“There Is A Somewhat Obscure Genre I’m Really Enjoying Lately, Which I Will Tentatively Title ‘earnest

A surprising amount of my knowledge of philosophy is not derived from textbooks or even research papers, but from people explaining how other people are bad at philosophy to me

ANTHROPOLOGY

Homecoming

High schools in the south of the United States, especially in Texas, often have a tradition of the girls wearing “mums” and boys wearing “garters” to the Homecoming football game. Mums usually consist of artificial Chrysanthemum flowers (originally real Chrysanthemums were used) surrounded by decorated floor-length ribbon and little trinkets. The tradition is that the boys create a personalized mum in their school colors, white and silver for seniors, for their date. Girls make garters for their date which are similar to mums but shorter and worn on the guy’s arm rather than around their neck like mums. The size of the mums and garters tend to grow along with the grade the person that is receiving the mum is in. Around the 1980s, mums were usually about a maximum of three Chrysanthemum flowers and a few ribbons and only worn by the Homecoming Court/Homecoming Prince and/or Princess but as the years have gone by, the size and expectations of mums have increased and have gotten more elaborate and are worn by almost all of the students. Depending on the school, mums can get quite competitive, expensive, and drastically bigger than they previously were intended to be. New items are also placed on mums than there previously were like LED lights, bubble containers, cow bells, feather boas, stuffed animals of all sizes, and even more. They now sometimes act like scrapbooks made of ribbon and even contain passages and photos of the mum/garter-receiver and their date. The detail, size, and price usually varies depending on the school, town, and couple. The tradition is to make the mum and garter after the couple is asked to Homecoming and exchange the night of the Homecoming game and wear it throughout tailgating and the game. Couples often take group pictures with their mums and garters the night of or before the night of the Homecoming Game to showcase them.

Link

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

found while looking for my own tumblr

some force compelled me to make this image and share it. this is what happens when you’re up til’ 2:30 in the morning with the willpower to make a vision come true..but god. at what cost..

I would sell my soul for more content like this

Linkin Park & Friends Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington

One of the Jacobin writers apparently found some 1856 articles about wealth inequality by Frederick Douglass that have never been republished before. They’re really incredible, and it’s fascinating to realize that Douglass appears to share the liberal socialist views of abolitionist Wendell Phillips, whom Douglass was friends with. According to the second article, he was a proto-Georgist too.

“The Accumulation of Wealth,” Frederick Douglass’s Paper, November 28, 1856:

…it is not wealth of itself that produces the dreaded effects, but its accumulation in the hands of a few — creating an aristocracy of wealth, ready to be the tool of an aggressive tyranny, or to become aggressive upon its own account. With an increase of wealth comes an increase of selfishness, devotion to private affairs, and a contempt of public — unless politics can be made to minister to the all absorbing selfishness of the individual…

We are ready to grant that the condition of man, cast as he is into the world naked, and surrounded by elements unfriendly to his continued existence, renders a degree of acquisitiveness necessary for the security of life; but is it just to plead this moderate degree of accumulation, indicated by nature, in justification of the unlimited hoarding of wealth, and monopolies of land, which has converted the entire civilized world into an abode of millionaires and beggars; which renders the enslavement of the peoples of the world possible, and shrouds the future of liberty with gloom?…

Wealth has ever been the tool of the tyrant, the readiest means by which liberty is overthrown. A nation starting with free institutions and customs, begins to increase in wealth, and that wealth to accumulate in the hands of a few, and here is the lever by which, eventually and certainly, the liberties gained in a simpler age will be overthrown.

Wealth is averse to agitation; it abhors revolutions; it calls for peace, at whatever sacrifice. A tyranny of an individual or a class may be winding its subtle meshes around the wealthy, depriving them of the right of unrestrained locomotion, the right of speech, the right of private judgment; but if it leaves them the privilege of grasping and accumulating gold, they are content — nay, will aid the tyranny to subject them who value their liberties enough to struggle for them; for the agitation might endanger their gains…

Louis Napoleon holds his seat today, and other tyrants with him, because they have enlisted the sympathies of capital, by professions of law and order; encouraging and increasing the facilities for growing rich. Say to one of these blinded instruments of tyranny, that personal liberty, the freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, is overthrown; and they will answer you, that commerce flourishes, manufactures increase, public securities are at par. The golden calf set up, they fall down and worship, and shut their eyes to the foul wrongs perpetrated every day on human rights.

Poverty, the natural consequence of wealth unduly accumulated, plays its part in the drama of national degradation. Wherever the palaces tower highest, and enclose within their walls the greatest accumulations of luxury and wealth, there does the peasant grovel lowest in ignorance and misery; there is tyranny most secure and freedom most hopeless…

From whence, in our own country, comes the danger to liberty? Who are the ready tools and apologists of slavery…? The plain answer is, the wealth and the poverty of the nation… We have the controllers of our commercial centres, blinding or buying the poverty-stricken, ignorant masses that fester in their alleys, to the unblushing support of the policy of slaveholding tyranny…

If such a statesman shall devise measures, which, while they will not hamper private enterprise, shall yet prevent the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals or associations, he will have merited and secured a fame more lasting than has yet fallen to the lot of man. He will have founded a nation which, though subject to human vicissitudes, will yet possess elements of prosperity and permanence, such as no nation has yet enjoyed.