#dear usamericans

[dear-usamericans]

Dear USAmericans (of Latine &/or Filipino descent/diaspora), we native Latines & Filipinos don't like the terms Latinx & Filipinx & wish you stop forcing it on us coz 1) Latine is much better & easier to pronounce 2) the Filipino language is already gender neutral 3) it shows you know nothing about the Spanish & Filipino languages 4) it's basically linguistic imperialism, forcing USA centric views & is rude 5) our LGBT folks hate it, too

.

#dear usamericans #from: latines #from: filipinos #us centrism #linguistic imperialism #doesn't spanish have a super complicated relationship with the letter x and its pronunciation and use too #especially between mexico and spain? #also i Hate when random USamerican stuff gets applied to non-u.s. non-english stuff and Especially #in the use of the letter x to be more gender neutral #it almost never makes sense and many languages have trouble with the letter x and how it's supposed to be applied #and in the end it creates more complications than it solves and most native speakers of those other languages hate it anyways #can we just agree to use our own languages for our own things and let other languages do their things instead of trying to govern what #they do? #cause this is ridiculous #anyways sorry for the tag rant

[laulo821]

anyways here how i try to fill in the us

im so scared to actually look the real map cuz embarrassment to fail

#/lighthearted #game #rambling #it's such a pain #but i feel like i've named quite a bit #also dear usamerican frens: if i interchanged your state with another sorry but that's your new home now

[hussyknee]

This white liberal USAmerican nightmare used Perfume Genius's version of Can't Help Falling In Love WTFFFFF that is Alexis Hall's give it back!!

Luc and Oliver sweetie I am so sorry I can't believe an ugly ass cis het bootlicking bitch like Berlanti would even do that to you

#it wasn't enough for this book to be a white liberal USAmerican mess or for the movie to be two hours of racist microaggressions #they have to go and rob everything else i hold queer and dear #BERLANTI I AM COMING TO YOUR HOUSE WITH A BAT #anti greg berlanti #it could be worse. hollywood might have tried to adapt Luc and Oliver #if Berlanti goes anywhere near Alexis Hall's work I am personally killing him #anti rwrb #anti rwarb #alexis hall #boyfriend material #knee of huss

[petraforgedyke]

i’m seeing a lot of fear today about Tumblr Shutting Down (Real) (Actually True) today and let peepaw seg tell you a story

i’ve been on this webbed site for fifteen years, believe it or not, since way back in the days of Tumblarity. now i was but a wee lad at the time, so i don’t remember the fine details, but rest assured, it doesn’t matter much for the story i’m about to tell you.

you see, i remember when tumblr was owned by tumblr. folk called its ceo (david karp) “daddy”, and were enthusiastic about his communications, even if on our own blogs, we’d bitch and moan about tumblr making changes to things we were used to. i remember the hubbub when tumblr removed tumblarity, and how this was surely going to be the end of tumblr.

all those fifteen (though it might be sixteen) years ago.

layouts changed, and we’d bitch and moan, and tumblr’d get sold, and we’d know for sure that This Was The End Of Tumblr, For Real This Time. this happened again and again and again, because this webbed site, you see, it makes no money, and companies, greedy things as they are, like money.

the porn ban, under the reign of YaHoo that was, was seen as another death knell. tumblr was going to die, for real, for sure, and i’m not proud to say that i was one of the ones who fell for it. peepaw seg needed to sow hir wild oats on other platforms.

now, i say this happened under yahoo, but it’s important to remember that this ban came in the wake of both the apple app store banning the tumblr app on account of real life csem being hosted on tumblr, and the new usamerican law SESTA-FOSTA being implemented, which made it so that companies such as tumblr would have to moderate the explicit content on them to make sure none of it breached sesta-fosta. tumblr, being a small fish in the grand scheme of thing, didn’t warrant that amount of financial effort on yahoo’s part, as the site was still not making any money, and it’s easier and cheaper to blanket ban than it is to moderate. all this to say, it’s important to vote, because if you don’t, your internet freedom will be curtailed.

and now we’re here, some sixteen years on, and i’ll say automattic has been not all good, but definitely not all bad for the site. they changed stuff we liked to our discontent (layouts), and added stuff we hated (live), but they also gave us stuff we like (polls) and an amount of open communication about tumblr’s inner workings not seen since the days of david “daddy” karp. and now they’re putting just a skeleton crew on the tumblr project.

and that’s going to be The End Of Tumblr For Sure For Real Actually This Time. Really. Promise. Abandon Ship.

and we come to the crux of this story.

which is that this has happened before, and it will happen again, because tumblr is surprisingly immune to making any money.

what we’re likely to see in the coming time is no new features (that’s reserved for projects that make money), and an increase in ads, until one day, and this might be in a few months, and maybe in a few years, there’ll be an announcement that tumblr’s been sold to one direction to a new company.

and we’ll start the whole rigmarole again. and this company might be good for tumblr’s userbase, or it might go against everything the tumblr community holds dear. no way of knowing which way it’ll go.

until one day, some parent company will have had enough, and will pull the plug.

but for now… well, i’m gonna sit here on my porch (blog), and we’ll see what happens. i'm not worried, tumblr’s survived worse things.

#tumblr #but also legit #i've seen some 'oh if you give tumblr money you're a bad leftist' takes before #and like bestie how do you think this website is gonna keep running? #investors aren't going to be interested in a cow that's run out of milk #which leaves ads and data selling and yes user driven income #as far as parent companies go automattic's been decent enough to the userbase #it could be so much worse #automattic #seg.misc

[lenasai]

a lil confession from a guy who used to like blaseball. going to preface with i absolutely loved it, the culture, the community, the characters and setting and all. i made art, wrote fics, bought the albums. but as someone who wasnt usamerican, who lived on the opposite side of the world in fact, i always felt a little left behind. joining late contributed to the feeling of lockout, timezone mismatch meant that i slept through events like voting, and the finale.

and… the communal character building. sometimes i felt like i had to force myself to use a usa-centric lens to see what everyone else saw. the deicide jokes were funny, but not when my actual rl faith started being teased and challenged as well.

i think i'll still always keep a shard of blaseball near and dear to my heart. the good parts of it really were amazing. but sometimes when i see people say they miss it, i think, i wish i could miss it as fiercely as you guys do too.

hey, i wanna say thank you for sharing this with me. i think it's an important perspective to put out there. i debated on whether i wanted to maintag it since i don't have a way to reach out and ask if it's okay to do so, but i really think other people should see it. (you can always send me another message if you want me to delete it and i will do so asap)

blaseball, as a game and as a community, was wonderful and overall a net positive, but it was by no means perfect. it had its flaws like any other community, in this case driven by the fact that its active fanbase was largely white and centered in the united states. there were a lot of people who felt ostracized by a community that was supposed to be welcoming to everyone - and whether it was people not knowing how to keep a bit contained to the circumstances of its universe or shutting down discussions about problems in character writing, there were people who got hurt. we cannot and should not pretend that never happened.

and of course, as you mentioned, the game was designed in a way that mostly centered the united states. i think there were attempts to fix this during coronation with planned events at different times, but we never got to see that play out. hell, you could even see it in which locations got to be represented by teams. i'm not personally sure how i feel about the fact that a lot of the teams that were represented outside of the us were prehistory teams. it feels like they took a step in trying, but those are all teams that wouldn't ever see active play, so it rang a little hollow to me.

at least from my perspective, it seemed like there were dialogues happening about this and that there was progress being made to fix those issues, but then the game ended and we didn't get to see anything come out of it. i really don't want to see that all be for nothing. i hope that everyone who learned something from this community will take those lessons and apply them to how they interact with other communities.

thank you again. i am truly sorry we didn't get to have the same experience.

#blaseball #all of this is of course not to say that people can't reminisce about blaseball. just don't treat it like it was 100% perfect

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Hi Theitsa! half Greek in America here, looking for translation help and you're the only blogger I know 😭

long story short: my family on my mom's side all practice Greek folk magic, with my great-grandma and(possibly my great aunt)apparently being "completely" a witch.

i grew up with it but i'm still learning the language and my family disowned me for being gay so I can't ask for help with research.

the most commonly used term for "witch" is "magissa"/ μάγισσα right?? is μαγεία more common for magic in general? when I'm using Google translate γητεία seems to be the most common term for folk sorcery.

and i see the practices of Circe referred to as μαγγάνεια??

thank you for your help if you know anything, I know it's a niche topic.

bless you!!!

Hii! Dear anon I'm very sorry for what your family did to you :/ That's nor fair at all! May you thrive and be always blessed in your life!

This topic is not niche, actually! The average Greek in the country has some basic contact and knowledge of such stuff either by doing some or by hearing of them. I haven't talked a lot about Magganeia/Vaskaneia in Greece so let's do a Masterpost!

(Greeks with deeper knowledge please add to this post and let me know if something is inaccurate! All I have is "average Greek" knowledge but well, someone has to make the start.)

People throughout Greece (as in the whole Balkans and the Middle East tbh) practice a lot of customs to bring good energy and good things to them or expel bad energies and bad things. The most prevalent being the ritual of xematiasma (the prayer for which needs to be passed down by the opposite sex on a full moon), or customs with bridal koufeta for young girls to attract a good groom, reading the coffee and the palm, explaining dreams (and having recorded oneirokrites), giving new year talismans for good luck (mati beads, pomegranate charms, horseshoes) and hanging them around the home, or baking a pie to St. Fanourios if you want to find something you lost etc etc.

Traditionally such practices in Greece are intertwined with local customs and herb knowledge and it's not a big "issue" like it would be for USAmerican (cultural or practicing) Evangelicals. In Greece it's acceptable to do many things that in the US would be considered "witchcraft" but here they're just "tradition".

For Greeks the basic stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph is widely accepted to the point many of them have fused with church practices through the centuries. Coffee shops where one can have their coffee and palm read - although not many - have lots of customers. Tarot readers also have a good clientele. I've heard Greeks dismiss such stuff as "nonsense" but rarely dismiss them as "evil". Actually, the comments about such practices being evil here are very tame and usually connected to the church - but not in the US way.

Our Church might have cried about such practices in the past but... who listens to the church on these things! :P (only a few do) Our insistence on keeping folk practice led to Greece having no witch hunts or any witches burnt for at least a thousand years now!

Map of witchhunts in early modern Europe (source)

There is a line here, too, of course. Like, if one uses a heart from a mouse wrapped in an oak leaf bathed in frog bile to expel the bad spirits (a spell I just made up) that's officially "witchcraft" and we find it weird at best. More mild stuff like burning wishes written on paper or letting garlic absorb bad energies and then burn it are middle ground and not outright condemned - I feel the Greeks have a great tolerance of what is considered "folk tradition" to them.

The fear of being "pagan" in recent centuries is a Western panic. Traditionally Greeks and their Church were most worried about harmful spells (which included harming an animal or human in the process) and calling demons to do your bidding. If you called a saint for help in a non-harming spell... hmm that wouldn't be that worrying I guess. As long as you didn't ask a priest's opinion, you'd be fine :P

The sum of acceptable and unacceptable practices by the Greek public can be called "μαγγανεία" or "βασκανεία". Because they include unacceptable practices as well, the words have a negative connotation.

"Μαγεία" for Greeks is connected more to the Western archetype of a wizard with a tall hat going around with a big rod shouting "abracadabra". It's connected more to fantasy and fairytales. Traditionally I don't think we used μάγος/μάγισσα for people who did such practices. Even today I've yet to hear Greeks who call themselves witches say "κάνω μαγικά".

I'd say μαγγανεία or βασκανεία are the appropriate terms for what your great-grandma practiced. The spells are traditionally called γητείες (sing. γητεία). The word γόης which now means "very charming man" meant "sorcerer" in ancient years. We just use it metaphorically today. These words all have the same linguistic root.

Nowadays I haven't heard men call themselves "μάγος" but some women call themselves "μάγισσα", and they do "ξόρκια" (comes from εξορκισμός, exorcism - the English version of the Greek word). I think "μάγισσες" practice more Western types of magic because they learned the spells from Western European or US books and videos. I don't know if a practicer of Greek folk spells would be called the same.

I must note that all the above is the reason why when USAmericans practice Greek customs to worship the Greek gods and call themselves "pagans" feels a bit unsettling to me. I suppose if you add crystal balls and tarot and crystals to the practice that would shift it more to the "witchy" side (although as a Greek I'm quite flexible :P) But more than once I've seen USians call themselves "pagans" for simple acts of worship which are very much non-pagan. Having a home altar with the gods along with some blessed items and candles burning... is Basic Christian Orthodox stuff too, a tradition unbroken from ancient years (εικονοστάσια με καντήλια, κεριά, λουλούδια, κομποσκοίνια).

At the same time, I understand that in their society this can be called "being pagan" so I'm not saying that my view is the only one that matters in this. But some knowledge of the Greek culture always helps if you're practicing its customs. It will also help the Westerners stop calling Orthodoxes "savage pagans" for our religious practices after a thousand years :))))

Thanks for making it this far! Get a small bonus: a great article on ancient Greek "bindings/wishes" which is in Greek and it will be probably still fine if translated through Google.

Some things might differ between areas and eras so that's why I welcome other Greeks to comment here with their own experiences and stories of "witches" (or whatever they called them) if their areas had any.

#vaskania #magganeia #folk sorcery #witchcraft #masterpost #answered

[jikimo-world]

Fried butter is VERY VERY VERY rarely eaten. Usually it's at state/county fairs, which are once a year, and it's usually served in very tiny amounts. Even then, a lot of people think it's crazy. They also serve fried ice cream and fried beer, and idk how that even works. I've never asked. I don't dare find out. Also, this terrifies most non-USAmericans I know: we microwave water.

I felt so guilty because in my place we fry pasta and also our decency, so this nice girl casually said that it was okay 😊 because you people fry BUTTER

She was right, knowing it made me feel a lot better... but in that moment my soul separated from the body and fled into hiding because of the absolute shock.

... But now, my dear American representative...

Light of my eyes, music to my ears, air from my lungs

WHY.DO.YOU.MICROWAVE.WATER?

#cultural gap #USA #Italy

[assiraphales]

yo, european here. im sorry for all the shit youre taking from a bunch of idiots abt that post. theres a bunch of reasonable critics to be made about the us and usamericans, even beyond the stereotypical, but anyone with a lick of sense would understand the urge to try to look at the positive side of the place you grew up in and obviously still hold dear. and the fact that people are bringing up shootings & the like as funny gotchas is absolutely fucking disgusting. i hope you're blocking liberally and that many usamericans found comfort in your post

I appreciate you

#asks #we’re all having a very tough time here #and sometimes the small things are important

[dear-usamericans]

Dear USAmericans, please stop acting like your diaspora experience is the same as natives (i.e. the Mexican-American experience ISN'T the same as a native Mexican). Also, just coz your heritage comes from another country doesn't mean you automatically know everything about it (i.e. Italian-Americans who never step foot in Italy & can't speak the language acting like they know more than the natives). Sincerely, the rest of the world.

.

#dear usamericans #from: the rest of the world #from: mexico #from: europe #god yes this is so annoying #heritage vs lived culture

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Can I ask what radicalised you into becoming a tankie (cool person) despite being a USAmerican/Canadian, and someone from the imperial core (rather than a victim of it)?

I don't like using the term "tankie" even in a self-referential or "reclamatory" (lol) way because it's an unserious word, but it was probably a combination of the double-whammy soulfucker of the pandemic and the 2020 election and a dear comrade with open DMs and extraordinary patience who I talked to on Twitter. It certainly didn't arise out of my material conditions (i.e. my relations with the means of production since im not a worker lol) but because I became convinced it was right, which is a weakness I try to be aware of.

[lyssified]

okayyyy uh new intro post because i hate my old one

hi :) you can call me lyss ! they/she a woman liking women. probably pansexual infp-t, libra sun scorpio rising gemini moon, enneagram 9 (in case anyone cares ab that stuff) usamerican :/

film kid AND theater kid (scary) a little bit of a nerd slash freak :) a MINOR so don't be a creep please however i do love new friends so don't be afraid to DM me/send asks/spam like or reblog/tag me in stuff/send me stuff you think i'll like

don't be mean, creepy, or a bigot, if i think you're a bot i will block you :) tone tags appreciated if warranted here's my pronouns page, feel free to add me to your circle if we're mutuals!! i have a tagging system now :0 if i need to be tagging something please let me know !

main things i post/rb posts about atm are: my life (there are a lot of these), queer things, pjo show, boygenius, dr who (currently on season 6), scott pilgrim, good omens, ofmd, music recs, theater kid shit, the soup anons (iykyk, if not you'll see), other interactions with people

the show i am currently working on is (please ask me about it): failure: a love story

more stuff abt me under the cut !!

love u all !!!!!

things i enjoy (hobbies ig): bass guitar, musical theater (costume design/tech in general, acting & singing), baking, reading, sewing, makeup, photography, film (chronic film kid taking film class), really any kind of arts&crafts, most water sports, music listening, watching bad tv to make fun of it, swimming in the morning, coffee, funky earrings/socks, vintage clothes/fashion history, and my dog :)

movies/shows i like (i consume so much media): heartstopper, young royals, umbrella academy, bee & puppycat lazy in space, the pjo show, TEOTFW, gravity falls, good omens, ofmd, i am not okay with this, doctor who, takin over the asylum, much ado about nothing (2011 tennant and tate version), stranger things (sometimes), moonrise kingdom, amelie, honestly anything by wes anderson, shit from the 80s like the breakfast club etc, knives out (and glass onion), scott pilgrim, lady bird, everything everywhere all at once, any kind of movie musical

music people: los campesinos!, arctic monkeys, boygenius, sorry mom, car seat headrest, phoebe bridgers, queen, the neighbourhood, sir chloe, noahfinnce, mcr, the front bottoms, radiohead, the smiths, eleven hours, beabadobee, mazzy star, the cure, pixies, mitski and many more

musicals i like (obligatory theater kid section): amelie (london version), heathers (west end and world premiere), wicked, in the heights, dear evan hansen, into the woods, the lightning thief, six, phantom, anastasia, bmc (both recordings), the prom, mean girls, beetlejuice, hadestown, hairspray, west side story, moulin rouge, les mis, chicago, newsies, grease, little shop

#about me

[super-hero-confessions]

I love Samuel L. Jackson and his version of Nick Fury. I know he was originally white in the comics but I don't care, Samuel L. Jackson is a legend, so I bought black Nick Fury, I'm keeping black Nick Fury, this version is simply superior. What I think tho is that people complain about other race swaps because characters are most of the time race swapped to be black and now historical figures too, not because these studios believe black people deserve genuine representation, but because of white guilt. And white guilt is exclusively a thing of the USA.

What do I mean by that? I mean black people were treated horribly (and still do nowadays) in the US, the slavery was insane, the segregation was insane. There, Native Americans were considered savages but black people weren't even considered people. White guilt, white shame, it's all an American thing. In other countries of course there can be racism against black people but it's not as deeply rooted as it is in the US. For example, the continent Latin America. The conquest was also horrible and cruel, but the people of today, they do not resent the Spaniards of today for what their ancestors did because most Spaniard conquerors chose to stay in Latin America. Most Latin Americans carry the blood of those Spaniard colonizers. White guilt would be stupid because you would be asking almost all latinos to hate a part of themselves. We choose to see each other as brothers and sisters because there is enough division in the world already. Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Puerto Rico, Chile, Canarias, Colombia, etc... we're ALL brothers and sisters! We don't go "your ancestors did x y and z" because your ancestors are also my ancestors! And even though Namor was race swapped, he showed actual representation, the beauty of songs in Spanish, etc, he wasn't the same Namor but latino. Race swap was done well!

So when race swaps are very clearly motivated by white guilt, of course other countries where this isn't a thing are gonna be confused af. Because we haven't wronged black people the way USAmericans have done in the past. And before you say this is a racist take, don't. We hispanics are the most diverse group, with all kinds of ancestry, Portuguese, Spaniards, the Muslims who inhabited Spain for 700 years, the large diasporas of Italians that came to Argentina between 1880-1930, Africans, Japanese, Lebanese. We are the most diverse people in the world. We aren't racist.

All we ask is that American studios keep in mind white guilt isn't for everyone. They race swap accordingly to white guilt, and expect everyone else to understand that, when a black Latino will see it and go "what kind of pendejada es esa" and a black Egyptian will see it and go "dear Ra what is this". Because those race swaps are for black Americans, born out of white guilt. As I said, we don't do white guilt, but people of the US think their problems are universal and they think if this is how their country works, then this is how other countries work as well and NO! I do agree that black people have been through hell in the US so there's a lot to compensate for. But please don't push your social mess to the world. Our countries don't function like the USA.

#confession #nick fury

[linka-r9-vysocina]

dear USAmericans

WHAT THE FUCK?

I thought Chuck E. Cheese was like. A normal fast food or something. What are those animatronics? And how did it not give children nightmares when I will probably have some after seeing some of the footage???

(I haven¨t watched the full video yet. I had to pause it after 10 minutes because, yeah, I was really worried that I might have problems falling asleep)

#chuck e cheese #Youtube

[spacejammie-eimmajecaps]

my dear betrothed ur usamerican is any of the things on supernatural like feasible??? im not talking about the monsters i mean the identity scams like theyve died on national tv like two or three times and somehow they flew to scotland??? is it really that easy to get a new identity there?

I mean, yeah, probably. Getting a fake ID isn't that hard, I knew multiple kids at my high school who had them.

#thus was 15 years ago though #idk if its as easy now as it was back then

[threewolfmoons]

tbh i dislike the "[all the/x] gays were wiped out" rhetoric around AIDS. like it is absolutely true that a staggering number of people died, i'm not talking abt survivors/older queer folks describing losing a generation*

what i am talking abt is primarily uninformed folks--often straight yes but also queer folks who grew up post the peak years of the crisis/queer folks who are, lets say, historically disinterested--bc it creates this insane idea that post-crisis queer community started from scratch. when 1) there are absolutely survivors & people who were alive during the crisis years who are still alive and active!! and 2) the peak years of the aids crisis are more or less referring to a span of time in the US, and to a lesser degree, canada/the uk** so like. 2.1) aids continues as a crisis beyond that limited scope and aaalso 2.2) gay people existed outside of the us at the time too shockingly

anyway the main point of this is just like its actually very easy to read about or hear about what it was actually like from folks who were alive then and lived through it & also from folks who did die during the crisis but whose voices have been lovingly and painstakingly preserved by queer communities (act up fucking pioneered recording & publicizing those recordings of protests as counternarrative to mainstream media reporting ffs***)

tldr spend some time with act ups oral history project i am begging yall

* generally what is meant here is "a generation of usamerican queers" which isnt to diminish the loss but to contextualize it

** not that aids wasnt an issue elsewhere obviously but generally "the aids crisis" in a queer history context is shorthand for the united states from 1981-1996 (this being the year aids stopped being a "leading cause of dear for all Americans ages 25-44" per hiv.govs timeline with a hefty note that it continued being a leading cause of death for Black americans in this age group and of course didnt ever stop being a major issue totally

*** ala eg. diva tv !! dont wanna claim they were the first bc iirc black panthers were also recording & sharing video at the time/act up had an rship w the black panthers but i think it is reasonable to claim that act up really engaged with video as a protest tactic in a fairly revolutionary way and also took great care to preserve and share that video for all

#aids cw / #idk man tell me if u want this tagged ig