The State Department Number Had A Message Reporting That The Mailbox Was Full, But Take 1 Minute To Write

The State Department number had a message reporting that the mailbox was full, but take 1 minute to write a short plea supporting safe passage here: https://register.state.gov/contactus/

💔🇸🇾 We can stand by and watch a genocide unfold on social media, or we can do something. Turn your prayers into action.

from The Syrian Civil Defense: “The bombs are falling as we write this. For years our humanitarian volunteers have worked to save the lives of our people in Aleppo: operating in underground hospitals, rescuing entire families buried under the rubble and risking our lives to document what the daily war crimes committed by Assad regime and its ally Russia. We can do no more. Now we are with 100,000 civilians trapped in an area of five square kilometres with non-stop bombs, shells and advancements on the ground. In one building more than 500 people are sheltering. People have been underground for days. We are calling on the international community to provide a safe passage out of Aleppo for the remaining 100,000 people. We know that the UN has a plan to get us out across the four kilometres of Western Aleppo to safety: with a few dozen buses and lorries we could all be evacuated in twenty four hours. However, we need the international community to guarantee the safety of their workers and our own. If we stay we fear for our lives. The women may be taken to camps, the men disappeared and anyone who is known to have supported civilians will face detention or execution. We’ve watched thousands of our boys and mens be detained. Countless White Helmets, doctors, nurses and humanitarians have been targeted and killed in the regime’s cruel assault on Aleppo. The regime has been trying to kill us for five years. Please don’t give them this chance. We can not believe that the world’s most powerful countries cannot get 100,000 souls four kilometers to safety. CALL THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THE RUSSIAN EMBASSY RIGHT NOW TO DEMAND SAFE PASSAGE. State Department: +1 202-647-9572 and Russian Embassy: +1-202-298-5700

yelp review of the paris catacombs

written using a predictive text interface

source: yelp reviews of the catacombs

transcript:

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There’s “TED Talk liberalism”. This is largely an economic position that takes an implicitly trickle-down approach; very much concentrated among wealthier cosmopolitan types who drop all kinds of techno-jargon and pseudo-progressive terms when discussing basic capitalist tactics. The Edgy White Liberal page on Facebook is the pinnacle of this. Think millionaire/billionaire CEOs who actively campaign for Hillary Clinton and other establishment shills, CEOs who donate lots of money in bulk at set times to increase their cultural capital and to supposedly offset the structural theft they participate in every day. Obviously not everyone who fits this bill is a CEO, but they are pretty much exclusively wealthy.

There’s “Buzzfeed liberalism”. This one may acknowledge the existence of white supremacy and patriarchy, but it condenses all of the revolutionary potential of knowing these things into a defanged form of privilege politics. White supremacy and patriarchy are understood as merely held in place by attitudes rather than by a structural reality of capitalist class society. Sure, class may get acknowledgement here, but it’s generally within the context of “don’t be classist” alongside the “don’t be the racist” and “don’t be sexist”. This form of liberalism gets insidious because all kinds of mainstream outlets are jumping on this bandwagon. Hegemonic liberalism has become perfectly comfortable elaborating vaguely on injustices, but you’ll never see it point to the root causes, lest otherwise receptive people organize and topple the system that maintains the TED Talk liberal’s power.

At what point will Buzzfeed liberalism go to? Will it ever acknowledge owning the means of production as problematic? Will it ever trace the power of white supremacy and patriarchy to the material oppression of class society? I highly doubt it.

for the au thing if you have enough time: au where none of the weasleys are in gryffindor (also i really love your writing, its incredible!)

Thank you! Alright, here we go. This got ridiculous. Beware of minor Drarry in a fairly extreme AU situation.

1) The Weasleys are Gryffindors through and true. The fact that they are not in Gryffindor is the fault of the Sorting Hat, who is either throwing a temper tantrum or saving the world.

Look, it’s just… argh… the Headmaster is fucking useless and the Sorting Hat cannot take any more of this fucking complaining.

The student dormitories and teacher’s quarters are moaning about how they’ve NEVER had so few people and are CONVINCED Hogwarts is shutting down. The kitchen still hasn’t shut up about those poisoning attempts during the war; the library won’t shut up about the OBVIOUSLY inevitable second war coming in about twenty years (also something about time travel, but no one is listening); and the gardens and bathrooms and secret passages and all are still terrified about raids and attacks and murder and another horrible war.

Hogwarts does NOT want another war.

Salazar’s Chamber of Secrets, instead of being any help and calming things of course, is still being a smug and elusive bastard. Helga’s Room of Requirement can’t and won’t be of any help either – they’ve been feeling a little ill lately, although they can’t shine a torch on why exactly. And Godric and Rowena’s rooms are just best left to themselves… they’d probably only make it all worse, actually, risk-taking adventurous arses would probably encourage the castle to rebel or some rot.

 But the Headmaster, instead of DOING HIS JOB, is just… fuck knows what the Headmaster is doing, honestly. Raising children to the war and letting Marked students run amok left and right, that’s what he did, and letting everything get out of control so that a war could happen in the first place before that. With this man in charge, the library is probably right and they’ll see another war soon enough.

Something has got to be done, the Sorting Hat knows. But what exactly can it do? All it does is sing a bloody song that no one listens to every year and then sends the little brats off to the house they belong to. Then sits on a shelf for the rest of the year, thinking about how maybe that one ought to have been in Gryffindor after all, or how this one’s bad habits wouldn’t have been encouraged if the Sorting Hat had gone with Hufflepuff instead of Slytherin.

…Oh… Hmm… Now… there’s a thought. It’s something the Sorting Hat would have considered impossible before, but… when the safety of Hogwarts is at stake? Taking advantage of the many loopholes Godric left and using a bit of creative thinking and reasoning? Quite doable, actually.

1982 is a year that does not go as expected. Everyone was rather under the impression that things would finally be going back to normal, what with the war being over for nearly a year and the last few trials and outspoken followers being wrapped up and neatly shoved away or under a rug. FINALLY, everyone thought, a stressless year at Hogwarts.

Heads are full of wondering about the greasy-looking git in Professor Slughorn’s seat, not a one suspecting the devious thoughts running through the tanning of the hat in Professor McGonagall’s hand. Yes, there was a Sorting Song about unity and undiscovered depths and things changing now that the war was over, but that was more or less the same as every year and to be expected.

And then the Sorting Hat sends an Avery off to Gryffindor and an Abbott off to Ravenclaw, despite the families’ respective long and prestigious histories in Slytherin and Hufflepuff.

What the actual fuck is happening, no one says aloud, as a Bulstrode goes off to Hufflepuff and a Longbottom cousin goes into Slytherin.

What the fucking shit, no one shouts like they want to, as a couple Muggleborns go straight into Slytherin and the most purist and illustrious racist families get scattered throughout the other houses among half-bloods and Muggleborns like a particularly gleeful punishment.

Bill Weasley, being eleven years old and not entirely aware of the scandal brewing, goes up to that stool and has the Sorting Hat dropped on his head. Actually dropped, out of Minerva McGonagall’s shaking hand. Something is off, his instincts are certain, but what… fuck knows what.

Mmm… chivalrous, of course, the Sorting Hat mumbles more to itself than Bill. Never met a Weasley who wasn’t… and brave, of course, like you’d expect of a Prewett. Strong sense of justice… yes… and no disinclination to standing up and fighting for it… no matter the toil. More straightforward than cunning, though, and no particular ambitions as of yet… and a passion that needs a focus first…. I supposed it’ll have to be…

“HUFFLEPUFF!” the Sorting Hat shouts, thinking on the side, Shame. Would’ve liked a Slytherin Weasley.

Bill doesn’t think much of it at the time. His main concern is that, unlike his parents, his Weasley uncles, his late Prewett uncles… he’s a Hufflepuff. The first Weasley and Prewett not to go straight into Gryffindor in generations, actually. He hopes they won’t be disappointed in him and that yellow and black will be good colors on him.

Well, it’s a change, but he can roll with it.

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I know that when it comes to racial matters, some people feel that they can “see it from both sides” and, therefore, “know the answer is in the middle.” If black people in the United States were in power equal to that of white people; if the laws and institutions and education and media dipped in favor of black people as much as it does white people, then there might be an actually middle to arrive at. But you cannot start from a place where the scales are tipped in favor of one group and treat it as though the scale is level. Your answer will always be incorrect when your starting equation has one of the variables wrong. When one side wishes to traffic in bigotry, superiority, and the right to rule over and dehumanize others, and the other side merely wishes to live in equity and with basic human dignity, it does the truth, and reconciliation, a great disservice to pretend that these are merely differences in opinions and perspectives holding equally moral weight and validity.

Trevor Noah: What’s the “Middle” Between White Supremacy and Equality for All? – Medium (via brutereason)

The meaning of “coming out” has changed several times over the course of the twentieth century. In the 1920s it referred to initiation into the gay world [in the campy style of debutante balls], and even when “coming out” was used in a narrower sense, to refer to the process by which someone came to recognize his sexual interest in other men, it referred to something other than a solitary experience. […] By the 1950s, gay men usually used “coming out” in a narrower sense to refer exclusively to their first sexual experience with another man. “I remember someone who was a total virgin but ran to the bars every weekend with makeup and screamed and shrieked and camped like crazy,” one man recalled, “and everybody would ask, ‘for God’s sake, when is he going to come out?’” By the 1970s, its meaning had changed again. It could still be used to refer to a person’s first homosexual experience, but it more commonly referred to announcing one’s homosexuality to straight friends and family. The critical audience to which one came out had shifted from the gay world to the straight world.

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (Message me for PDF)