cool

Thank you SO VERY MUCH for your time as a reader and as an artist!

This is remarkable. I am really just so moved by this!

Lupita Nyong’o for Who What Wear ✨

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

Some notes:

1) Posting will occur between August 7th and August 9th!

2) If you want your piece to be queued earlier than that, send it to me via the ask box! I recommend that you keep your descriptions short and simple, that way we can focus on your hard work!

3) If you want your work to be front and center (instead of constricted to my asks, completely valid), you can always post it yourself and then just send it to me/tag me! If you still want your piece to queued, then I ask that you at least wait until the week of the event, and then send it so I can queue it.

4) if you want to write a story! That's fine! Same rules apply- ideally, put it under a readmore, or give us a link and a summary. You know, let the story entice us some lmao.

5) yes, any form of art counts (gifs, yarn items, dolls, whatever) as long as the character involved is 1) Black, Black-coded, or a Black edit and 2) it's respectfully done. That's all!

image descriptions and translations:

[social media screenshot from Le Parisien, a french journal "renting instead of buying AC, the good deal proposed by [Don't-Look-Them-Up] mid-heatwave."]

[journal article from Le Parisien that reads: "renting instead of buying AC, the good deal proposed by [Don't-Look-Them-Up] mid-heatwave.

Since the start of the summer, acquiring an AC has been challenging. To answer to buyers who are faced with empty storefronts, [Don't-Look-Them-Up] has found a trick: the punctual rental of cooling units."]

ahem. and the review

Book: Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington

Chapters:

CH8- The Black Stork: The Eugenic Control of African American Reproduction

CH9- Nuclear Winter: Radiation Experiments on African Americans

How are we feeling so far?

Did we learn anything?

Share with the class!

Ch8 notes

"But many Black women who desired and used birth control did so despite a strong distrust of the whites who distributed contraception in their communities. In 1972, Black social worker Urelia Brown voiced this ambiguity: "Negroes don't want children they can't take care of, but we are afraid to trust you when your offered help has so often turned out to be exploitation.""

This quote most of all, I believe, summarizes the relationship between medicine in America and Black people, the whole point of this book. Do we want the help? Yes. Do we need the help? Yes. Can I trust it coming from the hands of someone who has more often then not, not had my safety and best interests at heart? No! You cannot ask me to believe that you want me to be okay, but you have not SHOWN me that that is the case!

I had to go past my six quote limit for this chapter. There's just so much history in here, so much that goes ignored despite reproductive justice sitting at the intersection of so many identities. The conversation is often directed from the experience of white, cis women. But that is simply not the case for everyone involved and we NEED to discuss that!

This chapter also brings into conversation the criminalization of drug use, versus treatment, and how convenient it was to overlap the two via antiblackness. The (already racist) drug war benefitted from the sensationalized use of "crack babies" to put even more people of color in prison.

Ch9 notes

Had to pass my six quotes here too. Tbh I think these next chapters are so large that I'll have to 😭

Can you imagine having your bones and teeth pulled out of you, while you were alive, and you went to the doctor to have your broken bones fixed? Literal hyenas, preying upon your injured body while you're STILL ALIVE. body snatching you, piece by piece.

the way Whiteness was promised to those who "looked" it, leading to Black and non Anglo Saxon women to burn themselves with radiation in order to look the part. Anything to be closer to whiteness!

Reading this chapter was just blow after blow of "y'all didn't even need to do this!!" Like, all of them are bad, but when it comes to nuclear radiation it's like these scientists were just playing in it using Black bodies. Like why are you feeding me irradiated mercury. What good is that gonna do. You know it will kill me.

Paul du Pointe du Lac was someone Louis "loved more than anyone on earth" and was never really allowed grieve for on account of being hunted by Lestat. As a consequence of that, he loses the ties and love of his sister, Grace, who buries the memory of him before leaving NOLA (IIRC).

So, it makes sense that, in their journey to absolve Lestat of all wrongdoing against Louis, perhaps to shake the ever persistent audience suspicion that he may have had a hand in his death, they would drag Paul from the grave. Drag him out and get him to thank Lestat for loving his brother how "he needed to be loved".

It's quite the death knell, turning Paul into someone sympathetic to Lestat, where his last words were were telling his brother, "Do not trust that man". And had the opposite effect (lmao), apparently. Because now I'm seeing people say, "Damn, he did kill Louis's brother!"

With Loumand (as it is referred) there were a lot of ways to handle what is, effectively, the fallout of yet another abusive relationship. But the writer have shown time and again, they see Louis committing normal relationship woes (arguing, questioning, being emotionally distant with his partners) as equal to abusive behavior.

And yet, none of it is comparable to what the writers had Armand do (i.e. the murder of his daughter, Claudia, the mind manipulation) and then do again to Louis (beheading him, torturing Claudia's doppelganger, branding him). In the end, everything comes back to that sham trial/lynching.

So, naturally they avoid it. And for them to go in the direction they did - again, largely to avoid making Lestat pay the piper to anybody - is not only predictable (at this point), but also feels like the writer's malice expressed to its fullest intent.

And in the end, after stripping the apparent nuances in Louis's past role working the red light district (the politics that therein with with regard to his class standing, and even the relationships he had with those minor sex worker characters), the writers suggests Louis's former occupation puts him on level with Marius who groomed and abused Armand. Marius, who has more ties to Lestat, and how Lestat tended to talk about Armand and his abuse.

For the writers, Louis did not meet a specific criteria of talking to Armand about his past or loving him, "Louis used him" and this Armand getting his well earned lick-back. The Loumand scream fest from 2x05 is a greater sin than Armand torturing him not once, but twice, and doing it with a live audience in mind.

And then they have Armand brand him like an enslaved negro, which cozies up nicely with Claudia's ghost to calling him a biologically determined slave and saying Lestat is actually her favorite father.

Of the other things I've read about TVL, the showrunners saying, that the previous two seasons were about "Louis navel gazing" (this specific term being used to say "selfish" or "narcissistic") vs. trying to reckon with his past and the relationships therein, certainly says a lot.

A lot, a lot, a lot.

TL;DR

The story isn’t over yet. 🐈‍⬛🤍

Hannah Moscovitch don’t think I’m letting you off the hook!! You were not only a writer but an Executive producers this season.

Shame on YOU!!

You were the one who mainly wrote Louis being abused, and a domestic violence survivor. You exploit black bodies, write them being harmed, abused and tortured over and over. All for your own creative success!! No care for survivors, black history, or racism!!

I know this was insincere and exploitation because you then have the audacity to do the DARVO Louis show?!?!?!!!?

A SEASON WHERE LOUIS IS BEING LYNCHED AGAIN. TORTURED AGAIN. VIOLENCE DONE TO HIM ON SCREEN THAT NO NON BLACK CHARACTER GETS PUT THROUGH ON SCREEN.

ALL WHILE LOUIS IS BEING TREATED AS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM. ALL WHILE ENDURING RACIST ANTI BLACK SLURS ALL SEASON. DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE CLAUDIA STUFF.

All while Ryan Kattners wears an awful hip hop sucks shirt - I see you. You don’t deserve to mention hip hop. Hell you don’t even deserve to mention music.

TVL team - I see you. You want to earn success, fame and fortune on the exploitation of black pain and racism. I see all of you.

Ending it with some love @coldeveryseason posts and critiques are very well made, and better than mine. Let’s praise and support the black creators who built Iwtv to what it was.