Web Surfing Spider

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
trickstarbrave
thedreadvampy

male gaze is not ‘when person look sexy’ or ‘when misogynist make film’

death of the author is not ‘miku wrote this’

I don’t think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what’s in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it’s utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn’t mean ‘i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot’ - it may in fact often mean ‘this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn’t intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it’s worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it’s there.’ it’s important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it’s important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn’t mean ‘finding a lady sexy’ or ‘looking with a sexual lens’, it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it’s important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can’t get a grip on male gaze beyond ‘sexual imagery’, you’re really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

sisification

#also like. male gaze isnt just about individual films. its about Trends that are common and happen across All of cinema#pointing to specific movies is about using them as an example to illustrate a point#the point of the concept isnt to be a gotcha at specific movies its about pointing out trends and the limited worldview and scope#of hollywood filmmaking and especially from that specific era#its about how filmmaking reflects a very specific worldview of a very specific dominant group#and it gets a LOT more complicated if you apply it to cinema that isnt western that has its own history#and especially when you bring in the intersections of race class queerness and other identities#that have their own context and their own history and nuances to how they relate to this concept…#you dont just slap it on any random movie you dont like to make it look bad.

kotaboda
kotaboda

Comprehensive Crop Guide for Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

There wasn't a single guide with all the information on it for hybrid crops, that and especially for the hybrid recipes it was kinda inconsistent across guides. So I compiled all the info from 5 guides (sourced in the sheet) into 4 google sheets: 1st gen crops, 2nd gen crops, 1st gen fruits, 2nd gen fruits. They have prices, growing seasons, grow times, etc all on one page.

If you would like to also use this sheet to try and keep easier track of which ones you made, you can just copy it and modify your copy. I'm still in progress of my first game soooo I'm using this to keep track and use as reference.

I still need to get the regular fruit sell prices and seasons real quick, and the sell prices of the 2nd gen fruits, and some of the info I still need to confirm myself but yea! For the most part complete. If anyone has any info they'd like to contribute to it just reply to the post or reblog it or something.

SoS: AWL Crop Breeding
1st Gen Crop Hybrids S Rank,Carrot,Melon,Potato,Strawberry,Sweet Potato,Tomato,Turnip,Watermelon,Acquired Carrot 🍂❄️ 195 G,Camelo,Pocaro,C
Google Docs
reblogging this for future reference I haven't gotten as far as making hybrids yet though I'm still in year 1
vaspider
sirfrogsworth

image

I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help.
He went to guidance counselors for help.
He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.

jenroses

Graduated high school in 1990. There was one guy in my class who was bullied and called gay because... he liked wearing eyeliner. That's it. he had a girlfriend. He's still, afaik, straight and cis. But he wore one item of makeup and had a fashion sense and that was enough. I left my small town and went to college at an extremely liberal private college and immediately met trans and gay and bisexual and lesbian people and started considering my own identity, which it had not been safe to do AT ALL in high school.

And later learned that a number of people I'd known in high school were queer. By later, I mean 20 years later when we all found each other on facebook.

vaspider

Kids started calling me a "lesbo" on the playground and beating me up for it while I was in elementary school. I became "boy crazy" as a form of self defense. If I was a slut, at least I wasn't a dyke.

It was a joke in my family that my youngest sibling hated dresses, which of course were mandatory for "girls." Ha ha, it's funny, ha ha. Because of course we just have to put up with wearing dresses.

That's my brother. Jake. He graduated from HS in 2001.

Fuck that asshole. We broke ourselves trying to survive. Some of us didn't.

websurfingspider

I knew that I hated, hated, being a girl, when I was 3 years old. I knew throughout my life that I would have given anything to not be a girl, that girls confused me and I couldn’t relate to them at all, that people making assumptions about what I like or how I think due to my “girl” status pissed me off. It always felt like something that was forced on me against my will and didn’t fit.

Did I know that I was trans during the 90s in elementary school? I’d never heard that word before, because people didn’t talk about that kind of thing in front of kids. I barely knew what being gay was, because my mom happened to be friends with a gay man. But if I had had access to information about these things, I would have recognized right away that I was trans. Because I knew in my soul that the girl everyone wanted me to be wasn’t me.

born in the wrong body doesn't describe me though I was born in MY body and other people imposed THEIR notions of gender onto it
whetstonefires

inquiridor asked:

What differs a Bronze Age Monarchy from a Feudal or Modern State Monarchy? For whatever reson I have always been given the impression that Bronze Age Monarchy is the ancient version of either the former or the later, but that does not sound right.

racefortheironthrone answered:

Yeah, that would be a major misconception.

image

Bronze Age monarchies:

  • were far more centralized than medieval monarchies, with large, year-round palace complexes that functioned not just as fortresses but also as judicial centers, religious centers, storehouses, state planning apparati, and so on. To operate all these various functions, they employed a large bureaucracy that had, if not a monopoly, something of an oligopoly, on literacy, numeracy, and higher learning.
  • were highly involved in planning the economy, from organizing irrigation and other labor-intensive farming practices to keeping detailed records on production and taxation to coordinating the complex network of international trade that regulated the flow of both key commodities like tin but also luxury goods.
  • had more of a monopoly on military force, especially when it came to elite units like chariots. Training an archer and a driver to work in unison with a team of horses specifically bred to the task and custom chariots was a long and expensive process that only a monarch could provide the necessary surplus food and other resources for.
  • were not Christian. I can’t stress enough how important this was as a structural force - Bronze Age monarchs did not have to deal with a large, European-wide, literate bureaucracy, with immense cultural power, that owned more land than they did. This isn’t to say that there was no interaction between the temples and the state - I’ve talked recently about the tendency of Bronze Age monarchs to either be god-kings or priest-kings - but that the terms of interaction between the two much more heavily favored the state.

By contrast, medieval monarchies - and I’m aware that the term is something of a moving target, because what it meant to be a king in CE 600 is very different from what it means in CE 1100 or CE 1600 - were:

  • decentralized. They had small, peripatetic courts, and initially almost no bureaucracy. Governing power was much more broadly distributed down to the regional and local level through feudal contracts, and it was a long and very fraught process for the monarchs to gradually wrestle that power back.
  • much less engaged in the economy. Aside from tariffs and monetary policy, which is important, you don’t really see medieval monarchs telling peasants when to plow and which fields (outside of the monarch’s own personal fiefs), because that was an interference with the decentralized manorial system. You see fewer and smaller building projects, in no small part because the monarch usually couldn’t afford to do them.
  • had less of a monopoly on violence. While the feudal exchange was supposed to give kings military service in exchange for land, in practice feudal levies could be slow to form, quick to disperse, and very fractious about their terms of service. This meant in practice that the nobility could exercise more hard power than their nominal overlords, which is why noble revolts were a common feature. Similarly, it took a long time for the monarchs to establish the necessary fiscal architecture for assembling professional armies and then eventually turning those professional armies into standing armies and then eventually turning those armies against the nobility - and by that point, we’re not really talking about the Medieval period any more.
  • were Christian. And while there could certainly be exceptions of Emperors who picked Popes (instead of the other way around) or kings who could weirdly judo-flip their piety into Galician-style control of their national church, over time the pendulum definitely swung in favor of the Church having more power than any one monarch. They were wealthy, their wealth tended to grow over time because they were a corporate institution that invested their profits back into the company, they had huge amounts of cultural power, they had huge amounts of political power, and so on.
cherumie
parakeet

remember when u were a kid and the movies you could watch were limited to like. whatever was on tv at that moment and the like 4 VHS tapes you had. do not miss that

parakeet

rb this and put in the tags what movie u watched over and over and over again as a kid. mine was the lion king

the dark crystal labyrinth the live action TMNT movies and my oma's lovingly typewriter-labeled pirated-from-TV copies of winnie the pooh and disney movies
bookwyrmbran
oldmanlogan

can we talk about the ups strike can we PLEASE talk about the ups strike

oldmanlogan

image
image
image
image

i know since writers and actors are already striking thats gonna take up most of the news space on social media but like. ups has until july 31st to meet the teamster's demands and if not then theyre going on the biggest strike against a single corporation since the early 1900s. the uaw (auto manufacturers union) contract is up this fall, and i believe the alu (amazon labor union) is as well. there's a huge possibility that they might strike as well, depending on how long the ups strike lasts.

im seeing a lot of talk about hollywood going down but i want to see more talk about labor rights and working class solidarity across the board... like A Lot of shit is about to go down

we're about to see a lot more propaganda by more than just hollywood, we're about to see a lot of bullshit political moves on local, state, and federal levels. dont fall for it. workers have power.

headspace-hotel

image
wiisagi-maiingan

There are already news articles saying that striking UPS workers will kill people by refusing to deliver medical supplies and other vital necessities.

That is propaganda.

Striking workers are not withholding medical supplies, UPS is holding medical supplies and other necessities hostage because they don’t want to pay their employees a living wage.

anarcho-smarmyism
methed-up-marxist

The idea the question is just "will living conditions improve or worsen for people in thr first world" is absurd. They will become more stable and conducive to human flourishing but they will be worse by any capitalist metric. We will consume less but we will do it with a level of agency humans have never known. We will travel less but we will never be compelled to sit in traffic, we will eat a narrower range of foods but we will make sure everyone eats, we will consume less cultural products but our culture will stop being an ammalgamation of products. Its a qualitative change whose character is far more importsnt than any underlying quantiative change a capitalist logbook of GDP would be able to reflect. And in exchange for finally living a worthwhile life we get to not rip the heart and soul out of the rest of the world and live on the backs of despotic imperialism

prismatic-bell
defilerwyrm

Let people grow.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.

got-doctor

Still call it out and question it ….

defilerwyrm

Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change. 

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.

x-cetra

We can’t change the world if we decide people can’t change.

sarasa-cat

Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

Folks. This shit needs to stop.

bisexualbaker

People who have changed for the better are incredibly precious to me. They’ve had a harder fight than I have in many ways, and I admire them greatly for the work they’ve done and how far they’ve come. We may not always see eye-to-eye, but I am very grateful they are here, because they remind me of two things:

First, the evidence that people are not doomed to be one way forever, but can become better than they were. That means that there is an actual, tangible goal to standing up for our rights: That, even if we can’t change everyone’s mind, we might someday be able to change enough minds that we can be safe.

And second, that if I ever mess up, that it won’t be the end; there will still be a path back for me to being the kind of person I want to be.

rattusrattus3
decolonize-the-left

Waiting for people to fuck up so you can cancel them, gatekeeping, communities self-policing to the point of self-destruction, debating each other's validity, communities infighting over terminology, fighting over the Best way to exist, trying to define what a Bad Community Member is/does, vilifying those people.

Besties I think we fucked up and internalized the surveillance state or the omni-present judgment of god or purity culture or perhaps just maybe all 3

decolonize-the-left

image

Yeah

ribbonsandnightshade
moonshinemagpie

There are little romance subplots all around me irl and I don't have the time to turn any of them into novels

Today I went to my favorite Italian restaurant and was seated at the table nearest the kitchen. We noticed a change to the menu. The list of pastas had been replaced by just "pasta of the day." We asked what the pasta of the day was. The waiter told us it was a mystery. So we ordered it, and when it came it was pasta with eggs and bacon, and I was so surprised and delighted by this unexpected whimsy that I started to clap. And then I noticed the chef watching me from the doorway and smiling. He had clearly come out wanting to see what people's reactions would be.

I'm not saying I love the chef or that the chef loves me. I am saying that is a seed with which to grow a romance that I don't have time to write.

moonshinemagpie

Romance seedling of the day:

Tonight I went to a party and a woman asked me my name.

"Anna," I said.

"This confirms my theory," she said loudly, to the entire room. People stopped to listen. "ALL Anna's are drop dead gorgeous!"

I felt v flattered. I asked for her name.

She flashed me a grin. "Anna."


Irl, do I love her and does she love me? No. But this is the seed of another romance book I don't have the time to write.

moonshinemagpie

I was miserable. At a parade! All of my friends were drunk and misbehaving and smelled of rancid tequila. I felt alone and about a million years old. The sun was glaring daggers into my eyeballs.

And then! At this parade! A very large beautiful man I didn't know! Saw me squinting! Said, "I'm can block the sun for you" and stepped in front of me. My sun-blindness cleared into a vision of his gentle smile.

He was a mathematics professor! Very sober, soft-spoken, kind. Did not insult my drunk friends but also stood carefully apart from them. The perfect balance.

Do I love him? No. But he's a romantic hero in a book somewhere in the multiverse.

moonshinemagpie

#these are very good example of what just looking and watching can add to your writing#i do this - not always for romance purposes but i just PAY ATTENTION to the people around me#because ordinary people are interesting and everyone has their own story#and they can inspire you in ways you'd never come up with yourself

Yes! This was a post about getting into the writing mindset.

I wasn't trying to share special memories or make a statement about the goodness of humanity (totally fine if that's what you got from this!). But this is a tool any writer could add to their toolbox: finding tidbits from life not merely through neutral observation but by observing the world through the lens of your own writing philosophy.

I write romance books. The romance genre at its best gives every kind of person the opportunity to be the hero of their own story. For me, observing the world through my writing philosophy means acknowledging the heroism intrinsic in us all. Thinking: What if this person were the romantic hero? Why would someone fall in love with them? For folks writing different kinds of stories, the approach may differ, but it'll still be creatively generative.

girlwearingredshoes
labelleizzy

image

Ahhhh. Delicious.

☕🍵☕ 🧋☕🍵☕

cronepunk

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An infographic titled "Here's Your Guide to Tea Around the World" has illustrations of various types of teas and the following descriptions.

Gong Fu China
Tea ceremony involving the ritual preparation and presentation of tea

Afternoon Tea UK
Tea and cakes, sandwiches, or biscuits, traditionally served with black tea and milk

Masala Chai India
Black tea made with cardamom, milk, brown sugar, and spices

Bubble Tea Taiwan
A combination of tea, milk, syrup, and tapioca balls or "boba"

Noon Chai Pakistan
Also known as Kashmiri or Pink Tea, made with special tea leaves, milk, salt, baking soda, and pistachios

Sweet Tea USA
Black tea steeped with sugar and served over ice

Matcha Tea Japan
Tea from finely ground powder of green tea leaves

Po Cha Tibet
Thick black tea with milk, salt, and creamy yak butter

Black Tea Kenya
Can be served as is, with milk, or with sugar

Cha Yen Thailand
Ceylon of Assam iced tea with sugar, condensed milk, and star anise

Touareg Tea Morocco
Green tea with fresh mint and sugar

Teh Tarik Malaysia
"Pulled tea" made with black tea, sugar, and frothy condensed milk

headspace-hotel
headspace-hotel

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia apart from the Chinese...which were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

dendrytes

Invasion ecologists are taking seriously how many of our commonly-used terms reinforce xenophobia.

- Time to retire “alien” from the invasion ecology lexicon

- The Language of Invasion Ecology

- Aliens & Invaders & Exotics, Oh My: The Language of Invasive Biology

headspace-hotel

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

bisexualbaker

dendrytes:

headspace-hotel:

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia apart from the Chinese...which were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

Invasion ecologists are taking seriously how many of our commonly-used terms reinforce xenophobia.

- Time to retire “alien” from the invasion ecology lexicon

- The Language of Invasion Ecology

- Aliens & Invaders & Exotics, Oh My: The Language of Invasive Biology

I had a discussion with someone I work with about the term "pioneer species" and the rather inaccurate and questionable colonialism-tied implications.

I prefer "disaster species," but "pioneer species" is still the typically used term.

Okay wait. Wasn’t there that post about the word “pokemon” being used in the early 20th century or something? About how it meant someone who was really slow or something?

Either I’m misremembering it, or there may be a connection here...

headspace-hotel

Pokeweed comes from an Algonquin word translating to "dye plant" so it's probably not related.

sparklyeevee

Wait wait wait is that why USAmericans would rather do all the nonsense involved in importing fucking quinoa rather than like... this is why amaranth is classified as a noxious weed in so many places, isn't it? Because a hardy pseudocereal that just grows wherever would like, help poor people not fucking starve? And while there are native amaranths in a lot of the US, it's pretty damn cosmopolitan, so many immigrants would know what to do with it, because there was also amaranth where they lived before?

headspace-hotel

A lot of the way we live is focused around avoiding the aesthetic appearance of poverty, yeah.

omniliquid

So, it seems what you're saying is more or less: If people could even partially live off the food growing in their neighborhood, they wouldn't be as exploitable. If they worked together to build a community farm that built solidarity and diversified nutrition, they would be even less exploitable. So the exploiters use laws and propaganda to avoid such things as much as possible.

So maybe we should be doing more sustainable farming, community gardens, homegrown fibres, and generally more pleasing and diverse environments in our "lawns" (while doing due diligence to ensure that we aren't causing inadvertant ecological problems)?

That is punk as hell. I am getting many ideas and many questions. Maybe I'll do research and post something when the Texas heat dies down enough that I can think.

headspace-hotel

Absolutely.

I haven't been able to read about it in much depth yet but there's this concept called food sovereignty which is basically people especially marginalized people having agency over their food systems instead of relying on Corporation which controls their resources

I think gardening and knowing plants and growing food and useful plants as part of a COMMUNITY is very powerful because it creates a kind of safety net that you can partly rely on for your basic needs instead of depending on the whims of Corporation

drdemonprince

Kaitlin Smith of Outdoor Afro & Storied Grounds in Boston has a whole historical tour about this, but a lot of anti-foraging laws and policies came into effect in the US following the abolition of slavery, when migrating, poor Black families would have to rely on wild plants to survive.


(Kaitlin also has a talk about how Black enslaved people in the US grew their own abortifacient plants for... the exact horrifying reason you might think. If you are in the Boston area and a Black person or close loved one to one, her tours are for you! Go check them out.)

queersicles

Also if you're in the Midwest, Alexis Nikole Nelson AKA @blackforager does really videos about plants, foraging, and the history of racism against black and indigenous people in the US

oscillatingmadness

This ties deeply into indigenous oppression as well. One of the first peoples targeted by for foraging/trespassing law and eliminating "weeds" was indigenous peoples.

It's well documented that there was no trespassing or law against foraging in early US history. It's even documented that the founding fathers thought foraging, and the land's bounty, was a god given right as it kept many alive in the early colonial days.

Once the US government was well established, 100 years later, and expanding west rapidly, trespassing and foraging became outlawed for two reasons.

One was so that towns near indian settlements could have a reason to shoot and harass them. Townships claimed a large excess of food growing forest around them, forest that natives had cultivated for generations as a primary food source, and then forced them natives as they were "trespassing." Not even getting into that native NA agriculture is food forests....

Second, was after the civil war, plantation owners still needed workers. One of the surefire ways to get them was to criminalize any way to live off the land, and make the only available work for black folks, plantation work.

From what I've seen, the criminalization of foraging is far more extreme in the south, lesser in the west, and least in the north east.

But it all ties into classism, racism, and forcing the poor people of the country to benefit the wealthly. Here's a pretty decent article to kickoff all these ideas.

Food Law Gone Wild: The Law of Foraging
Laws at all levels of government in America increasingly target foraging, the harvest of foods which are not cultivated by man but that grow
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prismatic-bell
elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey

so SAG-AFTRA finally released some official guidance for fans, viewers, creators/influencers, critics, and more during the strike. here's what you need to know:

  1. if you see a publication/news source/journalist talking about a piece of struck work, that's ok. they're allowed to do that.
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2. they're asking regular viewers and fans to DONATE TO STRIKE FUNDS, SHOW UP TO PICKETS IF YOU CAN, and please do NOT boycott streaming services or movies in theaters.

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3. influencers, content creators, cosplayers, and anything in between is still a bit of a grey area, but they're asking people to use their best judgement. "organically" means UNPAID promo (like an invite to a premiere without being paid, being sent a publicity box, letting the company's social media post a photo of you in cosplay, etc).

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obviously this doesn't answer every question, and isn't hard and fast rules for fanworks, but it can at least inform how you personally choose to move forward when posting online and moving publically. i hope this helps!

SAG-AFTRA Strike FAQ: How the Rules Apply to Influencers, Journalists, Cosplayers and More
The SAG-AFTRA strike has sparked a great deal of discussion and confusion about what is forbidden and what is still OK. SAG-AFTRA has put ou
Variety