Highlighter & Cigarettes

In addition to finding out where in Africa her ancestors were abducted into slavery, Mary Moran discovered the meaning of the Mende song: a processional hymn for the final farewell to the spirit, it was sung in Senehun Ngola by women as they prepared the body of a loved one for burial.

I love that Americans are known for complimenting strangers. I love that we fry everything, and that we do it well. I love 12-foot-high plastic Halloween skeletons in people’s yards and tacky Christmas lights that stay up too long. I love that we are an unabashedly goofy people.

I love bluegrass music. I love stepping. I love that there are always folklorico dancers in my town’s Mardi Gras parade. I love that my town has a Mardi Gras parade, even though most people here aren’t Catholic or French and didn’t grow up with any kind of Carnivale tradition. I love that if "Livin On A Prayer" comes on a pizzeria, at least one person at each table won't be able to stop themselves from singing along. I love that the middle school gym shakes to the rafters when families cheer for THEIR baby finishing eighth grade and that they bring balloons and bouquets and flower garlands to celebrate.

I love the 80 year old couple at our local No Kings protest. I love all the little kids there with their families, too. I love the brass band that always shows up at protests here and plays old union songs and gospel music. I cry like a damn baby every time I hear “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”

I struggle to make fandom friends on Tumblr, and sometimes I worry that it is because people in their 20s think they can't be friends with someone in their 40s. That I'm uncool, weird, cringe, intimidating, or just too different from them.

But things don't change as much with age as most think. Older people still are silly, awkward, overwhelmed, enthusiastic, confused, playful, irresponsible, obsessive, dumb, cool, horny, and all these other things young people think we stop feeling or being as we get older. We're just humans. I am really great friends with someone on here more than 20 years younger than me because we have so much in common! You can't tell that we're different ages when we chat.

And also—you can be friends with people who you do NOT have much in common with! Because fundamentally, you always have humanity in common.

Years ago, there was this lady in my community who was maybe 30 years older than me and who I knew was far more conservative than me. I dismissed her as someone I didn't want to spend any time with because she was obviously too different than me. But, I was forced to spend some time with her (long story), and guess what? I became really good friends with her! Because I found out I was wrong about all those things that made her different than me? NO! I was right about that—she was just as annoyingly conservative as I had suspected. BUT that wasn't the whole of her person. She was so much richer than that. There were lots of things I didn't know about her. A few of those things were commonalities, but overall, we still didn't have much in common—but that didn't matter. We could still be kind to each other, help each other, respect each other, even enjoy each other's company if we stuck to topics where we didn't clash too badly. I feel really bad for judging her, and I'm so glad I gave her a chance.

Performative self-flagellation over being white is not a substitute for doing serious introspection about the ways you have been complicit in or rewarded by a white-supremacist society, nor doing the work to dismantle white supremacy.

This, too, is a trashed bathroom; young queer people living through hell and having precious little control over their circumstances or the world in which they exist can affect something by using the language of social justice as a cudgel on their would-be allies, as well as getting a brief feeling of power over someone else by doing it.

Just. A fun thought idea.

the cambrian period is TOMORROW!!!

Stoneware bowl in the form of a drum with three legs with kintsugi a gold lacquer repair technique originated in Japan.

China, 12th-14th century, repairs 19th century.

Unknown maker

Now housed at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.

Ageless Linux intends to force the issue before the California state supreme court, then ultimately (probably) the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). It's a stupid, dangerous law, voted into place by legislators who either don't understand the core issue OR knowingly voted for it because they're assholes.

California is an influential state in the US. Many laws & regulations passed there eventually trickle out to most states. That's why it's worrisome to see this kind of thing rammed through, and why it's important to fight it.