?????? rich people are losing it
to be clear, yes i would also do some of this if i had the money. im experiencing blinding envy over the dr pepper mirror dimension.
Finally a rich person actually using all that money for something fun
*Scrolls past*
*reluctant sigh*
*scrolls back up*
*rebogs*
Because we don't teach history right.
We teach history like it's a work of fiction where the characters act the way they do because they were written that way. And not like the real world with real people who were just as human as us and had reasons to act the way they do. And that the same mistakes and foibles they had could happen to us too.
And even this history is woefully undertaught. People learn it to memorize the events of the story and then forget about it. They don't learn to comprehend it, they don't learn to learn from it.
This will be a long story, but settle in, because this is important.
I was fortunate enough to have some great teachers growing up, in a small, fairly well-funded school system (and during times when everyone still agreed that fascism was bad). In 8th grade, our school had an interdisciplinary unit for about a month focusing solely on the Holocaust. Every class taught something related to it, even math. For a month, we read horrifying stories and watched documentaries and did research assignments on the Holocaust. By the end, any one of us would have said we were experts on the subject.
And at the very end, our entire grade (about 100 kids) was broken into four groups, and we were told that as a reward for all our hard work on the Holocaust unit, we were going to compete for a trip to Disney World. Only one team could go, but the entire team would get to travel there and spend a few days in the park, all expenses paid.
The competition was simple: the group with the most team spirit would win. We were instructed to come up with a team name, a catchy slogan, and a logo (something simple and easy to draw). We were allowed to prove our team spirit however we wanted. That was it. That was all of the instructions. The competition would last a week, and short of stopping physical violence, the teachers stepped back and let us have at it.
It was terrifying.
At first, everyone just hung up posters in the halls and cheerfully recited their slogan whenever the teachers were watching. Within a few days, posters were being torn down and shredded. Verbal fights were breaking out in the hallways. It wasn't enough to say your team was the best, everyone had somehow decided. You also had to prove that everyone else's team was inferior. People started making up lies and gossip, saying that everyone in a particular group was lazy or ugly or smelly or what have you (we were 13). Slurs were thrown around. (Again, we were 13.)
By the final day, the groups were marching down the halls in formation, shouting their slogan in unison. Shouting slander against the other groups. The floor was covered in tattered paper.
I was shy and introverted and weird and unpopular and mostly stayed out of it. But those images are burned into my memory. These kids had turned into vicious monsters, all for a stupid school project.
The teachers had us march down the hallway to the auditorium to announce the results of the competition. The groups were little armies now. Most students marched in lockstep, shouting their slogans. We were seated together in our groups. The teachers dimmed the lights, quieted us down, and the teacher in charge of this whole project said that before he announced the winners, he had something to share with us about the person who was responsible for this entire competition. He turned on the projector and displayed a portrait of Hitler.
Everyone lost their minds. Kids were booing and throwing things. We knew that Hitler was a Bad Guy.
The teacher calmed us back down, and then explained that there was no trip to Disney World, and the fact that not one student questioned for a moment that such a massively expensive and complicated prize would be granted for such a silly competition was honestly kind of disappointing. This entire week, he said, was our final exam. The final exam for the Holocaust unit.
We had spent a month learning about this. About how this "bad guy" inspired a whole hell of a lot of people to march in lockstep shouting slogans and plastering their symbol all over everything. That one bad guy had told them that they were special, and other groups were trying to take away what was rightfully theirs for being the best, and they ultimately got extremely violent. We had learned all about the Hitler Youth and the SS and book burnings and, of course, the concentration camps. We'd all read the Diary of Anne Frank. We'd been marinating in this information for a month, in all of our classes.
But we hadn't learned. We hadn't really understood what they were trying to teach us. Not that this happened. But that this happens. It can happen very easily, especially if people aren't watching out for it.
The kids were furious. They shouted that this wasn't fair, that we were only following instructions. The teachers had lied to us. They had told us to do this, and now they were mad at us for following directions?
He was ready for this, of course. Calming us back down again, he pointed out that all they'd done is tell us to give ourselves a name, a slogan, a symbol, and demonstrate "team spirit." That was literally it. No one told us to rip posters down. No one told us to march in the hallways. No one told us to spread rumors and shout insults. No one told us to fight each other.
They didn't have to.
All it takes to get people to behave this way is to tell them that their group is special, they deserve good things, but the good things aren't there because those other people are taking them from you.
The Nazis were not uniquely evil people. They were just encouraged to demonstrate their team spirit. And there were no teachers to stop it from getting violent. Because the person encouraging them wanted things to get violent.
The Holocaust was not the story of Hitler the Bad Guy. He was there, and he was responsible for a lot, but that wasn't the point. Germany during the Holocaust wasn't suddenly, by total accident, full of evil people.
It was just full of people like us.
This time, it just was a lie about Disney World and a week of chaos. But if we didn't watch out, the next time fascism started to rise, we would get swept up on the wrong side of it. We had just proven that we would. We'd be too swept up in making sure that our special group got the prize they deserved to notice that we were being lied to about the prize in the first place.
That could happen. If we weren't careful. If we forgot the lesson we'd just learned.
After he'd let the horror and shame and embarrassment and indignation of that week sink in properly, he reassured us that it wasn't our fault. The point wasn't for us to prove that we understood the lesson of the Holocaust. It wasn't actually a test after all, it was our final lesson. The most important lesson.
He'd known that this test would go this way, because it always did. He did this every year. He said in all his years of teaching, only one student, one student, had ever questioned it. Pulled him aside in the hallway and said straightforwardly that whatever was going on was messed up and he wanted no part of it.
And you know what? That is how you teach history. You give students the facts of what happened. And then you show them how easily it can happen again.
Sadly, most schools don't have the resources for this sort of thing, and these days they'd probably not be allowed to run this little experiment. But I'm extremely grateful to that teacher, grateful that I was part of that experience. It was harrowing, and it made me and a lot of other people vigilant for the rest of my life in a way I know I would not have been otherwise.
It was over 35 years ago now and it still makes me emotional to think about.
Most people never got to have that experience, to properly learn that lesson. But at least I can pass the story on to you. And you can pass it on to others. Because if you think you would have acted differently, that you would have seen through the ruse, think again.
That story is so important!!!!
I myself am German, born in 1999 and live in a village very close to an old 'Arbeitslager' where 'war criminals' were held captive (and tortured).
Our village took the 'Entnazifizierung' very seriously, so we had the topic of WW2 for five years in a row. Every grade had at least a couple months of learning about it.
The information we were given was more than words and Numbers. We were visiting the sites, especially on school trips, we were taught how propaganda works - I still shudder when I see the German flag hanging anywhere outside of international Sport events - we saw actual pictures of the corpses, listened to time witnesses.
My grandmother told me about the bombings she witnessed as a child, my father kept telling me that he would have surely fallen for the same lies his father fell for (my grandfather was a nazi).
We were taught about relativations, things like 'at least they gave us the Autobahn' and 'work' in times when people were starving, you know, all those 'socialist takes' that has right wing people today use to claim the nazis were 'communists'. Those arguments were used to explain why people fell for the propaganda in the first place. (We don't hate Nazis for the Autobahn, in case this you're confused.)
We didn't do any of the (aweinspiring) roleplay the Person before me told you about. We were reminded everyday that this history is our responsibility to never repeat. And we watched the movie 'die Welle' which is basically the same experiment in video format, to get that point across.
I won't say it worked for everyone. I just know how all these things combined worked on me. And I take this responsibility very seriously.
It's why you see me post all those politic posts. But this is important to me. And right now, it should be important to everyone.
First humans ever to leave the solar system suddenly drop out of communications and the ship can't be found with any equipment. After one month of no contact their home countries start reluctantly holding funerals for the space heroes only for them all to turn up, healthy, well fed and extremely disoriented, in the middle of Tokyo, talking about alien abduction. Turns out that aliens found the poor humans straying out of their solar system, presumably lost, and took them to Alien Wildlife Rehabilitation before dumping them back in the middle of their native habitat.
I literally just googled "city with the highest population"
Iโll bet they have cool new tattoos that turn out to be tracking devices too. Just in case these spirited individuals try to make another break for it.
... do the tats make them stupid popular, like that time scientists gave birds tracker anklets and it accidentally made them ultra fuckable
Letโs say yes. Those alien scientists are learning so much, and none of it is accurate.
"ARNGHERRANHGERGNAHGHGERNAGH"
Baby
Princess Bride themed restaurant. Waiters say โas you wishโ after taking your order.
Finish the Fezzik in an hour, your meal is free.
Come in a wheelbarrow, your meal is 10% off.
Every so often the hostess will say โbye bye boys, have fun storming the castle!โ as people are leaving.
Miracle Maxโs Cure for the Mostly Dead is on the menu and its a giant chocolate cakeball.
The servers will sometimes switch your wines after distracting you.
They sell Anybody Want a Peanut Brittle at the door.
โThere are a shortage of perfect chicken breasts in the world. Twould be a pity not to order these.โ
โHello, my name is Inigo Montoya. Iโll be your server. Prepare to dine.โ
BWEAKFAST, BWEAKFAST IS WHAT BWINGS US TOGEVVER TODAY
this is perfect
The Choctaw-Irish Brotherhood(via)
I love stuff like this. Didnโt a tribe in Africa send America some cows after 9/11? Like this is holy and the most valuable thing we have. We hear your suffering and want to do anything in our power to help
It was not a potato famine. The famine didnโt happen because of the potato yeald failing. Ireland was actually producing more than enough food. However it was almost all land owned by Brittish landowners, who took all of the food out of the country to sell in UK. Potato was what the Irish farmers ate, because it was cheep and could be produced in worst parts of the land, where more profitable food couldnโt be grown. When there were no longer potatos, the decision for the farmers was to either starve and sent the food as rent to the landlords or loose their homes and then starve.
The Brittish goverment was unwilling to do anything for two reasons. First was the laissez-faire capitalistic ideology, that put the rights of property owners to make profits above human lives. Rent freeze was unthinkable and they even were unwilling to do proper relief efforts as free food would lower the cost of food. The second reason was distain for the Irish, and the thought that they were โbreeding too muchโ and the famine was a natural way to trim down the population, aka genocidal reasoning.
This is why itโs important to stress it was not a potato famine. The potato blinght was all over Europe but only in Ireland there was a famine. The reasons behind it had nothing to do with potatos and everything to do with the Brittish.
Apparently what made Choctaw want to offer relief to Irish was the news about the Doolough Tragedy. Hundreds of starving people were gathered for inspection to verify they were entitled to recieve relief. The officials would for *some reason* not do that and instead left to a hunting lodge 19 kilometers away to spend the night and said to the starvqing people they would have to walk there by morning to be inspected. The weather conditions were terrible and many of them died completely needlessly during the walk thoroung day and night.
This apparently reminded the Choctaw of their own very recent (and much more explicit and bigger scale) experiences of ethnic clensing, where they were forcibly relocated. It was basically a death march and thousands of Choctaw died from the terrible conditions also completely needlessly.
In 2015 a memorial named Kindred Spirits was installed in Southern Ireland to commemorate the Chactow donation.
Choctaw Nation has now added a monument of their own:
Been a while since I drew a furry comic based off of a tumblr post
It feels criminal not to include the third panel
THE GREATEST JOKE ADVENTURE TIME HAS EVER WRITTEN
People like to make fun of animators but jokes on themโฆ
WHYโD YALL LEAVE OUT THE BEST ONE?
Canโt forget this gem.
Yeah okay Ill reblog that!
Some women are conditioned to be fragile and weak, and to believe that it's a sin to outperform a man. Her feminism would involve allowing women to be strong.
Some women are expected to be strong at times when they can't. Her feminism would involve reassuring her that it's okay to not be strong.
Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're too stupid to ever amount to anything. Their disability activism would involve reassuring them that they're capable.
Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're smart and gifted, and are expected to live up to impossible standards. Their disability activism would involve allowing them to fail, make mistakes, be stupid, etc.
Some children are constantly reminded "you're the child, I'm the adult" in order to deny their autonomy. Their youth rights activism would involve treating them like an adult at times when they feel ready for it.
Some children are treated like adults in order to justify increased expectations or to downplay abuse against them. Their youth rights activism would involve allowing them to be a child.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to oppression. Each individual person's experience is different. Whatever trauma is caused by their oppression, the activism should focus on undoing it.
I heard recently that you can tell a lot about a person by the first movie they know Tim Curry from and I literally canโt stop thinking about it.
so say in the tags whatโs the first movie you know Tim Curry from. Mines muppets treasure island
I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but Iโm hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen daysโ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.
My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! Iโm amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. Iโm fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813
And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like
Some people have been wondering about the raccoon. Listen. Listennn. Don't ask about the raccoon.
But does the racoon survive the Uruk-Hai? Does he curl up on Aragorn's head, or does he go straight to Faramir? Does he bite Denethor?
My friend. My colleague. My brother my captain my king. I too have been pondering this question, and in my mind there can be only one ultimate outcome.
A few months later
All hail the High Warden of Gondor.
Epilogue: It ADORES Faramir.
Every time I see this post Iโm obligated to reblog and make it your problem too!
that was everything I was hoping it would be. marvelous
I love this because you know exactly where it's going and you're not disappointed
I was so looking forward for the Jupiter gravity and it didn't disappoint and THEN THE SUN GRAVITY MADE ME HOLLER
NASA released the clearest pictures yet of our neighbours in the solar system
Oh and of course us
Honourable mention
i have never contemplated someone doing this on the harp. i am amazed she got all the parts in and so fast
Wow!
HOLY FUCK
I love her commentary in the video
