VerdantSporeSeasoning

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 1 day ago

Not exactly fantasy, but Great Expectations by Dickens has a boy who grows up totally normal and then has his life transformed by a mysterious benefactor. It doesn’t go the way the kid expects.

Also, Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive & Tress and the Emerald Sea feature kinds of magic that can be accessible by anyone if they engage with it right. So perhaps give those a go. SA is a long series, but Tress is pretty approachable.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 3 days ago

A lot of them are raised to be that way though. One of the big pushes in a lot of Christian circles, for example, is the push to raise kids believing in complementarianism instead of egalitarianism–simply put, that god created men and women to have different roles, and that men just so happen to be in the role of leadership. Combine that with extreme purity culture (at times involving courtship instead of dating, for example) and a fervor to push for big families, and you get a bunch of grown ups looking up after 5, 10 years in a marriage going, “wait, I was promised happiness, why am I so miserable?” Divorce is a huge tool to help. We need to give people, especially women and children, a safe exit from high control spaces.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 5 days ago

My small city is getting a new Christan Nationalism school next year. The neighbors aren’t thrilled that the adults will all be in armed to the teeth at this school in the middle of a decent neighborhood. One of my kid’s friends is going there next year, and told the class that her dad is draining her bank account for the tuition. For an elementary school year education.

Another fun fact: private schools don’t have to take all applicants, so they regularly turn away students with disabilities or special learning needs.

I pointed that out to friends of a friend visiting from Ohio, after they told me how their state did a great thing, making vouchers available to all families in the state. I pointed out how the public schools need the ‘regular’ kids to help subsidize the special services needed by other kids. When the non-special needs kids aren’t there, funding for the specialists gets too expensive for public schools to be able to maintain. The lady clearly didn’t know what to say to that, and after a minute she just said how their children’s private school was too small to be able to have specialists like that. Not sure how that invalidates my point about accessibility of education for all students… It was too sensitive an event to voice that I don’t think public money should be going to institutions that are tax exempt churches. If churches don’t want to pay taxes, their organizations shouldn’t have their hands out for the public coffers. Simple.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 28 days ago

Yeah, black kids don’t need the help of white kids to succeed. They need their schools funded as if rich white children went to them though.

Also, school isn’t just about success, it’s about learning to live in a society, one which isn’t just a monoculture. Hard to learn to live together (for all kinds of races & identities) spending entire childhoods separated.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 2 months ago

Our Albertson’s (including most Safeway brands) in my region want to merge with the Kroger brand stores. They say it’ll be good for customers. 🙄

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 2 months ago

Because future generations have to safehold and not misuse extremely destructive knowledge. We have a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but do they have the ethics to use them responsibly, understanding their full potential? Do the other countries with nuclear bombs have that ethical responsibility, especially over generations? Cuz that big red button is going to be around for a while.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 3 months ago

The organization that invited him, it says above, is the local chapter of Turning Point USA; TPUSA nationally is run by a fellow called Charlie Kirk. It’s overt ‘goal’ is to ‘promote freedom’, and it does this by making lists of professors who are liberal. These professors often then get death threats. Charlie Kirk is a christofascist, and if you’re not familiar with the organization or the person, you’re missing someone who reliably pushes Trump and culture war on the rest of us.

VerdantSporeSeasoning, 3 months ago

I’ve had female relatives mad when the churches they attended started letting women vote in church matters. So I’m guessing about like that. Self hate is such a warm little cocoon once you cut off the parts of yourself that it demands.