given to understand as of this semester, culture courses. Which are operated solely by one professor and are consistently full or close to capacity due to popularity. There is no evidence they are losing the school money and I have several testimonials that the Korean culture-related programs have drawn students to UNCG as it is a unique niche the school gives not just over other UNC schools but over other colleges and universities.

Faculty and students were given information about what programs would be cut at precisely the same time, through an email sent schoolwide. Many students and faculty were in class at the time this was sent and had to proceed as if they weren't about to have their programs eliminated.

The administration alleges that current students will be able to finish their degrees. I have little faith this is the case for reasons that will take a while to get into but, to summarize as briefly as possible, completion of a degree here requires certain high-level classes that may be difficult to obtain with faculty cuts.

The chancellor alleges that Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies will not be affected by the elimination of religious studies, despite the fact that they are hosted under the department and Islamic Studies uses the same funding. As such, I believe that the highly technical and academic category used to refer to this sort of thing is "a blatant lie."

The administration has tried to quietly edit out any errors in original reporting. I am pleased to report that, as many of us intensely online people know, the Wayback Machine exists. Here is the original statistically incorrect press release that was given, which they have tried to bury.

While they have held forums, these have largely been ceremonial gestures rather than serious attempts at communication. At the one I went to, all non-administration speakers were given only two minutes to speak while the chancellor and dean were given as much time as possible to respond. Their responses to concerns were often dismissive and rarely addressed the necessary issues. I believe any person present will back me up on this, though I am not currently in possession of a voice recording.

I must operate within the evidence I am given. The best-faith interpretation of their actions is that the metrics they were using to determine what cuts should be made are incorrect and must be re-done before going through with any sort of program cuts, and that the administration's collaboration process with the group they employed is poor to nonexistent given the scattershot information provided. There is very, very clearly a communications breakdown somewhere along the line that raises this entire procedure into question.

I think it goes without saying it's all downhill from there. The level of arbitrariness with regards to cuts, lack of professionalism, and total lack of transparency would lead a reasonable person to believe there are heavy political motivations involved here and not simple brute facts. You are welcome to draw your own conclusions anywhere along this spectrum, of course. I encourage you to be skeptical.

Lastly, if I can't convince you that it's worth stopping this process to save religious studies, think about the anthropology department. Think about the languages that are getting cut. Think about physics or mathematics. A large-scale public university without a physics program is quite frankly unreal and the fact it's primarily humanities being targeted runs parallel with some sinister trends within American education. This process should, at the very least, be halted for time being.

What You (the Reader) Can Do

Firstly, be aware that we have until February 1st before decisions are finalized. I apologize for the short time limit. Myself and other members of the community were taken completely by surprise as well, and once again as I mentioned above it has caused some level of cynicism around the motivations of the administration.

With that out of the way...make noise about this. The school administration is making all efforts to keep this quiet. I can say the good news is that according to other people on the ground, they are beginning to lose control of their narrative that they are making difficult financial decisions to keep the school financially solvent.

Believe it or not, the farther removed you are, the better. If this hits a national scale then the school may be finally forced to acknowledge they are rapidly causing the otherwise prestigious UNC system, typically considered to be one of the best public university systems in the US, to be a national laughingstock and that they will lose money as their reputation declines in a way that they would not have if they'd simply carried out this process in a more reasonable way.

You can sign our petitions here and here. Easy enough, takes about three minutes, self-explanatory.

Finally, reach out to an academic or any passionate learner in a specialized field today. A lot of us feel understandably threatened and demoralized. Again, this is not just about me or even about my school. This is about trends within the American education system. Explaining the hows and whys in full detail is not within the scope of this post, but I think a reasonable person can conclude after looking at the current evidence that there is a dismantling of American schools in favor of a corporatized existence. For those of us who love knowledge and learning, this is incredibly sinister. Knowledge should not have a price tag put on it.

A Final Word

I and several other people have Chancellor Gilliam on record saying that he has dedicated his life to working at the collegiate level and towards students. While he and the administration have tried to ensure that their statements outside of highly controlled environments are not easily accessible, I should be able to provide a clip if needed given that this statement was livestreamed and North Carolina is a one-party-consent state in regards to recordings.

They have consistently characterized this process as having to make hard decisions to keep the university afloat. The chancellor is currently the highest-paid employee within UNCG itself and the fourth highest-paid member of administration within the UNC system as a whole (source.) Please be aware this does not include other benefits, which in 2022 put his salary above $500,000 (source.) As others have, I must ask why these "difficult decisions" within the school have not included a salary cut for himself if he is so dedicated to improving the lives of students.

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you've gotten this far, you've already listened more than anyone outside of the academic departments have and that means a lot to me in and of itself.

[bluevelvet-redroses]

David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini by the lake during the production of Blue Velvet in Wilmington, North Carolina, taken somewhere around summer/fall of 1985. Photo taken from Blue Velvet Revisited (2016) by Peter Braatz.

[atomicwinnerdreamland]

I got my Florida hat recently (yay!) and then caught a good Florida moment in "WNR 7/29: Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.":

Florida: [Trump] was just bragging about passing a test? What a nerd.

DC (old Gov): Weren't you just bragging about your coronavirus tests?

Florida: No no no, coronavirus isn't a test. It's a videogame and I have the high score.

North Carolina: Oh, is that why the Jacksonville part of the RNC was canceled?

Florida: Some people just can't handle hurricane season.

DC: I'm sorry, what exactly do you think this is now?

Florida: it's.... uh (glances at Loui to save him)

Louisiana: Person, woman, man, camera, TV.

Florida: Bonus points!

Florida definitely knew about the global pandemic, he just wanted to cause some more chaos (as if the pandemic wasn't enough lol). He's definitely smarter than he lets on, he just chooses to be the way he is probably because it's unpredictable and somewhat fun to him. And Louisiana definitely knows about this as well (bonus points if he's doing the same). Imagine if like surfer California or CHAZ, we get a version of FL that likes to study astrophysics & astronomy! (it might be a Texas/Austin type of relationship between astronomer FL and normal FL actually)

On a side note, North Carolina and Florida's sibling-like friendship is the best. They're always dragging each other and it's a lovely sight to see :D