The Lights You Make

not only are most people completely unaware of the devastation of indigenous languages in the americas, most people are completely unaware of the devastation of indigenous languages in europe. never mind occitan, they don't know about basque! it's wild! bleak! existentially horrifying!!!

did you know france has celtic languages? breton is the only celtic language spoken outside of the british isles. did you know france has germanic languages? alsatian, for example, is spoken in the east of france, unsurprisingly in alsace. it's not even the only french germanic language. did you know france has a number of languages and dialects known as langues d'oïl closely related to french? norman and picard, for example, are spoken in the north of france. did you know that france has gallo-romance languages? franco-provençal (which has a number of dialects) is spoken in the east of france, as well as parts of switzerland and italy. did you know that france has a language most closely related to catalan, the langues d'oc? occitan is spoken in the south of france and has a rich literary history. did you know france is home to basque, or rather euskara, a language isolate which predates indo-european languages? romani dialects! corsican! so much more than just french! there are even extinct jewish dialects of occitan! extinct langues d'oïl like angevin! so much linguistic diversity and all anyone talks about is french.

I'm reminded of those star-studded movie premieres where they decorate the theater to look like a scene out of the film.

it’s really interesting how the guys that fight against paying child support the hardest are the ones that could afford to do it. these dudes will quit their well paying salaried job with benefits just to avoid their pay getting docked and potentially going to reimburse the mother of their child for buying their kid new shoes. they’ll leave their child without health insurance and work under the table jobs because they really hate their child and former S/O that much.

men who have been conditioned to believe that having kids and caring for them is somehow emasculating

they swear it is a man’s role to provide and protect but they’re going out of their way to deprive and endanger

They believe that their role is to provide and protect the ones they choose to; it's not a responsibility (though they'll frame it like it is to sound better), but a power that they hold over others. Child support is emasculating because they see it as being forced to provide for someone who isn't "theirs" any more. They don't see it as supporting a child that they have ongoing responsibility for because they believe that they should have the right to withdraw that responsibility at any time, that unconditional responsibility for a child is the woman's role. They see it as being financially cucked.

pick up that non-fiction book

"representation matters!" but you wont read or engage with non-fiction works about any demographic outside your own

this version of the post doesnt seem to be getting much traction but this is arguably the most important reason why we should be reading nonfiction in addition to fiction

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