Goadstool

Ever play Wolfenstein?

holy shit no one has ever made this joke before

this is the kind of fair and accurate reporting that I love to see in c/news

loser

Sadly, this really just isn't true. You're thinking of white people as matured adults who've already been spoon-fed whatever liberal or conservative propaganda that first spoke to them, and been led down that path for some time. But, there are enormous sums of people out there who either aren't really that invested in political thinking, or haven't really been guided to a more radicalized point of view. And, just like the former group, the latter group often views the word "cracker" as a slur equal to any other, not having the historical context to weigh the use of that word against another. So, when you use that word, they're going to take it very seriously, regardless of how sarcastic you're being, and regardless of how much a word like that means in comparison to a slur used against a marginalized group.

I know this because many people start out from this position - all slurs are equal, everyone deserves equal treatment, etc. It may not be how the US behaves, but it is what people are taught in grade school (usually).

Well, I said "sadly", but to be honest I don't view this reality as something sad. I think it's actually quite a good thing not to simply write off anyone who will react in such a way, because like literally everyone here on Hexbear or anyone else, context is not naturally inherited - it needs to be taught, and with patience (and the interest to do so) you can often open people up to a greater, truer understanding of things. If you just call them a cracker and tell them to fuck off, then you're effectively further barricading the door to leftism against them. That doesn't mean tolerating any kind of hateful words or misinformation they might be spouting, it just means not giving up on everyone who doesn't super love it when you compare them to mayo or whatever.

well, at least this comment reminded me there's a block user function

I usually try not to engage in discussions about this stuff (except for once before like years ago), but maybe I'll indulge a little bit and just say that not only does it make me uncomfortable when I see it, but I also know that it actively turns many people away from ideas of actual leftism when they see it, especially whenever they don't know how "serious" people are around here when they throw around the cracker-word.

I'm bi-racial and I don't have much of a "racial identity" (whatever that's even supposed to be or look like), so admittedly I always get at least a little uncomfortable when anybody starts talking about their or someone else's "race", much the same way I get a little uncomfortable when people start generalizing each other because of their age, their gender, whatever.

I fully recognize that white privilege is a real thing in western cultures, and that anyone who can be construed as "non-white" is put at a very real disadvantage in many real-world situations (sometimes fatally so), and so because of that I also recognize the urge to undermine the general concept that "white = good / normal" by lashing out against it. But when you call someone who's open to leftism but doesn't have a complete understanding of things a "cracker", for example, you put them down in a way that they usually perceive as intensely bigoted, to the degree that they will stop listening to every single thing you say after that. They'll leave here, and never take you or anyone associated with whatever they perceive as your ideology seriously again. And I think that's a big shame, because instead you could be trying to guide them to a more enlightened view of the world.

Ultimately - regardless of how justified it is by societal conditions - it's a hateful act, born of hate (often times self-hate), and I don't feel like that's in the spirit of communism.

And, at the end of the day, I am conserving all my hatred for the moment when I personally blow away during the revolution.

Alright so I got two small experiences, they're not super scary but they're the closest thing to paranormal activity I've every experienced.

The first one is that one time when I was in middle school, my mom was driving my brother and I home. We were just a couple turns away, sitting at a red light in silence, when my mom suddenly leans forward, points through the windshield, and yells "What is that!?" We all look, and see this silvery disc-shaped object just floating in the sky. It was overtly saucer shaped, and had bright green lights along its midsection that stood out even though it was the middle of the day. She pulled into a parking lot so we could get a better look, but some trees broke our line of sight, and we couldn't find it again.

The other one is silly, but it bothers me to this day. When I was in elementary school, I remember being in class and being the only person on the side of the class where I was standing while everyone else gathered for story time or something like that, and I set a pencil on this very long counter we had that took up like an entire wall of the class room. I bent down to tie my shoe, stood back up, and the pencil was gone. I remember looking on the floor, I remember looking behind everything on the counter, I remember checking cracks and all across the carpet in the room, fully determined to find it and as thorough as I could be, and I just couldn't. I know there's a meme about pens / pencils disappearing when they fall to the ground, but it was one of those basic hex-shaped pencils and I know it didn't just roll off the counter, I know I didn't accidentally push it, and I know no one else was close enough to move / hide / take it. I was so distraught that I couldn't find it that I went and told everyone else in the class that it had just vanished, and I remember them blowing me off, "Suuure, Goadstool." I felt exactly like one of the kids in fuckin' Goosebumps, trying to tell people there's something fucky going on, and no one will listen. Not really scary, but to this day I swear that goddamn pencil vanished.

Having lived in Texas my whole life until very recently, the only thing I miss is the food. Fuck the weather, fuck the people, fuck it all. If I could just teleport my old burrito place to where I am now, I'd be sittin' pretty.

Anyone know if there's a way to access hidden images that imgur deleted? I see that pretty much all of the images I uploaded a while ago still have gallery thumbnails, so I know the image must still be stored, but they just won't let me see the full res version.