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lanomrah:

howtobenoladarling:

The Rape of the Negro Woman, 1632

appropriate title. Trans Atlantic Slavery began 1444.—-1619 British slavery in the colony began. 1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued. slavery officially ended for American blacks in 1945. (Using the U.S. because that’s the time frame I know best not for erasure) 

Anyone who wants me to get over it can get over dees nuts! 

Trans-Atlantic Slavery= A LONG MOtherfucking time. 

Also why it is important that every black person watch Goodbye Uncle Tom http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3766149445318503265

yes it is about American slaves, but the treatment of the slaves is the focus. You may cringe, you may cry, you may not be able to watch it in its entirety but You need to. period. Because if slavery seems unreal to you that movie will bring it to life for you.

For anyone looking to read more in depth critiques of this Christiaen van Couwenbergh painting (actually titled Three White Men With A Negro Woman) & the phenomenon of rape being presented as heroism in art there’s this review on JSTOR of Diane Wolfthal’s Images of Rape: the “heroic” tradition and its alternatives

by glass_museum on tiktok

In the district of Garhwal in the Indian Himalayas, at 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) above sea level, forests of sycamore, chestnut, and rhododendron gradually give way to gently sloping grasslands.

Known locally as bugyals (from the Garhwali word bug for soft grasses), these meadows were the favored grazing grounds of communities of trans-Himalayan traders [...]. High-altitude meadows are home to musk deer, moonal pheasants, and a variety of flowers, grasses (such as the scented jambu), medicinal herbs, and roots (jadi butiyan). Garhwali villagers had long used the jadi butiyan of bugyals for household consumption and trade. Customary restrictions [...] made this usage sustainable.

The advent of [...] [colonial and institutional] forestry in the princely state of Tehri-Garhwal (the Tehri Durbar), together with the growth of an urban elite Hindu market for Ayurvedic potions, arguably transformed the social lives of Himalayan herbs. [...]

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Works by upper-caste elites, such as the Maharaja of Gondal’s Aryan Medical Science (1895), claimed an exclusively “Hindu” provenance for the medicinal practices of Ayurveda. The nationalist reinvention of modern Ayurveda generated a market for medicinal herbs dominated by over a dozen firms by 1910. This emergent urban [...] bourgeois market for herbal medicines provides the context for the Tehri Durbar’s arguably unique project to commodify Himalayan herbs. Whereas the British government was reluctant to expand the plantation and manufacture of indigenous drugs, the Durbar established a separate department for the purpose, called the Vanaspati Karyalaya, that worked closely with the Forest Department.

Subordinated to the British government, the Tehri Durbar had begun contracting out vast swathes of pine and deodar forests to timber traders from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. In 1879 the Durbar’s Forest Department [...] restricted peasant access to common resources. Restrictions on the sale and collection of forest produce were put in place between 1878 and 1885, [...] precipitating numerous forest dhandaks (uprisings) as a consequence. Rules governing forest access changed in response to such protests and by 1930 prohibitions on the collection of and trade in medicinal herbs were lifted in certain areas.

The foundation of the Vanaspati Karyalaya prompted the systematization of the Forest Department’s initial efforts to monetize the collection of herbs through taxes, contracts, and tenders. By 1927 the department was working with the Karyalaya to carry out the sale of medicinal herbs, such as Gugal, Mashi, Atis, and Kawri, yielding an income of 18,294 rupees. [...] From the Durbar’s Annual Reports, [...] the Karyalaya’s preparation of Ayurvedic medicines seemed to have commanded “ready sale” primarily in the domestic market. Subsequently, therefore, the Forest Department focused on the overall sale and plantation of herbs while the Karyalaya specialized in the processing of herbs.

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Anticipating an extension of markets “as demand for Himalayan medicines grows,” the Durbar charted a project of mass plantation to overcome the “expense and difficulty of searching for herbs of indigenous growth” that were “scattered among other herb plants and weeds.”

The bugyals of Garhwal were thus classified as “wastelands” from which “practically no income at present can be derived.”

This justified plans for the cultivation of aconites such as kut and atis on a projected area of 2,000 square miles (517,997 hectares) of alpine grassland. In the 1930s, the Durbar initiated the plantation of kut in the Ganga Bhillangana Forest Division, employing trained gardeners as well as “coolie” labor to transplant herbs from nurseries to enclosed meadows. Thus, bugyals hitherto controlled by villagers [...] were gradually being enclosed for herb plantations. The Karyalaya also opened a pharmaceutical works just outside the town of Rishikesh at Muni ki Reti [...]. Graduates of [...] colleges in Delhi and Calcutta [...] were hired for these operations. [...] [T]he Tehri Durbar’s move towards the mass plantation and processing of herbs risked dispossessi[on] [...] as well as eliding local knowledges related to jadi butiyan. 

The story of the Vanaspati Karyalaya arguably suggests how complex cultural associations between the Himalayas and healing were becoming commodified.

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Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?

We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.

emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity is by no means adhd exclusive, and people with adhd experiencing those things doesn’t need to have its own special label or whatever when there’s no meaningful difference between someone with adhd experiencing those things and someone without adhd experiencing those things. that’s not logical and a ridiculous mentality of “rsd is adhd ONLY because our rejection sensitivity is SPECIAL” completely goes against building common ground with other neurodivergent people for petty and invalid reasons.

i feel like the case that happens here is that people see adhd and rsd through the lens of false correlation, and by that i mean, they observe a phenomenon that DOES happen, which is people with adhd feeling alienated from their peers and having a negative sense of self when it comes to social situations, and immediately think: “oh! this happens a lot with people who have adhd? must be a symptom!” when rather, it is related, yes, but it is more of a risk.

and this risk is not related to the very existence of adhd, but rather to outside circumstance, specifically ableism and underdiagnosis. during my research, some articles would cite going undiagnosed until adulthood as a higher risk for comorbid anxiety and depression. also, negative labels and rejection from family and peers contributed to low self esteem, negative self perception and oh shocker!/s social anxiety (sources, if you want them, sorry some of them are in portuguese: 1, 2, 3, 4).

rsd/rejection sensitive dysphoria is not a diagnosis. 

it’s not a symptom of adhd.

some dude made it up.

being very sensitive to rejection can happen to anyone. 

since adhd can involve emotional dysregulation, it can be especially hard for people with adhd.

being very sensitive to rejection is a result of trauma relating to rejection.

I’m a child of indian immigrants in the west and I thought I understood casteism because we definitely brought that shit over with us to the new country, but I don’t think I really understood it until my dad was talking about his childhood.

we were talking about his childhood in the first place because he’s having some issues with his brothers right now (he’s the youngest kid and his brothers can’t accept that he’s a grown man that makes his own decisions (he’s 60)) and he was talking about how they used to be so close and their childhood was so good and blessed but then he was like ‘but maybe it was always rotten, maybe there was always this seed of judgement in us’

he was talking about how they, an upper mid caste family in a tiny farming village, would hire low caste workers to help out during the harvest. as part of their wages, they would get meals from the family. but because they were low caste, they weren’t allowed to use the same plates and cutlery as my family. it was thought that them using the dishes would permanently contaminate them. they weren’t even allowed to keep their own ‘contaminated’ plates in the house. instead, they would take their meals on banana leaf plates. and I was like ‘ok that’s fucked up but banana leaf plates are commonly used by all castes’

then my dad explained ‘if we were to give them sambar, they would dig a small hole in the ground and line it with leaves, and we would ladle the sambar into that. if they wanted water, we would ladle handfuls of it into their hands and they would drink it all and silently ask for the next ladle. this was part of my daily chores as a child, to feed grown men in such a degrading way. something about it felt wrong to me, but I was a child who couldn’t understand why.’

I was already shocked at that but then he continued ‘once, there were no banana leaves, so I went to give him the plate I was holding. the man wouldn’t even take it from me, knowing how the rest of my family would react. when he accidentally brushed against it, I was surprised and dropped the plate. he then picked up the plate and built a small fire from the branches nearby and threw the plate in. these were steel plates, so they could survive that. he then used a different leaf to pick up the plate once it had cooled enough to give it back to me. not once had I even spoken or asked him to do this, but he knew that the plate needed to be purified before it entered our house. I think I was eight years old.’

I think this was coming up for him because he was already realizing that his family weren’t always good people based on their interactions with him and this made him see their actions through a new light. my dad left the village and eventually the country fairly young so I think he hadn’t interrogated his fond childhood memories like that. honestly, it made me think less of my family.

I’ve heard some people compare castes to different sects of christianity and I don’t think that’s a good comparison. that’s bias based on thinking you’re the best. casteism is having a hierarchy and knowing exactly where you stand in that hierarchy and knowing that you can’t change that no matter what. that you are dirty and that you were born dirty and that you will never be clean.

It's really in depth, cites research and is probably valuable to anyone who wants to learn more about the history, but still explains everything in a very accessible way. Basically everything in it was news to me, so if you know very little like me you'll definitely get very much out of it.

The conflict in Iran is disrupting fertiliser production and exports in the Middle East, tightening global supplies and raising fears of higher food prices, industry executives and analysts have warned. The Middle East is one of the world’s largest fertiliser producers, while the Strait of Hormuz is a crucial shipping route for exports. About 35 per cent of global urea exports pass through the waterway, according to CRU data. Urea is the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, which in turn underpins around half of global food production. The route also handles 45 per cent of global sulphur exports, a key ingredient used to produce phosphate fertilisers, as well as significant volumes of ammonia, a key ingredient for nitrogen fertilisers. “We shouldn’t underestimate what this potentially could mean for global food production,” said Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Europe’s largest fertiliser group Yara. He added that the focus on oil and gas was “overshadowing” the impact on the fertiliser industry. “If you’re not getting [fertiliser] into the field of the farmers, yields could go down by up to 50 per cent in the first harvest,” he said. If the disruption continues, consumers could see higher prices for bread within six to 10 weeks, eggs within a few months and pork and broiler chicken within six months, estimates Raj Patel, food system expert at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. 

The current war is disastrous from the point of view of the modern agricultural cycle.

The gulf region handles about one third of the global trade in inorganic nutrients and in terms of the agricultural cycle this is the key moment for shipments to be steaming out from the Gulf towards the major agricultural zones of the world.

[...] “The politicians are saying this is a war that’s going to last for weeks, not days, and when you look around at the world within four weeks, we’re in the middle of [the Northern Hemisphere’s] spring season applications and if these ships don’t go through the Strait of Hormuz today, they’re not going to arrive in time. … You’re talking about either having to switch your planting to a crop that is much less intensive for nitrogen use,” he said, or see yields fall. In Australia, while much of the fertilizer needed for sowing has already been bought, farmers around this time start looking to buy urea for dressing cereal crops beginning in September, said Stephen Annells, chief executive of Fertilizer Australia, a group representing the industry.”

[...] To see who will really pay the price however, look not to the developed world or big emerging markets like India, but to the weakest links in the chain - the poor, agrarian, smallholder economies of Africa.(x)

/// The global fertilizer market focuses on three main macronutrients: phosphates, nitrogen, and potash. [...] Potash and phosphates are both mined from different kinds of natural deposits; nitrogen fertilizers, by contrast, are produced with natural gas. QatarLNG, a subsidiary of Qatar Energy, a state-run oil and gas company, said on Monday that it would halt production following drone strikes on some of its facilities.

That shutdown puts supplies of urea, a popular type of nitrogen fertilizer, particularly at risk. On Tuesday, Qatar Energy said that it would also stop production of downstream products, including urea. Qatar was the second-largest exporter of urea in 2024. (Iran was the third-largest; it’s also a key exporter of ammonia, another type of nitrogen fertilizer.) Prices on urea sold in the US out of New Orleans, a key commodity port, were up nearly 15 percent on Monday compared to prices last week, according to data provided by Josh Linville, the vice president of fertilizer at financial services company StoneX. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is also preventing other countries in the region from exporting nitrogen products.

“When we look at ammonia, we're looking at almost 30 percent of global production being either involved or at risk in this conflict,” says Veronica Nigh, a senior economist at the Fertilizer Institute, a US-based industry advocacy organization. “It gets worse when we think about urea. Urea is almost 50 percent.”

Other types of fertilizer are also at risk. Saudi Arabia, Nigh says, supplies about 40 percent of all US phosphate imports; taking them out of the equation for more than a few days could create “a really challenging situation” for the US. Other countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt, and Israel, also play a big role in these markets.

March is traditionally the start of planning the spring planting season in the US, which starts in earnest in April. US fertilizer buyers would normally be placing orders now, Linville says, in order to have the barges arrive in the US by early April. “If we lose several weeks here, we are talking about limiting the number of tons that arrive in our most important month,” he says.

Nigh says that most fertilizer demand in the US—around three-quarters—goes to large row crops grown in the Midwest, like corn, soy, wheat, and cotton. These farms are large operations; most farmers, she says, have made decisions about what types of fertilizers their crops will need and would be unable to pivot despite changes in global supply. “It’s a very critical window right now,” she says.

When energy markets are tight, the US has some reserve supplies—the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the largest emergency supply of oil in the world—that it can release to help meet demand. But there’s no similar buffer for fertilizer, Nigh says.

[...] If the war keeps going, both Nigh and Linville say that US farmers—especially those growing cash crops like corn and soybeans—will most likely see increased prices for fertilizers of all kinds. US farmers are already facing big losses after the trade war with China. (x)

/// “We shouldn’t underestimate what this potentially could mean for global food production,” said Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Europe’s largest fertiliser group Yara.

He added that the focus on oil and gas was “overshadowing” the impact on the fertiliser industry. “If you’re not getting [fertiliser] into the field of the farmers, yields could go down by up to 50 per cent in the first harvest,” he said.

If the disruption continues, consumers could see higher prices for bread within six to 10 weeks, eggs within a few months and pork and broiler chicken within six months, estimates Raj Patel, food system expert at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. 

[...] Analysts say the disruption could prove even more damaging than the food shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when energy and fertiliser costs surged and global food prices hit record highs.

“When prices spiked in 2022 it was extraordinary, but the market was able to adjust because Russian exports continued,” said Chris Lawson, head of fertilisers at CRU, adding that the “big difference” this time was that a blocked Strait of Hormuz was a physical barrier.

The impact on food in 2022 was more immediate because Ukraine was a major wheat exporter, said Patel, but “this time around the impact will be far more widespread”. (x)

/// Fertilizer manufacturers in India are beginning to cut output after Qatari supplies of liquefied natural gas, a key feedstock, were suspended due to hostilities in the Middle East.

[...] Rising prices of other raw materials used to make fertilizer, such as ammonia and sulfur, are adding to fears of higher production costs.

Pakistan’s Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd. has also informed customers it will be unable to supply regasified LNG to their fertilizer plants due to the Middle East conflict, according to a company notice seen by Bloomberg. The country receives most of its LNG from Qatar and the suspension takes effect from midnight Wednesday.

“We are very much optimistic that the war may end soon,” Suresh Kumar Chaudhari, director general of Fertiliser Association of India said in an interview on Tuesday. “If the war continues, it will be matter of concern for us,” he added, without elaborating.

If the cuts last, India could be forced to step up costly imports ahead of peak agricultural demand during the monsoon season that begins in June. The country is the world’s biggest grower and exporter of rice and No. 2 producer of sugar, wheat and cotton.

/// Asia-based traders of dry sulfur are rushing to substitute supplies stranded in the Middle East as an intensifying regional conflict threatens access to the chemical used in fertilizer and nickel processing.

[...] About half the global seaborne trade of sulfur — roughly 20 million tons a year — originates in the Gulf and must transit the Strait of Hormuz to reach world markets. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Iran are among the main exporters.

Middle Eastern suppliers account for more than half of China’s sulfur imports, according to a note released Tuesday by consultancy SMM Information & Technology Co. With spring planting season approaching, sulfur demand remains firm as phosphate fertilizer plants run at high rates and step up restocking, the note said. (x)

/// Markets might not yet have fully ⁠priced in the ​possibility of a long war, according to Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein, who estimates that nitrogen prices could roughly double and phosphate prices rise ​50% from current levels.

every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.

the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.

some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.

you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.

some resources to learn more here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/feeling-fat-may-be-worse-for-you-than-being-fat-idUSTON079061/

I've noticed that there is a bit of tension/denial/defensiveness when it is suggested that racism is still a thing, elsewhere. I'm wondering if anyone is willing to elaborate for the class as to HOW and WHY? Because I can have my own theories (and I do) but it's still important to let y'all talk about it. So. Floor is yours!

I’ve also seen the argument that we abolished slavery relatively early in our independent histories from Spain as an excuse to say “we’re not like the USA.”

When it comes to Black peoples from the United States specifically, we actually see you as part-beneficiaries of the American Dream ™ because for us Latinos anything that moves and speaks American English (AAVE lumped in) is gringo. In the same vein as above, many Latinos in their countries think the US is diverse because it allows different races, languages, and cultures, to exist within its borders. In other words for the Latin American world, visible diversity is the end of racism.

I could elaborate more but my Ability to Be An Eloquent Menace is leaving me because I’m hungry.

I asked my husband, "Why would Argentinians have difficulty acknowledging that antiblackness exists in Argentina?"

His answer: "Because we were too successful at it," referring to the "silent genocide" of "Blanqueamiento" (literally, "whitening") orchestrated by former Argentinian president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in the 1800s. Sarmiento is said to have taken inspiration for the "Blanqueamiento" directly from his experiences witnessing segregation in the U.S. when he spent time traveling there.

My husband continued: "They [Black Argentinians] were either washed down [through deliberate racial mixing] to the point that they became 'brown' rather than Black, were deliberately sent to the frontlines to die in war, or fled north to countries like Uruguay and Brazil, where a slave would be freed if they crossed the border. Black women were married to white men, which led to the 'mestizo' (mixed) population taking over, and the older Black generations died out. Now, we don't have many African-Argentinians, and the average Argentinian would say that there never were, even though many of our country's proudest cultural heritages, like tango and traditional folklore music, actually originated from the early Black community in Argentina."

He added that there is a popular saying in Argentina, "Somos descendientes de los barcos," which means "We are the descendants of ships." White Argentinians are aware and even proud of the fact that they're not native to Argentina, but there is little or no discussion about why that is the case or what happened to the indigenous and Black populations that used to also live there.

Here are some more info about the "Blanqueamiento," if you're interested:

Black Genocide: The True History of the Whitening of Argentina

emblem structure

concessional structure

retrospective-prospective structure 

elegy’s structures

dialectical argument structure

descriptive-meditative structure

mid-course turn

epiphanic structure

circular structure

cliche-and-critique structure

dejection-to-elation structure

dream-to-waking structure

list-with-a-twist structure

metaphor-to-meaning structure

question-and-answer structure

reductio ad absurdum

story-with-a-moral structure

One of the things I think is true, which is a way of thinking about the afterlife of slavery in regard to how we inhabit historical time, is the sense of temporal entanglement, where the past, the present and the future, are not discrete and cut off from one another, but rather that we live the simultaneity of that entanglement. This is almost common sense for black folk. How does one narrate that?

Given that the afterlife of slavery means that black death is the normative condition of civil society, what is the character of the aesthetic in the context of terror? Does death find its antidote in beauty? Do we find a way of regarding death and reckoning with it in beauty or impossible beauty or monstrous beauty? These are things that I think about when I think about the aesthetic and the way that a variety of artists and writers are taking it up.

I think of Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, the Arthur Jafa short film. It articulates the intensity of the brutal disposability and precarity of black life, and then the making and creation and aesthetic genius that also unfolds in that context, too. That’s the pressure. Ultimately, part of that remaking is about anticipating a world in which slavery has ended. To most North Americans, that might seem bizarre, the tense of that sentence might not make sense, to imagine a future world in which slavery has ended, but that’s part of the project. What would it mean to not have a social political order that’s founded on settler colonialism and slavery, racism and anti-blackness, in particular?