Halloween is only several weeks away. You know what that means! PLEDGE YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE SKELETON WAR. OR ELSE SKELETONS WILL BLAME US IF THEY LOSE AND PUT BONES IN ALL OF OUR SOUP. IT’S AWFUL.
it’s like if bush denied 9/11 happened, except more people dies from Hurricane Maria than 9/11.
my wake up call was family separation. I have no doubt that everyone who supported it would be at least ok with genocide, with some willing to volunteer to run the gas chambers/whatever it is this time.
america has a serous racism problem. we need to talk about that loud and clear. it’s not normal for 35% the country to want to get rid of all the non-white people.
i read the sentence “abusers groom their character witnesses as carefully as they groom their victims” (in a comment thread in response to a “but i know [the accused] and hes such a nice man!!”) and it’s blowing my mind a weird amount even though i guess i already knew that
Here’s a thought, maybe people’s growing irreverence for 9/11 is because it was a long time ago and younger generations weren’t as affected by it, or maybe they are so sick of the way it has been basically commercialised by politicians and used as a device to justify incalculable pain and they are tired of it being cynically trotted out every year and told to never forget while every year they are also told to all but ignore mass shootings and US humanitarian crimes.
And like, I dunno, maybe it isn’t about disrespecting those who died but refusing, for any number of reasons, to be a part of the governmental hallmark industry that has built up around it.
I take students to see the 9/11 memorial all the time. More and more of the students I get were either so young or not even born yet.
And every time, I ask them, what do you think? What are you feeling? And many of them are hesitant to respond so I’ll prompt, “Was it sad? Was it boring?” And as soon as they know I’m not gonna judge them for it, 100% of the time, they respond, “I feel bad that I don’t feel as moved by it as you. You cried when you told us about it and I get that it was such a horrible day and so many people died, but I can’t really think of what life was like before or just after that time.”
That really struck me the first time I heard it because these kids really don’t remember a time when things were so carefree and relatively quiet. Little to no security screenings. Almost zero school shootings. Kids stayed outside by themselves until the street lamps came on.
Because they grew up in a post-9/11 society, all they’ve ever known is mass violence and distrust of everything. Kids expect a plane to crash into a building, a truck bomb to go off at a big event, a student shooting up a school. And they’ve just got to deal with it and keep moving on or they won’t survive.
This.
This is the most perfect description of my generation…we’re used to the atmosphere that 9/11 created. But at the same time it’s about as personal to us as the World Wars.
Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was a tragedy. Yes, a lot of people died. But we don’t connect. It happened, the world changed, we don’t remember the simpler one before.
And we are so used to the atmosphere of terror and mistrust that it caused that we don’t even question it anymore. This is the way it’s always been, there were always ‘if you see something, say something’ signs on busses and half an hour of airport security. We always knew about plane crashes and people who blew themselves up. We’re even used to school shootings.
My classmates mention notifications on their phones telling them about a mass shooting or a terrorist attack and we all get quiet for a second before everything goes back to normal. This is the way our world is. This is the way it always has been.
We don’t know any different.
And we are so used to the atmosphere of terror and mistrust that it caused that we don’t even question it anymore.
As someone who grew up in the “simpler” world that came before, I gotta say: that fact is even sadder to me than all the individual deaths we memorialize around 9/11, because there’s no end to it.
We had the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. And that was terrifying. But we could see things to be done to end it … And we did. The Berlin Wall came down, Germany reunified. The arms race slowed to a walking pace, and there was talk of even getting rid of the weapons we already had.
We were so happy! We peaceniks and protesters had won! The world was going to be more peaceful from then on – if not perfectly peaceful, at least mostly so.
Only, instead of living in a world of peace, we’re living in a world of paranoia, where every stranger is a potential threat. And there’s no end in sight. There’s no exit out of these “special” security measures. Because it all hangs on “Maybe” and “What if“…
If the people born in this century don’t question the terror, than how can we recover that hope?
Couney never charged parents for the care he provided, which also included rotating shifts of doctors and nurses looking after the babies. According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”
I mean
Horn’s father, who had seen one of Couney’s exhibits on his honeymoon, bundled tiny Lucille up and took her out of the hospital. “I’m taking her to the incubator in Coney Island. The doctor said there’s not a chance in hell that she’ll live, but he said, ‘But she’s alive now,’ and he hailed a cab and took me to Dr. Couney’s exhibit, and that’s where I stayed for about six months.”
This is really incredible.
well holy shit, carnies savin’ lives and shit too
[Image description: a text post from Ultrafacts.tumblr.com (Quote): “Martin Couney, an owner of a freak show in the early 1900’s invented an incubator to exhibit premature babies, in doing so he saved thousands of lives and marked the start of advanced prenatal care for preemies.” (end quote) below this is a black and white photo of a woman looking at an exhibit of three tiny babies sharing a single incubator in Couney’s exhibit. End description.]
As someone who was born as a tiny preemie in 1964,* who spent her first five weeks of life in an incubator, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes: I’m grateful this technology was invented to save my life, and all the lives before me, and all the lives that came after.
On the other hand, it makes me feel kind of icky that these advancements came at the (moral) price of turning real live babies into freak show exhibits for the amusement of the Normies. And as part of a for-profit endeavor, too.
*(born 9 weeks early, and at 3 lbs 14 oz [1.76 kg], a full pound underweight for my gestational age)
This could be something massive or it could be fuck all.
A resignation would be fucking hilarious.
It’s been delayed because the Tories can’t find a virgin to sacrifice for good luck before the statement.
If it’s an election I’ll laugh so hard shit will come out my nose.
The entire cabinet commits seppuku live on TV.
Theresa May starts by saying ‘negotiations are toughest in final strait’.
Negotiations haven’t really progressed at all. By time we’re in the ‘final strait’ but not in progress.
She goes all out on anti-EU immigration. Full-hard Tory Brexit.
“No deal is better than a bad deal.”
Here we go.
May rules out Northern Ireland being in the customs union.
“Throughout this process I’ve treated the EU with nothing but respect.”
Have you fuck!?
“We must continue to prepare ourselves for a no deal.”
Oh…great. I love the thought of stockpiling food and medicine.
She finishes her speech with, “We stand ready.”
You’ve not been ‘ready’ for any of these negotiations.
That speech was filled with so much hyperbole it might as well of been one of Daenerys’ boring as fuck rallying speeches as she gets her dragons killed.
Utterly robotic, completely shambolic.
I feel like the media watched a completely different speech that the one we watched.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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