these ‘open for a surprise’ pics make me so happy
Day: August 24, 2017
Each generation is promised more than it will get: which creates, in each generation, a furious, bewildered rage, the rage of people who cannot find solid ground beneath their feet.
James Baldwin, The Harlem Ghetto (via compassionisobligatory)
The way in which anti-semitism is distinguished, and should be distinguished, from racism, has to do with the sort of imaginary of power, attributed to the Jews, Zionism, and Israel, which is at the heart of anti-semitism. The Jews are seen as constituting an immensely powerful, abstract, intangible global form of power that dominates the world. There is nothing similar to this idea at the heart of other forms of racism. Racism rarely, to the best of my knowledge, constitutes a whole system that seeks to explain the world. anti-semitism is a primitive critique of the world, of capitalist modernity. The reason I regard it as being particularly dangerous for the left is precisely because anti-semitism has a pseudo-emancipatory dimension that other forms of racism rarely have.
I sexually harassed someone because of being weird and awkward and not having enough social skills. (Then I read about sexual harassment and realized that what I did was wrong and felt really bad about it for years.)
I hope that you no longer feel bad; learning not to hurt people is good, but being chased by horrible guilt is not.
I would add that people make mistakes while they’re learning. (I mean, all the time, but particularly while they’re learning.) If you make a mistake, learn better, and don’t make that mistake again, that is exactly how learning is supposed to work. You don’t have to feel bad about doing something wrong out of genuine ignorance.
If there’s any way to make repairation, that’s usually what guilt’s for. If you can’t make it up to the person wronged, you could take a symbolic action by say donating some to a relavent charity, and keep up direct action by watching for it in real life, deescaliting the situation when you see it occurring, and trying to patiently help the wrong learn right when you see it.
If you can’t, well, then the guilt is useless.
Happy birthday to American engineer Ray McIntire, born on August 24, 1918! A research engineer at the Dow Chemical Company, McIntire invented
foam polystyrene, better known by its brand name, Styrofoam. And what better way to celebrate McIntire’s birthday than with a selection of photos featuring objects made from Styrofoam? (Fun tidbit: that’s Ray McIntire himself in the first photo, posing with the foam Santa Claus!).
For more information on the history of Styrofoam, check out this Othmeralia post from May 2016.
Photo credit: Dow Chemical Company Historical Image Collection, CHF Archives (accession 2008.064).
Sometimes I get so tired of the amount of bad ‘70s politics that just won’t go away 😵
My parents have a kitten now and he’s so tiny I’m going to cry
A most obvious dog whistle.
His family are immigrants they weren’t here
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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