genghisyajj:

queeranarchism:

rotzaprachim:

rotzaprachim:

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

Every dialect you don’t like is a friend you haven’t yet made

If you find yourself disliking a dialect, that’s a little string you can pull on to unlearn some bullshit. There’s a very good chance that you’ll find that dialect is associated with

• a racial minority
• the queer subculture of a racial minority
• poor people
• poor rural people
• yes, especially those poor rural people you’ve also been taught to associate with right wing politics. Rethink that shit.
• a colonized people
• a very old religious divide that was used as an excuse for colonization and resource extraction from poor and/or colonized people
• teenagers
• teenagers of color
• all of the above somehow

There is one bad language. Which is contemporary Hebrew. And it’s bad because it was deliberately used to wipe out Yiddish and Ladino, which are now both endangered. It’s not even the same as biblical Hebrew.

This would be like if the vatican decided that every italian language, every local italian dialect, should be scrubbed in order for every single italian to be forced to learn Latin, but not the original Latin, a newer version of Latin influenced by modern languages. And also in this metaphor Venetian was seen as the language of the people among Trotsky-ite communists in the soviet union.

The promotion of Hebrew at the expense of Yiddish and Ladino is a very interesting topic but this is absolutely not the only language which does/did that.

Pretty much EVERY state has whipped out regional languages, dialects and minority languages in their effort to increase their control over their population. It’s what states do.
And pretty much EVERY colonial project has whipped out languages in their effort to eradicate the cultures they were colonizing. It’s what colonists do.
You wanna talk about a language that was pushed into dominance at the expense of other languages? Motherfucking English wins the gold medal.

Also, be careful not to apply that historical - and current - political knowledge to the individual speakers of a language. Most people don’t have a lot of options in what language they speak.
They acquire one language at birth, maybe get one of two other languages taught to them when they’re kids - and they don’t get to choose which ones - and never after that do they have the very considerable time and resources that they would need to learn another language as an adult. Only a very lucky talented few people can acquire extra languages as a hobby. Most of us can’t.

So judging people solely based on the language they speak is pretty much always still bullshit even if they speak a colonialist language. Which doesn’t mean they can’t experience privilege from the language they speak or that they can’t wield their knowledge of a dominant language in a colonial, or otherwise oppressive way, over those who speak an oppressed language. But that’s a specific behavior.

fuckyeahanarchistposters:

“Everything is legal when there’s no cops around”

Graphic by Wizard of Barge

potsiefaerie:

puppygirllaika:

“we shouldn’t fight to improve [small thing] because it’s just a symptom of [big thing]” okay well big thing is too big to fall on it’s own, so I’m gonna start by fighting to improve small thing, and once enough small things have fallen that people have the time and energy and bandwidth to fight then we can fight big thing, because until then all of the small things are weighing every potential fighter down to the point that they can’t get out of fucking bed, let alone fight big thing.

I hate that attitude so much - particularly when people say it to actual activists???

People used to say it to my one friend about her work on indigenous caricature school mascots, implying she should be spending her time elsewhere, like she wasn’t also at standing rock and wasn’t also fighting for clean water access on reservations and wasn’t also spreading awareness about MMIW2s. Each piece is part of the whole! And some people dedicate their whole lives to it and that’s great, but some of us only have a little bit of energy to give and giving that energy to the fight for a small piece is Good, actually.

themself:

b0tster:

b0tster:

buying microsoft products funds genocide

i understand we cant be perfect in this, and microsoft has wormed its way into almost every aspect of our lives so its not like we can just cut all ties with a single mouse click, but like. you dont need that that video game.

BDS is specifically focusing a target on XBOX and is requesting people participate in the following tiers of engagement:

1. cancel game pass subscriptions

2. avoid spending time/money on candy crush, Minecraft and call of duty

3. boycott all Microsoft gaming products, including Xbox branded consoles and accessories AND any Microsoft owned publishing labels

Bare minimum you should be able to cancel a game pass subscription, but I think we can all try to push for a level 3 participation. BDS specifically requests people avoid Bethesda in their list of Microsoft owned publishers.

This is a specific request of a targeted boycott, which has a higher chance of success. It’s nearly impossible to avoid products from all companies involved in the genocide, but we can focus on specific targets with specific demands and help push Microsoft to divest.

More information here

queeranarchism:

queeranarchism:

queeranarchism:

If people make cutesy posts about growing food and herb spirals and composting but never talk about stuff like preventing and getting rid of rats in a garden, I get this suspision that they either haven’t actually gardened much or they’re more interested in presenting an aesthetically pleasing image than in actually preparing people to deal with a garden.

People who comment on this that they’ve never had rats (good for you) are missing the point by a huge amount. This is not a post about rats. I could have said root rot, or plant viruses, or parasites, or ticks. This was a comment on the tendency to share only the aesthetically pleasing parts - the stuff that gets lots of clicks - of growing food and leaving your audience entirely unprepared for the not so fun parts of it. Which is part of a more general trend online of sacrificing educative and honest content for stuff that gets cloud. Which has always been a thing online but is absolutely skyrocketing now that half of the internet is trying to monetize their content.

#gardening is amazing and growing your own good fucking rocks but look. snails and deer and birds exists and they are vicious#plus not everyone can grow everything#everything from where in the world you live down to how nuch shade you have or the soil content in your garden matter#but there’s this weird polished image presented of all gardens being equal which is frustraitingly false#and makes people just wanna give up bc “nothing” grows and pests eats the rest#ok gonna climb down from my soapbox again now bye

Can I reblog these tags? ‘Cause YES! I agree with every word here.

And like, so many of these problems are considerably less of a problem if you don’t have open sources of stagnant water. Yet almost every fucking herb spiral that’s shared online has a little watercress pond at the end. Which is going to cause so much more trouble than a little watercress is worth, especially given how easy it is to just grow watercress indoors. But the little pond looks 'cute’ on pictures so let’s have an open source of stagnant water. /end rant.

lunalemondrawp:

uesp:

It’s live. 50 USD, or 60 for some Deluxe Edition.

Please remember that Bethesda is a Microsoft studio, and that

Microsoft (specifically video games) are a Priority Target for BDS right now.

Please do not purchase or play (online) this game or ANY other Microsoft game until the boycott is over.

Minecraft, Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls and so forth are NOT worth funding a genocide over. PLEASE keep this in mind.

For more information/source:

The BDS website

Boycott Microsoft's Xbox

Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 milli

BDS Movement

literallyaflame:

literallyaflame:

i don’t give a fuck if i “sound like chatgpt,” you will pry—my em dash—from my cold—dead—hands—fuck you fuck you fuck you

in all seriousness, i find it concerning how we’ve begun to denigrate rigid/formal english in favor of what feels “real” (i.e. informal, social). harrowing implications for neurodivergent and ESL communities. i was a child who “sounded like a computer”—i can’t imagine what my education would have felt like under AI-driven scrutiny. as an adult, i’m far more equipped to construct my thoughts using informal language, but i consider that skill a privilege

many people experience this in reverse, learning english as a native language through peer-driven social experiences. in that world, “formal” english signifies privilege and education rather than neurodivergence and/or multilingualism, so i understand the impulse to attack it, but there’s nothing wrong with relying on structure to be understood, and—for the record—you cannot always identify generative AI with a cursory glance. it is an exercise in hubris to believe otherwise

What people consider to be ‘informal, social’ speech online it also constructed. For example, most people’s device automatically capitalizes the first letter of sentences, so if you type all-lower-case, that’s often not convenience but a deliberate choice. Its a vibe you’re going for. which is fine. have fun with it! Go CrAzY.
But to then judge others for not doing the same vibe it just 'On Wednesdays we wear pink’ levels of aesthetic based in-group versus out-group think. Lame.

antifainternational:

Is Antifa Anti-White? Part Two: The Historical Origins of Racism & An Answer to Anon’s Question

(this week, we received a question from an Anon: “I notice with some of the messaging and words spoken on clothing and youtube videos. this might be a silly or even dumb question. but is ANTIFA an anti-white group? is it in the racial fuck white people as a group of people sense or is there another meaning to it? cause I’ve been really interested in this group but ill immediately backtrack if I find out that instead of promoting equality as we should. we simply promote hate, but to our oppressors instead. whether they are or aren’t a fascist.” In Part One of our response, we looked at what race is - a social construct.)

PART TWO

The concept of race isn’t even as old as you might think. It was invented in the colonial United States in the 17th century. There, wealthy Europeans increased their wealth through the labour of African and Indigenous slaves and indentured European servants. The workers vastly outnumbered the wealthy European landowners/slave masters and, if they united, would easily overthrow their overlords. To help prevent this from happening, a system of “race” was dreamed up, creating a hierarchy of privilege and power based on made-up racial categories, with white people (who most resembled the landowners/slave masters) at the top of the system, receiving the most power and privilege.  In 1681, the first mention of a white race in law appeared in a Virginia law prohibiting Africans from marrying “whites.”

Race was created as a system to reserve power to a specific class of people – people that most closely resembled the European colonists that invaded and occupied the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries as a way to divide and control the people subservient to those colonists by obscuring the interests they had in common (namely, overthrowing the colonists and liberating themselves) and making some of them believe they shared common interests with the overlords exploiting them.  That’s why we still have race today – it’s a social construct that provides enormous power to the elites that control us today by artificially separating us, providing disproportionate power and privilege to those of us classified as “white” and making many so-called white people falsely believe that their common interests are the same as those wealthy elites who they look like in some respects and not with their neighbours, classmates, and coworkers who might look somewhat different than they do.

Whiteness is a passport to a disproportionate share of power based on membership in that category. White people carry with them a set of privileges exclusive to their racial category that most of them remain unaware of their entire lives! In fact, pointing out these privileges to “white” people commonly causes them to react with denial, outrage, and hurt feelings (this is, in part, called “white fragility”). This power and these privileges come at the expense of other people not considered white. This is what racism is - the belief or acceptance that humans can be categorized into races; that these races then form a hierarchy (in which “white” people are nearly always placed at the top; and that this hierarchy confers more power and privilege to those at the top, at the expense of those lower in the hierarchy.  Racism taints every single institution in our society and every individual living in our society.

So now (finally!), we return to your question: if as anti-fascists we oppose racism and bigotry, we have to recognize that racism is a hierarchy that provides the most power and privilege to people classified as white, to the determinant of everyone else.  The ideology of racism infects all of us to the point that most of us have for our entire lives assumed that race was a biological reality, with clear boundaries established by well-reasoned science for each racial category.

If whiteness is nothing more than a social construct, we can socially deconstruct it if we believe that reserving that much power and privilege to people categorized as white is harmful to society. Since it’s plainly obvious that this is the case, as anti-fascists we have to oppose whiteness.

Note that this is different than saying that we “hate” or oppose people who’ve been categorized as white. Instead, it’s calling on white people to unlearn the racism they’ve known all their lives,  which privileges and empowers them, as “white folk,” to the determinant of all others. It’s insisting that white people now use that power and privilege to the benefit of others in order to build a society truly based on equality.

anarchopuppy:

anarchistmemecollective:

depsidase:

ALT