this image is probably the most accurate visual representation of the United States education system
Oh boy.
Do I have a story for you…
So this is the iconic and beloved clock of Moszkva square in Budapest, Hungary. Or more precisely it was.
It was a very popular meeting point for generations.
„2pm on Moszkva, under the clock?” „sure” It was in the middle of the square, so you could see each other pretty easily from anywhere.
When they „renovated” (rebuilt) and renamed the square that is now called Széll Kálmán tér (only by youngsters and tourists who don’t know any better - it will remain for a lot of us „the Moszkva”) the old clock was removed.
So. Removing the clock was very controversial, but it had to go, because someone dreamed about a new shiny one. Here it is. New, and weird and DIGITAL.
The problem is, it stopped working. For days. (you see, fixing it was time-consuming…) And they came and fix it. But it broke down in a couple of days again and again, so the lovely people around helped to fix it. Some of the best solutions:
Graffity: ?Is this a clock? No" and Where is the old clock? Furthermore, on the clock it states that it shows the right time.
An artistic rendition:
But my favorite one is where people got enough of the breaking down abomination, and the heartless people taking down the actually working clocks (it is a very busy square with a lot of public transport connections), and things escalated quickly:
I think this is the most of them we had taped on at once.
The papers state: In memoriam of the unknown time. Rest in Peace
So… I guess, Hungarians do.
content
A cute little rainy porch moment from this morning in my née dress that I got from a friend!
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This still blows my mind
I will happily delete this if I’m derailing or taking away from the original message (initially I put this in the tags, but a friend asked me to reblog as text)
If you don't want to pursue an autism or adhd diagnosis and you have access to a doctor or therapist you can get them to write you a note attesting to a symptom of your neurodivergence (rather than naming the condition itself) and stating the need for accommodation.
It's something my therapist told me about when we were still working in offices. I have sensory processing issues and on multiple occasions the noise in my office was so bad I broke the skin on my hand clenching my fist.
This work-around of course won't fix structural ableism and relies on you having access to a doctor/therapist who actually gives a crap, so still might only help a couple of folks.
Thats a good add on
Two hijabi women in Germany were suspended from work for wearing the hijab and the European union's highest court sided with the employers saying that workplaces can ban religious symbols which include headscarfs...literally these court cases wouldnt exist if it werent for Islamophobia. Like youre gonna have a bunch of european liberals saying "its misinformation its not just the hijab but all religious symbols" yeah i dont think europeans will be suspended from work wearing the cross i think we're gonna watch muslims, Sikhs and jewish people lose their jobs in large numbers. Christian imagery and institutions and values is ingrained and a central for many european countries tourist industries and europeans acting as if theyre actually "secular" doesnt change the fact that only very lately theres been a crackdown on getting religion out of the picture when its about muslims. Secularism isnt a European value its actually Christian supremacy.
Head scraves are also not inherently a religious symbol. They're a piece of clothing. This is a court forcing muslim people to undress in order to keep a job. Imagine that in any other capacity. If that court had decided that women needed to show a certain amount of cleavage in an office setting that would have caused an outrage among everyone, but because this is mainly targeting muslims people are okay with it. This is so fucked up
now that’s what i call ineffective tumblr discourse! featuring such hits as “why aren’t you talking about this thing you didn’t know about”, “this 3-hour-old post has 20k notes instead of 100k clearly you’re all willfully ignoring it”, “if you don’t reblog this you’re a bad person”, & more manipulative bullshit that only exists to make the person saying it feel holier than thou!
“if you can’t reblog this unfollow me” 0/10, no creativity
“[x people] MUST reblog this” 2/10 I was already going to until you said that
“if you can’t reblog this we can’t be mutuals” 5/10 kinda funny because the person who added that is usually a complete rando. Still probably unfollowing whoever put this on my dash though
“you can reblog this actually” 1/10 no shit, sherlock. Did adding that to the post make you feel good, or something???
“people who like this post but don’t reblog it are all hypocrites looking for woke points” 8/10 extra points for creativity and for actually riling me up. That’s really not how tumblr likes work btw
“look, you’re not obligated to reblog this if you really don’t want to, but think hard about WHY it is you don’t want to” -10000/10 I don’t want to SOLELY because you said that. You ruined a perfectly good post is what you did. Look at it. It’s anxiety-inducing
“I don’t care if this doesn’t fit your blog ~aesthetic~” yeah my blog aesthetic is not sending my followers into panic/guilt spirals about things they can’t do anything to change or help
The qualities that divide good children’s literature from bad children’s literature:
1) The dragons are real.
2) The adults don’t believe you.
will elaborate
what I’m getting at here is that being a child is an experience defined by marginalization—by powerlessness, not being taken seriously, not being believed.
when you are a child you are aware of the terrible things in the world and terrified by them, and you feel everything so intensely. Before you learn to manage your emotions, they are consuming, incandescent experiences that are almost impossible to access again as an adult. You are small but your emotions and experiences are as large and as vivid as anyone else’s, but they are not taken as seriously as everyone else’s. You recognize that adults condescend to you and dismiss you.
As a child, you know that the world ought to be fair, that people ought to be helped, and you ask “Why?” And you ask “What is the point?” And as you become an adult you learn to repress those things. The answer to every question you ask as a child is “Because you have to” or “Because that’s the way it is,” and these are bullshit answers and we all know it, but defending an authoritarian relationship to someone weaker is easier than defending things about our world that are indefensible if we look at them honestly.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Lucy first enters Narnia, she is not believed. Narnia has so much about it that makes it THE quintessential children’s book series, the archetype for children’s book series, and it all centers around how Narnia cannot be understood by adults.
Imitators have reduced this down to something about the Wonder of Childhood, something about how children are innocent and special that means only they can see magic because only they are able to believe in it. This is Not Correct. Books that do this are saccharine and awful because this is fake and we all know deep down that it’s fake.
Here’s the truth. Children do not live in an idyllic fantasy land where bad things aren’t real, adults do. For kids who have dealt with grief, abuse, trauma of all kinds—and let’s be real, that’s most of us—it’s condescending and idiotic to treat children as if they’re innocent about the evils in the world. Almost every child experiences evil early and is unable to communicate that experience to adults, whether this is in the form of a relatively innocent childhood fear or deeply damaging abuse.
There is much that has been said about how the Narnia books are about the trauma of World War 1, but most of that can also be said about how Narnia is about childhood in general—the traumatic nature of the return to the Real World is left unstated, because it is understood by the audience. Children have a vivid inner world that they do not have the vocabulary to explain to adults, and this is what Narnia is about.
There’s a reason why Neil Gaiman’s children’s books are so memorable, and it’s the same reason that they scared the living shit out of adults. There’s a reason why Where the Wild Things Are and Shel Silverstein’s poetry have had such a long cultural shelf life. These are not cozy, comfy stories that affirm adult perceptions of the childhood world as flat and innocent; they are troubling and ambiguous.
There’s also a reason why the children’s books that are so important often piss adults off. The best example I can think of is the Captain Underpants series. I never read any of them and yet I remember the extraordinary disdain people had for those books; they were the poster child for What Terrible Thing Has Become Of Literature.
And sure, maybe to an uncritical adult eye the adventures of misbehaving kids thwarting the rules of the world with poop jokes has no value, but I would argue the opposite—the poop jokes are, in fact, fundamental to the anti-authoritarian message. Adult attempts to suppress the scatological sense of humor children have hold a very important message about power.
Because here’s the thing: poop and farts are funny because they’re taboo, and especially so to children because we are constantly telling children what they Can and Can’t say. It’s not about poop, it’s about how adults betray themselves every time they get in a tizzy about a seven year old saying “turd,” because the fact that “turd” gets such a reaction means that uptight adults don’t have the power over kids that they want kids to think they have.
Scatological subjects embarrass adults, and the more uptight and controlling those adults are, the more devastating the embarrassment is. Kids are super conscious of the power dynamics in all their dealings with adults—how could they not be? And the explosion of raucous laughter that results from an elementary school teacher saying something that sounds sort of like “doody” wouldn’t happen if elementary school teachers weren’t constantly trying to reassert and solidify their position of power.
They, too, can be mortified and laid low by a humble “doody,” and if it did not have the power to do so, they wouldn’t try so hard to stop the kids from saying it.
I'd argue that where that all stands for Captain Underpants, part of it is also that it's a comic book series for kids that features two kids who constantly disobey their teachers and principal. Dav Pilkey, the author of Captain Underpants, has ADHD and dyslexia and has been open about the fact that he was punished very often for both of these things. The reason why many adults find Captain Underpants distasteful is not only because of fart and poop jokes, though that is certainly a factor, it's that the series is for those kids who can't focus, who struggle in school academically because the author himself was a kid like that, and as a result Captain Underpants has some pretty strong anti-authority messages. For example:
Dab Pilkey genuinely has the best ‘about the author’ I’ve ever read and I think it’s a crime that it hasn’t been included yet
Dav Pilkey is not even in the vicinity of fucking around, is he.
bananasofthorns