Seaweedbrainfodder

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Lena Luthor = useless lesbian.

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.

This is a spot from an italian estate agency (we are governed by the right-wing party)

The woman says "Ridiculous..."

The old lady is not in her home. She is at work. She's meant to be what in Italian is called "la portinaia", aka a cross between a doorwoman and cleaner of a residential building. She's in her small "office" space, at the entrance of the building, from where she can survey the coming and goings of the inhabitants. It's a job that has mostly disappeared, but is culturally very clear to us as having the connotation of "potentially gossipy, one-million-percent judgmental woman who sees everything that goes on in the apartment complex, knows everyone and their secrets, and has Strong Opinions™️".

African American Studies

An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, Revised and Updated Edition

Disrupting Colonial Pedagogies: Theories and Transgressions

J. A. Rogers: Selected Writings

The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny

African Studies

Ethnicity, Identity, and Conceptualizing Community in Indian Ocean East Africa

Lagos Never Spoils: Nollywood and Nigerian City Life

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Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History

The Urgency of Indigenous Values

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Graceful Resistance: How Capoeiristas Use Their Art for Activism and Community Engagement

Lacandón Maya in the Twenty-First Century: Indigenous Knowledge and Conservation in Mexico's Tropical Rainforest

Maya-British Conflict at the Edge of the Yucatecan Caste War

Neobugarrón: Heteroflexibility, Neoliberalism, and Latin/o American Sexual Practice

Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land

Voices of Indigenuity

Archaeology

Living Ceramics, Storied Ground: A History of African American Archaeology

New Deal Archaeology in the West

The Cretan Collection in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, volume III: Metal Objects from Gournia

Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History

Architecture

Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos

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Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985

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Covid and…: How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic

Hillary Clinton's Career in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women's Rhetorical Adaptivity

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Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting

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Stories of Our Living Ephemera: Storytelling Methodologies in the Archives of the Cherokee National Seminaries, 1846-1907

Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives

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Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979-1991)

Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel

Reconstructive Memory Work: Trauma, Witnessing and the Imagination in Writing by Female Descendants of Harkis

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Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar

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Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema

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The Visible Hands That Feed: Responsibility and Growth in the Food Sector

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Masculine Pregnancies: Modernist Conceptions of Creativity and Legitimacy, 1918-1939

Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940

Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918

History

Captivity's Collections: Natural History and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade

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Abraham Lincoln and the Bible: A Complete Compendium

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Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China

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Understanding Agatha Christie

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Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution

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Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America

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Cantonese Since the Nineteenth Century

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Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces

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Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism

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Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War

The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power in Honduras

The End of the Future: Trauma, Memory, and Reconciliation in Peruvian Amazonia

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Sonic Strategies: Performing Mexico's War on Drugs, Mourning, and Feminicide

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Phenomenology in an African Context: Contributions and Challenges

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Beyond Othering: A Gandhian Approach to Conflict Resolution in India and Pakistan

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Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century

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Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe

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Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1870

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Christan Colleges and Universities: An Empirical Guide

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Apartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence

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The Souls of Jewish Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois, Anti-Semitism, and the Color Line

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Transnational Families in Africa: Migrants and the role of Information Communication Technologies

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Come along with me to celebrate Kara Zor-El.

Supergirl.

The Last Daughter of Krypton.

Maiden of Might.

The Girl of Steel.

I miss the shirt rips

Images you can hear

Kara holding kids, no big deal.

The most powerful being on earth just lifting things, what's not to love?

There is a regality to Kryptonian capes that makes my heart skip a beat. Wish they had given Melissa a full length one.

Kara rescuing animals.

Drunk Kara.

Hopeful and powerful Kara - Our Paragon of Hope

Kara and pets.

Rage and Heat vision.

Breaking those chains.

Kara on trains.

Listening.

Casually lifting things.

The most powerful being on earth, the superior Kryptonian.

Bullet proof alien.

Supergirl and Dragon.

Fire Breath.

Heat Vision.

Flying never gets old.

Kindness. Compassion.

Hope and Lose.

Help.

Kara Zor El lost her entire world and culture, she has immense lose and trauma, but from that she takes one step in front of the other, and has hope and wants to help. That is a hero.

Kara Zor-El, our Paragon of Hope.