“I’m not into Indian girls, but you look [other ethnicity]” you’re into Indian girls.

“Omg I love Indian food” and it’s just butter chicken or chicken tikka masala.

“Chandelier earrings” you mean my jhumkas?

“I love avatar/atla” you don’t know what the concept of an avatar even is.

“Your slums are dirty” tell that to the unusually low Covid rates in those slums.

“Indians don’t experience colourism” that is certainly an echo chamber chronically online take.

Exams during our festival season while every other religion gets their days off. Told to speak English when many of us in the diaspora already do (thanks colonialism!). Made to take English exams or considered international students on the basis of our names. Overlooked in job applications. Blamed for climate change. Blamed for lack of jobs. Blamed for crashing economy. Blamed for terrorism (more issues there). Random TSA checks. Random hate crimes. Stolen culture. Stolen property.

Uncredited for simple things everyone does nowadays. Coconut oil, miswak, mehndi, indigo, the number 0, banking cheques, chess, yoga, chakras, third eye, evil eye, turmeric, clean girl aesthetic, lost wax casting, bindis, kohl, dupattas, bangles, courtyards in houses, paisley, the very concept of rebirth and reincarnation. I could go on.

The racism towards Indians is so entrenched in every single western culture that nobody bothers to look twice when India suffers a heat wave. You all love Greece and Rome but did you know they directly benefitted from trade with the Indian subcontinent? Did you know Indians were taken as indentured labourers too? Did you know we were slaves too? And I’m speaking for South Asia as a whole here, did you know many of us are still slaves?

because young women and girls need role models. need someone to aspire to become as they age. 

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

Edit: I've attempted to add this link at least three times and Tumblr is being stubborn, so let me try posting it on its own:

The clandestine nature of such transactions made estimating the relative numbers of such bodies difficult, but in 1935, Cobb rose to the challenge by analyzing the 2,139 cadavers that had passed through the Laboratory of Anatomy of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, since 1835. He showed that the bodies of whites were initially used in the Midwest but that they were rapidly replaced by imported Black bodies. Cobb found that in contrast to white cadavers, which were local, "a heavy Majority" of Cleveland's Negro cadavers emanated from southern states.. after the wartime exodus of Blacks from the south, the imported Black bodies were replaced by those of resident Blacks, out of all proportion to immigration trends...

Northern medical schools also employed strategies to make the most of the Black and poor-white populations that they had. For example, on February 20, 1810, Dr. John Warren and Professor of Chemistry Aaron Dexter presented the president and fellows of Harvard University with a "Memorial and Petition for the Removal of Med.Lect to Boston," in which they made their case for moving Harvard Medical School from the university's home base in Cambridge across the Charles River to Boston, where it could have veiled itself of cadavers from the poor Black and white denizens of the almshouse.

Warren successfully argued that "one of the great objects" of the school was to offer students cadavers for dissection, without which Harvard might be eclipsed by "other [medical] establishments, even in the remote areas of the country." Later that year, the medical school moved to Boston."

The Loch Ness monster, head/body/tail poking out of the water, says “I never look good in photos…”

Cthulhu says, “My name’s too hard to spell.” The tentacle-faced, winged humanoid is holding a piece of paper on which is crossed out “Ktulu,” “Ctuhlu,” and “Kthuloo.”

Godzilla holds its arms in the air and angrily says, “I hate modern architecture!”

King Kong says, “I fell for an actress…”

A seated, red dragon says, “I’m a pyromaniac…”

A mummy, face slightly unwrapped, says “I curse too much…”

I don't have a ton of photos of this species: this sweet old man was the only one anywhere near me. He's since passed, so I wanted to get photos of him online. All he wanted to do the times I saw him was relax in the sun, so that's how we'll remember him.

The Animal Photo Reference Repository is an independent, permanently open-access project and funded entirely by donations. Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use all photos in the repository as references.

I know we’re completely out of aardwolves in the US and I think there’s only a couple places that have striped hyenas left. The two facilities I knew of who had them, including this guy, have both passed. EDIT: I have been reminded that there are a couple of aardwolves, Nashville was raising a couple babies although I don’t know where they are now.

So I'm not sure what happened to Nashville's pups, but as of ~May 2026, AZA zoos are apparently aardwolf-free.