racism cw? | Brinens and Things – Tumblr Mirror

6-11. 9 is ideal.

Supposedly I had a great-grandfather who ate one entirely black banana every day, and who lived into his nineties, so I don’t think the overripe ones will hurt me, but after a certain point they taste weird. So once you get to 12, you have to make banana bread.

tchtchtchtchtch:

6 is the perfect sweet spot where it’s a nice vibrant yellow and perfectly ripe and doesn’t have any brown yet. So, that if I can, otherwise as close to it as possible.

another-normal-anomaly:

3-7, unripe bananas for the win. Also as per upthread I would be fascinated to find out if this is correlated with a) race or b) national origin. I mean, enjoyment of capsaicin and enjoyment of lots and lots of sugar are both correlated with national origin IIRC, so maybe banana preference is too.

Ideal banana: 11

Good banana: 10, 12, 13

Tolerable-but-I’d-rather-not banana: 9, 14, 15

Inedible banana: 8 and below

If it still has even the faintest trace of green, it’s not ripe enough.

—

Race: White*

National origin: United States (northeast)

Enjoyment of capsaicin: no

Enjoyment of lots and lots of sugar: not nearly as much as I used to, maybe just one “lot”

—

*Your mileage may vary. Some terms and conditions may apply. Your whiteness may be revoked at any time without notice.

Tags:

#food #survey #reply via reblog #(tbh ”is Brin white” has much the same answer as ”is Brin queer”) #(nobody can agree on the object-level answer but everyone agrees that I’m low-status) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(tangentially) #racism cw? #home of the brave

March 18, 2017June 21, 2020 ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

@sinesalvatorem

The previous thread was getting a bit long and topic-drifty, so I’m putting this here.

—

The band “Shame and Scandal” borrowed some instruments from. (Wikipedia says this is not technically prog rock, but more the stuff that prog rock evolved out of. *shrug* Prog rock’s not my area. I liked Genesis a lot better after they sold out.)

(Naming genres in general is not really my area. I’m used to the kind of mishmash of pop, rock, and maybe occasional dips into electronica like you hear played in the background in grocery stores*, in which the primary thing that distinguishes one type of music from another is age rather than genre. That’s why I included decades in my categorisations.)

(That’s also why it’s possible for a song from the 1980′s to sound late 50′s/early 60′s, or a song from the 2010′s to sound late 70′s/early 80′s. Both of those songs were deliberately trying to sound earlier than they were, and it works.)

—

God, I know I’ve heard songs so much like “Obeah Wedding”, but I’m having a hard time thinking of any. I don’t specifically seek them out, and they aren’t distinctive the way “Light My Fire” is.

Hmm. They mostly phased out 50′s stuff from the radio rotations in the late 00′s**, and since I don’t seek it out, I haven’t heard it much in quite a while.

I’m going to play the opening instrumental of “Obeah Wedding” to my mother and ask her what songs it reminds her of. That might help.

[…]

…well, she said her first associations were cruises and Mexico and Florida, so in other words she’s too close to the mark to be helpful. She did suggest big-band stuff from the 40′s, though, and–once I told her what the song was–pointed out that I would be familiar with this calypso song. That one sounds very different to me, though (and not fitting into any established category in my head, I think).

While I can’t seem to find anything suitable, I can tell you that I think a lot of what my brain is going off of here is “slower-paced song with lots of horns”. Although I suspect there’s some more subtle stuff going on too.

—

“Rally Round the West Indies”: again, I swear I’ve heard similar stuff, but I’m not sure what. Some part of me is insisting “The Same Moon”, but when I put them side-by-side it doesn’t seem right. (They have kind of similar minor background instruments, I think, and that’s probably what that part of me is latching on to.) Another part says “Dance into the Light”***, which is kind of similar in the horns but not quite right overall (and might be cheating, because I suspect he might be trying to sound vaguely tropical in that one).

—

Overall, this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Recognition-vs-recall issues, maybe. I’ll try to keep an ear out when listening to radio, see if I can spot something suitable.

—

*Well, probably not your grocery stores. But I know you’ve been in Canadian grocery stores, and probably American ones too. That stuff.

**Which is a suspicious timing. It may actually be that America just plays more 50′s stuff than Canada does, and it only seems like late 00′s because that’s when I moved.

*** /sees some of the music video while getting a Youtube version to link/ …god, Phil Collins is such a dork. I love him, but he’s a dork.

These are cool! However, with the exception of Shake Senora (which is actual Calypso), they all read to me as “Old American music of unspecified genre”, and I wouldn’t associate them mentally with any of the Calypso songs I linked. Huh.

Maybe you associate Calypso with rock but don’t have this association with its descendant genre (Soca)? This would be weird to me, because I feel like Calypso is more distinctly itself, while Soca borrows a lot. But IDK how your algorithm works. What do you think of these songs:

“Geelay”: 2010’s (possibly also late 00’s) music-to-dance-to, whatever the proper term for that would be. I have never been in a nightclub, but from what I’ve heard of them I would expect to hear stuff with this sort of sound. I do know from experience that it’s commonly played on radio stations aimed at adolescents; may be heard in grocery stores at times of day/week when students tend to shop, as well as at coffeeshops and fast-food restaurants at any time of day.

Ignoring the lyrics (with their geographical references), I would not have guessed it was from the Caribbean, but I probably would have guessed that black people made it.

Like the 50’s stuff, I vaguely enjoy but don’t seek out this kind of music. They kind of all blend together in my head (doesn’t help that they tend towards mostly-unintelligible lyrics), and I can’t pick out any specific examples of the category. (Except “On the Floor”, which is helped memorability-wise by having so many of its lines end with “on the floor”, but I suspect outside of the radio-playlist context that song doesn’t sound like another piece of the same puzzle.)

Well, the nice thing about still being on the radio a lot is that I can just turn on a radio for a bit and have a decent shot at getting something suitable.

[a few minutes later]

Okay, so I skipped around a couple youth-oriented radio stations, found a song just starting whose beginning sounded promising, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and guess what?

It’s a fucking dancehall song.

…well. I don’t really know what to say, at this point.

(…I’m beginning to wonder how much of the tendency towards unintelligible lyrics is because they’re actually singing in creole.)

—

“Far From Finished”: Same. Maybe a tad more electronic, but still definitely in the category of “things I would hear at Tim Hortons”.

—

“Lip Service”: Verging from the above category into rap, but I’m sure my definition of “rap” is overly broad from growing up in a subculture with a very tense relationship with black-dominated music genres. The definition of “rap” I absorbed was a metonym for the kinds of music you were supposed to dislike in a Definitely Not Racist, I Just Don’t Like Newfangled Stuff, You Can’t Prove Anything way. (I definitely don’t have a grasp of the distinction between rap and hip-hop, for one.)

—

“Find Yuh Way”: for some reason, this specifically evokes “bowling alley” to me rather than “coffeeshop” or “grocery store with lots of younger customers”. I don’t think I’ve been in a bowling alley since this song came out, though, so it’s probably not me subconsciously remembering having heard this song in a bowling alley.

—

“Jammin Sake”: Same as the first two. I’m getting a few “vaguely tropical” vibes, but I suspect that might be priming/[thinking to look for it], and if I heard this song at Tim Hortons it would not seem out of place.

—

Tell you what, here’s an Internet stream of the station I got that dancehall from. You might want to try it and see what you get.

(Folk-influenced rock is also very popular these days, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you get some of that.)

I could totally see you having accidentally listened to Soca without noticing due to inability to parse the lyrics. Probably way more true of Dancehall, though. Dancehall and Soca have similar relationships to their parent genres (Reggae and Calypso, respectively) in being a dancier, clubbier, pop-infused version. After all, Dancehall is meant to be listened to at the dancehall (ie: dance club).

However, afaik, Calypso songs have only ever been popular in the US/Canada when they were explicitly being enjoyed as ~exotic~, while Reggae was actually somewhat popular there for a while. So I’d expect Reggae’s clubby descendant to also be popular. In fact, it’s infected Japan.

So, if you’ve already been exposed to Caribbean musical styles in typical North American environments, this may be why you don’t think of them as distinctly Caribbean. Or something. IDK.

(I may also be biased on how “obviously Caribbean” these songs sound because I can actually understand what the singers are saying, and they sound home-y to me.)

Anyway, I was unable to play the radio station you linked me to, and I’m not sure why. Maybe they don’t broadcast outside of Canada? But, like, when I pressed play, it showed me an advertisement (about health, using kids on a hockey rink for the backdrop, because so Canada) before cutting off.

It could be geo-locked, but I do find when testing it that I have to press the play button two or three times before it actually starts streaming. (I didn’t get an ad, though.)

I scrolled down, and towards the bottom of the page, to the right of their street address and phone numbers, is a link to a list of recently played songs (which you could probably then hear on Youtube). Does that one work for you?

(I’m not sure if that URL is a permalink or not, so if it doesn’t work, clicking the “Recently Played” link on the main page might be worth a shot.)

Tags:

#music #reply via reblog #long post #racism cw? #(for earlier post in reblog chain)

March 18, 2017June 21, 2020 ~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

@sinesalvatorem

The previous thread was getting a bit long and topic-drifty, so I’m putting this here.

—

The band “Shame and Scandal” borrowed some instruments from. (Wikipedia says this is not technically prog rock, but more the stuff that prog rock evolved out of. *shrug* Prog rock’s not my area. I liked Genesis a lot better after they sold out.)

(Naming genres in general is not really my area. I’m used to the kind of mishmash of pop, rock, and maybe occasional dips into electronica like you hear played in the background in grocery stores*, in which the primary thing that distinguishes one type of music from another is age rather than genre. That’s why I included decades in my categorisations.)

(That’s also why it’s possible for a song from the 1980′s to sound late 50′s/early 60′s, or a song from the 2010′s to sound late 70′s/early 80′s. Both of those songs were deliberately trying to sound earlier than they were, and it works.)

—

God, I know I’ve heard songs so much like “Obeah Wedding”, but I’m having a hard time thinking of any. I don’t specifically seek them out, and they aren’t distinctive the way “Light My Fire” is.

Hmm. They mostly phased out 50′s stuff from the radio rotations in the late 00′s**, and since I don’t seek it out, I haven’t heard it much in quite a while.

I’m going to play the opening instrumental of “Obeah Wedding” to my mother and ask her what songs it reminds her of. That might help.

[…]

…well, she said her first associations were cruises and Mexico and Florida, so in other words she’s too close to the mark to be helpful. She did suggest big-band stuff from the 40′s, though, and–once I told her what the song was–pointed out that I would be familiar with this calypso song. That one sounds very different to me, though (and not fitting into any established category in my head, I think).

While I can’t seem to find anything suitable, I can tell you that I think a lot of what my brain is going off of here is “slower-paced song with lots of horns”. Although I suspect there’s some more subtle stuff going on too.

—

“Rally Round the West Indies”: again, I swear I’ve heard similar stuff, but I’m not sure what. Some part of me is insisting “The Same Moon”, but when I put them side-by-side it doesn’t seem right. (They have kind of similar minor background instruments, I think, and that’s probably what that part of me is latching on to.) Another part says “Dance into the Light”***, which is kind of similar in the horns but not quite right overall (and might be cheating, because I suspect he might be trying to sound vaguely tropical in that one).

—

Overall, this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Recognition-vs-recall issues, maybe. I’ll try to keep an ear out when listening to radio, see if I can spot something suitable.

—

*Well, probably not your grocery stores. But I know you’ve been in Canadian grocery stores, and probably American ones too. That stuff.

**Which is a suspicious timing. It may actually be that America just plays more 50′s stuff than Canada does, and it only seems like late 00′s because that’s when I moved.

*** /sees some of the music video while getting a Youtube version to link/ …god, Phil Collins is such a dork. I love him, but he’s a dork.

These are cool! However, with the exception of Shake Senora (which is actual Calypso), they all read to me as “Old American music of unspecified genre”, and I wouldn’t associate them mentally with any of the Calypso songs I linked. Huh.

Maybe you associate Calypso with rock but don’t have this association with its descendant genre (Soca)? This would be weird to me, because I feel like Calypso is more distinctly itself, while Soca borrows a lot. But IDK how your algorithm works. What do you think of these songs:

“Geelay”: 2010’s (possibly also late 00’s) music-to-dance-to, whatever the proper term for that would be. I have never been in a nightclub, but from what I’ve heard of them I would expect to hear stuff with this sort of sound. I do know from experience that it’s commonly played on radio stations aimed at adolescents; may be heard in grocery stores at times of day/week when students tend to shop, as well as at coffeeshops and fast-food restaurants at any time of day.

Ignoring the lyrics (with their geographical references), I would not have guessed it was from the Caribbean, but I probably would have guessed that black people made it.

Like the 50’s stuff, I vaguely enjoy but don’t seek out this kind of music. They kind of all blend together in my head (doesn’t help that they tend towards mostly-unintelligible lyrics), and I can’t pick out any specific examples of the category. (Except “On the Floor”, which is helped memorability-wise by having so many of its lines end with “on the floor”, but I suspect outside of the radio-playlist context that song doesn’t sound like another piece of the same puzzle.)

Well, the nice thing about still being on the radio a lot is that I can just turn on a radio for a bit and have a decent shot at getting something suitable.

[a few minutes later]

Okay, so I skipped around a couple youth-oriented radio stations, found a song just starting whose beginning sounded promising, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and guess what?

It’s a fucking dancehall song.

…well. I don’t really know what to say, at this point.

(…I’m beginning to wonder how much of the tendency towards unintelligible lyrics is because they’re actually singing in creole.)

—

“Far From Finished”: Same. Maybe a tad more electronic, but still definitely in the category of “things I would hear at Tim Hortons”.

—

“Lip Service”: Verging from the above category into rap, but I’m sure my definition of “rap” is overly broad from growing up in a subculture with a very tense relationship with black-dominated music genres. The definition of “rap” I absorbed was a metonym for the kinds of music you were supposed to dislike in a Definitely Not Racist, I Just Don’t Like Newfangled Stuff, You Can’t Prove Anything way. (I definitely don’t have a grasp of the distinction between rap and hip-hop, for one.)

—

“Find Yuh Way”: for some reason, this specifically evokes “bowling alley” to me rather than “coffeeshop” or “grocery store with lots of younger customers”. I don’t think I’ve been in a bowling alley since this song came out, though, so it’s probably not me subconsciously remembering having heard this song in a bowling alley.

—

“Jammin Sake”: Same as the first two. I’m getting a few “vaguely tropical” vibes, but I suspect that might be priming/[thinking to look for it], and if I heard this song at Tim Hortons it would not seem out of place.

—

Tell you what, here’s an Internet stream of the station I got that dancehall from. You might want to try it and see what you get.

(Folk-influenced rock is also very popular these days, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you get some of that.)

Tags:

#music #North Americans are…less exotic creatures than previously believed? #I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve accidentally been listening to soca for years without noticing #reply via reblog #long post #racism cw?

December 14, 2015September 19, 2019 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

nonternary:

sinesalvatorem:

@ilzolende mentioned that people asked to pet their hair at the Solstice. I said there was a good chance that more people would have asked to touch mine, because of the uniqueness. They said that there was actually a good chance that fewer people would ask because of the cause of the uniqueness.

So, fwiw, I like having my hair touched, once I have warning that it’s about to happen and don’t reflexively duck and block anyone trying to touch me. So, if I meet you irl and you want to touch my hair, go ahead and ask. I won’t call you racist.

…Actually, now that I think about it, there is a reasonable chance I will call you racist for something. It’s a habit from back home. I’m from a majority-black country where no one really takes the idea of racism seriously. As such, jokes about people being racist for innocuous things are the norm.

I have called people racist for saying “all X look the same” when they were talking about oranges or action movies. I have asked “Is it because I’m black?” when people have asked if I’d prefer Coke to Pepsi. The thing is, these were all jokes aimed at other black people, in a mostly-black culture, where no one took the idea of racism seriously. The most common reaction to “Is it because I’m black?” was always “Yes”. The reaction to “all X look the same” comments was “Yes, they do, and black people too”.

I may have to change this habit if I’m going to stay in North America. In my first week here, I called a Canadian racist for saying that all apples look the same. This… Did not go as expected. At all. It ended with us apologising profusely to each other and feeling mutually guilty.

On the bright side, if I can apologise at someone while they’re apologising at me and end up in a spiral of “I’m sorry!” “No, I’m sorry!”, there may yet be hope for me becoming a True Canadian.

So, for future reference: If I actually think you did something that was racist and bad, expect me to say “What you did was harmful because…”. If I say “That was racist”, you may assume with 90% confidence that I’m joking. I just wasn’t raised to take anything that begins with “That’s racist” seriously.

“In my first week here, I called a Canadian racist for saying that all apples look the same. This… Did not go as expected. At all. It ended with us apologising profusely to each other and feeling mutually guilty.” Alison/Canada OTP

Canada<–Alison–>Sunlight love triangle

Tags:

#reply via reblog

August 2, 2015September 12, 2019 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

aceofwands:

capriceandwhimsy:

aceofwands:

Saw another post on the DS9 tag praising the scene in By Inferno’s Light where Martok and Worf totally respect Garak for going into the crawlspace despite his claustrophobia, and say how brave it is of him.

And it got me thinking about that douche who thought Data wouldn’t make a good captain in Unification because ‘You wouldn’t see a Klingon as a counsellor’ (or a … whatever his other example was) – and I’m convinced he’s 100% wrong, and that a Klingon is as likely as any other race to be a counsellor.

Really, it’s all tied back to the ridiculous assumption (which TNG unfortunately seemed to perpetuate at times) that every single Klingon in the entire Empire is a warrior (never mind that we’ve seen Klingon scientists and judges and more) and therefore lol don’t be silly they don’t have any mental health professionals of any kind. Yeah, cause that makes sense.

As if a Klingon counsellor wouldn’t see helping their patients overcome their mental illnesses as a worthy battle.

If Martok and Worf can recognise the bravery in fighting internal fears, then there’s no reason to think that other Klingons wouldn’t feel the same.

So in conclusion, I now really want to see/read about a Klingon counsellor.

“Tell me about your fear,” Dugath said.

The Klingon youth sitting in the chair across from him shuffled nervously, eyes downcast, before looking up at the older Klingon with a practiced sneer. “There is no fear,” the youth said. “I am a warrior. Warriors do not know fear.”

“Then you are a fool,” Dugath growled. “Fear is what keeps a warrior alive. Fear tells him that danger is near, and that his life is in danger. A warrior should not be ruled by fear, but neither should he deny it.”

The youth remained silent. “To admit your fear takes great courage,” Dugath said. “Perhaps more courage than leaping into battle against many foes: for the only foe you now face lies within you, where no blade can pierce.”

The youth’s lower lip trembled, but he stilled it with a supreme force of will. “I dream of the night on Vikoth Nine,” he admitted at last.

“The night when you won your battle honors? The night of which the others still celebrate in song?” Dugath asked.

“They should not celebrate what is not deserved!” the youth growled. “There was no courage in my killing of the Romulans. Only fear and luck. Why do they sing songs of my courage, when so many more courageous and worthy warriors remain unspoken?”

Ah, thought Dugath. Much becomes clear. The face of my enemy is revealed.

The old Klingon said a silent prayer to Kahless as he prepared to do battle against the troubles infesting the youth’s mind, as he prepared to use all his courage and skill to polish and sharpen the blade that was a warrior’s soul.

Ohhhh Kahless, someone actually wrote something based on my offhand idea from a few weeks ago?!

THIS IS FANTASTIC~! And exactly how I picture a Klingon therapy session <3 <3

Tags:

#Star Trek #fanfic #hat-tip to cosmictuesdays for linking me this

July 31, 2015September 11, 2019 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

skankplissken:

I had a dream about a Star Trek series with a ferengi captain and he was super endearing but it was like…the worst ship in the fleet and it was full of the misfits of starfleet But I loved this captain I loved him who is he

obscuruslupa:

this is an amazing idea

wearmanyhats:

It’s Nog.

Despite its face as a purported utopia, Starfleet’s got some unfortunate cultural hangups to work through when it comes to certain species, of course. Being the only Ferengi in Starfleet, Nog has to deal with all kinds of racist bullshit from his peers, his superiors, those he eventually outranks.

He makes captain real quick, through a combination of a few open-minded mentors, bull-headed determination, and the good old-fashioned lobes for the business of dealing with people. And he does it despite the bullying, the unfounded rumors and stumbling blocks thrown in his way. He campaigns to have his own ship and gets it simply because the bigots at the top can’t find a legitimate reason to deny it.

But they still try to set him up for failure. They crew his below-substandard ship with the dregs, the misfits, the near-dropouts of the Academy. But instead of getting frustrated, Nog sees opportunity. He knows what his ragtag crew feels like- the unwanted, expected to crash and burn, pushed out to be forgotten.

They know why they’ve been dumped together, pushed aside in the hopes that they’ll just go away. After an admittedly rocky start, Nog sits the crew down in the mess hall and tells these square pegs to start carving corners into the round holes Starfleet has shoved them into. You can’t fit the job? Make the job fit you. We could just give up and be bitter that we’ve all clearly been put here because Admirals Whats-Their-Faces are just waiting for us to bumble into a black hole, or we could surprise them. Prove them wrong.

For himself, Nog adapts the Rules of Acquisition to be compatible with Starfleet culture. His uncle Quark would need a fainting couch if he ever heard, but Nog is thinking profit in a much longer game. He wants to be just the first of many Ferengi to join Starfleet, so he must be a consummate cultural pioneer. More Ferengi in Starfleet might mean eventually Ferenginar joins the Federation. It’s a… very long shot, admittedly, and he might be long dead of old age by the time it happened, but Nog has faith in his people. The females’ liberation movement, going full steam ahead back on his home planet, proves his people can change for the better; it’s a start. Wider acceptance in the galactic community = profit for Ferenginar’s people, and Nog’s idea of profit has expanded somewhat beyond just latinum. (Quark would also need that fainting couch if he ever knew the radical altruistic turn his nephew’s philosophy had taken.)

Ishka listens to her grandson’s weekly transmissions home and could just burst with pride with each one.

He susses out the talents and skills each of his crewmembers has to offer. Puts them to work in ways that dance just around the edges of regulation, finding loopholes in only the way a good Ferengi can. The jerks in charge of handing out assignments keep giving him missions either designed to be a guaranteed fail or are so terrible and frustrating that they should just want to quit, but he turns these fetch quests and garbage details on their side to not only succeed, but return with valuable data or objects of interest. Nothing galaxy-shaking, but more than enough that it makes Nog’s detractors fume at the thought of this upstart shrimp of a Ferengi and all those should-be washouts doing well. Pretty soon Nog’s supporters, the handful of teachers back at the Academy, are all smirking quietly at each other in the faculty conference rooms.

Then Nog and his crew land the big one. One of their little throwaway missions turns over just the right space rock and there’s some universe-ending anomaly staring back at them. Their calls for assistance are treated casually at best- ‘Ugh, it’s the Ferengi and the USS Jury Rig (not their little tub’s real name, but the insult backfired, and Nog’s pretty sure Jenkins is the one who handpainted the nickname on the nacelles during a spacewalk; Nog pretends not to have noticed.), what, did they get caught behind a flock of asteroids?’

Nog and his crew realize help is dragging their warp-speed asses and they’re on their own. Defiantly, they roll their eyes, sigh (gee, shouldn’t we all own condos here at the back of everyone’s priority queue by now?) and get to work. By the time the first ship arrives to help, its just in time to watch the crew of the Jury Rig banish the terrible thing in the sky.

In the fallout, Starfleet command is made aware of all the things Nog and his crew has actually accomplished, along with all the shit they’ve put up with from superiors who set them up to fail. Nog is offered a newer, better ship. Some of the crew are offered promotions, positions on more prestigious ships. To a one, they decline. They’re staying with Captain Nog.

…they take the new ship, though.

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #headcanon accepted

May 27, 2015September 6, 2019 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

thetransintransgenic:

[Note: I’m not endorsing (or, by this disclaimer, criticizing) the viewpoint presented here. I’m just claiming that this is a viewpoint that someone could conceivably hold.]

We are at a unique period of human history where our greatest trials come not from nature, but from ourselves. We have freed ourselves from the simple lack of necessary resources. Through the rigors of science we have freed ourselves from the iron grip of ignorance. Through vaccines and antibiotics we have defeated disease. And so on – fewer and fewer trials to humanity remain, that derive from our world and our place in the universe.

But nevertheless trials remain. Trials which threaten to tear our race and our planet apart. I speak, of course, of pointless destruction of people and property for the sake of the pointless hate of racism, and the dangerous and short-thinking violence we are commiting to our environment, our ecosystems, and our earth. These two, colossal trials parallel in their source in humanity, and yet parallel too in their solution.

For the problems of environmentalism, and the problems of racism, there is no single solution to be found. There is no scientific method by which a few people, giants standing on giants, can defeat racism. There is no vaccine to cure the environment. Any solution which can be found – which must be found, which WILL be found – must come from and be carried out by every person, every component of humanity, as one. As one human race we must dig inside our souls, and find slumbering there the compassion for our fellow humans, for our human race as a whole, for our planet, and for our future, and the creativity to make all of those things better.

But despite that – despite the odds, despite the trials and the naysayers and those, even, who actively oppose these goals – I still believe in humanity. I believe that every person has the capacity to wake up, to dredge up from the foundation of their souls the fundamental and yet revolutionary idea that their fellow human beings are HUMAN BEINGS, regardless of color. I believe that every person has, sleeping inside of them, thousands and millions of those revolutionary ideas, each one able to prop up nature just one more little bit. I believe that such slumbering ideas of such human compassion are the singular components that define the human experience.
I believe this because I can see no other option – no other possibility that could save our collective future but this compassion, these individual ideas of humanity that will collectively destroy the twin evils of racism and environmental negligence. And so I can do nothing but believe, and pray – in the deepest parts of my soul – that in every man, woman and child in this country and in the world, colorless green ideas sleep, furiously.

[Vaguely inspired by Shaenon Garrity’s short story, which you all should read.]

thetransintransgenic’s tags: #Linguistics #Context is EVERYTHING #wordplay #SUCK IT Chomsky #Also Shaenon’s story is an interesting possible-counterpoint to one of the points in #ozymandias271 #’s recent post on languages #In which Gadit Rants #(But like not actually about my opinions…)#Maybe I need a fic tag

Tags:

#…oh my god #language

October 13, 2014August 2, 2019 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sobeitjayt:

troublesinmytwenties:

YOOOOO OMG

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I don’t know what show this is from #TagViewer can probably find me someone who does #I’ll add it in soon #oh hang on the source says it’s #Saturday Night Live #that makes sense

Image ~ December 1, 2012June 23, 2020 ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

pyrrhiccomedy:

thedorkages:

Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1280.

The maritime plan of most of human civilization during our period went as follows:

Get boats.

Put weapons on boats.

Conquer neighboring countries either by military force or by overwhelming trade dominance.

Instagram shots of you in front of London/Indrapura/Mogadishu.

Go home.

The Polynesians, on the other hand, appeared to have a different plan:

Build canoes.

Sail out into the open ocean for four thousand miles.

???

Sweet, Hawai’i!

As the world looked on in tolerant, baffled wonder for thousands of years [sidebar on Vikings], Polynesians repeated steps 1-4, especially step 3, which when you peeled off the little sticker with the question marks turned out to be “employ an array of sophisticated navigational techniques which remain in cultural transmission and even active use today. Also, when you reach an island, use an equally sophisticated array of terraforming techniques to make an unfamiliar landscape ecologically viable for human life. Also, eat a balanced diet, because scurvy is for white people.”

The Polynesians did their eastern Pacific exploration around our period, and may have settled Easter Island and Hawai’i around then, too, if not a little earlier. Polynesian colonies were set up on little stubs of volcanic rock, hideously isolated archipelagos, even sub-polar islands. They probably hung out with medieval Peruvians, or at least, they made enough American contact to get ahold of sweet potatoes. [Sidebar on sweet potatoes.] And they found New Zealand, and settled in, and those who stuck around became the Māori.

And then hundreds of years later the islands of the Polynesian triangle were conquered by Europeans and the Europeans did their damndest to put that little ??? sticker back on the four-part plan, because, you know, people without shirts could not possibly be world explorers. But we do not have to listen to them. When I said those navigational techniques are still in use today, I mean literally, today, because in August of this year a group of Maori sailors took off from New Zealand for Rapa Nui, the last leg of the Polynesian triangle that no one’s completed in the modern era, and according to their website they should be landing, in, like, twelve hours, if they haven’t already.

???

oh my goddddd WHAT

I mean, not the navigational techniques and awesome canoes, I knew about those, I mean THIS AUGUST WHAT RIGHT NOW WHAT how come nobody TOLD ME?????

Stupid mainstream media: get your heads out of your asses. Now. I WANTED TO HEAR ABOUT THIS DAILY THANKYOUVERY.

Now there’s a good point. Why haven’t we heard about this? It seems like exactly the sort of thing Daily Planet would cover, yet I don’t think they’ve mentioned it. (Maybe somebody with a Twitter should ask @dailyplanetshow if they’re getting on this.)

(Also, the most recent news update on that page (December 1st, because time zones) says the current ETA is sometime next week.)

Tags:

#awesome #(except for the not having heard about it sooner)