reblog this and put in the tags something you watched that terrified you as a child. i was so scared of the hot sauce in spongebob that i refused to be in the room when it was on

I am about going to gripe about something that's been really annoying me lately.

First let me start with a disclaimer that I am speaking generally here. Of course both the U.S. and Europe are both massive and diverse places containing hundreds of millions of people, and a lot of regional differences. Neither the U.S. or Europe are a monolith (although a lot of people on the internet speak of both places as a monolith, which I wish people would stop doing, since neither are).

I could be wrong about this, since I don't live in the U.S., and haven't visited everywhere in Europe. But between where I have visited in the U.S., and where I have visited / lived in Europe, and from what I know from my friends in the U.S. and friends in other European countries, I get the feeling that overall the U.S. has stricter disability access laws than a lot of places in Europe do, especially in regard to building codes.

Of course there are exceptions, I know New York city is abhorrently hostile in its design towards anyone elderly and/or disabled. Although when I visited New York city it really just felt on par with a lot of major European cities with how abhorrently inaccessible it was.

One example of this is that recently I saw a Reddit discussion where a USAmerican vacationing in France was surprised at how many staircases didn't have handrails, because according to this man handrails are required by law in the U.S.

The comments were all Europeans having an absolute field day with this. Pretty much all of the comments were some variation of "I can't believe Americans are too stupid and lazy to use the stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 what's wrong with you fat lazy stupid Americans that you can't even use stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 thank GOD I was born in Europe where I was just taught how to walk up and down the stairs on my own and don't need a handrail like a lazy fat stupid American 🤣🤣🤣"

A few people tried to gently point out that this was about accessibility for elderly and disabled people, and it's not cool to laugh at building codes that are about accessibility, but those commenters were usually shut down with some variation of "yeah well in MY European country if someone is disabled or becomes elderly we either move to a more accessible building or we modify our home to be more accessible, we don't sit around whining like a bunch of Americans that our building isn't already accessible 🙄"

Which is, such a cruel way to talk about accessibility. Why wouldn't disabled and elderly people deserve the same access to a building as anyone else? Are elderly and disabled people not allowed to visit friends and family? Anyone could get hit by a car today, and after that struggle with going up and down stairs without the use of a handrail for the next several months, years, possibly the rest of your life. It's so easy to feel smug when you can easily trot up and down the stairs without a handrail, but so cruel to be unwilling to consider anyone who struggles with stairs should maybe be allowed access to the same places as you.

Honestly when I go on vacation abroad with my elderly + disabled mother, it's often easier to go to the U.S. with her than other places in Europe, because the U.S. does tend to be more accessible (in my experience, and except for New York city ofc) making going around to different public places with my mom generally a lot easier than somewhere like France or the Netherlands.

Out of all the things you could clown on the U.S. about, why you gotta go for accessibility of all things? It's disgustingly ableist and ageist, and I have to wonder if these people actually just hate disabled people / accessible design, and are using the U.S. as an excuse to hate on disabled people and accessible design.

I’m a Canadian. Our disability access is probably better than much of Europe (although I haven’t visited a lot of different European countries). But it’s definitely worse than the USA.

The USA has something called the Americans With Disabilites Act (ADA), and apparently it works fairly well. An American in my WhatsApp group went to a figure skating championship in Toronto a while back and was stunned that the arena didn’t have wheelchair access for spectators. Because an American arena would have.

Not everything about the USA is awful. Not everything about Canada and Europe is great.

Also, I live in Vancouver. We didn’t have a subway system until 1986, that’s when the Skytrain was finally built. Several of the Skytrain stations were originally built with no elevators. People with wheelchairs were expected to enter or exit the system at a different station that did have wheelchair access. In 1986.

The system wasn’t built in 1896 or 1926, when wheelchairs were a newfangled idea. It was built in 1986. British Columbian Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion world wheelchair tour started in 1985 (in Vancouver).

Or well, the Skytrain was opened in 1986. Let’s say the plans for it were finalized by 1983, since it would’ve taken a few years to build. In 1983, there was already a substantial disability rights movement in Canada, but several Skytrain stations didn’t have elevators anyway, presumably because it was cheaper.

Naturally, it eventually became politically unacceptable to make wheelchair users (and people with strollers, and people with canes or walkers, and people with suitcases) skip a station because they hadn’t bothered to put an elevator in that station.

So those stations had to be retrofitted at vast expense to make them wheelchair-accessible. It probably would’ve been cheaper to just build them accessible from the start, in retrospect. But we didn’t have a Made In Canada version of the ADA, so it didn’t happen.

Also, wheelchair accessibility does not only help wheelchair users. It also helps people with babies or toddlers in strollers, people using walkers, crutches, or canes, travellers with heavy suitcases, elderly people, etc, etc. I take the Skytrain several days a week, and I see all those people taking the elevator instead of the stairs or escalators.

Anyone who wants to know why America/The USA has the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), PLEASE look up "The Capitol Crawl." I saw a video of it at a disability centric school I went to. Hundreds of disabled people that couldn't walk dragged themselves up the Capitol steps- a famously giant staircase that leads to the places our legislation gets made. People were crawling up, risking their health, and lives to become visible. And while accessibility still isn't perfect (people on Disability have their income capped at $16,200 monthly, or about $19,440 yearly, any cent over, and you get no benefits and might as well die) we have some stuff. It was hard fought for, and people just fied out of sight beforehand. But we refused to let it keep happening. If anything, that is the opposite of lazy.

There’s a great picture book about Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, who was only 8 years old in 1990, when she participated in the Capitol Crawl.

no cheating by looking but who do you think your Spotify top artist is gonna be this year 👀

one of the most unhinged and disturbingly hateful things I’ve seen in the past two years, and that’s saying a lot, and no this is not in any way a defense of the politicians being depicted here. you can hate any of the men in power for their actions and policies as much as you want - this crosses a serious line into ancient conspiracies and violent Jew hatred (which puts random Jewish people at far more risk than it does to these men). dressing it up in rubber masks doesn’t make it benign or valid criticism.

they initially set this up inside Union Station.

the “menu”:

Anti-Zionist activists staged a display at a Washington, DC, train station on Thursday that echoed a blood libel, an age-old antisemitic conspiracy that has caused repeated mass violence against Jews for centuries.

The libel falsely claims that Jews murder non-Jews to harvest their blood for ritual use or as a sacrifice.

Performers wearing the masks of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, former US president Joe Biden, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former secretary of state Antony Blinken were seen in videos of the display drinking mock blood from wine glasses at a table adorned with blue Stars of David, red drops splattered on the stars.

The video is captioned, “Israeli Friendsgiving.”

The actors gnawed on fake, bloody limbs and organ meat, red liquid dripping from their chins.

The performers, their hands stained red, wiped the blood off their faces with Israeli flags, and the characters playing Netanyahu and Biden pulled apart a heap of bloody entrails. An activist filming instructed the actor playing Netanyahu to consume skin for the cameras.

The actor playing Netanyahu, at the center of the table, stood, patted the heads of Biden and Trump, as the activists shouted that the US leaders were “loyal lap dogs.” The Netanyahu actor then extended his hands over the others.

An oversized menu that was placed next to the table was titled, “Israel’s Friendsgiving Dinner,” and its offerings included, “Gaza children’s limbs,” “stolen organs,” “illegally harvested skin,” and for a drink, “Gaza’s spilled blood.”

The bottom of the menu was signed with a heart next to Netanyahu’s name.

The exhibit took place at Union Station in the capital, the main entryway into the city for public transportation. Videos showed the table set up both inside the station and outside its front entrance.

Another video showed Netanyahu holding the American leaders on dog leashes and leading them around, while the US leaders made barking sounds and canine gestures.

Anti-Zionist activists Hazami Barmada and Atefeh Rokhvand claimed credit for the display on social media. Barmada is a Harvard graduate and former UN staffer, according to LinkedIn, and Rokhvand is an activist with the group Teachers Against Genocide.

Jewish groups expressed shock and outrage at the display.

The American Jewish Committee said, “Blood libel was on full display today.”

“Dressed up as ‘activism’ and ‘performance art,’ this was nothing less than the revival of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic tropes in history,” the committee said. “Blood libel has fueled violence, persecution and massacres of Jews for centuries. Seeing it resurface in our nation’s capital is both horrifying and unacceptable.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater DC said, “Just steps away from the symbols and heart of American democracy, a scene that would have been right at home in Nazi Germany played out in the United States. Seldom have we seen such a sickening display of full-throated antisemitism.”

The Anti-Defamation League said the display “was nothing less than abhorrent.”

The libel is one of the most notorious antisemitic falsehoods and has caused repeated violence to Jews in Europe and elsewhere.

The myth took on a central role in the persecution of Jews in Europe with accusations against the Jewish community in Norwich, England, in 1144.

The false accusation spread through Europe, causing outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in medieval France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

The libel continued into the 20th century, igniting pogroms in Eastern Europe before and after the Holocaust, and becoming a motif in Nazi propaganda.

The blood libel has appeared elsewhere, including in Syria and Iran.

The libel is most often associated with the persecution of Jews in Europe, but it also has a history in the US.

The Puritan clergyman and Harvard University president Increase Mather first introduced the blood libel into the US in the mid-1600s, the historian Pamela S. Nadell wrote in her recent book, “Antisemitism, an American Tradition.”

“The Jews lie under the guilt of blood and murder. Some have laid a most hideous fact to the charge of the Jews, that they have been wont once a year to steal Christian children, and to put them to death by crucifying out of scorn and hatred against Christians,” Mather wrote in a 1669 tract.

A blood libel in Damascus in 1840 was a formative moment for the small American Jewish community as it mobilized a response, pushing the US government to help free the Jews who were imprisoned and tortured over the libel, Nadell wrote.

The most significant blood libel in the US took place when 4-year-old Barbara Griffiths disappeared in Massena, in upstate New York, in 1928.

As town members searched for the girl, rumors circulated that the local Jews had kidnapped and murdered her for ritual purposes.

The town’s Jews were interrogated, their shops searched for the body, and a mob blamed the rabbi for sacrificing Griffiths, who was found after being lost in the woods.

Echoes of the blood libel have surfaced among anti-Zionist activists, who often levy unfounded accusations that Israel harvests Palestinian organs.

Anti-Zionists sometimes recycle age-old anti-Jewish tropes, with Israel, Zionists or Zionism taking the historical place of Jews.

Last week, a university researcher in the UK taught a blood libel to students during a lecture.

people love to complain about sex scenes in tv shows and violence in movies when the real danger is scenes that make you feel second hand embarrassment.

grief is so crazy like what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. does she know i loved her. i miss her so much. i catch myself doing things she used to do. i wish i could call her. i miss her so much. i do a crossword puzzle. i cry while washing the dishes. does she know i loved her? my heart feels like a hummingbird. i miss her so much. what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. what if i forget.

i talked ab this feeling in therapy yday and my therapist asked me, “would it really be so bad if your memories changed? if they softened and faded or looked different over time? why does that frighten you so much?” and i said, “i don’t want the love to disappear.” and she looked at me for a long moment and then she said, “it won’t. it doesn’t work that way. even if the memories soften or change, it doesn’t mean the love does. that love keeps going backward in time, forever, because you love her still. all is not lost.” i just thought i would share that in case it resonated w anyone else too.

forget your zodiac tell me what you order at a bar and at a coffee shop

enough about books you love. tell me about a book you fucking hated

for the love of god keep em coming

THE MUMMY
1999, dir Stephen Sommers

Every now and then this ridiculously wonderful movie punches you in the face with all of the characters having made it through WW1.

@ people who carry bags everywhere what do you put in them what is there to bring other than chapstick, keys, phone and maybe a tampon why are you packing a suitcase to be outside for 5 hours