Bremer says when an edition of John Winthrop’s journal from the 1600s was prepared for printing about 200 years later, “the editors left out certain parts because they thought it was too explicit for the audience of the late 19th century.”…
Bremer explains that the Puritans got a bad rap at a time when American society was reacting negatively toward Victorian morality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Puritans were supposedly responsible for the roots of the temperance movement, prudish attitudes toward sexuality, and a generally conservative societal outlook. The Puritan stereotype was created because Americans were “looking for people to blame for everything that they didn’t like,” he explains, thus deeming them responsible for the stuffy attitudes of the early 1900s.
So much of what people still persist in describing as “puritanical” social attitudes do sound a lot more Victorian. At least if you’ve learned much about historical Puritanism.
The suckered have to admit they bought the con job. Own up. You got played. Your judgment is flawed. You like racial narratives that appeal to the worst in people.
We don’t need to beg. The European court of justice today confirmed Britain can go back and withdraw, without any of the EU stopping us or putting extra demands on us.
We can pull article 50 ( which was the parliamentary starting gun for Brexit) which Mrs May triggered far too quickly.
Today she postponed the vote in Parliament because she knew that the deal she had made with the EU wouldn’t get through tomorrow.
By the way both trump and Brexit can be linked to Russian financial meddling. ( they appear to have bankrolled the Vote leave organisation.)
Polite reminder. Trump & Brexit are not 2 different things. They are the same thing. Same companies. Same data. Same Facebook. Same Russians. Same Cambridge Analytica. Same Robert Mercer. Same Steve Bannon. Same Breitbart. Same Alexander Nix. Same Donald Trump. Same Nigel Farage.
That said, I don’t think many supporters of either side of that mess are ever going to be able to admit they were purposely fed all kinds of bad information. Maybe find some other targets to double down on with the blaming and scapegoating, but face the idea that they were wrong? Unfortunately unlikely, even to themselves.
How to reasonably deal with that and move forward? Hard to figure out. But, that does seem to be the situation in front of us.
it worries me so much that there’s been this (mostly unintentional) culture built up around coming out, to where young lgbt kids are putting themselves in danger at school and at home because they don’t want to “live a lie.” i just want to say, i came out when i was 15 and it created a lot of difficulties in my life that i could have avoided by waiting until i was older. it isolated me socially, it exposed me to homophobia from my parents, my family, my teachers, and my classmates at the most important developmental stages of my own confidence and sense of self… closeted people are not living a lie. closeted people are surviving. don’t let anyone pressure you to come out before you’re ready. don’t put yourself at risk when you don’t have to.
Historically, the importance of coming out was put forward by Harvey Milk as a tactic for normalization through representation; if your librarian, your postal worker and seven of the people in your local sports fanclub are all gay & you’ve been friends for years with no disasters, the rhetoric of queers as a monstrous unknown Other collapses. The thing is, Milk was mainly talking to other adults who had their own means of survival; their own incomes, their own houses.
Yes, homophobia has been used & is being used to eject people from their apartments & that is monstrous, & yes there are vulnerabilities which can cause you terrible harm as an adult, but when you are so much more vulnerable, your job is surviving. The closet is a survival tactic, & that’s all it’s ever been. It is not your job right now to be on the front lines of queer representation. Ellen DeGeneres & Laverne Cox are taking care of that so that you can be safe, & we’re going to need you to still be with us in ten years, ok?
You can find people who are safe to be fully open with, and you deserve to be able to do that but you do not owe the intimate details of the way you fall in love to people who would not treat you with basic human dignity.
People who will put you in danger have no right to your privacy, and no right to honesty from you, if that’s the way you want to frame it.
Coming out is a personal choice, something that you do when you feel it will improve your life or when you feel you are in a strong enough position to be able to. It is NOT a social or moral obligation. It’s not a requirement that you come out for you to be able to identify as you. You are valid already, and surviving safely is your number one priority.
I feel like it’s important to also add that you do not owe anyone that information.
Even if you’re in a situation where safety is not an immediate concern? It’s your life, and that information is about as personal as it gets. You don’t have to share it with anyone you don’t want to. To repeat, it’s never a social or moral obligation.
(And, on the other side of that, pressuring other people for information that personal is rude and intrusive.)
its not your fault that your abuser treats you like shit. normal fucking people dont respond to you not doing something the way they want with emotional or physical abuse. the normal response to someone not doing the dishes isn’t fucking abuse. abuse can make you feel like it’s your fault you’re abused, but remember, and its hard to keep this in mind, but it’s not normal. abuse is not the way nonabusers react with. abuse is not your fault, and it’s not normal.
I now know firsthand that going to a car dealership is…an experience.
I went going exactly what car I wanted and I imagine that if you don’t know that much it’ll be easier for a dealership to screw you over when you get there by feeding you misinformation about a car, manipulating you into buying a more expensive model, and etc.
I had already done all my research online so I knew what I wanted. Down to the color. (Green is my favorite color!)
So boyfriend and I went (I followed Tumblr’s advice about bringing a man lol). And I test drove the car and loved it just like I knew I would. And THEN the real dealership experience began.
The bottomline is that I knew my credit score and so I knew what kind of interest rate (APR) I should expect. I also knew the manufacturer price of the car (MSRP) and I knew how much they were selling for on average in my area ($3k less than MSRP).
So I knew what I was going to pay and I had already decided on that in my head.
So dealer #1 (a white guy–this is relevant to mention lol) brings back the first set of numbers. He cushions it with making small talk and flattering me on starting my PhD in August. He also chats up boyfriend.
The numbers were bad. I could tell looking at it. Although they didn’t say the APR, I knew that my monthly rate shouldn’t be that high based on the number of months I’d be paying it. Also they only gave me $2k off MSRP.
I noted that the sticker price was too high because I can go to another dealer and get it cheaper and they knocked off another $1k.
And then I asked him what the APR was. He was very evasive and kept telling me to look at the monthly payments because that’s what “really matters.” No, what really matters is what I’m paying for the car overall which is the sticker price + state fees (unavoidable) + interest rate.
Dealer #1 finally told me the APR and it was 3x the rate I knew I was eligible for. I told him that’s not gonna work. He turned aggressive and said that I’m a first time buyer and I can’t expect better and that I’m being unrealistic to expect a lower rate and etc etc.
So I said that my bank quoted me a rate half that much and I’ll just go through them and buy later (at a different dealer). Because I want the car but there’s 2 other places I can go to get it in my area.
Then all of a sudden dealer #1 could get me a better APR. His next offer was 2x what I wanted to pay. I said nah that good enough.
Then they brought out dealer #2, who was a Black guy. He didn’t sit down and instantly start talking about the price. He said a bunch of small talk and said some stuff about being Black lol. Tryna be chummy chummy and connect with us on a racial level.
Then he tried to push the same numbers as dealer #1. I said I know I’m young and I don’t have a math background but you’re charging me way too much for this car and I’m not going to buy it at that price. Period. I said: get the APR down and I’ll buy the car. He kept telling me it wasn’t possible and I said okay…I won’t buy it.
But then he was like wait…lemme run the numbers. And ta da! He came back with the right APR. Also zero down. And payments lower than my target.
This whole process took 5 hours.
Moral of the story:
– know as much as you can before going to a dealership so you can focus on the numbers
– know your credit score so you know what your APR should be
– get approved through an independent bank for a loan so you have leverage to negotiate with a better rate from the dealer
– don’t focus on monthly payments. Times that by the amount of months so you know what you’re REALLY paying
– threaten to walk because stuff magically happens at dealerships when you do lol
I also just… did the loan through my credit union and avoided the whole dealership lending process. It helps that I had a SUPER low APR offer from the credit union. So I just told the dealership not to run my credit. The the only negotiation was on the actual price of the vehicle, not on the financing. And ultimately I feel better having my financing through a financial institution I already know and trust rather than whoever happens to be managing the dealership’s loans.
During the construction of London’s massive “super sewer,” archaeologists discovered something unusual in the mud: a 500-year-old skeleton of a man still wearing his thigh-high leather boots.
The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) announced this week that the skeleton was unearthed on the shores of the Thames, near a bend in the river downstream from the Tower of London.
“By studying the boots, we’ve been able to gain a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of a man who lived as many as 500 years ago,” said Beth Richardson, a finds specialist who analyzes artifacts at MOLA Headland, a consortium of archaeologists. “They have helped us to better understand how he may have made his living in hazardous and difficult conditions, but also how he may have died. It has been a privilege to be able to study something so rare and so personal.” Read more.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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