“Dunbar used folk dialect to give voice and dignity to the experience of Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century.”

https://theconversation.com/the-brief-but-shining-life-of-paul-laurence-dunbar-a-poet-who-gave-dignity-to-the-black-experience-191553
@histodons #Histodons #BlackMastodon @blackmastodon

Greenpeace knocking it out of the park 😁
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/75832/everyone-hates-elon-and-greenpeace-unfold-giant-banner-on-piazza-san-marco-ahead-of-bezos-wedding/

I should have posted this (again) before half the country went into a heatwave. Here's my heatwave adaptation "hacks" I posted (for Southern California) awhile back: https://www.patreon.com/posts/heatwave-hacking-85954524 #heatwave #heat #survival #wx

Throwback to this charming misidentification
#DogsOfMastodon #ThreeToedSloth

I'm reading this book rn. It's about Jim a runaway slave with his friend huck finn.
Really makes y'all understand how whites treated black people. Not just in plantations but everywhere so degrading. Got to the bit about mistrels what tf 😒 . Book takes you on his journey thru towns and what he faces. That why we celebrate #juneteenth 👊🏾
#books #blackmastodon

Endlesss screaming

This regal AF Norwegian goat wishes you a happy Midsommar 🌞

My Los Angeles friends, you need to know that the LA Opera is having its costume sale this Saturday and you should. Buy stuff for yourself but also send me photos: https://laopera.org/costume-shop-sale

The reason Texas is part of the USA is that Mexico made slavery illegal.

Remember the Alamo? A lot of white people don't know is that what the "brave" people in the Alamo were fighting for was slavery.

That's also why it took two years after the civil war ended for enforcement of anti-slavery in Texas. (it wasn't because of slow communication, as is told in revisionist histories, it was because white people willfully defied the law).

Freedom is always worth fighting for.

Juneteenth is an amazing holiday because it commemorates the fact that being free on paper isn't the same as actual freedom. Real emancipation is in our minds and deeds, not in our system of laws.

Anyway, happy #Juneteenth, America. If you're not celebrating it, you're not free.

I can tell if someone has never been poor by how they talk about poverty. People who have never been poor have this weird fantasy of "Poor, but happy" "They are just simple folks who appreciate the simple things in life". They've created this false ideal that people in poverty have less to worry about somehow.

Mo Money, Mo Problems is privilege speak. There is also this idea that Wealth = Intelligence, but I'm pretty sure the last decade has disproved that in spades.

Calling all journalists covering the US-MX border and immigration: we're teaming up with Freedom of the Press Foundation, Centre for Investigative Journalism and ACOS Alliance to offer dedicated security workshops in Albuquerque and El Paso in August. Apply here! https://eff.org/jstapp

A staffer for Senator Tina Smith goes viral for sending an email to Senator Mike Lee after he tweeted-and later deleted-about the assassination of a Minnesota state legislator.

"I knew Melissa Hortman. Many people in this office did. She was a longtime friend of Senator Smith’s, who had seen her hours before she was murdered. So you’ll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief," the letter begins.

(1/8)

Oh WhatsApp, you changed. Meta got the best out of you.

"No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow.”

"Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.“

~ WhatsApp Blog, June 18th 2012
https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads

Ladies and gentlemen...the Democratic Party!

https://www.levernews.com/dems-crypto-schemers-have-entered-the-chat/

OMG, em dashes are not a sign of AI writing!

I kept hoping this myth would burn itself out, but no — the idea that em dashes are a sign of AI writing just keeps spreading. I finally couldn't take it anymore, so I crashed a segment into the latest Grammar Girl podcast.

The whole thing seems to have taken off after a popular GenZ culture podcast advised people to stop using the “the ChatGPT hyphen.” (And I have to confess it kills me that they didn't even know the name for it.) 🧵

BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego Garcia is getting a new set of high-profile lawyers for his criminal case in Tennessee.

Sean Hecker, Jenna Dabbs, & David Patton of Hecker Fink and Rascoe Dean of Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison filed a motion Tuesday evening to take over as counsel for Abrego Garcia.

https://substack.com/@chrisgeidner/note/c-126925091

@HeavenlyPossum The two day manhunt ended when they found him… at a house he owned. Who knows how long it would’ve taken them if his neighbor hadn’t tipped them off.