The grace of a collapsing cathedral

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
46hasu
homosexual-having-tea

You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.

quecksilvereyes

there are scriptures all over the world painstakingly crafted hundreds of years ago with paw prints and spelling mistakes or drawings covering up mistakes. a bunch of teenage girls 2000 years ago gathered to walk around their hometown, getting fast food and laughing with their friends. two friends shared blankets before people lived in houses. a mother ran a fine comb through her child’s hair and told it to stop squirming sometime in the 1000s. there are covered up sewing mistakes in couture dresses from the 1800s, some poor roman burnt their food so well past recognition that they just buried the entire pot. there are broken dishes hidden in gardens of people no one even remembers anymore

theropoda

children eleven thousand years ago enjoyed jumping around in puddles made from the footprints of a giant sloth. children loved muddy puddles so long ago there were still megafauna alive

captainlordauditor

There’s a record of an emperor of Japan in the 9th century talking about his cat - how pretty it is, and how it stalks birds and curls up in a circle and meows mournfully for company and escaped its collar. All completely normal ordinary cat things. And then it ends with him saying “it is superior to all other cats”. I am delighted to be united across 1200 years with this fellow cat owner with exactly the same feelings about his cat that I have about mine.

meow
loki-zen
nonevahed

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nonevahed

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loki-zen

I mean it's true like

backwhen, a lot of women did publish as men because women really were boxed out of the publishing industry. If cishet men really believed they were shut out purely on that basis they would do the same thing

adjoint-law

the ones with gumption, sure

shitpost i wager there are very specific imprints and publishing niches where this *does* happen but not very many at present publishing industry ozy Brennan
rotationalsymmetry
fhjskfjakdjfjkajf

having a lot of thoughts about alice in wonderland as a subversion of the apologue—one in which the diagetic world is neither hermetically sealed nor internally consistent. having a lot of thoughts about childhood, and how we construct stories for children.

fhjskfjakdjfjkajf

i recognize that not everyone is a narratology-pilled story-head, so i shall define a few things and (hopefully) explain why this is so fun to have a lot of thoughts about

many of the stories we write for young children are “apologues”—short, didactic narratives that utilize abstraction to make a moral, political, or philosophical point. for example, i could tell a child “hey, slow down, if you go too quickly you will become tired and consequently unable to reach your goal,” but it’s difficult to link all of that information together when you’re five.

so, we link the information to something they already know. rabbits move quickly, and tortoises move slowly. it is easy to assume that—in a race between a tortoise and a hare—the hare would fucking obliterate the tortoise. but what if the hare got cocky and burned his dumb ass out? this scenario provides helpful scaffolding on which to construct our rhetorical point.

children have access to a limited amount of information, so it’s important to keep things simple. animals can talk. don’t worry about it. this is a fact of our “diagetic world,” the constructed world that allows the narrative to function. it is hermetically sealed and internally consistent in that 1.) the ‘rules’ of human life do not interfere (no one questions why the animals can talk), and 2.) the ‘rules’ make perfect sense in relationship to each other

this is all well and good! until we confront the fact that the ‘rules’ of human existence are—uh oh—inconsistent. your mother might have a different opinion on “morality” than your father, one teacher might be cruel and another kind, chores require one outfit and your cousin’s wedding requires another. welcome to earth, kid.

alice’s adventures in wonderland (and through the looking glass, though in all likelihood they’re lumped together in your brain) borrows the form and aesthetic of the apologue. the architecture is there—talking animals, episodic structure, pockets of internally consistent logic—but rather than supporting a real-world value, such as the value of hard work or perseverance, the story says, “hey. how coherent are these structures, really?” it’s an endless parody, a deconstruction that pokes and jabs at the inconsistency and incoherence of institutionalized knowledge

and at the center of it, there’s alice, not a part of the apologue’s world nor a part of her own.

this is not a new assessment. i just find it interesting. we construct information for children in many ways, some helpful, some dangerous. but one of the most honest and painful things we must tell them—at the end of the day—is that we are often wrong.

critical reading
normalcei
coshayphinelove

I know I haven't posted regularly on this blog in years but I'm not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what's happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I'm genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I'm making a post about it.

A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:

2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.

2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.

November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.

December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)

Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.

1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)

Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.

The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.

ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.

It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.

Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.

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And from today.

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They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.

And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.

So that's a brief history.

Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.

It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.

I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.

Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.

crafting-and-tea

I've been monitoring this closely because I have friends in the area, and because I think every city in the country is at risk of having the feds come to do what they're doing in Minnesota, and we all need to get ready.

There are some Twin Cities activists who have been very clearly laying out what they're doing, and why it's effective at slowing down ICE. It sounds like all you really need, is neighborhood group chats where people can let one another know when and where ICE is present, and then people show up, start recording, and blowing whistles, and then ICE will leave again more often than not. This VERY SHORT thread by a Twin Cities activist outlines what to do and how it works.

Will Stancil (@whstancil.bsky.social)
Getting a lot of messages. A lot are like "Can I come help?" (appreciated, but unless you know the area very well, probably not THAT useful)
Bluesky Social

Also: Minnesota Public Radio has been doing great coverage of what's happening, and the local NBC affiliate has some excellent interviews with activists who were arrested and detained for hours.

And finally, some good news: the courts restored SNAP funding.

ref praxis
pasdechat
mixelation

in some ways i love "power imbalance" ship discourse. it's like watching dude bros debate power levels. you're trying to turn an extremely complex and nuanced scenario into crunchable numbers. i think that's why so many people are fixated on age gaps tbh. and then often they fail hilariously because they'll be like "well, it's a five year age gap between adults, so that needs to be addressed--" and then not even consider the insane dynamic of (check notes) dating your direct commanding officer with mind control powers in a fantasy military setting

the-grey-tribe
space-feminist

i feel like "feminist" anti-kink sentiment is very tail-wagging-the-dog. like male doms playing out bdsm scenes of abuse are not oppressing their female subs that's acting. you're mad at acting. you're those aliens from galaxy quest. same with fearmongering about "booktok". however an eroticized version of patriarchal dynamics being a popular kink DOES speak to the pervasiveness of sexism, bc eroticizing the oppression is a way of coping with living under it. it's women creating a fantasy world where men being menacing to them is sexy and not scary like it is irl, or where it is still scary but in the fun way like a horror movie bc you can tap out at any time by using a safe word or putting the book down. acting like this sort of kink is oppressing women is like if you assumed the thermometer controlled the weather outside. it might be depressing to look at the thermometer and see the impact of climate change, but it's not the thermometer's fault

shamebats

If you liberate women, fiction will begin to reflect said liberation. But you cannot liberate women through fiction.

plantsjustwannahavefun

This... is actually the first kink-critical take I've ever seen that I found very reasonable.

I still completely disagree with the idea that BDSM wouldn't exist in a gender-equal society, and really wish people realised that the "negotiate the entire experience beforehand" and "can tap out at any time" aspects are literally what makes "kinky sex" completely different from SA in the same way that martial arts is completely different from beating someone up on the street.

But if someone were ideologically against kink, I'd much rather they realised that it's not the kink itself that creates oppression so they should try to dismantle the source instead of the (perceived) side effect.

shamebats

I think the mistake a lot of people make is assuming that if you're critical about something that means you're opposed to it when it's very much possible to be critical in an academic sort of way, where you are able to analyze the themes of a work of fiction or study people's fantasies and draw conclusions about society from them in a completely non-judgemental way. You can just be like "straight women's sexuality tenda to be like this and here's how that might be influenced by or a direct response to patriarchy" without declaring that it's problematic, expecting women to change and shaming them if they don't.

BDSM would still exist in a gender-equal society, it's just that straight people would be more equally split between doms/subs, subs/bottoms, sadists/masochist etc. regardless of gender. We know that because queer people exist and lesbians aren't all bottoms & gay men aren't all tops purely because of biology or gender identity.

There will always be sexuality, sexual expression, sex, kinks, fetishes and so on, but since all of that is heavily influenced by culture, it does change along with social norms attitudes about gender and you can tell a lot about a society by the way individuals view & engage with sexuality in their minds, literature and bedrooms.

kink more or less endorsed
troubled-pasta
wolfertinger666

it is annoying that posts about antiblackness can be said by a non black person that's only parroting the surface level issues we black people face and get a gazillion notes and honestly It's starting to piss me off how those posts get more attention then black users on here getting overlooked when we talk about our experiences because people do have interlized racial biases. they won't even reblog it because they're scared they're "overstepping" but it's ok when a non black ally says the same thing.

please don't be scared to boost black voices, especially now with the current climate and how this website has a smaller black userbase than before. please.

wolfertinger666

we kinda just wanna be heard and understood, that's all. Also please don't do the "as a white person" bs on this post quite frankly it's annoying as well and unnecessary. you can quietly boost our voices.