Write down numbers 1-10, close your eyes, pick a random number (no cheating), and that is the number of songs that are going on your rainy day playlist. The songs are to be of your own curation and taste. Here’s my selection:
40 Days - Slowdive
Teotihuacan - Noel Gallagher
Mahlus Gardens - Asche & Spencer
Keep The Streets Empty For Me - Fever Ray
The Blower’s Daughter - Damien Rice
The Only Living Boy In New York - Simon & Garfunkel
Untitled - The Cure
Heart - MMOTHS
No Eyes - Baths
Haunt - Ghost Boy
i dont want to tag anyone tbh.. if u follow me u are Tagged and if u dont want to do it i will still love u
a friend of mine is a science educator. not a classroom teacher - he does the kind of programs you see in museums, fun experiments with lasers and dry ice and shit.
yesterday, a young girl asked him why he was allowed to pour liquid nitrogen all over his own arm but he didn’t want her doing it. I braced myself for some dumb “well I’m an adult so I’m allowed” non-answer, but instead he surprised me by giving some of the best science (and life) advice I think you can give a young person:
“well, it’s one of those rules designed to keep you safe. and following the rules really can help you stay safe, but they’re not perfect. sometimes, usually because they’re too simple, the rules let you do things that aren’t safe, or don’t let you do things that are safe if you know how to do them. one of the reasons I’m good at what I do as a scientist is I try to understand how things work so I can figure out my own rules for keeping myself safe. and sometimes my rules are little more complicated than what I might hear from other people, but they work better for me. like, I let myself play with liquid nitrogen, but only in really specific ways that I’ve spent time practicing. you should follow the rules you’re given at first, but if you take the time to understand how things work, maybe you can make your own, better rules.”
I loved this response. it’s a great encapsulation of two really important things I think people need to learn and re-learn all the time: on the one hand, listen to genuine authority figures; when someone knows more than you about a subject, don’t treat their expertise as “just another opinion” and act like your ignorance is just as good as their knowledge. but on the other hand, don’t obey anything or anyone blindly. recognize that rules and systems and established ideas are never perfect. question things, educate yourself, question things more.
and then, of course, a parent had to butt in and spoil this wonderful lesson by saying:
“but not the rules mom comes up with!”
everyone in the room laughed. except me. I gave her a death glare I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice.
because no. no. your rules are not above reproach if you’re a parent. the thing about the dictates of genuine authority figures - people who deserve to have power, and to have their positions respected - is that they are open to question. genuine authority figures are accountable. governments can be petitioned and protested and recalled. doctors must respect patients’ right to a second opinion. journalists have jobs terminated and credentials revoked if they fail to meet standards of integrity and diligence. scientists, to bring us back full circle, spend their entire careers trying to disprove their own hypotheses! you know who insists on being treated as infallible? megalomaniacal dictators, that’s who. oh, and parents.
I’m beyond sick and tired of this “my house my rules, this family is not a democracy, I want my child to think critically and stand up for themselves except to me ha ha” bullshit. my friend gave this kid the kind of advice that doesn’t just help people become good scientists - if enough people adopt the mentality he put forth to that girl, that’s the kind of advice that helps societies value knowledge and resist totalitarianism. and her mother shut it down because, what, she didn’t want to deal with the inconvenience of having someone question her edicts about whose job it is to wash the dishes on Mondays?
we already know you’re more likely to be a Trump supporter if you’re an authoritarian parent - and that this is a stronger predictor of your views on the current president than age, religiosity, gender, or race. I’ll say this another way in case you didn’t catch the full meaning: people who believe in the absolute, unquestionable authority of parents are more than two and a half times as likely to support Trump as people who don’t, and that’s just among Republicans. we can’t afford to treat the oppressive treatment of children or the injustice of ageist power structures in our society as a sideshow issue any longer. the mentality that parents should be treated by their children as beyond reproach and above dispute is a social cancer that has metastasized into the man currently trying to destroy the foundations of democracy in this country.
in short: parents, get the hell over yourselves before you get us all killed. and kids, learn as much as you can, and then make your own rules.
My mother is fond of quoting something that happened once at work (she’s the director of tourism for the neighboring county).
She was on the phone with my brother, who wanted to do something (I forget what, I think he wanted to go camping with some friends and she was worried it was going to be too cold that weekend or whatever)
And finally she got off the phone and sighed and said, joking, “When I taught them to question authority I must have laid it on thick, because now they’re questioning mine.”
And it got really quiet in the office. And then her secretary pipes up with “You taught your kids to question authority???”
And mom says that right there in that moment she realized what was wrong with a huge part of the world.
Teach your kids to question, people.
For a short while as a child I had sanctuary from an abusive home in a lovely home with good parents. One of the things that completely shocked my taraumatized little soul was how deeply the adults respected children’s thoughts, feelings, needs and wants.
Whenever a kid thought something was unfair, the adult would ask why it felt unfair and talk to them about it. Sometimes the reason for the rule or decision was immovable, like, “this isn’t safe” or “this isn’t possible with the time we have and the responsibilities that fill it”, or “homework has to be done even if it’s boring, because it helps you practice skills you will need later on.”
In those cases, the rule wouldn’t change but the child would understand why it was a rule, and feel listened to and respected. And best of all, sometimes even if the rule didn’t change, an adult might help the child brainstorm ways to make it easier to follow the rule, or find alternatives to the thing they couldn’t have.
Sometimes, the rule or decision was for more flexible reasons, like “We can’t do this because you need supervision, and I have work to do which means I can’t supervise”, in which case a child’s suggestions, like, “What if I call a grandparent and see if they’re interested in supervising?” were encouraged and listened to.
This taught the kids, me included, so much more than we ever could have learnt by being shut down by, “I’m an adult and I said so.” The system was designed to teach us to make good decisions and to give us as much information as possible about how to do that before we went out into the world. Teaching us the reasons for certain rules helped us respect them and to understand how to make good rules for ourselves going forward.
In my original household, the central rule was “Do whatever will keep you from getting hurt by the person with the most power.” From this we learned to make choices based solely on fear of consequences, no innate ethical system, so we learned to misbehave without getting caught.
We learned that if you can force someone to do something they don’t want to, you’re allowed to, because that’s how rules are decided, the most powerful person always gets their way.
We learned that asking questions of someone with power over you is dangerous and you have to figure everything out on your own. We learned to keep secrets about how badly we were hurt. There was no oppenness, no conversation, no negotiation or questions or teaching, just fear and hatred and a lot of pain.
Which household do you think taught me the best lessons, the ones I can use to build a healthy and responsible life for myself?
My older son (almost 8 now, god) said to me in a conversation this year, “You can say no to anyone, even grown ups,” and I almost cried with relief.
Just to go back to tdf’s bit:
“Whenever a kid thought something was unfair, the adult would ask why it felt unfair and talk to them about it. ”
Y'know, after I ran away from home, if an adult had started a conversation like that with me, I would’ve thought it was a trap and clammed up.
I’m not sure exactly what I think needs adding here, but there’s something about abusive parents training their children to not trust the absence of power abuse.
That’s actually a problem I’ve talked to other education folks about- kids who see honest questions as a trap, because that’s what they’ve been taught to expect, and clam up.
So some strategies, if you ever find yourself talking to a kid who thinks you’re trying to pull something:
Some of that is eased by building trust (if you show consistently safe, honest responses, that fear will ease), but you can also try some other things to help in the moment.
Instead of “why don’t you think it’s fair?”, for example, maybe rephrase: “I want to make sure this is fair, and it sounds like you have some ideas. Could you tell me more about what you mean?” The point is just to acknowledge upfront the value of their ideas and opinions, so they know exactly what they’re responding to, and why you’re asking that question.
If they’ve already clammed up, things can be harder, but I try not to push too much at that point. I’ve found it helps to leave an open offer and give them time to process, feel, and think; give them the same acknowledgement and reassurance that you genuinely value & want to hear what they have to say, and offer to let them think about it for a while (ideally while you do something else, so they have space). If you remember to come back and check in later to hear what they’ve been think about, it often makes young folks feel really, genuinely valued and considered.
The bigger thing here is that this is a pretty common trauma response, and I see it from kids who’ve had those experiences with parents and family, and from students who go to more authoritative schools. This happens with a lot of folks, and it sucks, and it helps if you can show them that they can be, and deserve to be, treated in a different and better way.
Just knowing that there’s an alternative to the way you’ve been taught the world works can really, really make an impact.
Just saw an instagram reel about “girl math” where “girl math” is defined as being bad with money and unable to manage finances. Luckily it’s not like women couldn’t independently open bank accounts until the 1970s or anything like that.
girl math is mentally splitting the bill perfectly and a crowd of unbelievers insisting on using a calculator to verify
I can’t be autistic bc I’m actually great at understanding social cues!
[Cut to my POV, a Terminator-style overlay analyzing word choice and body language while over everyone’s head a bar labeled Are They Mad At Me shows varying levels]
One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play’s dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It’s one of my favourites for two reasons:
It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and
Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn’t catch you.
Hey, you can support Jude Patton by purchasing his books! It’s a two volume series and the topic is an important one that is often lacking in our younger generation oriented spaces: aging, illness, and the end of life as a lgbtq individual.
Also he has done an oral history for The Outwords Archive! It goes far more in depth on his life and what his life was like before and after this article came out. Check it out:
Green Day solicit donations for HIV/AIDS organization, 1994
[id: a black and white photo of the members of Green Day at LIFEbeat’s Counter Aid Fundraiser, seated behind a folding table at what looks like a merch stand. Tre Cool smiles and tilts a large white bucket towards the camera to show “Donate You Fuckers” scrawled in black ink on the side. Billie Joe Armstrong sits in front of him, holding a beer, while Mike Dirnt sits furthest from the camera, looking down at the table. Another bucket on the table reads “Donate Or Die!” /end id]
