okay fellas, I'm sorry but I feel the need to get onto my little soapbox here for a bit.
Rant below the cut.
Warnings: discussion the genocide of american natives, WW2 discussions, mentiones of death (repeatedly), mentions of eugenics, gas chambers, hanging, starvation, jim crow laws and general rage at people who downplay horrible events that happened in history because they are "not as bad" as WW2
For context: I'm following a bunch of native american creators on insta because somebody unintentionally sent me down a rabbit hole and one of them made a post mourning the lives lost to the strategic erasure of their culture since the Europeans first stepped foot on the american continent. They described it as the native holocaust.
Some guy seemed genuinely confused about the use of the word holocaust so I thought I'd be nice and clear up some confusion about it and left it at that HOWEVER when I brought it up later with friends in discord because I thought it was kinda silly how mad the dude got over it in later comments I came to realize that a lot of people don't actually know what the word means and, especially white americans, seem to get really pissed off when the word is "misused" and now here we are.
So, just to be clear: It does NOT mean death by fire in german. I have no idea where everyone gets that from because it's not even a German word. Death by fire is Feuertod in german and, considering that a lot more people in ww2 died through gas chambers, hanging, starvation, sickness and gunfire using a word meaning "death by fire" would be completely and utterly wrong.
It's true that the greek word it stems from, holókauston, is put together out of holos (whole) and kaustós (burnt) but even then it still does not mean death by fire, it means a sacrifice that was wholly burnt which is why we use the term for events such as the ones of WW2 in a metaphorical sense. It was a great (as in big) intentionally made "sacrifice" that (almost) wholly "burnt" away a whole group of people and I'm putting sacrifice in "-" so nobody gets the wrong idea here. It wasn't a sacrifice, a sacrifice is something you make in honor of something like a god or a cause, it was government funded massmurder.
For reference, here is the wikipedia on the term.
What holocaust the modern word DOES mean is destruction or slaughter of human life on a mass scale through various means which include fire depending on what dictionary you look at.
For reference, here is what is says in the Duden in German and for the English folks the definition from the Cambridge dictionary just to make 100% sure everyone is on the same page here.
The reason for why we call the events of WW2 THE holocaust is because, thus far, it was the most extreme case in human history in meticulously planned execution and a (considering the death toll) extremely short time span. For that it is THE holocaust as in the biggest most extreme but that does not mean that there can't be other instances of one happening and that events that had been labeled as one previously before ww2 suddenly aren't one anymore and as much as we all like to believe that humanity has learned its lesson deep down we all know that is not the case and it's only a matter of time before something worse happens.
"Oh but Wiika, events change the meanings of words” Yes, but I honestly believe that this one word, the one word we have to describe man made horror beyond the comprehension of the average mind, should not be gatekept and exclusive to one event.
Claiming what is happening to native american folks is not a holocaust and "just a massacre that happened x amount of years ago" to me is denial of history and denial of the more than 13 million lives lost on the side of the natives alone as estimated by this paper on page 7 that I have seen cited as a source repeatedly while looking up the topic on the webpages of several reservations and articles on the topic so I'll trust that they check their sources more thoroughly than I do.
For reference, if we sum up the numbers given in the chart under "Number of deaths" from the United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum (and yes I picked an english source just for you, also to be clear we are only looking at the victims that were civilians/not soldiers and people that were imprisoned/qualified to be send to a KZ which is literally everyone else on that list) and pick the higher number for the Roma we get a number that looks a little something like 18.933.900 and taking into account the two shadows numbers we can pump that up to 19 million and still probably miss a few thousand.
Again, side by side. WW2 19 million in total. The natives of america 13 million. That is a difference of 6 million and at this point I would like to remind you that the killing and erasure of natives is still ongoing meaning that the number keeps going up and we also have a huge shadow number that is probably also in the thousands of kids that had been taken to be "cultured" and never were heard of again and kidnappings and killings that are being skillfully ignored by law enforcement and also just murders that happened in the past that we probably never heard of and also probably never will.
I know that the number of 19 million came to be within six years and the 13 million over the span from 1492 until this paper was first published in 2018 and I know that the timespan and how quickly things happened in WW2 are part of what makes it so disturbing to many people but it should not overshadow the fact that these are human lives lost to a system designed to erase them in both cases.
We should not be standing here and saying one of these things is less bad than the other because it took longer to achieve such a high number of deaths or because the total of deaths is lower. Millions are still millions. Most people can't even imagine what a few thousand people would look like in one open space. Now try and fathom literally millions of people as an image in your head, all dead.
Also, as a little side tangent: I know americans have a bit of a hard on for WW2 media and such because it makes them feel like the hero because they came and swooped in and killed the evil nazis BUT what a lot of folk like to ignore in the favour of the illusion of being a hero is that a lot of hitlers ideas and systems were inspired by what was going on in northern america. The KZs were inspired by the US Indian reservation system. The whole "blood purity" law that forced people to proof that they are "only to a certain percent jewish" or else they be sent to work and extermination camps was inspired by Margaret Higgins Sanger and her eugenics theories and don't even get me started on the Jim Crow laws that directly inspired a lot of anti-jewish laws that were going on back then.
To sum up my whole point with this long ass rant:
Please for fucks sake stop telling people that a massacre, especially against their own people, does not count as a holocaust because there has been "a bigger one".
Don't take away the one word we have to accurately describe the man made horrors and crimes committed against human life because you think a different event in time is more deserving of it. To do so is to deny what happened in its true extent and that is nothing but disrespectful to the lives that have been lost.
You can't just say that one of the two is less horrible than the other, both have aspects that are terrifying to them, some more and some less, but the second you say "I think that x event is less bad than y event" that implies that one of the two is more....excusable?
The two events mentioned above are clearly not the same, they never will be and they never should be treated as such and they never ever EVER should be treated as if they are in competition about which one of them is worse or is deserving of a title.
I merely brought them both up to put into perspective what some people are willing to excuse and even completely disregard because they feel like something else is more deserving of the label of "destruction or slaughter of human life on a mass scale" and thus completely disregard literally 531 and still counting years worth of bloodshed and abuse as nothing more than a minor hiccup in the history of the glorious land of the free the way that they always do with anything that throws a shadow on that not USA exclusive american dream considering that Canada is literally just maple syrup flavoured USA when it comes to this topic specifically.
Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
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Fully aware I’m bringing the straw discourse back myself but it’s almost like this is a systemic problem with how we manufacturer everything, including “eco-friendly” options.
Anyway, wishing all the ecowarrior girlies who told me and countless other disabled folks to our faces that if our disabilities meant we couldn’t give up plastic straws for safety reasons we were a burden on the planet and should consider suicide the moral option a very “suck on your toxic bullshit.”
Literally.
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If you don't know anything about eugenics beyond forced sterilization, or only define eugenics by forced sterilization, or by any one version of it, you're not only never going to understand eugenics, but you'll never be able to fight that ideology or keep it out of your spaces or unlearn it yourself. Saying you think disabled people just shouldn't exist in an "ideal" society is eugenics too, just like genetic engineering us out of existence, just like saying you wouldn't have a disabled child, or promoting the idea of us being completely separated from "abled society" in some sort of "separate but equal" supposed compromise.
Eugenics can be born simply out of believing our lives are nothing but suffering and that makes them less worth living, thus we shouldn't exist. But that's not true. I do suffer horribly in this ableist society, and I also suffer solely from certain aspects of my disabilities, but that doesn't mean disabled people shouldn't exist. Suffering doesn't mean I shouldn't exist. It means you should be working to eradicate ableism and people should continue working on science to help disabled people live with our disabilities. It means you should listen to us, ask us "how can we help", not eradicate us and the fact people move so quickly to that idea is scary as fuck.
And yet, today I had to talk with a trans person who told me people like me shouldn't be born, that mental illness' were "diversities" but cripples were disabled and lived their lives in suffering, so they should be engineered out of existence. This was all very leftist, mind you-No forced anything, just a dream of a mass program to genetically engineer cripples away until no disabilities were left at all, for "the better of our species".
It just makes me sad, things like that. I wish it made me angrier but no, people who should be my community telling me my people shouldn't exist is just sad, especially when it comes with the determined stance that it's not, in fact, eugenics. I mean, if you're going to be a dick, at least call your bullshit what it is. At least know what eugenics are! That's basic as hell!
So lesson of the day: learn your eugenics, listen to disabled folks, fuck ableism and never tell disabled people you don't believe people with their disabilities should exist.
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I grew up before autism was widely talked about, but it's indisputable that nerd culture and austistic culture have always had a big overlap, and I'm not gonna lie, whenever I see folks on Tumblr arguing that autistic people are intrinsically more politically enlightened than neurotypicals, I'm reminded of Usenet chatter from twenty-five years ago talking about how nerds have physically superior brains and what we really need to turn society around is laws to prevent stupid people from breeding. I'm not the only one seeing that parallel, right?
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My intrusive thoughts: “Hey, maybe the fact that your University graduate parents wanted you and planned for you was a sign that you weren’t actually a soul which needed to be here. Maybe that’s why you don’t intuitively understand yourself and your likes and dislikes. God didn’t push through to put you here, he just conceded to one-and-a-half mortals’ demands. Maybe that’s why you can’t stand the thought of who your “true self” could possibly be. Maybe that’s why you’re meant to be just a faceless member of society.”
My agnostic thoughts: “Or maybe you’re just tired and hungry and mad at everyone and dehydrated and about to start your period.”
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i don't get people who don't like looms because "when two time lords love each other very much they send a formal application to the council to use a machine that is in their house" is so much funnier than a nuclear family
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i have some discontent about the narrative "we will all end up disabled" "it is likely that you will be disabled before you die" and "you are only one accident away from disability" to convince people to care about us disabled people.
human health is fragile and it is very possible to become disabled, even severely disabled, when previously abled. but the sort of care and activism that will arise from "it could happen to you too" won't be helpful to disabled people. it isn't, for example, helpful to disabled people who were born disabled, and have been told many times by eugenicists that they should not have been allowed to exist. it also undermines the experience of disabled people who in their childhood, teens, twenties, thirties, are living a completely different lifestyle compared to their abled peers. people who only care about eventual poor health will not care about these young disabled people. will not care about the rights and autonomy of disabled children, will not care about accessibility in schools or playgrounds etc.
abled people also have the illusion that even if it could happen to them, it won't. most people do not think they will become permanently disabled. telling them they might will not change this assumption, because there are many many misconceptions and untruths about disability. on some level many people may still believe that disability will be a consequence of doing something wrongly.
finally people should care about us even if they will never ever experience ableism, disability, or poor health in their lifetime. this is true for many groups. my white friends care if i experience racism even if they don't. abled who never will experience ableism shouldn't need to be reminded, persuaded, coerced into caring about disabled people
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For the 1736717128th time, "slavic brotherhood" is an imperialistic myth invented by the russian propagandists during the times of russian empire to justify conquering their neighbouring "brothers". It is not scientific nor culturological, and god forbid it doesn't mean that you can do whatever harmful shit and cover up it with "but we're brothers/sisters!!"
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finally compiled screenshots of when ppl call gray pretty boy or think he's a girl
also I got these from desktop webtoons so if the quality looks wonky it's bc I was piecing together screenshots lol
ep 1 , Colton Choi and co.
also ep 1 , Alex Go
ep 3 , Eugene Gale
ep 7
ep 9
ep 16
ep 38
ep 48
ep 68
ep 71 , class 1-1
also ep 71
ep 84
ep 118
ep 147
ep 202 (THIS COUNTS OK . I SCREAMED WHEN THIS PANEL SHOWED UP)
ep 217 , the entire eunjang student body apparently
ep 234 , i bet it's the dude on the bottom right with the slushy
I skipped any dudes that vaguely mentioned how Gray looked bc they were flabbergasted and not questioning their sexuality lmao
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Something very interesting in how Eugene Lee Yang has been the one gay asian guy on a (first buzzfeed now) youtube team with otherwise straight white guys for years, so he felt a lot of pressure to perform well (especially in early videos). So he has this public image of an incredibly confident, talented, extroverted guy.
Plus of course, he's an internet celebrity so everyone has parasocial relationships with him (even more so than with other celebrities like actors and such). But obviously none of us actually know what goes on in his head or in his private life beyond what he decides to share.
And now he's playing a guy who feels a lot of pressure to perform well and has to appear confident and competent and extroverted - but who in his own mind has a lot more insecurities and of course acts differently in his private life than he does in public.
Idk. It's just fun. I wonder if he drew on that for his performance for Ambrosius
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Wow this piece of classic literature was so good. Very thought provoking. I wonder what the writer’s life was like. Let me pull up Wikipedia. HE MARRIED HIS TEENAGE COUSIN? HAD AN INCESTUOUS AFFAIR WITH HIS SISTER? FOUNDED THE SOCIETY FOR EUGENICS? KILLED AN INNKEEPER, BURNED DOWN AN ENTIRE VILLAGE AND FLED THE COUNTRY? REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS FIRST WIFE OR PAY ALIMONY, CAUSING HER AND HIS CHILDREN TO DIE IN POVERTY? MADE HIS FRIENDS DRINK HIS PISS???
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the wednesday show??? oh mein gott??? it was so good??? the plot twist was amazing and I can almost forgive the shitty love triangle between wednesday and the 2 boys because of it
ALSO THAT WENCLAIR HUG?? WOAH?? SHIT WAS MORE ROMANTIC THEN ANY KISS/ALMOST KISS
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Would like to see scifi deconstruct more often why eugenics is a bad idea
Tunnel visioned bureaucrats, or someone insisting they have the secret to progress, are no replacement for natural selection. You know how some breeds of animals the breeders were so focused on certain traits that they didn’t take care to keep out some negative traits?
And you try breeding a super race by putting them in an inhospitable wasteland: congratulations, the descendants are adapted to that specific wasteland
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"Oh no, [game publisher] was doing so well reforming their depiction of [biologically evil fantasy species], why did they suddenly backtrack" they didn't backtrack, bro – that was the plan all along. It's a trick.
One of the standard ploys in the gaming industry whenever they get pushback about how depicting a particular fantasy species as biologically evil isn't a good look is to do a little storyline that's like "no, see, there were some good ones, but then the bad ones killed them all; they made themselves biologically evil through self-imposed eugenics policies, so that makes depicting them like that okay".
Popular game publishers have been doing this song and dance for thirty years. Hell, Wizards of the Coast in particular has done it at least half a dozen times in that span.
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ok i know that crest bad and more than one crest very bad but consider this:
eugenics emblem superbaby in some unholy mecha made up of every single relic weapon
just a 12 yo completely covered in the equivalent of a roman catholic catacomb's worth of dead dragon
/
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2023 reads
The Deep Sky
scifi mystery thriller
on a deep space mission traveling from an environmentally devastated earth with hope to restart humanity elsewhere
when they’re halfway, an explosion kills 3 crew and pushes them off course
the only witness is the Alternate who has no specific role, and she has to figure out who caused it & if they might continue to sabotage, while they're figuring out a way to get back on course with limited resources
flips between present and the past: of her childhood and training for the mission, her identity struggles, and relationship with her mother
questions the ethics of ‘restarting’ humanity elsewhere vs putting resources into fixing earth
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