Tag: history

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the colonization of Pacific Islands is the greatest human adventure story of all time.

People using Stone Age technology built voyaging canoes capable of traveling thousands of miles, then set forth against the winds and currents to find tiny dots of land in the midst of the largest ocean on Earth. And having found them, they traveled back and forth, again and again, to settle them —all this, 500 to 1,000 years ago.

But one huge mystery, sometimes called “The Long Pause” leaves a gaping hole in this voyaging timeline.

Western Polynesia—the islands closest to Australia and New Guinea—were colonized around 3,500 years ago. But the islands of Central and Eastern Polynesia were not settled until 1,500 to 500 years ago. This means that after arriving in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, Polynesians took a break—for almost 2,000 years—before voyaging forth again.

Then when they did start again, they did so with a vengeance: archaeological evidence suggests that within a century or so after venturing forth, Polynesians discovered and settled nearly every inhabitable island in the central and eastern Pacific.

Nobody knows the reason for The Long Pause, or why the Polynesians started voyaging again.

Several theories have been proposed—from a favorable wind caused by a sustained period of El Niño, to visible supernovas luring the stargazing islanders to travel, to ciguatera poisoning caused by algae blooms.

Enter Moana, the latest Disney movie, set in what appears to be Samoa, even though most American audiences will see it as Hawaii.

Moana—pronounced “moh-AH-nah,” not “MWAH-nah” means “ocean,” and the character is chosen by the sea itself to return the stolen heart of [the island goddess] Te Fiti. An environmental catastrophe spreading across the island makes the mission urgent. And despite admonitions from her father against anyone going beyond the protective reef, Moana steals a canoe and embarks on her quest.

Moana’s struggle to learn to sail and get past the reef of her home island sets the stage for her learning of true wayfinding. It also shows traces of Armstrong Sperry’s stirring, classic book Call It Courage, and Tom Hanks’s Castaway.

But it is at the end of the film that a different and powerful angle of the story is revealed: Moana’s people had stopped voyaging long ago, and had placed a taboo—another Polynesian world—on going beyond the reef.

With the success of Moana’s mission and her having learned the art of wayfinding, her people start voyaging again.

And so the Long Pause comes to an end, Disney style, with a great fleet of canoes setting forth across the ocean to accomplish the greatest human adventure of all time. I admit to being moved by this scene.

As someone who lectures on traditional oceanic navigation and migration, I can say resoundingly that it is high time the rest of the world learned this amazing story.

The Smithsonian | How the Story of “Moana” and Maui Holds Up Against Cultural Truths
(via leafo-flameo)

slenderboobs:

slutshame-alexanderhamilton:

historicalmenandotherdumbshit:

usnavis-hat:

casper-the-friendly-being:

kabuki-akuma:

dzzjjjtttwubwubwubwub:

mutant-kidzz:

awkwardontheoutside:

adcacai:

acquaintedwithrask:

strawberry-fox:

live-love-laurens:

xxdarkwing:

21st Century AU fic where the founding fathers write the Declaration of Independence using Google Docs

“You guys! Stop deleting everything I write!”

“Unalienable!”
“Inalienable!”

I’M LAUGHING LIKE A MANIAC

“SO HELP ME I WILL LOCK THIS DOCUMENT IF YOU DON"T STOP CHANGING THE FONT SIZE JOHN HANCOCK!!!”

“STOP HIGHLIGHTING EVERYTHING!”

“WHO DELETED THE ENTIRE FUCKING DOCUMENT!”

“FOR THE LAST TIME, WE ARE NOT DECLARING OUR INDEPENDENCE IN COMIC SANS”

“GOUVERNUER MORRIS WILL YOU PLEASE STOP ADDING ‘IN BED’ AFTER EVERY LINE”

ladyhistory

This is a thing of beauty.

I-I found it???? The post???? The post™

“OH MY GOD FRNKLIN SIGNED ON WITH ANOTHER NEW ACCOUNT!”

“Is THAT who just keeps typing pussy?”

“can we just let Thomas finish this?”

“JOHN ADAMS STOP LETTING SAMUEL EDIT THIS WHEN HE’S DRUNK ALL HE DOES IS WRITE SUCK IT ENGLAND. IN THE MIDDLE OF A PARAGRAPH!”

@history-jokes

inklingart:

alexisthenedd:

ironychan:

This is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu.  Everybody knows the Great Pyramid of King Khufu, but you probably don’t know about the Shit Pyramids of his father, King Sneferu.  This is a shame, because they are amazing.

When King Sneferu came to the throne of Egypt, the cool thing that all the pharaohs had was a Step Pyramid, like the original one built by King Djoser and designed by Imhotep (not the mummy).  King Sneferu could easily have had one one because his predecessor King Huni had died before his could be finished. All Sneferu had to do was step in and put the last few blocks on.

But King Sneferu had a vision.  He didn’t want any old Step Pyramid.  He was going to build Egypt’s first smooth-sided pyramid, and make King Huni’s pyramid way taller in the bargain.  It didn’t work.  The core of Huni’s pyramid couldn’t handle the modifications and nowadays the Step Pyramid at Meidum looks like this:

It’s not on a hill – that’s the outer layers of the pyramid that have fallen down all around it.  The name of the structure in Arabic is Heram el-Kaddaab, which means something like The Sort-Of Pyramid.

Anyway, King Sneferu was understandably disappointed and made his pyramid-builders start over from scratch at a different site.  Apparently having learned nothing about the Big Fat Nowhere that hubristic pyramid ambition was going to get him, this pyramid was designed to be even taller and pointier than the last effort!  Too tall and pointy, in fact – the bedrock proved to be less stable than he might have hoped, and by the time the pyramid was half-finished stuff was already moving and cracking inside of it.  There are ceilings in this pyramid that are to this day partially held up by wooden beams.

The builders seem to have panicked and decided that the only way to finish the pyramid without another disaster was to make the top half lighter than the bottom half.  They did this by changing the angle of the slope, ending up with a pyramid that looks like this:

Egyptologists call this one the Bent Pyramid for fairly obvious reasons.  Uniquely among Egyptian Pyramids, it has most of its smooth outer blocks intact, rather than having them all stolen to build other stuff (most of medieval Cairo is built from the skin of the Giza pyramids).  I’m guessing this is because nobody dared touch the thing for fear the whole structure would come down like a giant limestone game of Jenga.

I’m sure the pyramid-builders were very proud of this solution.  Sneferu appears to have been less so.  He had them move over about half a mile and start over.  Again.  Why only half a mile when he had them move 34 miles between the Sort-of Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid is a mystery.  I think he wanted to keep them in sight of the Bent Pyramid so they could look at it and feel ashamed every once in a while.

And there they built Sneferu’s third pyramid, which is called the Red Pyramid.  As pyramids go, it’s a very cautious one – it’s got the shallowest slope rise of any Egyptian pyramid, and while it’s the same height as the Bent Pyramid it spreads its weight over a much greater base area, making it far more stable.  Sneferu seems to have been happy with this one, because he was buried in it.  Either that, or after a forty-eight-year reign he just finally died and that was the pyramid they used because it was the nicest of the three.

These three pyramids together actually contain substantially more stone than the Great Pyramid of Sneferu’s son Khufu.  By the time Sneferu died, his workforce had honed themselves into a lean, mean pyramid-building machine.  They had already made every possible pyramid mistake.  So when Khufu announced that he didn’t just want a great pyramid, but The Great Pyramid, these guys built him a pyramid so fucking great that we now think aliens must have done it.

It was as true in Ancient Egypt as it is now.

THE SHIT PYRAMIDS OF SNEFERU

OH MY GOD

A lesson for the ages.

profmeowmers:

My bros I have been doing a lot of
reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a
story because I love it okay

once upon a time there was a dude in
Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol
hated him some goddamn fascists.

See Spain had recently ended its civil
war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in
Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy
buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty
bullshit

so soon after war breaks out Pujol
travels to his local British embassy and goes “hey I wanna spy on
the Nazis for you”

“who the fuck are you?” say the
British, and kick him out

but Pujol is not deterred! He still
wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German
embassy instead. “hey” he
says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them”

“yeah
okay” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit”

and
just like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German
intelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and
such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his
way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later
writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England

Pujol
had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon
public library, where he checked out a number of English guide books
and set about just wholesale making shit up

this
is slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely
did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were
basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen,
because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a litre of
wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so
that’s probably the same right?

Here
is where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves
this. “wow this dude is a
great spy” they say, because apparently none of them had ever been
the England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new
awesome spy that the British start to get worried

you
see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly
unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by
reading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio
transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and
reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England.
The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by
parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept
the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed
in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies

so
there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a
prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as
double agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking
up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great
spy- a spy the British do not have in their jail

“oh
shit” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they
have to and from this mysterious super spy.

“hey
wait” says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending.
“someone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio”

At
this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the
British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally
an Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t
interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again.
It wasn’t until MI5 started
asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “oh yeah we
know that guy”

so in
1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially
becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case
officer so he can start making up even better bullshit

and he
does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d
recruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to
disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+
sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK

none of these people actually exist

Pujol
just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of
their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of
MI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but
ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive
in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy
network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agents

Pujol,
now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a
huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge
intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of
attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation
Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII
Adventures). Obviously you know how this ended

crazily
enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent.
After the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which
require personal authorization from Hitler), and a
Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)

unable
to resist being totally fucking ridiculous,
Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this
time against the USSR. “no,” he said “just help me fake my own
death and then I’m moving to Venezuela”

and
that’s exactly what he did. Juan Garcia Pujol died in 1988, at the
age of 76

empress-delilah:

empress-delilah:

dornishjedi:

wannabanauthor:

kablob17:

cindehella:

lord-kitschener:

arealliveghost:

stillvisions:

maybenotboring:

and at no point has anyone thought “maybe we should not build a giant flammable goat this year”

They tried fireproofing. And armed guards. And fences, and cameras… Sadly the wikipedia page has been cut down by super srs folks to remove all the awesome Keystone cops tales of the goat’s history (emphasis added by me)

  • 1966 Stig Gavlén came up with the idea of a giant goat made out of straw. But it turned out that Gavlén organisation did not have enough funding for the goat. Then Harry Ström, who at that time was the chairman of the Södra Kungsgatan Ideella Förening (a non-profit society), decided to pay the whole cost for the goat out of his own pocket. The goat stood until midnight of New Year’s Eve, when it went up in flames. The perpetrator, who was from Hofors,Gästrikland, was found and convicted of vandalism. The first goat was insured and Ström got all his money back.
  • 1967 Nothing happened.
  • 1968 The goat survived. A fence was built around the goat. Previously it was popular for children to play hide-and-seek inside and around the goat. There was also a rumor that one night a couple had sex inside the goat. In subsequent years the inside of the goat was protected by a chicken-wire net.
  • 1969 The goat was burnt down on New Year’s Eve.
  • 1970 The goat was burnt down only six hours after it was assembled. Two very drunk teenagers were connected with the crime. With help from several financial contributors the goat was reassembled out of lake reed.
  • 1971 The Southern Merchants got tired of their goats being burned and stopped building the goat. The Natural Science Club (Naturvetenskapliga Föreningen:NF) from the School of Vasa (Vasaskolan) took over. 
  • 1972 The goat collapsed because of sabotage.
  • 1973 N/A
  • 1974 Burnt.
  • 1975 N/A
  • 1976 Hit by a car.
  • 1977 N/A
  • 1978 Again, the goat was kicked to pieces.
  • 1979 The goat was burnt even before it was erected. A new one was built and fireproofed. It was destroyed and broken into pieces.
  • 1980 Burnt down on Christmas Eve.
  • 1981 Nothing happened.
  • 1982 Burnt down on Lucia (13 December).
  • 1983 The legs were destroyed.
  • 1984 Burnt down on 12 December, the night before Lucia.
  • 1985 The 12.5 metre (41 ft) tall goat of the Natural Science Club was featured in the Guinness Book of Records for the first time. Even though the goat was enclosed by a 2 metres (6.6 ft) high metal fence, guarded by Securitas and even soldiers from the Gävle I 14 Infantry Regiment, it was burnt down in January.
  • 1986 The merchants of Gävle decided they were willing to build the goat once again. From 1986 on two goats were built, the Southern Merchants’ and the School of Vasa’s. The big goat burnt down the night before Christmas Eve.
  • 1987 A heavily fireproofed goat was built. It got burnt down a week before Christmas.[21]
  • 1988 Nothing happened to the goat, but gamblers were for the first time able to gamble on the fate of the goat with English bookmakers.
  • 1989 Again, the goat burnt down before it was assembled. Financial contributions from the public were raised to rebuild a goat that was burnt down in January. In March 1990 another goat was built, this time for the shooting of a Swedish motion picture called Black Jack.
  • 1990 Nothing happened. The goat was guarded by many volunteers.
  • 1991 The goat was joined by an advertising sled, that turned out to be illegally built. On the morning of Christmas Eve the goat was burnt down. It was later rebuilt to be taken to Stockholm as a part of a protest campaign against the closing of the I 14 Infantry Regiment.
  • 1992 The goat was burnt down eight days after it was built. The Natural Science Club’s goat burnt down the same night. The Southern Merchants’ goat was rebuilt, but burned down on 20 December. The perpetrator of the three attacks was caught and sent to jail. The Goat Committee was founded in 1992.
  • 1993 Once more the goat was featured in the Guinness Book of Records, the School of Vasa’s goat measured 14.9 metres (49 ft). The goat was guarded by taxis and the Swedish Home Guard. Nothing happened.
  • 1994 Nothing happened. The goat followed the Swedish national hockey team to Italy for the World Championship in hockey.
  • 1995 A Norwegian was arrested for attempting to burn down the goat. Burnt down on the morning of Christmas Day. Rebuilt to be standing before the 550th anniversary of Gävle county.
  • 1996 The first time the goat was guarded by webcams, nothing happened.
  • 1997 Damaged by fireworks. The Natural Science Club’s goat was attacked too, but survived with minor damage.
  • 1998 Burnt down on 11 December, even though there was a major blizzard. Was rebuilt.
  • 1999 Burnt down only a couple of hours after it was erected. Rebuilt again before Lucia. The Natural Science Club’s goat was burnt down as well.
  • 2000 Burnt down a couple of days before New Year’s Eve. The Natural Science Club’s goat got tossed in the Gävle river.
  • 2001 Goat set on fire on 23 December by Lawrence Jones, a 51-year-old visitor from Cleveland, Ohio, who spent 18 days in jail and was subsequently convicted and ordered to pay 100,000 Swedish kronor in damages. The court confiscated Jones’s cigarette lighter with the argument that he clearly was not able to handle it. Jones stated in court that he was no “goat burner”, and believed that he was taking part in a completely legal goat-burning tradition. After Jones was released from jail he went straight back to the US without paying his fine. As of 2006 it was still unpaid. The Natural Science Club’s goat was also burnt down.
  • 2002 A 22 year old from Stockholm tried to set the Southern Merchants’ goat on fire, but failed, the goat receiving only minor damage. On Lucia the goat was guarded by Swedish radio and TV personality Gert Fylking.
  • 2003 Burnt down on 12 December.
  • 2004 Burnt 21 December, only three days before Christmas Eve. The fire brigade quickly arrived on the scene, but the goat could not be saved. No new goat was built.
  • 2005 Burnt by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and the gingerbread man, by shooting a flaming arrow at the goat at 21:00 on 3 December. Reconstructed on 5 December. The hunt for the arsonist responsible for the goat-burning in 2005 was featured on the weekly Swedish live broadcast TV3’s “Most Wanted“ (”Efterlyst”) on 8 December.
  • 2006 On the night of 15 December at 03:00, someone tried to set fire to the goat by dousing the right front leg in petrol (gasoline). The red ribbon on that leg was slightly burned and fell off. The lower part of the right leg was scorched, but the rest of the goat failed to light. The leg was repaired that morning. The Natural Science Club’s goat was burned at about 00:40 on 20 December; the vandals were not seen and got away. On the night of 25 December, a drunken man managed to climb up on the goat. Before the police arrived on the scene the man climbed down and disappeared. He did not try to set fire to the goat. The Southern Merchants’ goat survived New Year’s Eve and was taken down on 2 January. It is now stored in a secret location.
  • 2007 The Natural Science Club’s goat was toppled on 13 December and was burned on the night of 24 December. The Southern Merchants’ goat survived.
  • 2008 10,000 people turned out for the inauguration of one of the goats. No back-up goat was built to replace the main goat should the worst happen, nor was the goat treated with flame repellent (Anna Östman, spokesperson of the Goat-committee said the repellent made it look ugly in the previous years, like a brown terrier). On 16 December the Natural Science Club’s Goat was vandalised and later removed. On 26 December there was an attempt to burn down the Southern Merchants’ Goat but patriotic passers-by managed to extinguish the fire. The following day the goat finally succumbed to the flames ignited by an unknown assailant at 03:50 CET.
  • 2009 A person attempted to set the Southern Merchants’ goat on fire the night of 7 December. An unsuccessful attempt was made to throw the Natural Science Club’s goat into the river the weekend of 11 December. The culprit then tried, again without success, to set the goat on fire. Someone stole the Natural Science Club’s goat utilizing a truck the night of 14 December.[36] On the night of 23 December before 04:00 the South Merchant goat was set on fire and was burned to the frame, even though it had a thick layer of snow on its back.[37] The goat had two online webcams which were put out of service by aDoS attack, instigated by computer hackers just before the burning.[38]
  • 2010 On the night of 2 December, arsonists made an unsuccessful attempt to burn the Natural Science Club’s goat.[39] On 17 December, a Swedish news site reported that one of the guards tasked with protecting the Southern Merchants’ goat had been offered payment to leave his post so that the goat could be stolen via helicopter and transported to Stockholm. Both goats survived and were dismantled and returned to storage in early January 2011.
  • 2011 The inauguration of the goat took place on 27 November. The fire-fighters of Gävle sprayed the goat with water to create a coating of ice in the hope of protecting it from arson. The goat was burnt down in the early morning of 2 December.
  • 2012 The inauguration of the goat took place on 2 December. It was burnt just ten days later in the hours before midnight of 12 December, one day before Lucia.
  • 2013 As in 2006 and 2007, the straw used to build the goat has been soaked in anti-flammable liquid to prevent it from burning in the event of an arson attack. The inauguration ceremony took place on 1 December. But despite the anti-flammable liquids the goat was burnt down on the early morning of December 21.

Any history of plots involving a DDoS attack on the security cameras, a plot to steal it with a helicopter and flaming arrows shot by people dressed as Santa and the Gingerbread man is just plain hilarious in my book.

I’m laughing so much about this goat. obviously if you build something big enough people are going to have sex in it and burn it down. obviously

what the fuck is going on in sweden

how will the saga continue this year

2015: The goat was burned.

I lost it at the last comment.

Reblog for the season.

the time of the goat is upon us!

2016 update: it’s the 50th anniversary so, naturally, it needs a birthday party. Streamed, apparently w a fucking english commentator for all the world to enjoy. It’s gonna be cringeworthy for sure. Also, it’s wearing a bow tie. 

which probably won’t dissuade aspiring goat murderers any more than its cutesy tweets have, but can’t fault them for trying. 

lmao ok

it lasted a couple of hours.

hauntedfalcon:

constable-connor:

adhdkirabraginsky:

marauders4evr:

factsinallcaps:

fenrisesque:

factsinallcaps:

sightless-raiton:

factsinallcaps:

THE LIST OF THINGS NINTENDO PREDATES INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO:

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES FRANCHISE

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISHENHOWER’S BIRTH

THE NOVEL “DRACULA”

THE NOVELS “THE TIME MACHINE” AND “WAR OF THE WORLDS” BY H.G. WELLS

THE FIRST MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES

THE DISCOVERY OF HELIUM ON EARTH

… Okay. I believe you. But like… how?

NINTENDO WAS FOUNDED IN 1889 AS A CARD GAME MANUFACTURER AND ALL THOSE OTHER THINGS HAPPENED IN 1890 OR LATER

WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT DRACULA WAS EARLIER WHAT THE FUCK

YOU COULD WRITE A DRACULA FANFIC WHERE DRACULA TRAVELS TO JAPAN AND BUYS A PACK OF NINTENDO BRAND PLAYING CARDS AND IT WOULD BE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE. SAME DEAL FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES.

No no no no no!

Don’t write fanfic!

Those things are in the public domain!

You can legally write, publish, and sell a Dracula book where Dracula travels to Japan and buys a pack of Nintendo brand playing cards!

Same deal for Sherlock Holmes!

what if you write a book where dracula and sherlock holmes travel to japan at the same time and reach for the last pack of nintendo brand playing cards that they both wanted

Dracula travels to Japan for some Nintendo cards and a murder takes place. Is it Dracula? Who knows, but Sherlock Holmes has been asked to solve the murder and must visit Nintendo and purchase a pack for analysis.

Dracula and Sherlock Holmes travel to Japan at the same time and reach for the last pack of Nintendo brand playing cards. 

Their hands touch.

Fun fact

travelerofthetimestreams:

smallrevolutionary:

jeankd:

wtfzurtopic:

beoriseyo:

fatbodypolitics:

giizhigaate:

the-yaadihla-girls:

istamaza:

thecuriousviolet:

Native Americans weren’t allowed US citizenship until 1924.

Let that sink in. We lived here first…for thousands of years. And less than a hundred years ago we were finally given citizenship.

We also fought in WWI despite not being US citizens.

In Arizona, natives weren’t granted the right to vote until 1948. Think how that type of neglect ties into resource colonization as infrastructure was developed within years prior. 

In addition: the indigenous peoples of Canada were not recognized as Human Beings until the year 1960.
Now let that shit sink in.

In the US it wasn’t until 1968 that the Indian Civil Rights Act was passed and allowed for the right to freedom of speech / assembly / press, a jury trial, the right to an attorney etc. It’s so fucking frustrating.

and it wasn’t until 1978 that we were legally allowed to practice our own religions. in a nation founded on religious freedoms, it was illegal to practice our own religions. in our own country. how fucked up is that?

Aaaand Native Americans weren’t entitled to their own languages (had no legal rights to teach them in their schools, use them in business) until the Native American Language Act of 1990.

I teach this to my students, because NONE of it is in a single textbook. This is and act of indoctrination

Boosting because I didn’t know any of this.

These facts should be known by all.

ineptshieldmaid:

magickedteacup:

curlicuecal:

deathcomes4u:

greenjudy:

joebidenfanclub:

it seems so strange to me that the only people it is socially acceptable to live with (once you reach a certain stage in life) are sexual partners? like why can’t i live with my best friend? why can’t i raise a child with them? why do i need to have sex with someone in order to live with them? why do we put certain relationships on a pedestal? why don’t we value non-sexual relationships enough? why do life partners always have to be sexual partners?

My grandmother and grandfather more or less adopted my grandmother’s best friend back in the 50s. After my grandfather died (before I was born, back in 1968 or so) they continued to keep house together, platonic best friends, and they hung together until they died, a few months apart, in 2007.

It’s quite recently, as far as I can tell, that living arrangements like that have stopped being regarded as normal.

It’s absolutely a new thing to find this stuff weird, and it has a lot to do with media pretending that the nuclear family and marriage are the only reasons to live with other people.

I’ve lived in a 3 adult household my whole life. My parents and their best friend. This was never weird to me, even though everyone my age thought it was because the media never portrayed these kinds of housing arrangements. As far as i was concerned, I just had an extra non-blood parent.

According to my parents, it was very common in the 70′s-80′s to buy houses with your friends, because it was financially smart to do so (so long as you were certain they were close friends who wouldn’t fall out with you and fuck everything up). Houses and house payments are much more manageable when you split the bills 3-4 ways instead of just two.

Millenials aren’t the first to think it’s a great idea to just shack up with friends. That’s housemating without the hastle of living with strangers. It’s still a good idea to shack up with people you’ve known a long time so you know how you’ll get on living together, but still. In the current economy, it’s pretty much now our only option for affording anything.

I think, and I’m not researched on this, but I think conservatives probably tried to suppress images of non-nuclear families because they likely thought it would encourage ideas of polygamy, polyamory, open sexual relationships with or without marriage, as well as other relationship types they thought of as un-christian or unsavoury. I could be wrong, but that shit wouldn’t surprise me.

(And i want to make a note that there’s also a disturbing amount of asexual denial around that makes people go ‘if they’re living together they HAVE to be banging because why wouldn’t they?’ and that shit both creeps me out and annoys me no end. People can be in relationships without sex. People can live together without sex. Sex is not the be-all and end-all and people being taught to think it is really need to stop).

Don’t let the media fool you into believing you can only live with a sexual partner or blood family. Someone somewhere has an agenda for making these seem abnormal, when really it’s just practical.

A lot of people acted like it was super weird when two of my brothers decided to move states with me when I started my postdoc. I got really used to giving a little canned speech about it because it seemed to bewilder people so much. (Their leases happened to be up! We could share rent! They wanted to try somewhere new!)

The notable exception was my grandma, who was just like, “oh, yes, when we were young my sister and I decided to move cross-country together and it was lovely.”

More of this kind of thing for everyone, pls.

The implication that close sibling relationships must also be a warning sign for incest also peeves me off; what kind of society are we living in anyway

#my mom’s a historian#does a lot of research#one of the main takeaways from the census data of literally every US census since the beginning#is that the nuclear family has never been the actual norm#nobody really ever lived like that#and a lot don’t now#and it’s clearly artificial and not ideal for most people#every household in the census had at least a grandma#usually a cousin#some rando#someone living in the house who wasn’t mom or dad or kid#always someone#usually several someones#some uncles etc.#unmarried aunties#that sort of person#but often unrelated friends#we’ve never really lived alone#that’s not how families work#that’s not how humans work  

tags by @bomberqueen17