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probablyasocialecologist · 10 months

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“The ‘war on drugs’ may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people. Its impact has been greatest on those who live in poverty, and it frequently overlaps with discrimination directed at marginalised groups, minoritiesand Indigenous Peoples. In our reporting and experience, we have found that such discriminatory impact is a common element across drug policies with regard to the widest range of human rights, including the right to personal liberty; freedom from torture, ill-treatment and forced labour; fair trial rights; the right to health, including access to essential medicines, palliative care, comprehensive drug prevention and education, drug treatment, and harm reduction; the right to adequate housing; freedom from discrimination and the right to equal treatment before the law; right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; cultural rights and freedoms of expression, religion, assembly and association. Globally, drug control has had massive costs for the dignity, humanity and freedom of people of African descent, with reports showing that people of African descent face disproportionate and unjust law enforcement interventions, arrests and incarceration for drug-related offences. In various countries, the ‘war on drugs’ has been more effective as a system of racial control than as a tool to reduce drug markets. Policing interventions based on racial profiling remain widespread, whilst access to evidence-based treatment and harm reduction for people of African descent remains critically low. Around the world, women who use drugs face significant stigma and discrimination in accessing harm reduction programmes, drug dependence treatment and basic health care. Although one in three people who use drugs are women, women constitute only one in five people in treatment. Women are also disproportionately affected by criminalisation and incarceration, with 35% of women in prison worldwide having been convicted of a drug-related offence compared to 19% of men. The causes of women’s interaction with the criminal justice system in relation to drugs are complex, often linked to other factors such as poverty and coercion, and may reflect systemic gender inequality in society more broadly. Of note, most women in prison for drug related offences have little education. Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose capital punishment for the ‘most serious crimes’, meaning crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing. Drug offences clearly do not meet this threshold. However, drug-related offences are still punishable by death in over 30 countries, and human rights experts have raised concerns about evidence of its discriminatory impact on individuals belonging to minorities. Everyone without exception has the right to life-saving harm reduction interventions, which are essential for the protection of the right to health of people who use drugs. However, according to UN data, only 1 in 8 people with drug dependence have access to appropriate treatment, and the coverage of harm reduction services remains very low. The situation is particularly critical for women, LGBTIQ+ persons, and other marginalised groups, for whom harm reduction and treatment services may not be adapted or respond to their specific needs. Women and LGBTIQ+ persons also face even higher levels of stigma, including self-stigma, and discrimination than men who use drugs.

As the world grows older, drug use among people over 65 has also increased. The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health and well-being of older persons, and studies show an increased use of pain relievers, tranquillizers, and sedatives among this age group. Older drug users are also more often using the dark web, social media, and online forums to obtain illicit substances resulting in a rise of drug-related deaths among older populations. The criminalisation of substances traditionally used by Indigenous Peoples such as the coca leaf can also result in the suppression, undermining and marginalization of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and medicine, which has wide-ranging health impacts and is rooted in discriminatory hierarchies and conceptions. Forced eradication of crops, including through the aerial spraying of highly hazardous pesticides, can cause serious harm to the environment and clean water, as well as to the health and welfare of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples that might be affected by these and other drug control operations must be meaningfully consulted, and guarantees should be given that their lives, cultural practices, lands and natural resources are not violated. Criminal laws and the punitive use of administrative and other sanctions stigmatise already marginalised populations. Criminalisation results in significant barriers to access to health services (including those for HIV and palliative care) and in other human rights violations. As called for by the UN system Common Position on drug-related matters, drug use and possession for personal use should be decriminalised as a matter of urgency. Drug use or dependence are never a sufficient justification for detaining a person. Compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centres need to be closed and replaced with voluntary, evidence-informed, and rights-based health and social services in the community.

#drugs #war on drugs #prohibition

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comradekatara · 2 months

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In your modern au who in the gang goes to college/grad school and what subjects do they study? would they end up at schools close to home or go far away? How do there relationships change after highschool and with people moving away?

okay wow that’s a great question but also. a lot.

aang is a year below katara so his top choice school is just. the school katara goes to. it’s small and affordable and he studies philosophy and religion (but also takes any sort of fun elective offered to him) and joins a lot of clubs and makes a lot of friends and generally just has a nice time. he and katara overlap for three years but after she graduates they still live together, so he basically sees her every day anyway. it’s nice :)

katara genuinely considers not going to college but then she gets a sports scholarship she’d be a fool to reject so she’s like “fine, i’ll go, but i’m gonna phone it in the entire time.” she assumes that college will basically just be like high school, yet another prison where she will be forced to do math against her will. but she actually finds that she kind of enjoys some of her classes, and she can devote way more time to sports, and azula isn’t there (a weight has been lifted off her shoulders truly), and she actually meets a whole group of people who don’t find her intimidating and abrasive, but instead share her interests and actually organize with her. also, the fact that sokka isn’t there means that she doesn’t constantly have to compare herself to an impossible standard, and she finds that she actually enjoys learning when she gets to go at her own pace. and in fact…. she’s actually a great writer???? and really enjoys theory and philosophy and criticism and history and sociology and literature????? and she might actually be really fucking smart????? she graduates with honors. but there’s absolutely no way she’s pursuing grad school lmao. everyone knows that shit is a scam.

sokka goes to princeton for undergrad because, and i quote, “it’s nearby.” full ride, obviously. he double majors in physics and engineering, and also accidentally fulfills an art history minor without even noticing. everyone assumes that he’ll get a phd (at least one), but katara keeps insisting that grad school is a scam and so is the ivy league. and it’s not even that sokka necessarily disagrees with her, he just thinks that those are bold words coming from the girl who fell for a pyramid scheme. twice.

zuko goes to a small liberal arts college for undergrad and spends years attempting to justify his choice of going to a smaller, slightly less prestigious school by majoring in something dignified and respectable, like econ or business or engineering. none of which he is any good at. but eventually, after enough time spent beyond ozai’s purview, zuko just goes “fuck it” and double majors in theater and classics. his focus is on ancient greek drama. he then does a poetry mfa wherein he attempts to write on earth we’re briefly gorgeous without just rewriting on earth we’re briefly gorgeous (many such cases). he complains about his program constantly and how fake and pretentious it all is, but anyone who knows him can tell that it’s clearly the most fun he’s ever had.

suki doesn’t go to college. she figures that there’s no point in blowing money she doesn’t have and wasting precious valuable years of her time getting a fancy little bachelor’s degree she’ll never use for a job that doesn’t actually require one. and she doesn’t have any adult figures in her life to convince her that college is necessary (although sokka does spend a full week going “but are you sure…?” before suki realizes that she can just shut him up forever by claiming she can’t afford it). she continues to teach at the dojo, but because she basically already lives in her truck, she’s always driving over to princeton to crash in sokka’s dorm. she spends a lot of time just hanging out in the library while he does work, and finds that she doesn’t even need to go to classes to learn new things by herself. it’s funny how a formal education can make learning seem so much less interesting than it actually is. if she had actually gone to college, she probably would’ve spent the entire time blowing off classes and doing as little work as possible, but since she has no incentive to learn, she actually does. by the time sokka has graduated, suki is basically qualified to practice medicine, could tell you the entire history of the inca empire, and is basically an expert in mycology. and it didn’t cost a cent.

toph considers suki an inspiration, and by the time she graduates, she is already so estranged from her parents that she also has the agency to just blow off that whole thing. she moves in with sokka and mai and just follows them around. she sits in on their lectures whenever she feels like it (they claim she is mai’s little sister who is visiting her), and otherwise just kind of lounges about. occasionally sokka will be like “you know you could’ve just… gone to this school, right??? you’re literally a child prodigy and your parents are crazy rich.” to which toph just shrugs like “yeah……but nah.”

mai goes to princeton with sokka. it wasn’t even her top choice school, but once she realized that it’s where sokka was going, she couldn’t think of anywhere else that she would rather be. they’re roommates since freshman year and are basically inseparable. everyone assumes they’re dating, but sokka’s like “nah she’s gay, she’s just really clingy :)” which mai hates because he’s totally ruining her street cred. she’s a cs major, but she basically accumulates the credits for a math minor, a physics minor, and an english minor because all the cs classes are so easy for her (she first taught herself how to code when she was like six). sokka somehow convinces her to join his physics program for grad school, but after a year she drops out because she finds it so miserable. they continue living together, of course, while mai gets really into making esoteric indie games. zuko doesn’t really understands how video games work, but she still bounces her ideas off him because he’s the most ruthless critic she knows.

ty lee goes to college because it’s the sort of thing a girl from a decently respectable family does, but she’s pretty envious of suki’s lifestyle and wishes she could just blow off the entire thing. she goes to a decent school, one that appears acceptable on resumes but not so elite that it will raise any employer’s standards too high; she enjoys being underestimated. being in an entirely new environment gives her the opportunity to test out new personas free of consequence, and eventually she realizes that she’s kind of wasting her talents by pretending to be dumber than she is, so she actually applies herself and does really well. but then she gets bored of applying herself because now everyone expects too much of her and she misses when a B was considered a good grade. she’s technically a dance major because it’s the only thing she does consistently across three years (she graduates early), but she goes through different phases where she’s really into various fields, including but not limited to: abnormal psych, quantum physics, philosophical ethics, north african literature, microbiology, and women’s rugby. she keeps in touch with azula, mai, and suki, but she also just goes through phases of avoiding contact with all her former friends entirely. it’s fun to be aloof.

and last but certainly not least, azula goes to harvard for undergrad, and then harvard law. in fact, there is no other school azula could ever go to. even if she had lived on the other side of the globe, and not new jersey (or as she likes to call it, “manhattan”), azula would still go to harvard. she truly believes that it is the only school on earth capable of withstanding her towering intellect. anyone who found her insufferable in high school is in for a rude surprise once they realize that within a semester, harvard has somehow made her ten times worse. she’s technically pre-law, but she also studies pre-med and engineering, just in case. which is far too much for any one human to handle, and she ends up suffering a nervous breakdown during junior year where she eats nothing but cheetos for a week straight and tries to cut her own bangs with a pair of kiddie scissors. zuko and sokka go to cambridge to stage an intervention (mai and ty lee were too busy washing their hair that weekend) and help her out. you can tell it’s bad because she actually agrees to go to therapy. eventually she gets through it and decides to take a gap year before law school. she spends her gap year as a paralegal at a highly prestigious firm, and within the first couple years of graduating law school, she makes junior partner there. and they never speak of the cheetos and uneven bangs incident ever again.

in terms of who keeps in touch with whom, obviously mai, sokka, suki, and toph still hang out all the time after high school. mai and sokka are roommates for their entire twenties basically, and toph and suki pretty much also live with them. mai and sokka move to new york after princeton. and after zuko graduates, he also moves in with them. aang and katara sort of resist the idea of living in a big city, and instead decide to travel the world after aang graduates. but then when they go to visit sokka & co. katara realizes that it’s always secretly been her lifelong dream to work at a really cute little overpriced coffeeshop in brooklyn, and so she and aang get an apartment in like. red hook or something. ty lee actually moves to california, so they all assume they won’t see her often, but she flies back every time one of her sisters has a birthday, so they actually run into her pretty frequently. eventually she moves back to the east coast, and pretty soon after that she and mai uhaul together. none of them really hear from azula except for mai and ty lee, who are in a semi-active groupchat with her. but she and zuko reconnect after ozai’s funeral, and she gradually befriends the rest of the gaang, even if she never quite gets along with katara. so yeah, there are a few years where most of them don’t really talk to one another, but eventually they do manage to reconnect and stay in each other’s lives. they do all make other friends though. god could you imagine.

#averyho #asks #the gaang and #modern au #this was a fun one #the inherent comedy of being from new jersey. etc. etc.

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isimpforsharktoothanimeboys · 2 months

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okay hear me out…

Sukuita college AU, mixed batch of characters everyone’s there and alive! All of the characters are in the same friend group or it’s that situation where everyone knows one person in another friend group and it makes a big group of people. Sukuna being the playboy who can get any man or woman in his bed with a simple smirk. Gojo having the playboy energy but always faithful to his loving boyfriend. All of them and chilling and talking one day when they get on the topic of relationships. While all that happens Yuuji comes into the common room to make some food and him and Sukuna fuck with each other the whole time. Gojo and Geto decide to play matchmaker and Sukuna and Gojo make a bet that Sukuna can’t get Yuuji to fall in love with him in 2 months. And ofc Gojo is rich so there’s money involved but so does Sukuna so the loser will have to do something dumb, still deciding on it. So now you have Sukuna trying to get Yuuji to fall for him but it’s not working quickly because Yuuji is recovering from a former abusive relationship. And slowly but surely before Sukuna even realizes it he’s fallen in love with Yuuji and now they’re both in love and everything’s great! Right?

Sukuna - Historian Masters (specifically in the Heian era)

Yuuji - Film Major with a Minor in Dance

Megumi - Veterinarian

Kugisaki - Fashion Design Major

Gojo - Business and Marketing Major

Geto - Comparative Religion

Inumaki - Culinary School Nearby

Maki - Gender Studies

Shoko - Don’t even play with me we all know what this woman is and what she does best

Still trying to figure out ones for other people this is a very rough draft for the idea, what do y’all think?

#college au #sukuita #sukuna x yuuji #jujutsu kaisen #yuuji itadori #gojo satoru #geto suguru #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #megumi fushiguro #nobara kugisaki #nanami kento #shoko komi #jjk #geto x gojo

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kipandkandicore · 8 months

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changing tulpa terminology: what would it look like?

we’ve seen some fearmongering stating that the goal of changing tulpa terminology is to divide the tulpa community from the endo community, to discredit tulpamancers and current research, and to make previous guides unusable. it sounds like some people are trying to frame this discussion as a group of anti endos attempting to tear apart the tulpa community. these are nasty rumors that are just untrue! we’d like to talk about how this transition away from culturally appropriative language could occur.

step one: acknowledge something’s wrong

the tulpa community needs to come together to address the racism in their spaces. we have seen folks on r/tulpas and in other spaces speak out on the cultural appropriation of their terminology, but they tend to get dogpiled and drowned out by folks who aren’t interested in listening and changing for the better. our own post we made was removed very shortly after submitting it! it’s imperative that the community learns how to center marginalized voices when discussing issues that directly affect them, while unlearning racial stigmas and biases along the way.

step two: find a new term

once it’s well understood that racism should not be tolerated, the community could choose a term that can best represent their experiences that isn’t rooted in the fetishization of central asian religion and culture. we’ve heard of parogenic, thoughtform, and willogenic as all potential new labels! our wife (who used to identify as a tulpamancy system) switched to willogenic for a while, but lately they’ve been vibing with “paro” as a replacement for tulpa and “paromancy” as a replacement for tulpamancy.

step three: updating resources and guides

this would involve changing website titles and communities, like “thoughtform.io” or “r/paros.”

when it comes to the wealth of resources and guides available, not every guide will need to be completely rewritten! it should be enough for folks to add disclaimers to the top of their works. something like “it has come to our attention that tulpamancy terminology is actually cultural appropriation. the author(s) of this work are switching to parogenic language in their every day lives.”

of course, if people want to completely rewrite their guides, they’re welcome to do so!! when this point is reached, we’d happily put our english degree and paper-editing experience to work by offering to rewrite guides for those who are interested in changing their language. it would be amazing if other plural writers could come together to help the community make this shift while maintaining current resources out there!

step four: reaching out to researchers

after the shift has been mostly achieved online, it’ll be time to contact research professionals. it could start with getting in touch with the authors and institutions that have already published tulpamancy research, explaining the community shift away from that language, and asking the authors of the works to include disclaimers about the terminology they used.

additionally, it could involve reaching out to those who are currently working on or completing tulpamancy research, and ask them to adjust their language use before their research is published.

language changes, and researchers should not only understand this but be more than willing to adjust the language that their research uses in order to better reflect the concerns of religious and racial minorities. this has happened in the past with slurs and terms like “transsexual,” which are now not used by researchers who study these phenomenon.

(note - we’re not comparing tulpa terminology to slurs here. we’re making the point that researchers have to change or adjust their language all the time, and this is no exception.)

step five: reaching out to the public

if anything, changing the terminology will improve public perception of plurality without trauma. to outsiders, it may seem like the community is coming together to deal with a racism issue that’s persisted for decades (which is true!).

people can reach out to reporters, write medium articles, and talk about this shift in language to people they care about in their own lives and in online spaces. if the community believes that change is possible, then it only becomes a matter of taking steps to achieve it.

we know that this shift will take quite some time to pull off, but the more people who get involved, the faster the change can happen! if you want to start small, you can start by daring to call out racism and cultural appropriation within your own community when you see it. even baby steps in the right direction count as progress!

we are not an expert on linguistics, and while we’ve existed in the tulpa community for over a year, we haven’t exactly been an active member. but these are our thoughts on how this language shift could occur. we’d be happy to discuss this more or answer any questions to the best of our ability!

and for those who haven’t seen it, please check out our document compiling asian/tibetan buddhist voices and their thoughts on tulpa language.

#syscourse #tulpamancy #tulpa #pro tulpa #anti tulpa terminology #pro endo #long post

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heretic-child · 11 months

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The Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, was a one-party state during the interwar period. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) of the Republican People's Party (CHP) was omnipotent. Turkey’s state ideology was Kemalism. According to Dutch-Kurdish historian and genocide researcher Uğur Ümit Üngör, this was a combination of "republicanism, secularism, statism, populism, revolutionism and nationalism".

The Turkish government believed in one people, one language, one religion: their new Turkey was ethnically Turkish, linguistically Turkish, and the faith was Sunni Islam. This ideology was spread from the centre to the periphery. Everywhere CHP party buildings were erected, the new message was proclaimed.

In Kurdish areas of eastern Turkey, Turkish centralisation met with Kurdish resistance. Turkey crushed these uprisings and strengthened the power of its central authority in these areas, which used to be only nominally under Ottoman rule. One of the most problematic areas was Dersim, located around 400 km east of the capital Ankara. In this mountainous, difficult-to-access area, central government had only nominal authority. The actual rulers were the various Kurdish tribes, who regularly clashed with each other.

The Kurds in Dersim were also a triple minority. They were Kurdish, but spoke a different language to many Kurds: Zaza. In addition, they were Alevis.

According to Üngör, Kurds from Dersim can in a way be compared with the Yazidis, who were victims of a genocide by ISIS in 2014. "Yazidis also formed their own minority group, with their own ethnic and religious identity. And they were also killed for that," he said.

Dutch anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen, who has studied Turkish, Kurdish and Zaza cultures, said that the Turkish government compared the Kurds in Dersim with the Native Americans in the "Wild West".

"The Turkish rulers considered Dersim a desolate area where 'civilisation' was not yet ruling. This area had to be civilised. The Kurds in Dersim were barbarians in the eyes of the Turkish rulers. They were dehumanised and it was easy to kill them en masse in 1937-1938," he said.

"Children from Dersim who survived the slaughter were raised as Turks and as Sunni and in the Turkish language, with the aim of extinguishing their former identity."

In this context, Üngör speaks of three hammer blows that the Dersim Kurds had to deal with:

"The first blow was when Turkey decided in 1937-1938 to destroy the pilgrimage sites and to kill the carriers of its own Dersim culture. The second blow came when children from Dersim were raised Turkish and Sunni, and Dersim itself was filled with Sunni mosques. The third blow was the massive exodus of Dersim Kurds from Dersim, who immigrated to Istanbul, Izmir and abroad. New generations no longer learned Zaza. This language is now threatened with extinction. This also had to do with the nationalist education in Turkey after the 1980 coup. At school Zaza was banned."

The Dersim Massacre - Then and Now

#dersim #zaza #alevi #kurdish #txt

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study-with-aura · 26 days

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Thursday, March 21, 2024

I should be able to finish my current book tomorrow, but pictured is the book I will read next. It's a graphic novel, so it should only take me a couple of days at most.

It was interesting however comparing what I had planned to read next with something I read today as part of my studies. Hungry Ghost apparently dives into the topic of eating disorders according to the description I saw before adding it to my list. In the article I had to read today about self-control, I felt frustrated with how the writer of the article described self-control or lack thereof.

TW (eating disorders, disordered eating, religion):

The writer attributed gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, to a lack of self-control. The writer is also a pastor at a church and went into how he could not even control his "idolatry worship" of food (gluttony) and he was called to lead the people at his church. It was very focused on how eating too much is a sin and it's a lack of self-control, when I know that for many, it is because of emotions or even physiological needs due to something being out of holistic alignment. It also made me worry that others who use this curriculum and take this course who may have issues with their weight whether that be because they are considered clinically overweight or obese or because they have an eating disorder could potentially make things worse for them mentally. I don't have an eating disorder, but I know someone in my dance class who went inpatient for one at the children's hospital a couple of years ago. Something about the article did not sit right with me, and whether it was the whole lack of self-control being a sin thing (which I personally do not believe in the case of many people who are considered above their "ideal" weight) or the whole good food bad food nonsense that was littered throughout the article, I'm not sure. Perhaps it was both, especially since eating disorders are often about control in some manner and can deal with the labeling of food as good or bad.

Article link

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - Learned to construct equilateral triangles, squares, and special angles + practice + honors work

Lit and Comp II - Reviewed Unit 21 vocabulary + read the first part of chapter 42 of Emma by Jane Austen

Spanish 2 - Copied new vocabulary

Bible I - Read Judges 16

World History - Read about Sigmund Freud + answered questions + completed the Nationalism in China, Turkey, and India assignment

Biology with Lab - Read and watched videos on how biological clocks indicate recent creation (creationist perspective)

Foundations - Read more on self-control + read another article displaying media bias + read a short scholarly paper about errors in history textbooks

Piano - Practiced for two hours in one hour split sessions

Khan Academy - None today

CLEP - None today

Streaming - Watched episode 3 of Life on Our Planet (evolutionist perspective)

Duolingo - Studied for 15 minutes (Spanish, French, Chinese) + completed daily quests

Reading - Read pages 282-330 of House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Chores - Put away the dishes + took the trash out

Activities of the Day:

Personal Bible Study (Proverbs 16)

Ballet

Pointe

Journal/Mindfulness

What I’m Grateful for Today:

I am grateful for being able to see how beautiful nature is.

Quote of the Day:

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

-Sigmund Freud

🎧Prelude in G sharp minor, Op. 11 No. 12 - Alexander Scriabin

#study blog #study inspiration #study motivation #studyblr #studyblr community #study community #study-with-aura

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lestatthebrat · 2 years

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About the Racists, Homophobes, and Purists Reviewing amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”

To put it bluntly: the people giving this show bad reviews are racists and homophobes. This is a damn good show that breathes new life into an old story, and the fan reviews claiming that this adaptation is “horrible” and a “disgrace” to Anne Rice’s work are simply bigots who cannot stand to see two men kissing on screen and/or who are ridiculously offended that Black actors are playing Louis and Claudia.

Don’t believe me? Look at what fan reviewer joshua g had to say on Rotten Tomatoes: “Of course they would take a classic that does not need change, and turn it into a homosexual love story.” Obviously, his 0.5-star rating (the lowest rating possible on Rotten Tomatoes) was not motivated by the quality of the show but by his own homophobia. P W is another fan reviewer who gave the show a whopping 0.5 stars, because he has a problem with People of Color playing some of the leading characters. He says: “At some point, the intentional casting of minorities in reboots is going to end. History will look unfavorably at the practice.” Fan reviewer Rich G says it even more bluntly: “I dislike this show for one very specific reason. The race swapping of Louis and Claudie” (the misspelling of Claudia’s name is his mistake, not mine). Meanwhile, a fan reviewer on IMDb, GeorgeWHAMMYBush, gave the show a 1/10 (the lowest possible rating on IMDb) and this review: “They made the whole thing a dismally shot propaganda piece and it's painful to sit through… The plot gets obliterated completely in this and it's barely about vampirism at all and is now about race and sexual orientation. The whole thing is a waste of time. They then go after religion because while it was touched on as offensive to vampires in the books here it is clearly the target of the hacks who made this abomination. This could be studied in school as a part of a series on why American media failed when it had every chance to succeed. Whoever made this should be banned from the media industry entirely. Do not bother watching this. It will just aggravate you.” Most of the very low reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMBb are reminiscent of these examples, and it’s cringingly obvious these people just hate the show because they are racist and homophobic.

It amuses me that some of these bigots are attempting to use their alleged “love” for the source material as a mask for their racism and homophobia. Like “HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ANNE RICE’S BOOK AND MAKE LOUIS A BLACK MAN INSTEAD OF A SLAVE OWNER!?” or “HOW DARE THEY MAKE LOUIS GAY JUST TO SEEM WOKE!?” But if these so called “avid fans” actually read any of Anne Rice’s books, they must have stopped after book one, because if they got even to book 2 they would have known that Louis and Lestat have ALWAYS been an LGBT couple. If you read book 1, “Interview with the Vampire,” and missed the pretty-hard-to-miss subtext, go re-read it. To recap: Louis talks about how Lestat “had me mesmerized, enchanted” (direct quote); Louis explicitly compares Lestat turning him into a vampire to sex; he and Lestat live together for over sixty year; and they adopt a child together. By book 2, “The Vampire Lestat,” Lestat has male lovers both before and after becoming a vampire, and he confirms that he and Louis were lovers. He and Louis also have a heartfelt reunion in the 80s, and they kiss multiple times on the mouth. (I know, too gay for people who didn’t get past the Neil Jordan film.) By the time we reach the final book in of series, “Blood Communion,” Louis and Lestat are again living together, and in the final chapter of the book, they dance together at a ball, embrace, kiss multiple times on the lips, and profess their undying love for one another. Sorry, homophobes, but these vampires ain’t never been straight, and you’d know that if you actually read the books.

Aside from the raving racists and homophobes, there are some fan reviewers who seem to genuinely love Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” but have a problem with the amc series diverging from the source material. Again, the “race swapping” is commonly mentioned, so I wonder how many of these people are also motivated by prejudice, but they have other problems too, such as changes in the time period, the ages of the character’s, the dialog (come on, what tv show preserves all of the dialogue from the books?), and even tiny unimportant details like the vampires “spilling blood” when they kill people. I understand when you passionately love a book series (and I myself passionately love “The Vampire Chronicles”), you imagine the story and characters a certain way, but what these people need to realize is that it is not unusual, uncommon, unfair, or disrespectful for tv reboots or movies to make changes from the books. “Interview with the Vampire” was already made into a very successful and well-known movie in 1994, and most remakes/reboots that do NOT try anything new but simply repeat what has already been done fail miserably. “Psycho,” “Nightmare of Elm Street,” “Carrie”... these are all movies that took a classic and remade it more or less the same as the original, and all of these films were brushed off and forgotten because they offered nothing new and exciting, nothing updated and relevant, nothing thought-provoking that would allow the audience to think of things in a different way or see things in a new light. In simply repeating the original with different actors, they failed to live up to the original. The same thing has happened when books have been made into movies and then later into tv series: look at “The Shining.” Most people don’t even know the inferior miniseries exists, even though it is more accurate to the book and Stephen King wrote it himself. On the contrary, some of the most successful remakes, the kind of remakes that make people say, “This is better than the original!”—which, by the way, the majority of critics and fans ARE saying about amc’s “Interview with the Vampire”—are remembered and beloved because they do not just rehash the same old material but because they put a spin on old characters and content; they make changes and updates; they offer the audience something new, exciting, current, and relevant, something more and something deeper. Some examples: “The Fly,” “The Thing,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” This is what amc is doing with “Interview with the Vampire.”

So, if you earnestly love the original books, that’s wonderful, but you have the books, and you can read them as many times as you want. You also have the Neil Jordan film which you can re-watch to your liking. Now, the amc series is remaking/rebooting this series, and it is not a crime for production teams to take creative liberties, and I honestly do not see this as a disrespect to Anne Rice’s work either. She SOLD the rights of her work for this television series, which means the production team can make whatever changes they want. That’s how it goes for any author whose book is being made into a movie: they sign the contract, they get paid (and Anne Rice most likely got paid millions of dollars for this series) and they don’t have any say over what changes are made to the production. Even most script writers who spend months or years creating characters and writing a story, if they are lucky enough to sell their script to a production company, they lose creative control over that story. That’s just the way it works. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing shocking. And it’s not a “disgrace.” This has been going on literally always since movies and television shows have been made based on books. Have you ever seen the “original” 1931 “Frankenstein” movie? Ever compare it to Mary Shelley’s book? So like I was saying, movies/tv shows departing from the source material is nothing new and nothing to be “furious” or “disgusted” about.

Now, if you love the show, please go leave a review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, because it’s being review-bombed by racists and homophobes and purists who want to see it tank! But we won’t let that happen because they dumbass bitches and love wins! ♥️

#amc's interview with the vampire #AMC+#AMC #amc plus #interview with the vampire #Lestat De Lioncourt #lestat #Louis de Pointe du Lac #lestat x louis #loustat #homophobia #racisim #rotten tomatoes #imdb #reviews #critic reviews #the vampire chronicles #claudia

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olderthannetfic · 9 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/722638631176716288/but-it-was-still-a-silly-idea-god-is-real-or?source=share

Anon actually thinks most religions start as deliberate cons prepetrated by people in power? Wow.

It's a good thing you, OTNF, are being the voice of reason here, because some of these anons are doing a great job of perpetuating the notion that atheists are idiots.

It's also worth pointing out that several people have noted how the Snapewives differ from and compare to paganism, but the mean atheist anons keep harping on Christianity as if it's the only religion that exists.

I don't even like religion, but I do love Religion for Breakfast and Esoterica. For all that people want to point out Scientology or whatever, the reality is that most religions with a heavy text component (which is a tiny fraction of them, actually), start as practice with texts accreting over time, often being struck from the record if they conflict with the aims of those in power.

Texts follow practice. It's just not obvious thousands of years later.

Many religions are offshoots of older ones, not someone plopping a book in front of non-religious people and converting them. There was a lot of apocalyptic thinking going on around the time of Jesus and plenty of Jews looking for reformers, from what I understand. Mormonism started as a reform of Christianity. They're separate now, but "Someone wrote a book, and..." is just not an accurate picture of the spiritual lives of early adopters.

We all fucking know that high control groups recruit sad college freshmen who feel alone. They don't go "This book is cool. Read it and come join us if you like it!" It's social. It's about fostering a sense of community and then cutting people off from any other community.

The idea that texts mean fuckall compared to the religious community and its quotidian practices is nonsense.

People just like that because texts are tidier and easier to study in school, not because it's a useful way to look at religion, even religions with central, vital texts that the laity actually read, which again, is a tiny minority of religions.

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dykefaggotry · 7 months

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any recs for intro/base level jewish study texts? np if they’re academic ones I can use my uni’s library :-)

oooo okay. fair warning my minor is history so a lot of this is history focused but there are a lot of modern Jewish studies as well! like intersections w queerness and feminism etc. it is just not my wheelhouse.

starting w some comparative religion is always a solid base when it comes to academics bc some of the first classes are like world religions etc. it has been so long that i do Not remember which one i used but really any "intro to world religions" textbook that your uni's library has is good! and if you want to just focus on the section about Judaism go for it. looking at Christianity and Islam might also be helpful though to put it into some context.

A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood by Raymond P. Scheindlin is excellent. here if you want to dig deeper whenever it mentions a Jewish thinker/scholar, try and find some primary resources of their writings! like Moses Maimonides, possibly the most influential Jewish philosopher, or Moses Mendelssohn (another philosopher and theologin).

Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy. if you wanna go the extra mile go for the whole Torah (so Leviticus and Numbers as well), but these three do a solid job of giving a good idea of the more non-historical aspect of Jewish religious history and will give you a good idea of where a lot of customs, laws, etc came from. of particular note are gonna be the two accounts of the Sinai event in both Exodus and Deuteronomy and ask yourself: why do they differ? why do you think that is? what could this tell you about Judaism and the ancient Israelites when each account was written?

I have not read it but Wanderings by Chaim Potok is a highly recommended one outside of academia and one that I know some goyim have read as well to better understand Jewish history. however I haven't read it so I don't know if there's any issues with it as it is an older work.

another one i see around a lot outside of academics is The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred J. Kolatch. this one is less history and more, as the title says, a book about Why and ritual/custom/etc.

more intermediate/deeper dives

this is my own personal niche so if you do not care about this you can ignore this section but I find it so interesting and useful/helpful to look at just How Judaism evolved and some good ones for that are The Origins of Biblical Monotheism by Mark S. Smith and as much as I have some beef w the man Jan Assmann is going to crop up a Lot in these types of discussions so giving him a read is useful, particularly Moses the Egyptian and The Price of Monotheism. give it a critical read though, I personally disagree w a lot of his conclusions but I find his work and history he gives to be of note & worthwhile. you might find you do totally agree and that's fine too.

continuing off of That i personally think the Ugaritic texts are incredibly important in understanding the context of the ancient Israelite religion that came before Judaism and thus Judaism itself and so if you're interested more in that type of ancient history when it comes to Jewish studies giving them a read is really eye-opening bc it gives you an idea of what sort of cultural knowledge was assumed by the writers of the Tanakh. like they were writing it with the assumption that their readers would Know these stories that were shared in this region so reading them is super helpful with putting certain customs/belief into context. but that's more of a lil deep dive so if you don't wanna do that you absolutely do not have to. rn i'm reading Stories From Ancient Canaan by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith

#long post #religious studies rambling #ignore my plurality typo there for a minute i changed a few words and forgot to change the conjugation <3

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unwelcome-ozian · 9 months

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When social, politically correct trends grab the attention of democratically free societies, the governmentally controlled military system often takes on a role as society’s social-psychological experimental laboratory. The military is a closed-loop system, in which uniformed personnel literally belong to, and work for, their military bosses 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. In many countries, military personnel are provided with housing, food supply, pay, and medical care systems. Compared with performing social studies in society at large, conducting military ‘social experiments,’ collecting performance data, and obtaining feedback on how well ‘treatments’ work in the military is almost assured.

During their military careers, most US military service personnel have typically participated in one or more ‘social experiments.’ Examples of social studies targeted toward military personnel include the following: (a) integrating the work force through inﬂux of members of all religions, racial and ethnic minorities, women, and, more recently, homosexuals; (b) instituting sexual harassment awareness and other sensitivity training in the workplace; (c) implementing tobacco-smoking cessation, control of recreational drugs and alcohol use, family advocacy programs, personal weight control, physical ﬁtness, and uniform dress regulations; (d) adoption of the British Army’s regimental unit replacement personnel transfer policies whereby a whole military unit’s personnel, and dependent families, relocate together as a group from one military assignment to another; and (e) making it mandatory for military personnel to subject themselves to inoculations, experimental drugs and therapeutics, or, owing to insuﬃcient supplies, withholding drug treatments for some personnel.

Military psychologists, therefore, have the opportunity to participate in the enactment of social and organizational change in the military, and their work can have far-reaching implications for society at large.

#document dump #military psychology

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harveyb-wabbit92 · 2 years

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[Y/n is filling in for Emmet who’s sick, she’s reading while waiting for the trainers to reach the battle car, when Ingo notices the book she’s reading.]

Ingo: What's that, quantum physics?

Y/n: Yeah. I'm fascinated that light could be a particle and a wave. I was gonna study it in college but I got interested in biochemistry, and then on a whim settled on linguistics with a minor in comparative religion.

Ingo:*baffled* Wow... How'd ya end up working here?

[He’s legit curious as to how Y/n went from being a Biochemist to working as a Subway ticket guard? His girlfriend snaps her book closed and thinks for moment then shrugs.]

Y/n: The last guy quit. Can you believe it?

{That’s when Ingo figured out that Y/n was risk taker, she saw an opening and took a risk, probably best decision she made, cos she wouldn’t have met Ingo if she hadn’t taken the job.]

#S: corner gas #pokemon incorrect quotes #submas #subway boss ingo #subway boss ingo x reader #fem reader #Ticket attendant! reader

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vincent-sinclair-deserved-better · 1 year

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A Little Bit Of Heaven, A Little Bit Of Hell

I wasn't able to write today because the day drained me and I am frustrated so I'll just split this in two parts I guess (I just want to show it to people asdffgasad)

Characters: Judah (by @bluecoolr), Esther (yet to be introduced? mayhaps?), other minor background characters

Words: 3023

Content warnings: religion/Christianity, religious guilt, bible quotes, it's been years since I was in church so I'm making stuff up as I go, mention of murder - if you need anything else tagged or specifically marked in the text, please let me know

dividers by firefly-graphics

Where my heart becomes free And my shame is undone

It was like paradise.

Or that was what it felt like in comparison to Judah’s home anyway. Sure, most of the people living in Zak would disagree, they were too brainwashed to see what kind of hell they lived in, but he knew. He saw the darkness wherever he looked, the corruption seeping from every nook and cranny, staining everyone and everything. And he knew the source of it, lived with it, the whole house and family tainted by self-righteous lies and false promises. He’d had to get out.

Carmel was different. People were kind and welcoming from the moment he arrived, there was no one watching his every move or monitoring his words. They weren’t suspicious simply due to him being an outsider. There was no constant underlying threat of severe punishment for making a mistake. And he was treated just like everyone else; he didn’t catch spiteful glances thrown his way, nor was he immune to consequences or exempt from rules. For the first time in years, he felt normal and like an equal member of the community.

Also, people genuinely liked and respected the Reverend as opposed to being scared or seeming completely enraptured with him. They came to the services because they wanted to and didn’t get anxious if they missed one.

The town had communal gardens, a bakery, a butcher, all the usual things. It was pretty self-sustained and actual money was only rarely used. Mostly for things that had to be bought from out of town; there were a few people who worked in the city and did supply runs. Everyone helped everyone and did whatever work was needed, to the best of their abilities.

Parents didn’t have to worry about their children getting a place in kindergarten or school since the town had everything. In the community centre, there was a specific area for children who needed to be watched past the time the school ended, and it included free food, activities, and help with homework or studying. Single parents didn’t have to worry about not finding someone to look after and take care of their kids because there was always someone willing to do it. Alternatively, the town had what could probably be most closely compared to boarding schools, where parents who were overwhelmed with childcare could send their children, along with being where orphans lived. Those schools also offered an option for teenage mums to stay and live with their children.

Carmel also offered full support for people who wanted to move away for whatever reason, from kids wanting to attend college over single adults looking for a job and career to families who wanted a change of scenery. They were supported on every step of the way. No questions, no criticism, no judgement, no objections.

Everything was perfect.

So perfect it was outright blinding.

But things don't always come that easy And sometimes I would doubt

He still wasn’t sure if he had actually not seen the signs or if he’d subconsciously ignored them, unwilling to let go of the ideal vision that he’d had in his mind. It was difficult to bring the image of the Reverend’s friendly, helpful brother David into accordance with the devious person Abigail had spent the last half hour describing to him. Still, he couldn’t sense any dishonesty in her voice, and her tearful expression seemed sincere. It pained him to see his usually cheerful and smiling neighbour like this.

“Please,” she said, “I won’t ask your aid, all I need is for you to not tell on us. Not yet, at least.”

Some strands of dark hair that had escaped her braid where clinging to her forehead and cheeks, her skin covered in a mix of sweat and tears. She looked tired and scared. Desperate. He was torn, unsure what was the right thing to do. All he had wanted to do was take out the trash and get ready for a lazy evening, lounging on the sofa and watching TV. He hadn’t expected to catch Abigail and Esther, a girl who helped with a lot of community events, climbing out of a window of the neighbouring house. Esther walked over to them, still holding Abigail’s new-born son. The boy had been fussy and crying, so she had taken him to calm him down.

“They’ll send her to Saint Margaret’s,” she stated simply. The community home for single parents, teenage mums, and struggling families. A good place, build on kindness and compassion. Or so he had thought.

Judah rubbed his temples, watching the boy who was now looking around the room, his chocolate brown eyes filled with curiosity and innocent wonder, “And you’re sure you can’t just- I mean, surely someone would believe and-”

There had to be a solution. Something that didn’t involve him lying and going behind other community members’ backs. There had to. But then again, why would they lie? If what he had been taught before was true, why would anyone want to run away? If the people actually were as supportive and kind as he had thought up until now, why would a first-time mother go through the trouble of sneaking out of the hospital with her baby?

Esther sighed and handed the boy back to his mother, before stepping in front of Judah, looking up at him, “Listen, I know this is a lot to take in, but we don’t have much time. At this point, someone must have noticed her disappearance. They’re probably looking for her already, and it won’t be difficult to figure out that she might want to stop by her former home.”

“It’s just... it just seems so... harsh. Ostracising someone, sending them away or locking them up I could imagine, but outright murder? It’s against everything we believe in, isn’t it?” he said unsure, questioning, not even knowing whether he was trying to convince himself or not.

“I can give you proof, okay? I can prove everything she said and more, just not now,” Esther replied and grabbed his hand, her eyes pleading, “Just go to sleep and act like nothing happened. Pray for forgiveness for all I care. This isn’t your... ‘fight’, for the lack of a better word. You don’t have to get involved, and the sooner we get out of here, the smaller the risk of being seen with us.”

He sighed but nodded, “Alright. I’ll just... I’ll head upstairs, get ready for bed. You do what you must.”

With that he turned and left before either of the women could say another word. When he reached his bedroom, he just sat down on his bed, not even bothering to turn on the light. He just stared into the darkness. This was the exact kind of stuff he had been running from. Secrecy and lies, fear and betrayal. Death. But it seemed like it was impossible; no matter how idyllic a place looked on the surface, corruption spread its tendrils everywhere, slipping through the smallest cracks in people’s faith and seeping into their hearts.

And, contrary to everything he thought he had known, if what the women had said was true, things here were even worse than back home.

Back home?

This thought gave him pause, ripping him out of his contemplation. This was his home. It had been for almost a year now, and that’s what he had thought and felt about it as well. The town, the people, the house – this was his home. The community was his community, his family.

He hadn’t thought of Zak as home in years. It’d been the place he lived, where he was stuck, trapped – his own personal hell. Zak had not been home. It wasn’t home. How could it be? It was led by a bunch of murderers.

Just like Carmel, apparently.

His heart clenched at the thought and his chest hurt. His head hurt too. It was too much, everything was too much, and for the first time since he was a child he went to sleep without proper prayer. All he could muster the energy to do were a few sentences mumbled under his breath, before he lied down and slipped under the blanket. He didn’t even change into his pyjamas.

My life I know it’s never really been mine So do with it whatever You like

Judah had expected there to be some kind of agitation or restlessness the next day, some consequence for what had happened last night – instead everything was as calm and peaceful as always. Nothing had changed. As he stood in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil, he wondered if it had all just been a dream. Back in Zak someone would’ve already come knocking at the door, ready to take him in for questioning. Nothing escaped Darrell and “The Zakkaites” attention. But there was no knocking, no doorbell, no calls.

Despite feeling exhausted, he did manage to get dressed and attend the 12 o’clock service, half expecting people to give him judgemental or knowing looks, but everyone just smiled at him. Kindness and trust.

Proverbs 28:13 – Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

He sat down next to the baker, a woman named Sarah, and tried to calm down. At this rate, people were bound to figure out that something is wrong, it was basically written in his face. As if on cue, Sarah nudged him, “Are you alright? You are looking pale.”

“Yeah, I just didn’t sleep well,” he replied, which technically wasn’t a lie.

Sarah nodded and squeezed his hand, “Maybe try and take a nap once you’re back home. You deserve some rest.”

Luke 8:17 – For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.

The service seemed to pass in the blink of an eye while also seeming to last forever. The Reverend had talked about guilt and regret and penance. About how everyone could be forgiven. Judah was ready to go and ask if the Reverend had a moment, that he needed to tell him something, but before he had the chance someone grabbed his arm.

“You ready to talk?” Esther said, piercing blue eyes seemingly staring right into his soul.

“Actually, I was going to-” he began, but she cut him off, “Great, let’s go then.”

With that, she turned around and pulled him with her. He was to stunned to react at first, and didn’t want to draw attention to them either.

“Esther, wait. We can’t just- I can’t just keep quiet about this. It’s wrong,” he said, managing to pull his arm from her grasp and stop. Esther turned to look at him, then their surroundings, and nodded towards an alley, “Can we at least not do this in the middle of the road?”

He sighed, “Yeah, sure.”

They went to the side of the road, just far enough to be out of immediate earshot while also remaining fairly inconspicuous.

“So, what is it? Did all the talk about sin and forgiveness affect you, or were you planning to run off to the Reverend all along?” Esther said, an edge to her voice that almost felt hostile, but was really just bitterness. He felt sorry for her, wondering if her mind was perhaps being affected by guilt she wasn’t aware she was carrying.

“I hadn't really made up my mind going in, I wasn’t sure whether all of last night’s... happenings were actually real or just a dream,” he said slowly, “But the Reverend did bring up some good points. Relatable points. Like, I think it was Psalms 32:3-4, ‘When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.’ - don’t you feel that at all?”

She scoffed, “No. And I strongly doubt David and the Reverend’s other brothers care much about confessing their own wrongdoings either.”

“But it isn’t our place to judge,” Judah replied, “That’s up to the Lord.”

“Isaiah 1:17 – ‘Learn to do right; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’” Esther said, “Widows like Abigail. Orphans like the children whose mothers pass in that cursed birth house because if they aren’t deemed worthy, they only receive minimal care. They let people die there, Judah.”

Psalm 120:2 – Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Esther, but that’s just really hard to believe,” he said, unable to meet her eyes.

Some people had gathered in front of the café just a little down the road, watching their quiet but agitated discussion. Esther clenched her jaw and leaned closer, forcing him to look at her, “So let me speak. Tell you what I know, the other perspective. Just hear me out, or are you so unsure in your faith that you worry you could be this easily deceived? If what I say is untrue, don’t you think you’d be able to tell?”

“If what you say is true it would only prove that I have been deceived already, so how could I trust my own judgement?” he replied, frowning at his insecurity.

“Whatever. If you don’t want to listen, I can’t make. If you prefer to stay blissfully oblivious, be my guest. And if your ‘guilt’ is so much you insist on running off to the Reverend, sure. They’ll be grateful, and whatever will happen to me... well, I have no regrets. I only do what I deem to be right and just. And if I could go back in time, I’d do it all over again,” Esther stepped away from him and straightened her posture, putting on a neutral expression, “Just one more thing for you to consider: Proverbs 11:13 – ‘A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret’. Make of that what you will.”

Everything I once held dear I count it all as lost

Hearing his brother’s words come from Esther’s mouth was like a punch to the gut, and he kept staring at the space she had stood even after she had left. He felt sick. How could it be that the past he had so desperately tried to escape from and forget was catching up to him now? Did Esther know Darrell, or was it just chance? He didn’t know what to believe anymore, his thoughts and feelings in complete disarray, and he prayed for some kind of sign that would show him the right way.

The touch of a hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his thoughts and his gaze met Sarah’s worried expression, “Judah, dear, are you alright? You really aren’t looking well.”

He just stared at her for a moment and opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

Sarah gently took his arm and lead him across the street, towards the café, “Come, take a seat and have a glass of water. Take a moment to calm down, you seem troubled.”

“I- yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” he replied, voice raspy and almost inaudible.

They found a table right by the window, and the small crowd that had formed dispersed on Sarah and Judah’s arrival. He still felt eyes on him, people watching while walking out. He told himself they were just concerned for his well-being, but it didn’t feel quite right.

It didn’t even take five minutes for a glass of water to be brought while Sarah sat across from him, holding his hand and keeping a watchful eye on him. It was only when he picked up the glass to take a sip that he realised he was shaking, but thankfully Sarah didn’t comment. He didn’t feel like talking about his past. He didn’t even want to think about it.

“You really shouldn’t spend too much time with Esther,” Sarah said, gentle voice having a surprisingly serious edge to it.

He met her gaze, brows furrowed in confusion, “Why not?”

“She’s a bad influence. Hiding it well, though,” the older woman replied, “Her parents have been trying to rein her in for years now, but despite acting all nice and proper on the surface, people know she’s secretly up to no good.”

“But... isn’t she one of the main people planning the gardens? And doing a lot of tutoring in the community centre?”

Sarah sighed, “As I said, she is hiding it well. Just, be careful. Don’t blindly believe what she says, and be prepared for her trying to use her past as a means to gain you sympathy.”

The way Sarah was talking about and describing Esther was so different from what he had seen and her tone rubbed him the wrong way. Despite trying to keep her voice concerned and caring, there was clear judgement. Especially the last part of her sentence sounded almost deprecating. “Her past? What about it?”

“Her older siblings died in a car accident when she was fourteen, she didn’t take it well and started acting up afterwards, running away and doubting the Lord. It got better – or at least more subdued – once she turned eighteen,” she explained, turning to wistfully look out of the window, “She used to be such a good girl, you know? Well behaved, polite, gentle, earnest. Then her sister started getting into her head, telling the poor child Lord-knows-what. The accident was the last straw, and no matter how well she pretends to have returned to that innocent and pious girl she used to be... it is hard to believe. People don’t just change overnight. There’s still something wrong with her, that I am certain of.”

Judah’s stomach twisted, every single word making the feeling stronger, and by the time Sarah had finished speaking, he was feeling nauseated. No matter how hard the older woman had tried to obscure her acrimony towards Esther, attempting to cover it behind pretend compassion and melancholy, it had seeped through, her words dripping resentment. In all the time he had been here, he had never seen anyone express such negativity. Maybe it was a slip-up on Sarah’s part, or maybe he hadn’t paid attention. Either way, he wanted to get out and have some space to think.

tag? tag: @probably-a-plant-thing @solmints-messyocdiary @visceravalentines @goldrose-star @rottent33th @immortal-velociraptor @myers-meadow @ace-of-hearts-and-spades

remember, remember, the fifth of November to tell me if you don't want to be tagged, I know all the AU and OC stuff isn't for everyone, not everyone cares about all OCs etc. I won't be offended, promise <3

#cylas writes #judah todd #blues ocs #i literally looked up biblical/christian town names #esther burr

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mask131 · 7 months

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There was a set of articles and reports published today in France which perfectly illustrate the awful socio-political situation we are in, stuck between not just the regular "right" and "left", but between two extremes - extreme-right and extreme-left, that crush all other moderate ways of thinking.

It is an article that explores antisemitism in France today - and there was an investigation performed by the IFOP, at the demand of the Union of Jewish Students of France. And the numbers couldn't be clearer. When it comes to "From where do you fear violent acts against you can come?", 63 percent of the people asked answer "From the extreme-right", as expected (especially since there is a new rise of small but very loud neo-nazi movements in France). But 83 percent of the people asked answered "From the extreme-left". Meaning for most young Jews today, both the right and the left are seen as threats, and for yet another portion the left is even more frightening than the right.

It might surprise people to hear that, because for many people "The right's the Nazis, the left must be the good guys opposing the Nazis! The left is all about everybody being equal and all religions being hand in hand together" etc etc... But the truth in France is very, very different from those cliches. Nowadays the most virulent and loud parts of the left (the actual extreme-left that is dominating the entire leftist spectrum) is all about "Let's take down what we perceive as the elite, the privileged, the upper-class, the evil people who are persecuting us poor minorities". This means for example the "old, white, Christian France" - but it also means... the Jews. Because there are antisemitic movements in the left that clearly treat the Jews as "elite upper-class" and consider them among the "persecutors" of minorities.

Take the party of "La France Insoumise", the loudest and most popular of the parties of the left, that is clearly now the extreme-left today in France, and whose head is none other than Jean-Luc Mélenchon - aka France's equivalent of Trump, sharing the same demagogue methods and "vulgarity-charisma" despite them being at two opposite sides of the political spectrum. The studies performed revealed that 37 percent of the members of the party believed that Jewish people were wealthier than "normal people". And 21 percent of the party believed the Jews had too much power in the world of economy. These are currents and trend that Mélenchon is clearly aware of among his followers, but he doesn't say anything about it and hasn't reacted in any way - because he never speaks against his followers of course. Worse, he did at best unthought at worst conscious metaphors that encouraged such behavior - notably comparing the persecutions against him to the Christ being "executed by his compatriots". (Yeah Mélenchon doesn't have a little ego).

More generally, these informations come from a later investigation and report about antisemitism in the world of French universities. Indeed the investigation of the IFOP I described above is one part of a vaster project centered around the suffering of Jewish students in France. The IFOP found out that, for 10 Jewish students, 9 of them faced antisemitism during their university years. The "good" news is that the most vicious attacks, such as verbal fights and physical attacks, are not a majority in these attacks - but the bulk of this antisemitism is formed by sentences perpetuated negative stereotypes, antisemitic jokes, and insults related to the status of being Jewish.

Based on the results the IFOP got when asking non-Jewish students across French universities, 24 percent of them believed the Jews were wealthier than the regular population of France. 18 percent thought the Jews had a too strong presence in the world of economics. 15 percent of them believed the Jews had too much power in the world of politics. And half of them were convinced that all the Jews were related and linked to each other, forming one unite group and community all across France.

For some, the situation is really bad, and we have lost ten or fifteen years of sensibilisation to antisemitism, returning to the 2000s. For others the situation is still bad, but more hopeful: there isn't more antisemitism than four or five years ago, it's just that it hasn't regressed and its levels haven't changed.

Why such a situation today? Several explanations and factors can be brought up. There is the fact that when it comes to political spectrum and parties, the left is heavily present and very influential among the university students - with a lot of students union being clearly part of the Left political movements. And with the info related above, and how extreme-left politicians such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon appeal a lot to young adults... If you recall some times ago I had a massive rant on this blog because a group of students, supporters of Mélenchon, had decided to block and ravage the Sorbonne university, because their candidate hadn't been elected to the presidentials, and they hoped that by somehow destroying books and computers and paintings inside the university they would make themselves "heard". This shows the kind of vicious thinking Mélenchon encourages - he claims he is the voice of the people, he claims the "people" can only speak through him, and so these people have the same logic as Trump followers, if Mélenchon does not win the presidentials, it means the votes were rigged and that the people weren't heard somehow - at the same time negating all the votes of the people who do not like Mélenchon as not being "the people".

Anyway I digress. So the heavy presence of the left in the world of French universities, and the rise of the extreme-left in popularity and political scope is one key to understand the widespread antisemitism (which isn't even thought of antisemitism, as those who keep doing antisemitic jokes insist that it's "just for fun", there's "no harm done", and that's just humor). Speaking of humor, the second key to understand the situation is the popularity of infamous entertainers that openly did antisemitic jokes, presented to their audience negationist beliefs or antisemitic conspiracies, and that were condemned by the law for their hateful speeches and insulting humor. Condemnations that paradoxically made them even more famous and gave them anew audience only here to share their hatred. Dieudonné is the most famous of the two ; more recently there was Alain Soral. It is commonly agreed that men like them kind of "resurrected" an antisemitism that was aging and slowly dying away - they set the flame ablaze by making a new and younger generation discover the hate of the Jew, and encouraging them as seeing it as either "good humor" or as "the truth they want to condemn us for".

And the third key is a widespread movement of hatred against Israel among university students. The antisemitic movement is closely tied in most of the antisemitic students' mind with the Israel-Palestine conflict - as for them, hating the Jews in every country means hating Israel and showing their dislike of Israel. Or in reverse, for them doing antisemitic attacks is showing their support of Palestine.

The pernicious thing with antisemitism in France being that there isn't one big scandal or an explosive case or one terrifying terrorist attack. It is just a drop-by-drop phenomenon, that is regularly talked about, but for minor-scale incidents. Here an antisemitic tag on an university wall... Here neo-Nazi songs at an university sportive event... There a teacher that starts saying some offensive things during a lesson... And you have to put things side by side, over several years, to realize there is a widespread antisemitism across universities.

As a last interesting fact, the IFOP also performed a dual investigation, among Jewish and non-Jewish students, asking them to rank, in order, from most to lesser, the type of discrimination they saw and heard about the most in their universities - or the ones they deemed to be the most widespread and serious in universities. Jewish students answered that antisemitism was lcearly the number one problem of French universities, followed very close by racism, then by sexism, and finally by homophobia. But the same question, asked to non-Jewish students, resulted in a very different result: for them sexism is the big and main problem of French universities, then racism and homophobia come equally in second position, and antisemitism is the very bottom of the hierarchy, not a true problem or not really present in universities. With the added note that still today, many non-Jewish French students consider the Jews to be among the "privileged" parts of French society.

#france #french stuff #antisemitism #antisemitic #french universities #extreme left

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notmuchtoconceal · 11 months

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Imagine a religion that, instead of forecasting a radiant future, predicts the inevitable rebirth and triumph of evil: a religion that assumes the gods repeatedly allow their people to suffer in an eternal cycle of destruction.

Welcome to the religion of Hyrule, the world of the Legend of Zelda.

In this seemingly idyllic land, the population holds to an ideology of enduring pessimism due to the cyclical resurrection of demonic forces that terrorize the people with each passing generation.

Why do I argue this? Well, let's back up a bit.

In a previous video, I shared a thought experiment. Imagine you're an anthropologist and you've been transported into the Legend of Zelda universe with the task to study Hylian religious behavior. The Zelda video games are your sources. What would you find?

I argued that Hylianism -- the religion practiced by the people of Hyrule -- revolves around obtaining and protecting ritual power. Specifically, almost every aspect of Hylian religion revolves around protecting objects of power. For example, consider their pantheon of Gods.

Although the Hylian pantheon includes a Trio of Creator Gods and a Patron Goddess Named Hylia, the creator gods are almost completely absent from Hylian ritual practice. Nobody seems to worship them. Or, at least their worship plays a minor role in day to day life. Now, the patron goddess Hylia is more important in that she blesses and protects the Hylians throughout their history, and she seems to be venerated and temples and at small-scale shrines, but it's the Triforce and Not the Gods that take center stage in Hylian religion, An Object of Near Ultimate Power Made By The Creator Gods. But the existence of the Triforce introduces an existential risk. Physical contact with this relic can impart power to any individual, evil or otherwise, and thus losing control of this object can plunge the world into chaos if it falls into the wrong hands.

And what can the gods do? Well, nothing.

The destiny of the universe is Outside the Control of the Gods, so with the gods ceding their power to this object, Hylians strategically leverage their religion to mitigate the risk the Triforce poses. Hylianism is thus a form of damage control, both on an individual and cosmic scale, all in an effort to protect the Triforce. But protection from whom?

Demons. Lots and Lots of Demons.

Well, monsters too, but demons are the big bads in the Legend of Zelda. There's the body-snatching Malladus, the demon sorcerer Vaati. There's Girahim and Zant and of course the most famous of them all -- The Demon Train. No, I mean Ganondorf. It's Ganondorf.

He's The Most Famous One.

With so many demons, a robust understanding of Hylian religion requires that we develop a robust understanding of Hylian demonology.

Demonology is the systematic study of malevolent supernatural beings. This includes studying the belief around these entities, their characteristics and the roles they play in various religions, mythologies and cultures. Demonology encompasses a huge range of topics -- everything from the origin of demons, to their classification, powers, weaknesses, and ritualized forms of exorcisms or protection against them. Now I'm using the term "demon" here somewhat loosely --

as a cross-cultural category to describe any type of malevolent spirit or supernatural entity.

But anybody who studies comparative religion should know comparison is tricky business. Malevolent supernatural beings do appear in every culture. You have the oni in Japanese mythology, the rakshasas in Hindu mythology. In Ancient Akaddian texts, there are several beings that could be translated as demons, including rabisu, gallu, utukku. All referring to different types of oftentimes malevolent beings. But the entities that may be labeled as "demons" in one cultural context might not necessarily align with the characteristics of demons in another context. There's always going to be some conceptual slippage between religions.

So we need to be cautious when employing a term like "demon" across cultures, especially if that concept is deeply rooted in a specific religion.

For example, in a Christian majority country like the United States, Christian conceptions of demons might loom so large in our public consciousness that Christian demonology might sway our analysis of a different culture. So while the term may be a convenient shorthand to discus any sort of malevolent supernatural being, it can also oversimplify and thus run the risk of misunderstanding the specificity of indigenous concepts. The Japanese oni or rakshasas in Hinduism are not perfect analogues to a demon in Christianity.

In fact, the Greek word itself, daimon where we get the English word "demon" is not necessarily analogous either. It originally referred to different kinds of ambiguous divine entities, everything from the souls of the dead to even the Gods. But ancient Jewish and Christian literature later developed a strongly polarized demonology in which demons became categorically evil creatures. The demonology of Hyrule shares this strong polarization we see in Christianity. Almost without exception, demons are evil beings. But Hylian demonology is a remarkably sophisticated system that echoes demonologies from many different religions. So what is a demon in Hyrule?

The demons of Hyrule have been described as a race or a tribe that emerged from under the earth in the distant past. This would make them analogous to the other tribes of sentient beings occupying Hyrule, like the aquatic Zoras, the rock-dwelling Gorons and the sylvan Koroks, but I'd argue that demons share very little with these other beings, who typically have their own unique cultures and societies, not to mention shared physical features. Instead, demons seem to be a fundamentally different class of being. There's little to indicate that they share some sort of culture or society of physicality.

Comparing all of the demons in the Zelda universe, they really only share their evilness and some shared supernatural abilities.

What's interesting though, is that "being a demon" doesn't seem to be an unchangeable characteristic. Individuals from other tribes have transformed into demons. Vaati once belonged to the small magical people called Picori before his stint as a sorcerer and One-Eyed Demonic Creature. In The Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf was once a human and leader of a tribe of warrior-thieves called the Gerudo. Conversely, the demon Batreaux transforms into a human with the help of Link, who gives him crystals earned by doing good deeds for others.

So you can become a demon if consumed by enough evil, and reverse that condition with enough good deeds, which might undermine the argument that demons are some sort of species or race, and more like the end-state of any being when corrupted by enough evil.

But, as I dove headfirst into this rigorous scholarly pursuit of studying the religious ideology of a video game franchise, I started to formulate a Grand Theory of Hylian Demonology.

You see, some scholars classify demons as a type of "small god". The term small gods refers to a diverse range of supernatural entities that don't fit neatly into many religious traditions. They're ambiguous entities that occupy a middle-ground between the divine and the mundane.

In other words, small gods are beings that are very powerful -- they're greater than human, but they're also closer to humans, both in terms of proximity and power level. This can include beings such as fairies, nature spirits, ghosts and demons. Because they inhabit this categorical space between Gods and humans, and because they literally act as intermediaries between Gods and humans, some scholars call them "intermediary spirits".

Now, despite their "smallness" intermediary spirits often hold a significant place in local folklore and popular belief. They're often locative, in the sense of relating to a specific location. They live in a particular steam, grove, or building. In some cases these beings might be seen as useful or benevolent, like guardian angels. While in others, they may be seen as malevolent or dangerous. Others are deeply ambiguous entities that hover in a zone of uncertain and ambivalent power.

In Greco-Egyptian magick for example, a daimon is sometimes a useful being you can call upon, or a chaotic and dangerous being to avoid.

These small gods can be contrasted with the very difficult and very technical term "big gods". The social psychologist Ara Norenzayan defines big gods as "powerful, omniscient and morally concerned supernatural beings that serve as the central figures in many world religions". These Gods are believed to posses the ability to monitor human behavior, reward moral actions and punish immoral ones.

Big Gods can be found in various religious traditions, including Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In each of these cases, the central deity is believed to be All-Knowing, All-Powerful and Deeply Concerned with Human Morality and Behavior. I'd also add Gods like Zeus and Osiris or Major Hindu Gods like Vishnu and Shiva, Gods Who Are Clearly In A Class Of Their Own, above humans and intermediary spirits.

In Hylian Demonology, demons are not small gods at all. Well, there are lower-level demons, but more often than not, they're only referred to in passing. Other times, they appear as small-scale antagonists, like Dark Link who appears to be some sort of demonic being.

But overwhelmingly, most demons in Hylian Demonology should not be classified as small or intermediary. You have Demon King Malladus, Demon King Ganondorf -- Zant, King of Darkness. The title of King is thrown around all the time and these beings go toe to toe with the Gods in battle and Sometimes Win.

So what we're dealing with here are Big Demons, or Master Demons, rulers of lesser demons who are closer in power level to Big Gods.

Master Demons are a common feature in world religious. There's of course Satan, the main antagonist of God in Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple Jewish Literature mention Belial, the leader of the Sons of Darkness. And in Hinduism, there's Ravana, the Multi-Headed King of the Rakshasa, who is a central figure in the epic poem called the Ramayana. Hylian Demonology is really a demonology of Master Demons. A Master Demonology, if you will. In fact, the entire moral universe of Hyrule and Hylian cosmology revolves around a Very Big Demon, indeed. A Demon King called Demise.

Demise is the central antagonist in the Hylian Religion; a primordial demon king who, according to the Spirit of the Master Sword, is An Eternal Being and The Source of All Evil.

As the events of Skyward Sword unfolded, the hero Link arose and defeated Demise, but he then uttered a curse that set the stage for a recurring struggle between good and evil for eternity.

An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time.

The Legend of Demise is thus an etiology for evil; a mythical explanation for the origins of evil as a general concept and evil beings like monsters.

The idea of a Primordial Demon King is a rarity in world religions, but not unheard of. The closest parallel to Demise is likely the entity known as Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) in Zoroastrianism, a primordial spirit from which originates evil.

The Curse of Demise thus means that a surprisingly depressing or even cynical type of demonology underlies Hylian Religion. An ideology that I like to call "cyclical apocalypticism". You might be more familiar with apocalypticism in ancient Judaism or Christianity, which refers to the ideology that God will Intervene in the near future, bring an end to an evil era and inaugurate a new era by establishing His kingdom.

But critically in Christian apocalypticism, Time is Linear.

The end of days arrives, Satan is vanquished and the Kingdom of God Lasts Forever. It'd be unthinkable in Christian end times theology that Satan would One Day Arise Again and Topple God's Kingdom.

But in Hylian Apocalyptic Demonology, the Curse of Demise launched and endless boom and bust cycle. Phases of peace and prosperity followed by cataclysmic events that plunged the world into an era ruled by evil, usually at the hands of some sort of Master Demon -- An Incarnation of the Primordial Evil.

So if Hylians are subjected to an endless cycle of cataclysm after cataclysm, how do they deal with these Master Demons?

Ritual strategies to defeat demons are found all throughout the world.

In my own sub-field of ancient Mediterranean religion, you commonly see various forms of exorcism. Rituals that aim to extract a demon from somewhere or someone. Jesus famously exorcises demons with a simple command, but there are also elaborate exorcism formulas from the ancient world that require special incantations or ritual objects. Another strategy you'll commonly see are various forms of apotropaic magic; rituals and objects that aim to ward away demons pre-emptively. For example, someone might wear an amulet to keep a demon away. But these are strategies to combat lesser demons. As we've said, the people of Hyrule regularly need to deal with Master Demons, so these small-scale rituals wouldn't quite cut it.

Hylians generally defeat master demons in two ways. First, by literally destroying them in physical combat with sacred weapons, such as the Master Sword or the Bow of Light, which possess divine properties capable of vanquishing demonic forces.

In fact, according to the Japanese manual to the Super Nintendo's A Link to the Past, the Master Sword was originally called tama no ken, which we can translate as Exorcism Sword.

In other words, a sword specifically designed for banishing demons.

When battling demons, Link usually needs to identify and exploit the demon's weakness, observe enemy patterns, dodge and block attacks and seize opportunities to strike. This might sound formulaic, but it's not unlike how some demons are defeated in world mythologies. For example, consider the description of Rama vs. Ravana in the Ramayana. They shoot arrows back and forth during a chariot duel, but eventually reach an impasse. Rama then takes up a sacred arrow, a gift of Brahma, a mighty arrow unfailing in battle. He consecrates it by chanting mantras over it before shooting it directly through Ravana's heart.

But Master Demons in Hyrule seem to be difficult to kill, so more often than not, the Hylians resort to binding and sealing the demons. This often involves a powerful figure like Zelda, the sages, or a Goddess like Hylia engaging in forms of ritualized constraining and containment, banishing and trapping the demon in a different realm or prison. Another example of ritualized containment occurs in Twilight Princess. When the execution of Ganondorf goes awry, the sages banish him to the Twilight Realm through the Mirror of Twilight.

Now, because of the cyclical nature of Hylian cosmology, these seals never last, but it at least ensures a few hundred years of peace.

Demonology may strikes some of us as exotic. It's the weird side of religion, the occult side of religion. But as the scholar David Frankfurter says, "as exotic as it often seems, the study of demonology engages the most subtle dimensions of culture..."

For example, studying the demons of a particular can reveal how that particular culture conceptualizes the landscape. In what sort of place do demons dwell? It can reveal how that cutlure views sickness or disabilities or bodily autonomy. Studying demonology enables us to explore the specific threats and anxieties that a society perceives, and what strategies that society views as effective to mitigate or confront those dangers, either through writing, iconography or prayers that seek to repel or bind them.

Moreover, because demonological beliefs can be found among both the religious elite and the general population, studying demonology can help illuminate modes of religious authority. For example, the roles of priests, shamans or other ritual specialists who are believed to have the ability to combat demonic forces, can provide valuable insights into the authority structures and the sources of social prestige within a society.

So by studying the demonology of Hylianism, we catch a glimpse of Hyrule's cultural beliefs, values and fears. A society locked in an endless, cyclical struggle between good and evil, a society that thus values sacred power and divine weapons to overcome the revolving glass door of master demons, and the society that must also grapple with the reality that divine intervention only offers temporary relief and the gods might be powerless to vanquish demonic forces once and for all.

#to get a feeling #deeply relevant

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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Should racism and discrimination be viewed as public health threats? A new study argues they should - ABC News

LONDON -- Racism and discrimination must be acknowledged as public health threats in the fight to address global health disparities, according to a new study.

As part of the four-paper series published in The Lancet medical journal Thursday, researchers from countries around the world, including the U.S., U.K., Brazil and India, carried out a major review of scientific literature and used data from hundreds of articles in recent years.

The tendency among health professionals has been to explain unequal health outcomes on either genetics or economic conditions, according to the study's authors. But in order to tackle racial health inequities, racism and discrimination themselves should be classified as public health threats globally, the authors say.

"Racism has always been a public health threat," Alexandre White, assistant professor of sociology and the history of medicine at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, told ABC News. "It has emerged time and time again, especially over the last 10 to 15 years."

Research into the intersection of race and health disparities has advanced in recent years, particularly in the U.S. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention almost every two in three pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. A 2020 report found that non-Hispanic Black women experienced a higher pregnancy-related mortality rate -- a disparity placing them nearly three times more at risk of dying due to pregnancy-related causes compared to non-Hispanic white women.

STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images

"This study is tremendously important [as] it sheds light on the fundamental role that racism, xenophobia and forms of discrimination actually play on health, both from a structural level and generational level over time," White said. "But also fundamentally since the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen the ways in which, especially racism and xenophobia, affects who gets sick, how seriously and why."

The study also reports that racial biases in health care can lead to a stress response -- affirming previous studies that found discrimination, whether overt or covert, can lead to chronic stress responses which can affect human neurological and immune systems. That chronic stress response can lead to lower life expectancies and is associated with other health complications such as anxiety, depression and heart disease.

"It's not only because of racism at the individual interpersonal level," Dr. Abi Deivanayagam, a public health doctor, researcher, activist and one of the study's authors, told ABC News. "It's racism in the way that our society is structured. And that's very real. And it's really important that we acknowledge this in a medical journal like The Lancet so that health people recognize that this is something this is our duty of care to patients. And our care really has to go beyond the individual to making sure that our systems are safe for our patients."

Although discrimination against minority groups comes in different forms around the world according to such factors as race, ethnicity and religion, a pattern of worse health outcomes for minority groups can be seen globally.

According to Deivanayagam, the study has drawn two major conclusions.

"One thing is that there is evidence globally that shows that racism, xenophobia and discrimination affect a range of different health outcomes, and that this is embedded across different levels of society and that it affects people across the course of their lives ranging from COVID-19, to vaccines, to actually getting health care access," she told ABC News. "The second thing is that we need to get to the root cause of this. And the way we do that as health professionals is to recognize that racism, xenophobia and discrimination are actually a public health threat."

#Should racism and discrimination be viewed as public health threats #racism is a health threat #studies say yes #racism #white supremacy #systemic racism

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