KING

person w adhd experiencing symptoms of adhd: why the fuck can’t I do this thing . I wish there was some explanation for this

christ

when i pass people on the duolingo leaderboards i hope they know i'm doing it with gleeful malice in my heart. i'm not doing it on accident and i'm not thinking haha yay i'm thinking everybody get fucked this is call of duty to me

i love the strange reality of being a human person with a human brain. one time someone said something to me in a foreign language (japanese, which i do not speak) and i automatically responded in a different foreign language (spanish, which i do not speak well) and then we both said “what?” in english, an experience made more surreal by the fact that everyone around us was speaking loudly in canadian french (as this occurred in Quebec)

the fact that we're in a day and age where you can get dueted by malala. how can you show your face in public after this

There were many reasons why I stepped away from archaeology & academia just 16 months post-PhD but the one that still angers me most today has to be the ways in which the Institution™ categorizes folklore vs science when it comes to Indigenous people. Ancestral knowledge of the ‘Old World’ is seen as a form of early science—curiosity leading to rigorous study and eventual advancement—with their fairytales and folklore viewed as purposefully allegorical. The Indigenous people of Africa, Turtle Island, and the rest of the so-called Americas never got that same respect. Outside of a handful of tokenized and understudied societies, most Indigenous ancestral knowledge is viewed through the lens of folklore—and no grace is given to allegory or metaphor or philosophy, either. The assumption is that our people can only think in literal, concrete terms. And it’s fucking insulting. There’s this joke in academia that if archaeologists don’t know an artifact’s usage they’ll deem it as ‘ritualistic purposes’; and it’s funny or whatever but nine times out of ten those artifacts are from [insert literally any Turtle Island or Mesoamerican nation] and not from much-older Greek civilizations. But it’s not well-studied because we’re not well-respected, and therefore nobody bothered to ask our still-living people who are very much aware of what said artifact was meant for (spoiler alert: not ritualistic).

Early on in my first Master’s program I got into a huge fight with a white professor who wanted to use a widely misinterpreted SuPeRsTiTiOn from MY tribe as an example of a persistent folktale. The folktale being that: Chiricahua Apache women don’t take baths during pregnancy bc we think the water is evil. It is true that, after being moved onto the rez, birthing + postpartum women were becoming ill when they bathed. This isn’t some ancient happening stoked by mythology—this is 100 years ago to recent times; midwives saw it happening and acted by cautioning against bathing. My grandmother, an Indigenous midwife, saw it play out and is very hesitant to recommend bathing to pregnant women on the rez today. This isn’t because she or any other Chiricahua thinks water is evil; it’s because water quality has been so horrific that it quite literally was infecting the womb at its most vulnerable time. Had this been a European society, this knowledge would be considered evidence-based but since we’re Indigenous, they slap some contrived faux folkways mythos onto it and call it superstitious.

This is just one example of what happens on a constant basis when it comes to communities who are being oppressed by the same systems that set the standards for what science, history, and art are.

It’s maddening and sickening to me to this day.

(Tangentially, the next time I see a non-ndn upload or reblog our artifacts and crafts and tag it as “primitive art”, I’m going to scalp you. You’ve been duly warned)

is there confetti every time you make an original post now?

for @babyange1face 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

[Image ID: A picture of a bee and a wasp, both labeled. Both are colored yellow and black. Facts are listed about each one in their respective columns.

Bee:

Cute and fuzzy, like a friend

Make honey

Come in pretty colors with different occupations (blue orchard bee, carpenter bee)

Pollinators!

Freeloaders who will come build hives in the walls of your house

Communicate with dancing

According to all known laws of aviatin, honey bees can fly up to 15 mph

Like sweet things

Over 20,000 species--not just honeybees!

Wasp:

Cool and sleek, like a motorcycle

Prey on pests

Come in pretty, iridescent colors (ruby tailed wasp)

Will try to mooch off your drinks (so check your cans!)

Pollinators!

Leave you paper nests that you can sell to collectors

Communicate with smells

Like sweet things

Over 30,000 species--not just [kind I hate]

At the very bottom, in smaller text, is the URL bug-maniac.tumblr.com. /End ID]

NO ANTI-WASP SENTIMENTS ON THIS POST

may 27th, 2022 || exam season and the return of the king (my glass of ice water)