If I'm your savior, then you're mine.

The Crimson Report is a report that gathers cases on modern day lynchings (MDLs), and has identified more than SEVENTY cases in the past 25 years, most of which being falsely/prematurely ruled as suicides or homicides without a discriminatory motive.... while happening in incredibly racist states with known histories of lynchings and racism. Mississippi is one of the worst cases in this regard, with the requirements for coroners being literally just a high school diploma or GED, and is the state with the longest patterns of MDLs and half-assed investigations. it also mentions places with high levels of trans victims, texas being the state with the most examples of such, as well as migrant and immigrant victims, with the number of MDLs continuing to increase each year.

sorry to share with a reblog instead of tags, but i felt this was an important point to bring up.

Link to the report:

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

But anime and video game boob jiggling is like. The most uncanny valley shit I've ever seen nine times out of ten. You would think people this horny about tits would have actually looked at some but I guess not.

One example is canning dairy products (milk, butter, cheese). They'll show up in a canning group and say something like, "Look how I canned all this milk that the store was getting rid of this milk for 50 cents a gallon because it's the last day!"

Sane and responsible members of the group will say things like, "Dairy isn't safe for home canning; if you have fresh milk that you need to save for later, you can freeze it or make cheese!" And, "If you need shelf-stable milk you can buy powdered milk," or "You can dehydrate it at home, but you need a really good dehydrator, plenty of trays, and it takes forever; you're usually better off just buying it."

And then the person who just canned 20 quarts of botulism will start frothing at the mouth about how when the shit hits the fan--

And yeah, I'll grant that if grocery stores cease to exist, and you are entirely reliant for your winter survival on what you can put up during times of plenty, the risk-benefit analysis would be different. But in the actual world that we currently live in, it's false economy at best, and at worst a stupid flex that could end up killing somebody.

Anyway, TL;DR, "simple" often refers to an imagined past when the problems of modernity did not exist--yet somehow, the problems of that era have been left behind--which in turn is often a racist dogwhistle.

Specifically about how it was hell on fucking earth and how her grandmother fucking hated every single second of it

The moment her grandmother could buy canned fruit easily in the supermarket? Never fucking canned a thing herself again and was so relieved and grateful that she would never have to again

Canning as a hobby in your kitchen? I can see that being fun

Canning because you have a fuck ton of fresh fruit coming off of your trees and if you don't can it all NOW you won't have any fruit for winter and it's all you do from sun up to sun down in the middle of summer?

if soda were all i could access? at an overpriced corner store? that’s a serious issue, and a gross injustice. i have been food insecure. i study food insecurity. i feel the weight of this.

ok so it might not seem like it but this was a four hour rush job this morning lmao

Happy Birthday Dianxia!

I wanted to paint his portrait like Hua Cheng would! But like more of a current reflection. I pulled outfit inspo from the official New Years /5th Anniversary art and my fav detail is that it goes hand in hand with this quote from the book: