[“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Now, there’s an admirable practical joke for you. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do.”]

kurt vonnegut

SOGUMM — Dazed Korea Fall 2021 ph. Cho Giseok, styling by Kim Yeyoung

TAEMIN ❖ IDEA:理想

Teuta Matoshi gowns

maybe if they make stucky canon kim jong un will be next

Imagine showing this post to someone yesterday

Hold on I’m having a coherent thought

If you hear a piece of media or its creator is bigoted your first thought should not be “can I still enjoy this,” but instead “did I register said bigotry” and “how has enjoying this impacted my own thought process and internal biases.” Your first action should always be to maintain solidarity with the group being discriminated against and working to better yourself and not to look out for your own self interests.

being a hater in moderation is good for you man if you go thru life only feeling positive to neutral emotions about media you’re doing it wrong

By Valentina Li on Instagram.

here are some petitions to sign:

stop mark zuckerberg from colonizing kauai

hold the u.s. army accountable: justice for vanessa guillen

junk the anti - terrorism bill and uphold human rights

support the equality act

change the kkk status into terrorist organization

justice for julian m. solis

target, stop filling the world with plastic bags

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SERBIA?

TL;DR: we’re living under a dictatorship. people are currently protesting the deaths caused by decisions the government made while prioritising the election over human lives. mainstream news are making it seem like the protesters are hooligans who are protesting new safety measures and not the dictatorship they refuse to even acknowledge.

THE LEAD-UP

here’s a brief list of things that caused the people to protest:

the elections have been rigged since the moment aleksandar vučić became president. not even in a relatively subtle way like in the usa (gerrymandering), but by literally replacing sacks of voting papers with ones that are voting for sns (srpska narodna stranka, the president’s party)

we were lied to about when the first covid-19 case appeared in serbia. the government withheld information from us because it benefited them.

also, about a week before the lockdown, the president made fun of the virus, encouraging people to “go shop in milano if they want”. when the situation got serious, he shifted the blame to the people.

hospitals all around the country were and still are severely underfunded. they’re reusing masks, don’t have enough space for all the patients, and the tests we’re still given aren’t accurate.

the lockdown was lifted prematurely because of the parliamentary elections. if you look up “serbia covid19 cases” on google, you’ll see that the second wave started around june 21st, which is when the election was.

right after the election was over, the government set extreme safety measures, including: police enforced lockdown fri-sun, an attempt to force all belgrade students out of their dorms during exam season, etc.

THE PROTESTS

last night (july 7th), there was a huge unorganized protest outside of the belgrade parliament building.

as expected, the police turned it into a violent protest. they used tear gas 26 times, attacked people who weren’t even protesting, and used unnecessary force against those who were. a man was choked the same way george floyd was.

only n1 (cnn’s channel) actually informed people that this was happening, and their website was down all night last night. every other network was airing their usual program, since they’re controlled by the government.

the people got into the parliament building a few times, but were ultimately forced out violently by the police.

there were protests in other cities too, but they weren’t as large.

rts (the most watched channel in the country) is putting all the blame on the protesters and making it seem as if they’re protesting the new safety measures, and not the dictatorship of aleksandar vučić.

every other international news source is pretty much doing the same.

WHAT NOW?

the protests will continue. in case they’re successful, there will be another election, one that won’t put only sns members in the parliament (they make up more than 70% as of right now).

in case they’re not successful, we’ll be expecting a change of the constitution that will state that there’s no limit to how many terms a president can have. we’ll live under complete dictatorship.

the most you, outside of serbia, can do is share correct information and spread awareness about what’s happening.

reblog and share this post, share other posts (on instagram especially) made by serbian people, call out false information when you see it.