It was a grisly scene inside Apartment 3722 at the Hamptons, a gated community in Tampa, Florida.
One body lay face up on the floor, wedged between a wall and an air
mattress. A handgun was stuffed in a holster on the dead man’s waist.
The other body, clad in a black T-shirt and shorts, was slumped back on a
futon, a shattered and bloody iPhone on his lap. A police investigator
would later write that the two men had been “shot multiple times at
close range with an assault rifle.”There were some obvious clues that this was no ordinary double
homicide. Tacked to the wall near the bodies was a large black-and-white
flag bearing the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, Adolf Hitler’s
elite paramilitary unit. On a nearby shelf was a black Stahlhelm, the
distinctive helmet worn by Nazi soldiers during World War II. There were
multiple copies of “Mein Kampf” and a prominent place was
reserved for “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel of race war in
America that has inspired generations of terrorists, among them Timothy
McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. A framed picture of McVeigh sat on a
dresser.On that night in May 2017, the police quickly took two suspects into
custody and developed a rough outline of what had happened. One of the
suspects, Devon Arthurs, 18, said the victims were his roommates, and
members of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division. Arthurs said
that he’d decided to leave the group, and that he’d killed the men to
keep them from carrying out what he said were their plans for violence.The second suspect detained by police, Brandon Russell, also lived in
the apartment. Russell told the authorities he’d just returned home
from a weekend of training with the Florida Army National Guard. And
then Russell revealed something that should have set off alarms among
federal investigators assigned to track the growing threat from armed,
violent right-wing extremists. He said, and the police quickly
confirmed, that the single-car garage attached to the apartment was full
of explosives.Explosives experts from the Tampa Police Department and the local FBI
field office soon found components of a crude pipe bomb as well as
radioactive materials. The search turned up ammonium nitrate and
nitromethane, the mixture used by McVeigh to destroy the federal
building in Oklahoma City in 1995. There were sacks of explosive
precursors, including potassium chloride, red iron oxide and potassium
nitrate. There were homemade fuses fashioned from brass 5.56 mm rifle
cartridges. In a closet, they found two Geiger counters.And there was a cooler with the name Brandon scrawled on the lid in
black marker. Inside, the investigators discovered HMTD — hexamethylene
triperoxide diamine — a potent, highly volatile peroxide-based
explosive. It has become a favored tool of terrorists both here and
abroad, who cook it up in small batches using recipes circulating on the
internet and in improvised weapons manuals.At Tampa police headquarters, investigators put Arthurs and Russell
in separate interrogation rooms. They wanted to know about the killings,
about the neo-Nazi group and about the explosives.Arthurs said the apartment had served as a nerve center for
Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist organization of 60 to 70 people
that has spoken openly of its hopes of igniting race war in the United
States. If the authorities could access the group’s encrypted online
chats, Arthurs said, “it’d be easy to track down each member.” The
interrogation was videotaped, and a recording was obtained by ProPublica
and Frontline.“The things that they’re planning were horrible. They’re planning
bombings and stuff like that on countless people, they’re planning to
kill civilian life,” Arthurs said. A detective asked if Atomwaffen had
drawn up a list of specific targets. “Power lines, nuclear reactors,
synagogues, things like that,” Arthurs replied.“I’m telling you stuff that the FBI should be hearing,” Arthurs said, adding that he thought lives could be saved.
To this day, it is unclear if the FBI talked with Arthurs or what
steps it took to shut down Atomwaffen. The FBI declined repeated
requests to discuss the case. But this much is clear: Within months of
Arthurs’ warnings, Atomwaffen members or associates had killed three
more people.This was a damning read. Florida pd genuinely dropped the ball here
Tag: beyond skimming
At 18, everyone receive a superpower. Your childhood friend got a power-absorption, your best friends got time control, and they quickly rise into top 100 most powerful superheroes. You got a mediocre superpower, but somehow got into the top 10. Today they visit you asking how you did it.
“Power absorption?” you ask him over your pasta, which you are currently absorbing powerfully. in the background, a tv is reading out what the Phoenix extremeist group has done recently. bodies, stacking.
tim nods, pushing his salad around. “it’s kind of annoying.” he’s gone vegan ever since he could talk to animals. his cheeks are sallow. “yesterday i absorbed static and i can’t stop shocking myself.”
“you don’t know what from,” shay is detangling her hair at the table, even though it’s not polite. about a second ago, her hair was perfect, which implies she’s been somewhere in the inbetween. “try millions of multiverses that your powers conflict with.”
“did we die in the last one?” you grin and she grins and tim grins but nobody answers the question.
now she has a cut over her left eye and her hair is shorter. she looks tired and tim looks tired and you look down at your 18-year-old hands, which are nothing.
they ship out tomorrow. they go out to the frontlines or wherever it is that superheroes go to fight supervillains; the cream of the crop. the starlight banner kids.
“you both are trying too hard,” you tell them, “couldn’t you have been, like, really good at surfing?”
“god,” shay groans, “what i’d give to only be in the olympics.”
xxx
in the night, tim is asleep. on the way home, he absorbed telekinesis, and hates it too.
shay looks at you. “i’m scared,” she says.
you must not have died recently, because she looks the same she did at dinner, cut healing slowly over her eye the way it’s supposed to, not the hyper-quickness of a timejump. just shay, living in the moment when the moment is something everyone lives in. her eyes are wide and dark the way brown eyes can be, that swelling fullness that feels so familiar and warm, that piercing darkness that feels like a stone at the back of your tongue.
“you should be,” you say.
her nose wrinkles, she opens her mouth, but you plow on.
“they’re going to take one look at you and be like, ‘gross, shay? no thanks. you’re too pretty. it’s bringing down like, morale, and things’. then they’ll kick you out and i’ll live with you in a box and we’ll sell stolen cans of ravioli.”
she’s grinning. “like chef boyardee or like store brand?”
“store brand but we print out chef boyardee labels and tape them over the can so we can mark up the price.”
“where do we get the tape?”
“we, uh,” you look into those endless dark eyes, so much like the night, so much like a good hot chocolate, so much like every sleepover you’ve had with the two of your best friends, and you say, “it’s actually just your hair. i tie your hair around the cans to keep the label on.”
she throws a pillow at you.
you both spend a night planning what you’ll do in the morning when shay is kicked out of Squadron 8, Division 1; top rankers that are all young. you’ll both run away to the beach and tim will be your intel and you’ll burn down the whole thing. you’re both going to open a bakery where you will do the baking and she’ll use her time abilities to just, like, speed things up so you don’t have to wake up at dawn. you’re both going to become wedding planners that only do really extreme weddings.
she falls asleep on your shoulder. you do not sleep at all.
in the morning, they are gone.
xxx
squadron 434678, Division 23467 is basically “civilian status.” you still have to know what to expect and all that stuff. you’re glad that you’re taking extra classes at college; you’re kind of bored re-learning the stuff you were already taught in high school. there are a lot of people who need help, and you’re good at that, so you help them.
tim and shay check in from time to time, but they’re busy saving the world, so you don’t fault them for it. in the meantime, you put your head down and work, and when your work is done, you help the people who can’t finish their work. and it kind of feels good. kind of.
xxx
at twenty, squadron 340067, division 2346 feels like a good fit. tim and you go out for ice cream in a new place that rebuilt after the Phoenix group burned it down. you’ve chosen nurse-practitioner as your civilian job, because it seems to fit, but you’re not released for full status as civilian until you’re thirty, so it’s been a lot of office work.
tim’s been on the fritz a lot lately, overloading. you’re worried they’ll try to force him out on the field. he’s so young to be like this.
“i feel,” he says, “like it all comes down to this puzzle. like i’m never my own. i steal from other people’s boxes.”
you wrap your hand around his. “sometimes,” you say, “we love a river because it is a reflection.”
he’s quiet a long time after that. a spurt of flame licks from under his eyes.
“i wish,” he says, “i could believe that.”
xxx
twenty three has you in squad 4637, division 18. really you’ve just gotten here because you’re good at making connections. you know someone who knows someone who knows you as a good kid. you helped a woman onto a bus and she told her neighbor who told his friend. you’re mostly in the filing department, but you like watching the real superheroes come in, get to know some of them. at this level, people have good powers but not dangerous ones. you learn how to help an 18 year old who is a loaded weapon by shifting him into a non-violent front. you get those with pstd home where they belong. you put your head down and work, which is what you’re good at.
long nights and long days and no vacations is fine until everyone is out of the office for candlenights eve. you’re the only one who didn’t mind staying, just in case someone showed up needing something.
the door blows open. when you look up, he’s bleeding. you jump to your feet.
“oh,” you say, because you recognize the burning bird insignia on his chest, “I think you have the wrong office.”
“i just need,” he spits onto the ground, sways, collapses.
well, okay. so, that’s, not, like. great. “uh,” you say, and you miss shay desperately, “okay.”
you find the source of the bleeding, stabilize him for when the shock sets in, get him set up on a desk, sew him shut. two hours later, you’ve gotten him a candlenights present and stabilized his vitals. you’ve also filed him into a separate folder (it’s good to be organized) and found him a home, far from the warfront.
when he wakes up, you give him hot chocolate (god, how you miss shay), and he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t smile at the gift you’ve gotten him (a better bulletproof vest, one without the Phoenix on it), or the stitches. that’s okay. you tell him to take the right medications, hand them over to him, suggest a doctor’s input. and then you hand over his folder with a new identity in it and a new house and civilian status. you take a deep breath.
he opens it and bursts into tears. he doesn’t say anything. he just leaves and you have to clean up the blood, which isn’t very nice of him. but it’s candlenights. so whatever. hopefully he’ll learn to like his gift.
xxx
squadron 3046, division 2356 is incredibly high for a person like you to fit. but still, you fit, because you’re good at organization and at hard work, and at knowing how to hold on when other people don’t see a handhold.
shay is home. you’re still close, the two of you, even though she feels like she exists on another planet. the more security you’re privy to, the more she can tell you.
you brush her hair as she speaks about the endless man who never dies, and how they had to split him up and hide him throughout the planet. she cries when she talks about how much pain he must be in.
“can you imagine?” she whispers, “i mean, i know he’s phoenix, but can you imagine?”
“one time i had to work retail on black friday,” you say.
she sniffles.
“one time my boss put his butt directly on my hand by accident and i couldn’t say anything so i spent a whole meeting with my hand directly up his ass,” you say.
her eyes are so brown, and filling, and there are scars on her you’ve never noticed that might be new or very, very, very old; and neither of you know exactly how much time she’s actually been alive for.
“i mean,” you say, “yeah that might hurt but one time i said goodbye to someone but they were walking in the same direction. i mean can you imagine.”
she laughs, finally, even though it’s weakly, and says, “one time even though i can manipulate time i slept in and forgot to go to work even though i was leading a presentation and i had to look them in the face later to tell them that.”
“you’re a compete animal,” you tell her, and look into those eyes, so sad and full of timelines you’ll never witness, “you should be kicked out completely.”
she wipes her face. “find me in a box,” she croaks, “selling discount ravioli.”
xxx
you don’t know how it happens. but you guess the word gets around. you don’t think you like being known to them as someone they can go to, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of options. many of them just want to be out of it, so you get them out, you guess.
you explain to them multiple times you haven’t done a residency yet and you really only know what an emt would, but they still swing by. every time they show up at your office, you feel your heart in your chest: this is it, this is how you die, this is how it ends.
“so, like, this group” you say, trying to work the system’s loopholes to find her a way out of it, “from ashes come all things, or whatever?”
she shrugs. you can tell by looking at her that she’s dangerous. “it’s corny,” she says. another shrug. “i didn’t mean to wind up a criminal.”
you don’t tell her that you sort of don’t know how one accidentally becomes a criminal, since you kind-of-sort-of help criminals out, accidentally.
“i don’t believe any of that stuff,” she tells you, “none of that whole… burn it down to start it over.” she swallows. “stuff just happens. and happens. and you wake up and it’s still happening, even though you wish it wasn’t.”
you think about shay, and how she’s covered in scars, and her crying late at night because of things nobody else ever saw.
“yeah,” you say, and print out a form, “i get that.”
and you find a dangerous woman a normal home.
xxx
“you’re squadron 905?”
“division 34754,” you tell him. watch him look down at your ID and certification and read your superpower on the card and then look back up to you and then back down to the card and then back up at you, and so on. he licks his chapped lips and stands in the cold.
this happens a lot. but you smile. the gatekeeper is frowning, but then hanson walks by. “oh shit,” he says, “it’s you! come right on in!” he gives you a hug through your rolled-down window.
the gatekeeper is in a stiff salute now. gulping in terror. hanson is one of the strongest people in this sector, and he just hugged you.
the gate opens. hanson swaggers through. you shrug to the gatekeeper. “i helped him out one time.”
inside they’re debriefing. someone has shifted sides, someone powerful, someone wild. it’s not something you’re allowed to know about, but you know it’s bad. so you put your head down, and you work, because that’s what you’re good at, after all. you find out the gatekeeper’s name and send him a thank-you card and also handmade chapstick and some good earmuffs.
shay messages you that night. i have to go somewhere, she says, i can’t explain it, but there’s a mission and i might be gone a long time.
you stare at the screen for a long time. your fingers type out three words. you erase them. you instead write where could possibly better than stealing chef boyardee with me?
she doesn’t read it. you close the tab.
and you put your head down. and work.
xxx
it’s in a chili’s. like, you don’t even like chili’s? chili’s sucks, but the boss ordered it so you’re here to pick it up, wondering if he gave you enough money to cover. things have been bad recently. thousands dying. whoever switched sides is too powerful to stop. they destroy anyone and anything, no matter the cost.
the phoenix fire smells like pistachios, you realize. you feel at once part of yourself and very far. it happens so quickly, but you feel it slowly. you wonder if shay is involved, but know she is not.
the doors burst in. there’s screaming. those in the area try their powers to defend themselves, but everyone is civilian division. the smell of pistachios is cloying.
then they see you. and you see them. and you put your hands on your hips.
“excuse me, tris,” you say, “what are you doing?”
there’s tears in her eyes. “i need the money,” she croaks.
“From a chili’s?” you want to know, “who in their right mind robs a chili’s? what are you going to do, steal their mozzarella sticks?”
“it’s connected to a bank on the east wall,” she explains, “but i thought it was stupid too.”
you shake your head. you pull out your personal checkbook. you ask her how much she needs, and you see her crying. you promise her the rest when you get your paycheck.
someone bursts into the room. shouts things. demands they start killing.
but you’re standing in the way, and none of them will kill you or hurt you, because they all know you, and you helped them at some point or another, or helped their friend, or helped their children.
tris takes the money, everyone leaves. by the time the heroes show up, you’ve gotten everyone out of the building.
the next time you see tris, she’s marrying a beautiful woman, and living happily, having sent her cancer running. you’re a bridesmaid at the wedding.
xxx
“you just,” the director wants to know now, “sent them running?”
hanson stands between her and you, although you don’t need the protection.
“no,” you say again, for the millionth time, “i just gave her the money she needed and told her to stop it.”
“the phoenix group,” the director of squadron 300 has a vein showing, “does not just stop it.”
you don’t mention the social issues which confound to make criminal activity a necessity for some people, or how certain stereotypes forced people into negative roles to begin with, or how an uneven balance of power punished those with any neurodivergence. instead you say, “yeah, they do.”
“i’m telling you,” hanson says, “we brought her out a few times. it happens every time. they won’t hurt her. we need her on our team.”
your spine is stiff. “i don’t do well as a weapon,” you say, voice low, knowing these two people could obliterate you if they wished. but you won’t use people’s trust against them, not for anything. besides, it’s not like trust is your superpower. you’re just a normal person.
hanson snorts. “no,” he says, “but i like that when you show up, the fighting just… stops. that’s pretty nice, kid.”
“do you know… what we are dealing with…. since agent 25… shifted….?” the director’s voice is thin.
“yeah,” hanson says, “that’s why i think she’d be useful, you know? add some peace to things.”
the director sits down. sighs. waves her hand. “whatever,” she croaks, “do what you want. reassign her.”
hanson leads you out. over your shoulder, you see her put her head in her hands. later, you get her a homemade spa kit, and make sure to help her out by making her a real dinner from time to time, something she’s too busy for, mostly.
at night, you write shay messages you don’t send. telling her things you cannot manage.
one morning you wake up to a terrible message: shay is gone. never to be seen again.
xxx
you’re eating ice cream when you find him.
behind you, the city is burning. hundreds dead, if not thousands.
he’s staring at the river. maybe half-crying. it’s hard to tell, his body is shifting, seemingly caught between all things and being nothing.
“ooh buddy,” you say, passing him a cone-in-a-cup, the way he likes it, “talk about a night on the town.”
the bench is burning beside him, so you put your jacket down and snuff it out. it’s hard sitting next to him. he emits so much.
“hey tim?” you say.
“yeah?” his voice is a million voices, a million powers, a terrible curse.
“can i help?” you ask.
he eats a spoonful of ice cream.
“yeah,” he says eventually. “i think i give up.”
xxx
later, when they praise you for defeating him, you won’t smile. they try to put you in the media; an all-time hero. you decline every interview and press conference. you attend his funeral with a veil over your head.
the box goes into the ground. you can’t stop crying.
you’re the only one left at the site. it’s dark now, the subtle night.
you feel her at your side and something in your heart stops hurting. a healing you didn’t know you needed. her hands find yours.
“they wanted me to kill him,” she says, “they thought i’d be the only one who could.” her hands are warm. you aren’t breathing.
“beat you to it,” you say.
“i see that,” she tells you.
you both stand there. crickets nestle the silence.
“you know,” she says eventually, “i have no idea which side is the good one.”
“i think that’s the point of a good metaphor about power and control,” you say, “it reflects the human spirit. no tool or talent is good or bad.”
“just useful,” she whispers. after a long time, she wonders, “so what does that make us?”
xxx
it’s a long trek up into the mountains. shay seems better every day. more solid. less like she’s on another plane.
“heard you’re a top ten,” she tells me, her breath coming out in a fog. you’ve reclassed her to civilian. it took calling in a few favors, but you’ve got a lot.
“yeah,” you say, “invulnerable.”
“oh, is that your superpower?” she laughs. she knows it’s not.
“that’s what they’re calling it,” you tell her, out of breath the way she is not, “it’s how they explain a person like me at the top.”
“if that means ‘nobody wants to kill me’, i think i’m the opposite.” but she’s laughing, in a light way, a way that’s been missing from her.
the cabin is around the corner. the lights are already on.
“somebody’s home,” i grin.
tim, just tim, tim who isn’t forced into war and a million reflections, opens the door. “come on in.”
xxx
squadron one, division three. a picture of shay in a wedding dress is on my desk. she looks radiant, even though she’s marrying little old me.
what do i do? just what i’m best at. what’s not a superpower. what anyone is capable of: just plain old helping.
Written art. Beautiful. Better than most movies. Please read and share.
this is one of the only long posts on this hellsite that i bother reading properly every time. It’s beautiful and powerful adn I’m in love with it and will never not reblog
I can just hear the radfems saying “but a man can’t just DECIDE to change his orientation to include nbs when he was only attracted to someone in the first place because he thought they were a woman!” – radfems tell straight and queer women that they can choose to cut men out of their lives and be lesbians, so by that logic men should be able to “decide” to change their orientation too. (And it is a decision, how you choose to label yourself regardless of your actual attraction)
I cannot even begin to explain how much the next sentence out of my fingers is going to make me want to cringe into an early grave but here we go.
Radical feminism quite literally looks at the structures that create societal sexism and misogyny and, well, reverses them. There is no attempt to dismantle these hierarchies and create a truly kind, nurturing environment for all people. It’s just a blatant shot at placing (white, cis, abled) women at the top of the hierarchy and moving (white, cis, abled) men into the newly vacated inferior position.
Complete with all the hypocrisy, paradox, and abuse that entails.
As such, creating a double standard where women should take unilateral control of their own identities to adhere to a specific and rigid construction of acceptable sexuality, but men fundamentally are unable to.
Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh, I can’t believe I just had to define and defend “reverse sexism” but here we all are. These are the depths to which radical feminism forces us all to sink.
http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/11/cissexism-and-cis-privilege-revisited.html?m=1
>Michel Foucault initially coined the phrase “reverse discourse” to describe the approach taken by gay liberationists who re-appropriated the heterosexual/homosexual distinction in order to forward the narrative of a homosexual class that was oppressed at the hands of the heterosexual majority.[4] Within feminist theory, the phrase “reverse discourse” has been used to describe certain strands of feminism that conceptualize sexism solely in terms of “men are the oppressors, women the oppressed, end of story.” (Note: in some of my previous writings, I have used the term “unilateral feminism” to describe this particular approach to feminism.) Reverse discourses have also arisen in other activist movements, where they are often described under the rubric of “identity politics.”[5]…
>Having come into activism during the heyday of third-wave feminism and queer theory, I was taught to be highly suspicious of reverse discourses for several of reasons. First, they divvy up all people into two mutually-exclusive groups: the oppressors and the oppressed. This move excludes countless “liminal” people who do not fall neatly into one group or another. This is why feminists who forward reverse discourses have such a horrendous track record in dealing with people who fall under the transgender umbrella, and why gay men and lesbians who forward reverse discourses have such a horrendous track record in dealing with people who fall under the asexual and bisexual umbrellas.
>Reverse discourses also tend to be highly unilateral, focusing primarily on that one particular axis of oppression, while ignoring other forms of marginalization that intersect with that “primary axis” (as well as with one another).[6] As a result, reverse discourses tend to depict the marginalized group in a homogeneous manner—e.g., by making claims that all members share the same perspectives, beliefs, needs, and desires—when this is typically far from the truth. Reverse discourses also tend to portray the “oppressor class” (who in reality are a heterogeneous mix of people who vary greatly in their experiences, privileges, and forms of marginalization they may face) in a monolithic and stereotyped manner. As Judith Butler once said: “The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.”[7]
Regarding Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) Therapy
Disabled people need to earn their right
to exist by performing less disabled, and ABA will train them to perform
as a less disabled person. At its core, ABA is rooted in the hatred and
denial of the humanity of disabled people. Even with the most generous
interpretation, it is about pathologizing and rejecting disabled ways of
being and holding up non-disabled ways of being as the only right way
and the only way to be correctly human.
It doesn’t matter that it may seem like
fun, it doesn’t matter that your “Behavior Technician” seems like a
really nice person. It doesn’t matter that you read a study that ABA
“works,” because what it “works” at is wrong. It is compliance training at its core.Of all the demographics, one of the groups most at risk of experiencing physical, sexual,
emotional, verbal, institutional, financial, and educational abuse is
the demographic of people with developmental disabilities. You can
double, triple, and quadruple those risks according to how many other
marginalized groups they fall in.Parents and therapists often use an
ends-justify-the-means approach to therapy for their disabled children,
believing that acquiring skills is the most important thing and that it
is worth the child having negative experiences if it means that they
will have a “better life.” In this context, what is considered better is
what is most “normal,” or non-disabled.Survivors of ABA have come forward to say that they have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex-PTSD (C-PTSD) as a result of their experiences in ABA. This is not an acceptable trade-off.
This is not an acceptable trade-off. Suicide is dramatically shortening the life-expectancy of autistic people and autistic people are saying it is because they are not being accepted.Autistic writer Max Sparrow, “All
those years of ABA therapy will have taught them that they are
fundamentally wrong and broken; that they are required to do everything
authority demands of them (whether it’s right or wrong for them); that
they are always the one at fault when anything social goes wrong; that
they get love, praise, and their basic survival needs met so long as
they can hide any trace of autism from others; that what they want
doesn’t matter.”Another former ABA therapist writes,
“I thought that because I cared about the kids’ well-being, because I
had a strong desire to help them, everything I did must therefore be in
their best interest. In my mind, it gave me a special immunity to making
mistakes. Caring meant there was no way I could be hurting them. I now realize how dangerous this idea really is.
I’ve hurt many people I care deeply about. Just because you care about
someone or have good intentions does not guarantee you’re doing the best
thing for them.”
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
Long and depressing but worth reading.
Can’t sleep gonna read this zine
In case anyone is interested, it’s a great read:
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/89858:why-misogynists-make-great-informants
“[Misogynists] both do the work of the state and need to be held accountable”
[Essay] | Punching the Clock, by David Graeber | Harper’s Magazine
Historically, human work patterns have
taken the form of intense bursts of energy followed by rest. Farming,
for instance, is generally an all-hands-on-deck mobilization around
planting and harvest, with the off-seasons occupied by minor projects.
Large projects such as building a house or preparing for a feast tend to
take the same form. This is typical of how human beings have always
worked. There is no reason to believe that acting otherwise would result
in greater efficiency or productivity. Often it has precisely the
opposite effect.One reason that work was historically irregular is because it was
largely unsupervised. This is true of medieval feudalism and of most
labor arrangements until relatively recent times, even if the
relationship between worker and boss was strikingly unequal. If those at
the bottom produced what was required of them, those at the top
couldn’t be bothered to know how the time was spent.Most societies throughout history would never have imagined that a
person’s time could belong to his employer. But today it is considered
perfectly natural for free citizens of democratic countries to rent out a
third or more of their day. “I’m not paying you to lounge around,”
reprimands the modern boss, with the outrage of a man who feels he’s
being robbed. How did we get here?By the fourteenth century, the common understanding of what time was
had changed; it became a grid against which work was measured, rather
than the work itself being the measure. Clock towers funded by local
merchant guilds were erected throughout Europe. These same merchants
placed human skulls on their desks as memento mori, to remind themselves
that they should make quick use of their time. The proliferation of
domestic clocks and pocket watches that coincided with the advent of the
Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century allowed for a
similar attitude toward time to spread among the middle class. Time came
to be widely seen as a finite property to be budgeted and spent, much
like money. And these new time-telling devices allowed a worker’s time
to be chopped up into uniform units that could be bought and sold.
Factories started to require workers to punch the time clock upon
entering and leaving.The change was moral as well as technological. One began to speak of
spending time rather than just passing it, and also of wasting time,
killing time, saving time, losing time, racing against time, and so
forth. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an
episodic style of working was increasingly treated as a social problem.
Methodist preachers exhorted “the husbandry of time”; time management
became the essence of morality. The poor were blamed for spending their
time recklessly, for being as irresponsible with their time as they were
with their money.Workers protesting oppressive conditions, meanwhile, adopted the same
notions of time. Many of the first factories didn’t allow workers to
bring in their own timepieces, because the owner played fast and loose
with the factory clock. Labor activists negotiated higher hourly rates,
demanded fixed-hour contracts, overtime, time and a half, twelve- and
then eight-hour work shifts. The act of demanding “free time,” though
understandable, reinforced the notion that a worker’s time really did belong to the person who had bought it.
[Essay] | Punching the Clock, by David Graeber | Harper’s Magazine
Before Europe: The Christian West in the Annals of Medieval Islam
historicity-was-already-taken:
Love this! This is post-modern historiography done beautifully! Not rejection of narrative and contextualization abilities, but reframing of narratives in a challenge to Euro-centric constructs and modes of thought!
Sorry for saying “post-modernism” lol. And like, the other jargon. I’m just having a Moment.
“Is it possible, then, to write a history of Europe using only Arabic sources?”
Wow, this is really interesting!
Before Europe: The Christian West in the Annals of Medieval Islam
What Happens When Poor Kids Are Taught Society Is Fair
Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014.
Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced, he chose what some might consider a radical approach for his writing and social-studies classes, weaving in concepts such as racism, classism, oppression, and prejudice. Barrett said it was vital to reject the oft-perpetuated narrative that society is fair and equal to address students’ questions and concerns about their current conditions. And Brighton Elementary’s seventh- and eighth-graders quickly put the lessons to work—confronting the school board over inequitable funding, fighting to install a playground, and creating a classroom library focused on black and Latino authors.
“Students who are told that things are fair implode pretty quickly in middle school as self-doubt hits them,” he said, “and they begin to blame themselves for problems they can’t control.”
Barrett’s personal observation is validated by a newly published study in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development that finds traditionally marginalized youth who grew up believing in the American ideal that hard work and perseverance naturally lead to success show a decline in self-esteem and an increase in risky behaviors during their middle-school years. The research is considered the first evidence linking preteens’ emotional and behavioral outcomes to their belief in meritocracy, the widely held assertion that individual merit is always rewarded.
“If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it,” said Erin Godfrey, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.
“If the system is fair, why am I seeing that everybody who has brown skin is in this kind of job? You’re having to think about that … like you’re not as good, or your social group isn’t as good,” Godfrey said. “That’s the piece … that I was trying to really get at [by studying] these kids.”
The findings build upon a body of literature on “system justification”—a social-psychology theory that believes humans tend to defend, bolster, or rationalize the status quo and see overarching social, economic, and political systems as good, fair, and legitimate. System justification is a distinctively American notion, Godfrey said, built on myths used to justify inequities, like “If you just work hard enough you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps … it’s just a matter of motivation and talent and grit.” Yet, as she and her colleagues discovered, these beliefs can be a liability for disadvantaged adolescents once their identity as a member of a marginalized group begins to gel—and once they become keenly aware of how institutional discrimination disadvantages them and their group.
“If you’re [inclined] to believe that … the system is fair, then you’re maybe going to accept stereotypes about you more easily.”
Guillermo del Toro’s highly personal monster film ‘The Shape of Water’ speaks to ‘what I feel as an immigrant’
Obviously the world has changed dramatically since you were shooting this film. I can’t imagine you could anticipate the way those themes would resonate …
I did. And the reason why is that I’m Mexican. I’ve been going through immigration all my life, and I’ve been stopped for traffic violations by cops and they get much more curious about me than the regular guy. The moment they hear my accent, things get a little deeper.
I know it sounds kind of glib, but honestly, what we are living I saw brewing through the Obama era and the Clinton era. It was there. The fact that we got diagnosed with a tumor doesn’t mean the cancer started now.
Hopefully one of the things the movie shows is that from 1962 to now, we’ve taken baby steps — and a lot of them not everyone takes. The thing that is inherent in social control is fear. The way they control a population is by pointing at somebody else — whether they’re gay, Mexican, Jewish, black — and saying, “They are different than you. They’re the reason you’re in the shape you’re in. You’re not responsible.” And when they exonerate you through vilifying and demonizing someone else, they control you.
I think the movie says that there are so many more reasons to love than to hate. I know you sound a lot smarter when you’re skeptical and a cynic, but I don’t care.
But you’re not on a mission to change the way people see genre?
No, I can’t. I know that what I saw when I was a kid had redemptive powers. Some people find Jesus. I found Frankenstein. And the reason I’m alive and articulate and semi-sane is monsters. It’s not an affectation. It’s completely spiritually real to me. And I’m not going to change.
@aprilwitching uhhh have you seen this interview because dang
“some people find jesus. i found frankenstein.”
i… i have never had my me put into words so well. “and the reason i’m alive and articulate and semi-sane is monsters.” fuck. fuck fuck fuck. it me. it’s my heart and my soul and my me.
The idea of otherness being seen as the enemy.
i can’t brain rn but i know what he’s talking about.
yessssssss. i have so many feels about that + “i found frankenstein” but no words. i just. ::inarticulate yearning noise:: it’s the inside of me. i wish i had words.
Reblogging because I’m so happy people are reading this article. Its so present, and relevant and on point. Guillermo inexplicably ‘get’s me’ in a way I’ve never been able to articulate, and he’s talking about himself.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.