Because I’m only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven’t seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We’re worried, and we need people to know what’s happening to us.
kill the rhetoric that americans are so lazy that they won’t take farm jobs. americans take labor intensive jobs all the time. the reason no americans will take farm jobs is because agricultural work is exempt from the vast majority of labor laws and labor protections, including the use of child labor. so only immigrants - people who have little to no protection from the law or other options for work - take most of these jobs. we have created a permanent underclass of labor and then say that americans are just lazy for not volunteering to be part of the underclass.
there are actually good discussions to be had about how alienated many americans are from food production (hi hello that’s what my only popular post is about), but the real solution to this problem is to protect agricultural workers, citizens or not. ban child labor in its entirety. punish corporations and farm owners that abuse and poison their workers. reform the immigration process so that these people aren’t barred from legal protection and recourse.
agricultural workers have been exploited since the dawn of civilization, but the US in specific has been doing this since slavery, and it evolved in the 30s when FDR’s labor laws excluded them specifically because most agricultural workers at the time were black. now it’s mostly latino immigrants.
food doesn’t fucking pick or slaughter itself. but citizens aren’t going to take these jobs when the entire industry is rife with abuse - both legal and illegal - and horrific wages and working conditions.
the gimmick blogs are like tumblr’s rogue gallery. yes we’ve got some heroes, yes we’ve got some villains, but more importantly if you look over here you will see some freak who devotes all their time to counting the number of “t’s” in a post
T Count: 15
Letter Count: 198
Your T Percentage: 7.58%
Average T Percentage: 6.95%
You used the letter T 1.09 times as much as average!
YOU EXIST???
Sometimes you create a guy and it turns out they already exist
consider: teenagers aren’t apathetic about everything they’re just used to you shitting all over whatever they show excitement about
Teen: *gets a job*
“I GOT THE JOB!”
Parents: Well, when I was your age, I already had 5 jobs and was supporting my family
Teen: *gets all A’s*
“I worked really hard!”
Parents: Well, of course you did, this is the expectation, not a celebration.
probably why so many teens take to social media where they can enthusiastically share their interests and achievements and get positive feedback that their parents never gave
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
This hit hard
I remember once, when I was in my early 20s, I was an afternoon supervisor at my job, and I worked with mostly teenagers, and the one day this one kid, who was like 15, was bored so I suggested he could clean out the fridge. He did and when he was done I said he did a good job.
After that, this kid was cleaning out the fridge at least once a week, and I was like, “why are you always cleaning the fridge?” Like, I didn’t mind, but it seemed odd. And he said, “one time I cleaned the fridge and you said I did a good job. I wanted to make you proud of me again.”
Literally, I changed the entire way I interacted with teenagers after that. I actually got a package of glitter stars and I would stick them on their nametags when they did a good job, and they loved it.
My manager had commented on how hard these kids work and I said, “they’re starved for positive feedback. They go to school all day then come to work all evening and no one appreciates it because it’s expected of them, but they’re still kids. They need positive feedback from adults in their lives.”
Like, everyone likes feeling appreciated. Everyone likes being complimented and having their efforts be noticed. Another coworker (who was a mother of teenage children), hated that I did this, and said they were too old to be rewarded with stickers, but like… it wasn’t about the stickers. The stickers were just a symbol that their effort was noticed and appreciated. I was just lucky that I learned this at a time when I was still young enough to remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was only 2 years out of highschool at that point and highschool is fucking hard. People forget this as they get older, but ask anyone and almost no one would ever want to go back and do it again, but they expect kids to suck it up because they’re young so they should be able to do school full time, plus homework, and work, and maintain a healthy social life, and sleep, and spend time with family, and do chores and help out at home, and worry about college and relationships and everything else, and then just get shit on all the time and treated like they’re lazy and entitled. And then they wonder why teenagers are apathetic.
For a german exam I had to argue against an article that was essentially „kids these days, they don’t care about anything and are constantly on their phones“ and really it was the easiest essay I‘ve ever written.
Teens don’t talk to adults bc adults only ask „so, how‘s school“ to then interrupt them two sentences in. And because they can’t engage in a conversation about buying houses and working in a bank. I would’ve loved to talk about philosophy and politics and history with family the way I did with friends and in class but because I was young no one took what I had to say seriously.
And no, teens aren’t always on their phone. They’re on their phone when they’re bored. You think I‘m on social media when I‘m with my friends? When I‘m talking about something I‘m interested in?
Maybe the reason kids are so distant and always on their phone during family parties and the like is because you‘re failing to engage and include them.
Whoop there it is
When you respect kids, they really respond and learn from you. But if you treat kids like “theyre just a kid, what do they know??” then you’ll never find out.
As a Disneyland Cast Member, I’ll add my own experience onto this –
Very frequently, when I first speak to a child while I’m at work, they’ll kind of withdraw and act uncomfortable and shy. Their parents will then rather frequently tell them to not be shy and try to coax them to talk to me – whenever that happens, I always, without fail, politely dissuade the parents from pressuring them.
“I’m a stranger,” I’ll tell the kid’s parents. “I don’t blame them for not talking to me – if they were anywhere else, they’d have the right idea, to not immediately trust me.”
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen that same kid – simply after hearing their initial reaction being validated, instead of reproached – immediately open up to me after that. I also cannot tell you how many times that child and I would go on to start a friggin’ marathon conversation, and I got to hear all about how great their day was or what their favorite Disney movies were or what rides they liked and didn’t like or how much they like a certain Disney character or song…all from me validating that initial feeling and showing genuine interest in what they had to say.
This isn’t just young children, either. I will always remember being positioned outside the Animation Academy one day and starting up a conversation with a young lady, perhaps 12 or 13, who joined the line with her father a full 25 minutes before the class was supposed to start. Now keep in mind, we do a drawing class every 30 minutes: there was no one else in line at that point, and no one else joined the girl and her father in line for a full fifteen minutes. So I could tell pretty quickly that this girl was very emotionally invested in getting a good spot for the drawing class: a conclusion all the more bolstered by the fact that she had a notebook under her arm. I asked her if she was an artist – she said yes, but seemed uncomfortable at the question, so I skipped even asking her if I could see her work, instead admitting that I myself wasn’t very good at art, but that I’m trying to get better and that I love the history of Disney animation. On the screens around us was video footage of different Disney concept art and animation reels, so I pointed one of them out (for Snow White) and asked if she knew the story behind the making of the movie. Upon confirming that she didn’t, I proceeded to get down on the floor so I could sit next to her and her father and dramatically tell the whole story of how “Uncle Walt” created the first full-length animated motion picture, even though everyone and their mother thought he was an idiot for even trying, and how the film ended up becoming the first Hollywood blockbuster. After the story was over, the girl’s father said that his daughter really wanted to be an animator when she grew up, and she finally felt comfortable enough to open her notebook and show me some of her artwork. It was wonderful! Every sketch had such character and you could tell how much work she put into it! And I could tell how much telling her that – and sharing that moment with her, where we got to connect over something we both really enjoyed – had meant. And after the class was over, she sought me out to show me what she and her father had drawn – and sure enough, hers was great! (Her father’s was too, really. XD)
People, kids and teens included, love sharing what they love and how they feel with others. You just have to give them the chance to show it.
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
-~-
I feel like I am obliged to add one more thing: don’t ever think that the kids won’t feel your unspokenjudgements cause they do!
I felt always like a ‘problem’ in my family, until I was about sixteen, I got this teacher who was litterally the first to tell I was worthy. He changed my life up till this day.
Also how do grown ups imagine how ‘we’ will ever learn to engage in conversations with adults properly if you don’t teach us?
This post is
Everything
I told one of my new coworkers (who is 26) that he was doing really well and that I was proud of him and his progress. I thought he was going to start crying for how quietly he said “really?”.
Positive feedback makes the biggest difference to everything.
I was supervising an afternoon soccer game with kids in summer camp and one of the kids was trodding along cause he didn’t want to do any of the other activities but had to do something to be supervised. So he sat next to me while the other kids played and so i tried to get him to talk a bit. so i asked the usual smalltalk questions until i finally landed on Comics and a floodgate opened. Just showing interest in listening to him made him open up about everything and also made him start to interact with the other kids and the other counselors cause one person showed interest in his opinions. The mother also came and was like: I never see him this engage with anything, what did you do with him?!?! so I asked her instead: did you know your son has a vast knowledge of comics and the artists behind them and himself a really good artist. and she was stunnded… her son then very quiet said: I told you ma… but you didn’t listen…
So yeah if you have the chance positive feedback and just showing the vaguest interest in what is important to them can go a long way…
‘bread is bad for you’ ‘rice is bad for you’ sorry im not subscribing to the idea that staple grains that have been integral to cultures for centuries are evil. i love you carbs
not to say that people can’t have food intolerances to anything under the sun, of course they can! but anyone who tries to generalize that to “no one can tolerate this food” is trying to sell you something expensive and unsatisfying
Tumblr: No NSFW! You know how it is we banned it because of the bots in 2018!
Also tumblr:
lmao
You know how it is then, folks!
MANUAL BLAZE MODE GO
….am I allowed to say “whovians, grab your TARDISes?” You know how it is.
Tumblr loves doing this. I tried to make a post about the ads that showed actual human penises in them, with screenshots, and it was taken down for violating community guidelines…. unlike the ad, I guess?
friendly reminder that characters don’t need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.
IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it’s literally true:
We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.
It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.
So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.
You’re correct:
Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator’s secret, violent desires.
Every household appliance should follow the same philosophy as GNU software: one thing well.
A toaster should toast things, without breaking down due to thermal cycling.
It should not make a table of what was toasted and when.
A refrigerator should maintain a low temperature, without burning out its motor.
It should not build an inventory and communicate it to a corporation.
An oven should maintain a user-specified high temperature, without starting a fire.
It should not measure the weight of its contents and give dietary advice.
But most of all, none of these things should connect to the internet [of things]. They should be as dumb and robust as possible. They should be future proof by virtue of having no compatibility requirements beyond
energy source and
physical dimensions.
There’s a sewing machine in front of me that was built in the mid fifties. Its only compatibility requirements are the physical dimensions of needle and bobbin, and a 230VAC power supply. It is perfectly reliable after more than sixty years and should still be in another sixty. It’s solid metal and might well be operable for centuries with very little maintenance. I doubt that the same could be said of modern machines full of plastic and microprocessors.
tl;dr I’m a tech person and I endorse OP’s message.
When I was buying a fridge, I went to so many shops where the shop assisstants looked at me like I was crazy when I told them that I’d like a fridge that cools my things, has a decently-sized freezer and absolutely no apps and no wifi.
