“It’s not that Jackson had a ‘dark side’, as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents – Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama – have each advanced popular imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
If you’ve already set up an account there, or feel you don’t have a choice,
Expect anything you do on Pillowfort.io to be publicly-visible and temporary.
Don’t give Pillowfort.io your primary email address. They’ve already leaked all their users’ email addresses coupled with their usernames, potentially outing users’ private blogs to employers, stalkers, etc. If you signed up with your primary email address, you need to change it.
Don’t use a password that you use anywhere else on Pillowfort.io. (especially not along WITH your primary email address)
Don’t post ANY information you want to be kept private on Pillowfort.io.
Don’t
rely on being able to log in to Pillowfort.io when you need to contact
someone.
Don’t rely on other people being able to log in to Pillowfort.io when they need to contact you.
If you post things you want to keep on Pillowfort.io, crosspost them elsewhere and/or make backups.
The Pillowfort.io devs are either very inexperienced or very careless. If it doesn’t shut down, there will be more security breaches, and likely also accidental data loss. If you choose to use Pillowfort.io, trust it less than you trust Tumblr.
this post may not be wrong, persay, you should obviously be careful using a site that’s in beta and it may go down sometimes and it’s already had security issues, but like…calling the devs ‘inexperienced’ or ‘careless’ is a super unfair characterization. web development is fucking hard, and i don’t mean that in a ‘aww throw the poor people a bone, they’re just starting’ sort of way. i mean that sites that have large and dedicated teams funded by huge corporations routinely run into the same exact issues. shit goes wrong. it’s not gonna be perfect. but that goes for any website you ever log into.
I’ve been reading and studying a lot about Watergate recently (which I’m sure a lot of people interested in American politics are doing right now), and something sort of caught my attention.
Trump really is playing this Russia investigation like it is Watergate verbatim.
It’s not really surprising, he did surround himself with a few Nixon people (Roger Stone comes to mind immediately), so the stuff about trying to demonize the media, the paranoia around a “deep state” conspiracy and trying to purge out political opponents, the emphasis on “law and order” while everyone around you commits felonies, all that is there and comes straight from Nixon.
But what really grabbed me was trying to figure out why Trump keeps trying to refer to Mueller and his team as “13 angry Democrats” when most of them (Rosenstein, McCabe, Mueller) are Conservative Republicans themselves.
Then it hit me. Archibald Cox, special council investigating Watergate, was a liberal professor from Harvard Law and he brought in many young Harvard Law grad who were also liberals to help him. He’s trying to play this like it is Cox, not lifelong Republican Mueller, investigating him.
Can we just… normalize teens loving their parents? Like obviously you’re not obligated to if your parents are shitty, but damn, I love my mom. She’s there for me all the time and sure we have rough patches but honestly she’s the greatest. Like. We need teens to know that they don’t have to hate their parents just cause.
It must be nice to come from a nonabusive family. One that doesn’t traumatized every emotional interaction to the point where you drive away any sign of love as a form of manipulation because that’s all that you were raised with. 🤷♀️
It is.
Reading Comprehension
Culturally normalizing being okay with parents during the teenage years would also probably help the teenagers who are abused by their parents, because right now? If a teen talks about their parents being strict or never letting them do anything without diving into ornate detail, most people in the US think Normal Teenage Issues and not Possible Cause For Abuse Investigation, Let Me Ask A Few Questions. Sometimes even if the teen gives details, because hyperbole comes with the hormonal fluctuations and we’d rather hear it as hyperbole.
If the parental conflict portrayed as part of the teenage years in the media was even just toned down, unrelated adults might be more likely to see serious teenage complaints about parents as possible red flags instead of automatically defaulting to ‘wait, they’re just looking out for you, you’ll agree with them in a few years when puberty’s over’.
When I complain about being a ‘gifted’ kid who grew into a talentless adult I don’t mean that I’m not trying to work on my talents or anything
I mean that the ‘gifts’ I had are useless
Reading books above my age isn’t a talent when I’m not eleven
Knowing big words isn’t a talent when I’m not a kid, it’s just growing up
It’s just a weird thing that happens and it feels shitty when you’re brought up being told you’re an exceptional child only to realise as an adult you’re just average
This
I did a lot of reading about gifted kids and especially gifted adults when I got my “diagnosis” because I was told I was gifted at 23 and well, it serves no purpose to have a confirmation that you’re gifted at 23
Thing is, gifted children are not amazingly better than everyone else. Gifted brains just don’t work the same so they build their skills in a different order
Basically when you’re very young, most people brain learn social skills and how to interact with their peers, but gifted brains are already at the next step which is how to understand and interact with the world
That makes the stereotypical young children that are very good at math, always asking questions about how things work, very upset when they don’t know a thing
But the thing is, when everyone gets older, they’ve mastered most social skills and now turn towards understanding the world
But the gifted children have already mastered that part and are turning towards how to build social skills. Except there’s no one left to teach us about that! Because we’re late to that party
Long story short, at the end everyone, gifted or not, goes through all the necessary steps to make functioning adults, so the difference that was obvious as a child has disappeared
But us gifted people often end up with social anxiety and impostor syndrome because we are actually less equipped than others to face a world that taught everyone to be confident and talk to people while we were busy reading books above our age
……………that last paragraph.
damn.
The one bit of this I disagree with is:
Sure, my weird language thing is less impressive now than it was when I was eleven.
Sure, that’s sometimes REALLY REALLY PAINFUL.
But my gifts still matter. Other people can write books now… but some people love mine.
Don’t spin around so hard in your disillusionment that you think your gifts don’t matter because you’re too old.
Look, I appreciate that progressives are compassionate and empathetic people, who aren’t content to cheer on “winning,” but want to make sure they’re acting ethically and towards worthwhile goals. If we didn’t have these qualities, maybe we really wouldn’t be much better than the opposition.
But for God’s sake don’t let people hijack your empathy entirely towards a Nazi or a Klansman going “oh no you’re making me feel intimidated,” and away from the people he’d murder if he got half a chance.
This isn’t theoretical. The far right murdered most of my family in the 1930s and 40s. And now they’re trying to stage a comeback, with the approval of the fucking President. In the face of that, I think it’s justifiable to be a wee bit impolite.
The already worrying “is it okay to punch a Nazi” discourse is sliding into “is it okay to make a Nazi feel bad?” discourse, and FUCK YES IT IS. IT IS ENTIRELY OKAY TO DO THAT.
So many nerdy Internet people are psychologically stuck in how all their classmates thought they were weird and it made them feel bad and nobody respected their ~original unpopular thinking~, and project that in a silly and self-centered way all over serious political issues. When your Geek Social Fallacies lead you all the way to sticking up for crying Nazis, it’s time to address your own issues and seek help, not project your fear of social exclusion all over people’s opposition to violent far-right movements.
I kinda understand the venting needs behind posts that say “all straight men treat their girlfriends like shit,” but please think of the message you’re sending to straight women whose boyfriends are treating them like shit.
“Might as well stay, they’re all like that! This is simply the burden you must bear as a straight woman!”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 