Centruies Of Thought

An interesting commission from this month- I’ve read the Chabon book and did Pilgrim’s Progress in school, but unfamiliar with the rest! Fun to draw these.

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I'm starting a collection.

watching gen z and millennials make fun of gen alpha has been torturous. "But they're actually stupid" 1. theyre middle schoolers 2. isn't that what older gens said about us? don't you remember being 11?

it truly is just "impulse reaction to cringe <- has not yet unlearned shame"

the cycle continues let me out of here

guys. guys I think we should kill cringe culture

My kids and their friends are Gen Alpha, and they are sweet, sweet kids living though appalling times.

They grew up with the most rigidly binary models of childhood that have existed in my lifetime (girl-glue, anyone?) and been viewed as their earning potential since before they could walk. They have been exploited and abandoned on the internet by their parents, have been exploited on the internet by the algorithm when they were too young to understand it. They are the first large generation of the children of Mommy bloggers, anti-vaxxers, trad wives, and quiverful types.

They’ve survived a pandemic, and had it cut through their schooling in a way that has been enormously traumatic. They have the smallest outdoor range of any generation to date. In their lifetime, climate change has become violently real, socioeconomic disparity has only increased, reactionary movements have increased, and rights that we’ve taken for granted have been rolled back. They are the generation of British trans kids taking their lives on the now-static youth GIC waiting lists. The American trans kids who are watching their very existence become illegal. They are the generation of creative kids whose arts and humanities funding has been cut to the bone. A generation who have grown up watching soft-lit, queer friendly cartoons, walking out in to a world of violent trans and homophobia.

They are depressed, anxious, afraid. Their aspirations are low, their hopes for the future fragile.

They are clever, and creative, and charming, and brave. And they are KIDS.

Be nice to them, they’re dealing with a lot.

They are clever, and

creative, and charming, and

brave. And they are KIDS.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I know millennials are getting the traditional generational luddite reputation at this point for sneering at smart devices and banging on about privacy and not needing all those fancy functions etc. but I am speaking to you right now as an experienced activist: you have to start seeing your smartphone as your big red glowing weak point. it is a repository of all the information someone could conceivably use to ruin your life, and you carry it around with you all day every day guarded by maybe a 6 digit PIN (or a photo of your face, seriously turn off face unlock right fucking now).

a couple of people I know don't use smartphones at all, because their devices were compromised years back and they spent about a decade being tracked and spied on by the police without any idea. they learned the hard way and we should all pay attention.

Ethiopian Orthodox icon of Saint Michael the Archangel.

Everybody loves that “I never thought the leopards would eat my face” meme but if you actually talk to the people who voted for the leopards-eating-faces party and then had their face eaten by leopards, most of them are just like “Okay, but if you look at the statistics a lot of people’s faces were eaten during previous regime as well”, or “The leopards only ate my face because of unrelated social problems we inherited from the prior government”, or “My face wasn’t actually eaten by leopards, you need to stop getting your news from biased media sources” or “Sure, voting for this party means that leopards ate my face, but have you seen the other guys?”

All right, this has reached epidemic proportions with the second Trump administration, so I think we need to talk about this again.

The thing I need people to understand is that the main character of the “I never thought leopards would eat my face” story is the equivalent of those Chick tract sinners who lament their folly once they’re condemned to Hell. Like the “sexy nurse”, it’s an archetype that is in its essence both fictitious and pornographic, attested occasionally in its general shape, but amplified, sensationalized and misrepresented by an industry that repackages the myth for a vast market of readers who crave – crave is the right word – an oversweetened, chemically synthesized self-satisfaction, not even as a solace but as a circlejerk. I find this habit unsavoury in any circumstance, but it’s particularly bad when you are losing, because this ill-founded smug triumphalism obscures the work needed to achieve true success and support.

This is a particular case of the fundamental political relationship of targeted media (by which I include all social media): the things that you hear about outsiders and enemies through these channels are disproportionately hand-picked and repainted to appeal to you, and so the picture they paint in aggregate is not really a picture of them; it is a picture of you, rendered in the medium of the other.

Just read this and softly whispered “what the fuck?”

Richard Spencer? Richard Spencer the Nazi dude?

did that punch reset his brain or something?

Sometimes I feel like you guys will call anything Chrisofascism, but then get weirdly defensive of the catholic church. What's up with that.

Trump and Vance really put the tyrant in tantrum, didn't they? Pathetic. Weak, cowardly, sniveling little bullies is all that they are.

I understand that I'm just one person who voted against all of this. I understand that this is just my Tumblr thingy. I understand that when the history of this is written, I will not even be a footnote.

But it is still important to me to go on the public record: The way Trump and Vance treated the President of Ukraine was despicable. It was a betrayal of an ally that is fighting for its very existence. As an American, I am disgusted with the rulers of my country. I am disgusted with their supporters, who ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To the people of Ukraine, I am so sorry. 75 million of us did everything we could to stop this. but there is a white supremacist cancer in America's blood, and the 2024 election confirmed that it has metastasized. For what it's worth, I stand with you, as I stand against the tyrants who disrespected your president today.

yes. when an infant is in the womb it is taught the entirety of torah by an angel, but upon birth the knowledge is slapped out of it (niddah 30b v. 21,23), thus imbuing the child with the characteristic of sitra acha, i.e. the evil impulse resulting from loss of attachment to god

The process of birth is a pure soul, undifferentiated from the One, slamming into the cuckoo clock of material reality, and assuming it's myriad natures while still remaining divine in essence.

correct; thus the sages say the form of the clock is to be taken as a reminder that we have left the timelessness of ein sof, so as to be able to participate in the joy of return to that one. the form of the cuckoo hole we take as the crack in the klipot which allows the one's light to penetrate this world, while the cuckoo herself is the soul which strains upwards to reach the blessed shekhinah. this is why the ari tells us it is a mitzvah to emulate the cartoon mouse

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

I work at a bookstore and hearing one of my male coworkers call smutty romantasy "the downfall of society" because it's "literally just porn" radicalized me

Men have an entire industry. Entire industries dedicated to their sexualities. Let women have fantasy sex. there's not even a camera crew involved.

Left this in the notes

my current collection

it involves a lot of CRTs, that's rarely shown in fictional depictions

The 'all lives matter' MAGA pro-lifers are a Christofascist eugenics movement.

anyways tl;dr on that last post it’s like we’ve reached a point where in popular culture the ancient Greeks are remembered for their mythology and literature (and maybe Athenian democracy) while the Romans are remembered for their patriarchal imperialism, despite the fact that both cultures did plenty of both. and the consequence is that we’ve ended up with a bizarre quasi-gender binary where Greek stuff is for people who like mythology and literature and Roman stuff is for people who like patriarchal imperialism

@finelythreadedsky hopefully ok to reblog with your comments because this is literally exactly it!!

"These right wingers don't follow the REAL teachings of Christ"

They ignore the parts of the Bible which encourage compassion and charity just as easily as a nice Christian ignores the parts about misogyny and bigotry. Religious documents are just documents.

REAL MORAL OF DA POST: the interpretation of religious doctrine is inherently a political act.

JOKE MORAL OF DA POST: become a thelemite