TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)
In 1997 Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran, and other members of the Moran family were invited to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they were welcomed in Freetown by Sierra Leone’s President and then flown by helicopter to the country’s interior. There, in the small village of Senehun Ngola, Mary and Bendu Jabati met and sang this song together for the first time. Years earlier, Bendu’s grandmother had told her that this song, which had been passed down in her village from mother to daughter for centuries, would one day reunite her to long-lost relatives.
In addition to finding out where in Africa her ancestors were abducted into slavery, Mary Moran discovered the meaning of the Mende song: a processional hymn for the final farewell to the spirit, it was sung in Senehun Ngola by women as they prepared the body of a loved one for burial.
(The OP’s link leads to a site with a recording of the song sung by both Mary Moran and her mother, Amelia)
due to factors such as “time pressure” and “tulle is of the devil” my expectations for this shirt are not high. but i spent a lot of time imagining these button bands and they turned out pretty nice
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progress on this includes:
attached the back and the yoke; did the yoke with wonky little panels for reinforcement(?), as it’s not double-layered, and for a fun symmetrical piecing moment
attached fronts to back at shoulders (not pictured)
constructed a collar and collar stand and arranged Leafs upon it
started hand stitching down leafs. it would be more elegant to do this before assembling the collar, but i can’t visualize how both the seam allowances and the crease in the collar work + the tulle is itchy if misplaced
have yet to do sleeves, side seams, finishing hand stitching on collar, attaching collar, sleeve plackets (on tulle??), cuffs, Buttonholes (evil to me)
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Shirt’s done except for finishing the collar handstitching & touching up some of the buttonholes (used a friend’s fancy machine with varying success). Lots of things wrong with it that are hard to see from more than three feet away
No pictures of it on me because I have yet to obtain a suitable layering piece which is a really funny problem to have!
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buttons!!!!!!
Finished the collar! If you want to make embroidery you cut out of some tulle look like it is On There For Real this is what I did
roughly cut out and place embroidery. baste with glue stick (glue sticks to the back of the embroidery and not the tulle)
tack it down with a color matched running stitch (or whatever) along the stems and centers
cut off more tulle from the edges with tinier scissors
tack down the edges. with, in this case, a different thread color, do a faux chain stitch where you grab the very end of a stitch from the extant embroidery
like so
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this has the benefit of kind of squashing down any tulle that didn’t get trimmed
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and now it moves with the fabric and doesn’t stick up at the edges!
i swear to god i regret reblogging that estrolabs post because absolutely no one is focusing on the actual issue, which is that it’s a phishing site very clearly run by malicious people and giving them any information on yourself could fuck you over big time
their ashwaganda “estrogen replacement” would be useless at best and extremely dangerous at worst, if it actually existed. however the products on that site almost certainly do not fucking exist and never have, and they have zero intention of actually producing them. the listings for the “supplements” aren’t on the site anymore.
when scams like this pop up suddenly, they’re not legitimate to even the slightest degree. there was never a real product, they were trying to get your money or your card and contact information either to doxx you, harass you, or literally steal from you. it’s a PHISHING scheme, not a “making a shitty product to Literally Kill People” scheme. one of these things is far cheaper and far easier for a layperson to do.
while the information on the function of ashwaganda was definitely useful generally, it was/is not the most present danger of this estrolabs/queerquirk situation and people need to be aware of the actual threat these kinds of sites and situations pose.
as i was writing this estrolabs has been taken down, but queerquirk is still up and still advertising it’s fake products and has a contact us page. do not give them your contact information, even to send hate. it is not worth getting phished to epicly own the dumbass behind this scheme. report the site and move on.
“I don’t care if you think it’s weird. I think it’s weird you give a fuck about someone else’s medical care so badly when you don’t know the first thing about it!”
This is Lana. She is about 10 years old, and desperately needs a new home.
She belonged to my sister (now deceased) and then my mother (also now deceased).
She’s the worlds most cuddly cat. All Lana wants is to be picked up and pet. She’s never gotten the amount of love she properly deserves, but has remained sweet regardless.
I don’t live in a situation where I can keep her, but I’m trying to avoid putting her into a shelter.
We’re in Virginia, but I’m willing to drive her anywhere on the east coast if it means she will be given a good home!
Please repost so she gets more views! Help Lana find the forever home she deserves!
Hey fellow Northeasterners on Turtle Island, aka the USA and Canada! Recent wildfires are spreading smoke and dangerous air conditions across New England. I only realized this because of social media, so I’m spreading the news further with maps for visuals. Things are officially UNHEALTHY so everyone needs to be careful, especially anyone with heart or lung conditions.
If you’re in NY, MA, RI, CT, NJ, etc, please be careful!
Close your windows (consider sealing them if it’s really bad)
Wear respirator masks (ex N95s) outside
Turn on air filters if you’ve got them
Use fans inside to keep cool and keep air moving
Check for air coming in around window AC units! You can probably still use your AC, but remember that their filters generally don’t block smoke.
Remember, wildfire smoke doesn’t just include burnt up trees but can include all kinds of hazardous materials, so the less outside air inside your house the better. If you’ve got any DIY Corsi-Rosenthal Boxesaround for COVID-19 filtration, they excel at filtering out other dangerous particles too. Here’s a diagram for making one, :
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Also, try to avoid strenuous activities (ex moving furniture, climbing lots of stairs, etc) and listen to your body’s needs. If you need to lay down and do nothing for a while, go for it. Stay hydrated, especially if your throat is getting scratchy! If you’ve got asthma, make sure your meds are close by.
Take care of yourselves and each other out there!
This is not limited to the northeast either, here in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest it was so hazy this morning it looked like fog rolling in and we had spikes up to 170 even in rural areas near the coast, parts of Ann Arbor and Lansing are sitting at 200 right now. The more sensitive of us in family and friends have been getting dizzy spells, chest pain, and burning lungs off and on for a week.
Check your area before doing things outside, and there’s a forecast option too to help you plan around the worst of it! Im using this site that helps you pick a station close to you for current updates. http://aqicn.org/here/
Your high filtration masks will help with this, keep them handy!
For the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1994, flag creator Gilbert Baker was commissioned to make the world’s largest flag. The flag took months of planning and work done by teams of volunteers. The flag utilized the basic six colors of the rainbow and measured thirty feet wide by a mile long.
i can’t believe i have to fucking say it because i’m an educator so like how is it possible nobody else has said this.
unless a person is actively making materials/etc for children, they do not need to worry about your kid.
your child gets respect as a human. that’s it. nobody’s private life/artistic endeavors/unrelated interests must be controlled for the sake of your kid.
educators and athletes and artists do not have to live in chastity because your kid might see us on our days off. we do not owe it to your kid to only write poems about bunnies and only sing songs about tying your shoes. i do not care how much a person has given to children, if they are acting as an adult in adult spheres, they are allowed to. they are adults. it is your job as a caregiver to raise your kid and keep them out of adult spheres, not our job to keep ourselves out of those spheres just in case.
guess what! adult role models are going to bars and hooking up and dancing and being adults! this is so they have the mental energy to do all the child-centric things.
“it makes me feel weird to picture them like that!” i don’t know how to tell you this but actors aren’t actually their roles. the customer-service personality your waitress has is probably not her actual personality. the way teachers interact with students is not the way that they interact with their private lives, and it shouldn’t be.
“this tells kids this kind of behavior is okay!” actually it’s showing kids a normal and natural progression of a person’s life, boundaries, and bodily autonomy. it’s showing kids that adults are dynamic human beings. kids already know this. they know there’s places they’re not allowed and things they don’t understand yet. it’s just that you have icky feelings because you were raised in a society with black-and-white morality.
celebrities don’t owe your children perfection, modesty, sobriety. and you know something? it’s way healthier when they don’t. “this is a person, who gets up every morning and does their job - but also has adult interests, which you’ll learn about later” is way healthier as a role model than “you should be perfect like the curated image of this person and if you’re not perfect you should be deeply ashamed.”
anyway. idk why “think of the children!!!!” is making a comeback as a popular stance. but to be clear? it’s a way of saying “this makes me feel uncomfortable, but i don’t know why, and i don’t feel like untangling it, so i’ll blame you for it and hope you feel guilty about my children.”
hi, op here. do not make this about “fandom drama.” don’t do it.
it is about the policing of black bodies, of minority communities, of queer expression, and of women in the workforce.
it is about real people in the real world. the notes are full of people who express the same thing: teachers who cannot buy wine with their dinner, social workers who have to cover up perfectly appropriate tattoos, queer folk who worry about bringing up their partner in the workplace.
there are real-life, horrific, and ongoing consequences for this. real people get fired because they were in a picture holding a single beer, or they were seen wearing a too-saucy costume at halloween, or they kissed their partner in public on their day off. women have been fired for being the victim of revenge porn; their illegally distributed image instead just being seen as evidence against their character. there are queer artists that are actively being silenced because of this rhetoric. trans people fear using the fucking bathroom because of this rhetoric.
this is about the return of white nationalist slogans to a public stage. this is about how we are even seriously debating the phrase “think of the children”. the children are not thought of during discussions of climate change, gun control, educational spending, free health care, student debt, access to childcare, access to food, or just getting the fucking vaccine and wearing a mask.
they do not care about the children. they want to protect their own bigotry by manipulating your empathy towards kids. that’s what this post is about.
please acknowledge the systemic, ongoing process of erasing identity and freedom. it is not just some “internet discussion”. it is a legitimate, scary, and powerful force that is hugely detrimental to the lives of those around you.
I think it’s about time I make a masterpost for this quilt, pattern by Haptic Labs – I started making it in February 2021 as fulfillment of the 2nd wedding anniversary gift of “cotton” for @starfoozle and I. As of May 28th, 2023, I completed the last stitches. Last night we were able to sleep under it :’)
I’ve seen @suzirya craft a lot of amazing things over the better part of the last decade, but this is one of her most incredible projects yet. Glad I get to sleep under this constellation quilt every night beside my remarkable wife who made it. ✨💕✨
Gen Z is fucked because they don’t consider actions to be inherently evil but only evil within the context of people they deem “deserving” of punishment, so now everyone’s a psychopathic little busybody with a hero complex thinking they can play judge, jury and executioner.
Remember those two ladies at Disneyworld who somebody said “looked racist”? They weren’t wearing Confederate flags or Neonazi symbols on their clothes, they were just a couple of fat older women dressed in t-shirts and board shorts. So someone on Instagram deemed it perfectly acceptable to mock them for being fat and unattractive, because they were assumed to have been “deserving” of it.
The same mentality is used to mock poor people in the South. Again, because everyone in the South must be a racist redneck. So suddenly it’s fine to sneer at them having poor living conditions, their political needs not being listened to by the Democratic party, for natural disasters to ravage their homes etc. Because they’re obviously all racist, so it’s okay that they’re poor and suffering. They “deserve” it.
Do you understand why this whole “It’s okay if I do this to the right people” mentality is totally fucked up? You’re acting bigoted to people and justifying it by associating them with a negative trait. Which is exactly what racists do. What homophobes do. Literally the actions of the people you think deserve every kind of misery, you are doing that yourselves.
I think somewhere people got confused and now think that “privileged” equals “oppressor” and “having privilege” equals “has the power to oppress”.
It doesn’t.
Would love to hear more about this, because I understand the first part, that privileged doesn’t automatically equal oppressor, but I don’t think I know enough to understand how having privilege doesn’t equal having the power to oppress.
Having privilege does not automatically grant you power.
I have working legs. This does not mean I am systemically oppressing people who need mobility aids, and it doesn’t mean I have the power to do it, either. If I got elected to government and passed legislation that removed elevators and ramps on the basis of “Well I don’t need them”, then I’d be systemically oppressing people based on walking privilege.
It’s exactly what I was saying on the other post; existing doesn’t mean oppression.
You do not have mobility problems with your legs at the time of this posting. I do, but I can still walk with relatively little assistance as long as my pain is low and the terrain is not actively working against me. That doesn’t mean the stairs in your house or apartment are oppressing me, or that your ability to climb them with no negative effects is oppressing me. You have the privilege of not needing to worry if you can actually make that climb and thus more avenues are open to you- you don’t have to worry about the expense of buying a house with no stairs, you don’t secondguess if you can actually take the flight, entire venues and employment/schooling oppurtunies and city streets and businesses aren’t completely inaccessible to you because they exist on the third floor with no fucking elevator, you don’t suffer sleepless at night when you were forced to take stairs you shouldn’t have climbed. But unless *you*, specifically YOU, designed these stairways in these places with no other way to access the upper floors… it’s not like you not needing to worry about that is directly oppressing me.
You CAN contribute to it- “why should stairs need to be accessible” “who even needs ramps and elevators” “I mean if you can walk you should be able to take a couple steps” “why do I need to make room for you on the elevator or wait for you to catch up” and my favorite “wow the world’s youngest senior citizen” usually said when walking with my cane. But until that line is crossed, you existing as someone who can walk without pain unassisted is not directly oppressing me.
And that’s the thing. Actions are oppression. Existing as someone with privilege does not mean you automatically oppress people.
“Having privilege” is morally neutral. Society is what bestows you privilege. That is completely out of your control.
“Oppression” is morally repugnant. Actions that contribute to the harm of others are terrible and bad and you should not do them.
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