I Just Discovered Foodtimeline.org, Which Is Exactly What It Sounds Like: Centuries Worth Of Information

Hot take, but cis people have gender identities. They aren't the gender they identify as because of their genitalia or what their birth certificate says. They're only cis because they identify with a gender and it happens to match their government documentation. Cis men aren't men because they're "obviously" men for having a penis. They're men because they identify as men. It's the self-identification that dictates this, not any other factor, even for cis folks. And we should be framing it this way. A cis man identifies as a man and a cis woman identifies as a woman. There is no automatic or inherent gender.

Don't neglect the UK's indigenous languages

Why the UK can, and should, make space for our indigenous minority languages.

The ten languages indigenous to the British Isles and still spoken today are English, Scots, British Sign Language, Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, Manx, Angloromani and Shelta.

Begging people to stop infantilizing art

okay people who have been fighting to unwhitewash the clones, now is your time to help māori!!

What’s happening

- 182.41 hectares of our ancestral land in Wairarapa has come up for sale.

- This whenua backs onto our maunga Tararua, our awa, Waiohine and is near our whānau urupā, Te Uru o Tāneroa.

- The tender price is between $1.2-1.5 million.

- Our whānau are trying to raise money to meet the tender price.

- Our iwi has not settled, so we have no collective financial base.

- Our whānau want to buy back our whenua and establish papakāinga and sustainable business to bring our people home to Wairarapa.

If the tender is unsuccessful they will keep all donations for the next bit of land that comes up

Givealittle

#LandBack Help us buy back our ancestral land in Wairarapa

#LandBack. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy it back and help recreate a hub for our Ngāti Kahukuraawhitia people.

(information has been copied from @/amscraig on twitter, who is a member of the iwi attempting to reclaim their land)

it is so disappointing that this is the only option to reclaim illegally stolen land for the iwi, but the government wont work towards settlement with many iwi so we have no other choice

if you have any money avaliable to donate please do, anything would be appreciated!

The photo is not very good and I still need to wash and iron it, but I couldn't wait to show my first ever big cross stitch project;

Love how it turned out, especially with the green embroidery thread (cotton thread on linen)

I've never heard anyone say that the term "gypsy" is offensive before. I know it used to have a negative connotation, but it seems like it hasn't for a couple of centuries. Do people still identify as gypsies? I'm not arguing, but this is news to me and I would like to understand more.

Thanks for asking with the intention of understanding better! 

On my father’s side, my family is Romani, the ethnic group historically called gypsies by outsiders. The name came from the misperception than we originated in Egypt (we’re actually from India). Other names for us include words that literally mean unclean or untouchable (in a taboo and gross way). We have always called ourselves Roma or Romani, so it’s not that we identify as gypsies, it’s that others identify us as gypsies. This name or label was forced on us.

Like Native Americans, we are not a dead culture. We have become splintered, and many Romani have been pushed into inescapable poverty thanks to institutional racism. Many of us have assimilated into the dominant culture of the places we live (my family fits here).

But the negative connotation to the word is very much alive and well. Romani girls and women are among the most targeted by sex traffickers. In 2017, Fox “News” aired a scare-mongering “report” on Gypsy immigrants threatening the very fabric of the US.

Historically speaking, the Romani have been forcibly relocated, sterilized, and subjected to genocide. To address the “gypsy problem,” in the 1800’s, Switzerland rounded up Romani males and sent them to North America. This is how one branch of my family arrived in the US. It tends to not get mentioned in history classes, but twenty-five to fifty percent of the Romani population living in Europe in 1939 died at the hands of Nazis.

Taking a word that has been used to label and other an ethnic group, and romanticizing and using it to describe a free-spirited and mischievous nature does not erase the baggage or harm that has been done. Gypsy and its derivative gyp (to steal or swindle) are vulgar and hurtful words that need to be retired and relegated to history.

⁂

Here are some sources and articles, should they be of interest:

The Problem with the Word ‘Gypsy’ (this whole site can be helpful)

The Harmful History of ‘Gypsy’ – discusses the modern myths and the current state

Romani Genocide – Romani specific Wikipedia article on the Nazi Holocaust

Remembering the Roma victims of the Holocaust – discusses how the Romani are often excluded from historical accounts of the Holocaust, and the impact on the people – less dry than the Wikipedia article

Persecution and Politicization: Roma (Gypsies) of Eastern Europe – nice summary of the history associated with the word from Cultural Survival Quarterly magazine

The “G” Word Isn’t for You: How “Gypsy” Erases Romani Women – from the National Organization for Women (NOW) this focuses a little more on how the long-standing stereotypes and racism hurt Romany, especially the women.

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

9/11 is coming up - and with it, a sharp spike of anxiety that always accompanies the anniversary. each year our community deals with attacks, threats, even deaths. each anniversary i don’t leave my house. i don’t go to the masjid.

i remember the time someone shot up the side of our mosque when we were inside

i remember the time someone chased two young hijabis with a taser

i remember the time someone intentionally swerved towards me when i was crossing the street and i stood frozen in fear

i remember the time someone slipped a knife threat into my mailbox

or the times my friends and i have been verbally assaulted in crowded public spaces and nobody said a word

call out racism and islamophobia when you see it. check in on your muslim neighbors and friends. refuse to tolerate the bigotry and hate that takes lives and spreads fear - both in public and online. stand united with us against hate.