Owning investments is so weird in a way I can’t describe. It’s like here is some dollars that you own but their value keeps changing. No you can’t spend them at the store. No you can’t use them with your debit card. It feels fake and made up, like it’s just a number on a screen and it’s supposed to mean something. I’m starting to think we’re just meant to barter with chickens and cows and maybe this whole currency thing was a mistake.
having friends notably older than you is fantastic actually, cause you can drop in a little mention of how old you would have been at the time of a story they tell and watch the existential crisis set in
So far the a/c unit for my apartment in the span of one week has had a condenser replaced, has had two new motors, refrigerant added, and a new capacitor installed. Wanna take bets on how many hours it works for this time before the pipes freeze again?
So I’m a historian who works particularly on the relationship between trauma, national memory, and childhood. The focus of my research is not the Holocaust, but it’s a subject upon which I’ve taught, mused, written, and examined. A few years ago, I was a TA in a class on the Holocaust (cross listed in the History Department and the Department of Judaic Studies) at a US University (a pretty prestigious one). Most of the course focused on the realities of the Holocaust: what happened? how? why? Now because of my areas of expertise/interest, I was invited to give a lecture to the entire class as opposed to teaching my particular subset of students each week. The subject of the lecture? The Holocaust in US education and children’s/YA literature.
The thing that I found most distressing about this lecture? The fact that only about nine state in the US require that students learn about the Holocaust in classrooms. Among those only a few require it as a part of history or social studies classes, the rest require it as part of language arts. And, the way that students actually learn about this subject is determined at the discretion of the school district, which means that, as long as students meet the general requirements of standardized tests, they don’t have to learn particular details. So, let that sink in. Even more distressing? The states that “require” students to learn about the Holocaust, have only done so since (at the earliest) the 1980s, and far more likely the 1990s and 2000s. This means that there is an entire generation whose knowledge of the Holocaust comes from popular media and triumphant narratives about US involvement in WWII: these narratives are hugely false, and what I call the “Punching Hitler” story after the iconic image of Captain America socking Hitler in the jaw. In the US the general shared narrative about WWII is that the US went over the Europe, lost a lot of boys, but killed Hitler, won the war, and saved the Jews. o__O That’s…not what happened.
In a class of 200 students, only about 10 percent knew anything about how the Holocaust happened. They didn’t know about the groups that were targeted, the way that anti-semitism and opportunistic nationalist politics helped make it happen, they didn’t know about complicity or bystandardism. They knew nothing. They didn’t know that US officials were aware of what was happening and refused to get involved in the war. They didn’t understand that there was concurrent anti-semitism and racism in the US. They were taught none of these things. And that is actually terrifying, not only because it means that these kids have no idea about the past, but because they can’t see the giant flashing warning signs in our current socio-political world.
Facebook deleted this almost immediately. It’s almost like the ultrawealthy don’t want us knowing or talking about what’s at stake.
Just want to add one thing:
In countries with universal healthcare, this is a non-issue during a strike. Our access to healthcare isn’t tied to working. It’s an unconditional right for each and everyone of us.
The US system screws workers over in oh so many ways.
This is exactly why US companies fight so hard against universal healthcare; even if single payer healthcare is cheaper on a per-person basis and takes the cost away from the employer, it also takes POWER and leverage away from the employers… and they don’t ever want to give that up.
