Corbie's Quills

Introduction of Sharon Patricia Holland's The Erotic Life of Racism

It's worth noting that this is just the amount wagered, so it doesn't reflect how much money gamblers lost. At least some of that had to be paid out as winnings, or no one would keep betting, and state governments also take a cut as tax revenue. But as we all (hopefully) know, the house always wins:

People killed: around three quarters of a million.

In the scene where Smoke teaches the young girl how to negotiate, they're standing in front of of a cafe. The shot of them negotiating is framed so that you see a sign in the cafe window advertising a Ham and Eggs breakfast - in other words, a full meal - for 25 cents. The editing makes sure to put that sign back into frame whenever the question of the value of money arises in their discussion.

Smoke offers her 10 cents a minute and asks if that works for her. She says yes. He says no, it does not and tells her to negotiate higher. The 25 cent sign is framed in the shot when he tells her no, reminding us *why* it's not a good value.

She comes back with 50 cents - which the sign has informed us is the cost of *two* meals. Smoke tells her that's too much and counters with 20, which is just under a full meal but we now know that's a fairly respectable price because we just got the high/low contrast of 10 being too little and 50 being too much.

The negotiation ends with her getting 20 cents per minute and we now know 1) 25 cents is the cost of a filling meal in this environment 2) This girl only needs to do five minutes of work to be able to feed herself for a over day (20 cents per minute times five is a dollar, which is four meals) 3) Smoke has the kind of money to throw around that over a day's worth of food for someone can be to him - as it is to our modern eyes - mere pocket change and 4) Smoke's the kind of person who can both be a violent gangster but also care about teaching this girl how to look out for herself so that one day maybe she too can throw over a day's worth of food around like pocket change.

Combined with 5) you can now use that 25 cents = a meal to do the math every other time money gets mentioned in the movie to understand just how much cash the Smoke Stack boys are dealing with.

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Julia Serano, "Whipping Girl"

ignoring the horrifically racist implication that Black people apparently cant play soccer in real life (honestly people who say this should get shot)

what fucking Disney movies are you watching that have Black characters? like apart from a few in the past decade and a half, Disney movies have been not only exclusively white, but also take direct inspiration from blackface and minstrel shows

here's the article that the person i saw was complaining about

Argentina is the only team in the entire 2026 world cup to have no Black players.

the article, and tiktok creator Adiv (@adivunsolicited) say it better than i ever could put into words. please read the article, it explains the racist history of Argentina that led to the segregation we can see in their team today