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The Offensive Momma

@theoffensivemomma / theoffensivemomma.tumblr.com

Just one offended mom being offensive.

How I beat Ellis at darts. This will never happen again, so I'm gonna relish this. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-WPcGEF5QhBTs6lDuu3UEL5OzaoTZ29xu1dKg0/?igshid=vap3o1j84bs3

Quarantine Creativity. Ana's on the left, Aryanna's on the right. Comment your pick, winner announced Monday! https://www.instagram.com/p/B-TPFm9FtUYW6O8zCx7kohTtYZzCtx1JSwVTHI0/?igshid=i7yne7kefxs9

Pretty sure that generation has been dead for awhile but ok, pretend one thing has something to do with another

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The end of Jim Crow laws was in the 1950′s. The first black student to attend a formerly all white school was Ruby Bridges in 1960. 

Here she is being walked to school under the protection of Federal Marshals because angry white people were ready to harm or kill her. 

Here she is in 2010, eight years ago. 

The generation that enforced segregation is not dead, fucko. They were our fuckin grandparents, and it was not that goddamn long ago. 

Google is free. 

Grandparents?!

I’m 31.

My MOM was born the year before school segregation ended.

She was NINE when MLK was shot.

She remembers race riots in her school over school segregation ending in our home state.

My MOTHER lived through this. She’s 61 years old–which means while her own health is shot, people from her generation will be around for another twenty to thirty years.

1956. This is not colorized. IT WAS SHOT IN COLOR. Look at that–segregation was still ongoing in the age of neon lights.

Same exhibit. 1956. Banana splits, poodle skirts, and the ability to get “colored” drinking water only from the white folks’ backwash. You can see the pipe connecting the white tank to the colored fountain behind the little girl in the light pink dress.

Less than ten years later. That’s Martin Luther King, Jr. in the middle. Have you ever seen him in a color photograph before? There are many, but for some reason … maybe because black-and-white makes things look old … nobody ever uses them.

Look at the bank logo in the back. Colored squares like that were a thing in the mid-to-late 1960s. The slicked-down hair on the Black girl in front says we’re not yet to the mid-1970s, and since these signs all say “Honor King” it’s quite likely this is 1969-1970. You know what else was happening in 1969? Not Woodstock, not the moon landing, although both of those things happened. No, something we think of as being much more recent.

THE INTERNET STARTED.

1969 was the launch of ARPANET, which would later become the Internet. BLACK PEOPLE WERE STILL MARCHING FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS WHEN THE INTERNET WAS STARTED.

This picture was taken sometime between 1956 and 1958. I don’t have a precise date on it, but the sleeveless sundress says later 1950s, the hair on Orange Plai says this was after Elvis, and the stars on the flag say that’s not a modern 50-star flag, which was first used in 1959. (We had a single year, 1958, with 49 stars.)

Ah yes. It was so long ago. Let’s get some more perspective:

Donald Trump was eight years old when school segregation was declared illegal in 1954. He was nineteen when the police beat and shot at peaceful Black protest marchers in Selma, Alabama and twenty-two when MLK was assassinated by the FBI for trying to encourage desegregation.

Hillary Clinton was seven when school segregation was declared, eleven when it went into effect, and eighteen when Selma happened.

Bernie Sanders was thirteen when the integration ruling occurred, 19 when Ruby Bridges started going to a formerly all-white school, and twenty-four when Selma happened. Joe Biden is only a year younger than Bernie.

Elizabeth Warren was eleven when Ruby started her new school, fifteen when Selma happened, eighteen when MLK was shot.

You will notice that all of these people are running for President, or were rumored to be running for President, this year. They’re not just alive, they’re thriving. And they were all alive for desegregation–in fact Trump, Clinton, and Sanders were all old enough to either endorse or oppose what happened at Selma.

But let’s keep looking, because they’re probably outliers, right?

Hm. Three of MLK’s children are still alive. They’re between 56 and 62 years old. (His elder daughter died of unknown causes; her family suspects an undiagnosed heart condition.) In fact one of his siblings is still alive, and she was born before him! She’s 96.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Yeah, she was 21 when school integration was made the law of the land. And she’s still serving on the Supreme Court.

But tell me again how long ago it was.

I’m sure the people from those generations are all dead, after all.

Perhaps most relevantly, Strom Thurmond was a US Senator who filibustered for nearly 24 hours AGAINST the Civil Rights Act. He continued to serve in the Senate until his death in 2003. That means, for years, black Senators and Congresspeople were being asked to write policy alongside someone who had actively fought against their basic, civil rights, and had continued to serve in government without facing any consequences for those actions.

I literally met ruby bridges the other day. She is still well and truly and thoroughly alive.

This can save lives of many Black people who were wrongly convicted and arrested on drug possession charges. Please spread!

^^^^

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This is real #BOOST

I will always reblog

Also Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers! Its a smaller fast food chain but they have a couple hundred locations across the US!! I think their website is freddysusa.com but I’m not sure

based on a true story

I don’t think Fortnite is to blame for kids nowadays not reading…

That’s the joke. It’s the authoritarian overbearing parent.

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He was being sarcastic lol

Reminded me of these

That violin one hit close to home.

I remember doing homework once, asked my grandmother if she was proud of me. “Do some thing for me to be proud of.” That hurt.

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That comic up there – I witnessed almost that exact scenario. Teacher wanted the kids to all pick books. One kid spots something on the shelf and gets visibly excited. Pulls it out and starts reading. Teacher sees it, snatches it off him and tells him that this is a book for 8 year olds (the kid was 15ish) and tells him to get a book more appropriate for his age. Kid slouches around the shelves for about 10 minutes, finally picks up a book at random and sits in his chair tucking the edges of each page into the binding to make that looped-page look. He didn’t read a word. He sat there and did this to his book for the remainder of the reading session:

He had been genuinely excited about the 8 year old book he’d picked up. It was a new one in a series he used to read as a younger kid. He’d been actively sitting and reading, and then he was embarrassed in front of his classmates, told off for reading a kids book, and voila. He lost all enthusiasm for reading anything else that day.

What’s worse? That kid had been hit by a car like a year and a half earlier. Severe brain trauma. Had to re-learn a lot of basic things, like how to speak and how to read.

An 8 year old book would have been perfect for him. Easy enough to read that it would have helped rebuild his confidence in his own reading ability. A book meant for 15/16 years olds? A lot harder to read than a book for 8 year olds. Especially if you’re recovering from a relatively recent brain injury.

And yeah, the teacher knew all about his brain injury, and the recovery. He just seemed go be of the opinion that the kid was 15, so he should be reading books for 15 year olds, irrespective of brain injury.

Reading this thread I’m reminded of Daniel Pennae’s The Rights of the Reader, which can be found in a lot of bookshops and school libraries: 

The child speaking at the bottom in Quentin Blake’s distinctive spiky handwriting is saying ‘10 rights, 1 warning: Don’t make fun of people who don’t read - or they never will’

Reblogging for Daniel Pennac because he is one of my forever favourite writers. If you have the opportunity to read him, please do, you will love it.

As a disabled person aircraft carriers have:

-Thrown out my boarding pass while saying to my mother, “it’s okay she’s in a wheelchair of course someone will just give up their seat for her”

-had staff kneel down to me and talk to me in a baby voice and say, “oh sweetie you didn’t understand me I asked you if you could walk

-been through every thorough pat down known to man

-had my wheelchair banged up to the point I had to by new wheelchair tires

-had staff talk over me and about me as if I wasn’t there

- had staff complain about me while I was being moved in a transfer chair

-was brought to a flight of stairs up to a plane and staff was shocked that I couldn’t board that way

-was sent a bus to pick me up and bring me to the wheelchair accessible boarding spot. They had to send a second bus because the first one they called for was not wheelchair accessible

And NOW, the Department of Transportation is proposing laws for aircraft that would:

- FORCE me (and other SD teams) to get paperwork proven that my highly trained service dog is well behaved and isn’t gonna poo everywhere

-FORCE me (and others) to arrive and HOUR earlier than anyone else on the flight so my service dog can be WATCHED FOR AN HOUR before deciding if we’ll be allowed to board

This is being disguised as a way to control people taking advantage of ESAs and what it is trying to do and what it will do is IMPEDE disabled people. They want to refuse legitimately trained miniature service horses. They want to make ESAs not allowed in aircraft at all. And they want to discriminate against disabled folk even more than they already do. This is not okay.

There is about a month or two left for the public to comment on the DOTs proposal. Please comment and help out our disabled community especially those with animal helpers

Woop woop, new thingy!

I love the Dresden Files book series and I thought this is a fun thing to have and give as a present to other fans. :3

Made from white pine, stained and finished with lacquer.

So I didn’t expect these to sell out in a single evening @_@

I just added another batch to Etsy, so if you’d like one, be quick before they’re out again!

Invite us in. *harmless grin*

@neurodivergent-crow Honey, the Dresden Files is John's fave series. FYI.

Look, motherfuckers.

I grew up in a house where I had to cite sources on my feelings. Every subject was an acceptable target for debate. My parents kept telling my sister and I that “not everything is a contest” but that might have been more impactful if my dad wasn’t an Argumentation professor who brought his work home with him.

What I am saying is that I was essentially constructed from the ground up to be the most unpleasant, contentious, prickly, contrarian motherfucker you’re likely to have the misfortune of interacting with this week.

And I have decided that you are a person worthy of love who has had unique experiences that make you special and important. It is my understanding that you are an everyday miracle and your very existence is a gift to the universe.

So nothing you can say will make me believe that you are worthless and useless and incapable of growth and undeserving of kindness. Bullshit. I won’t have it.

Fuck your negativity.

You are a treasure and if you wanna tell me I’m wrong then fucking fight me.

Some bastardous positivity for your friday night.

There’s a bunch of scary shit happening in the world but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re valuable and important and people love you.

I’ve been looking through the notes and the tags on this and I want you all to know: You never deserved the way that people were shitty to you.

No matter what you did you deserved to be treated with respect and allowed your dignity.

And god fucking damn it if you were a child and people treated you like shit you deserved so much better.

You’re worth kindness.

You never had to earn it.

You never had to earn it. It should have been free and expected and if other people wouldn’t give it to you you can have some of mine.

In Finland, speeding tickets are calculated based on your income - causing some Finnish millionaires to pay fines of over $100,000. Source

This is what “equality” looks like in that liberal fairy tale land of Finland.  They punish you proportionately to how successful you are.  Sounds really “fair.”

Except… it is fair? Because it’s proportionate. I don’t get what’s difficult about that. An impoverished person paying $400 dollar fine isn’t the same as a millionaire paying the same amount. For the poor person, $400 dollars could mean starving. Would you really claim it would have the same consequence for a rich man? Would it even be noticeable to him, while the absence of food in their stomach would be glaring to a poorer man? Would it be fair for a man to starve for the same crime as a man that would be having a three course meal?

By taking income into account, it allows the impoverished able to still survive while paying any fines they may incur. And, ultimately, while $100,000 dollars would be noticeable to a millionaire, they would still get by. And, assuming the law is properly implemented, they would be paying the same equivalent of their yearly income that a poorer person would. That’s what makes it fair. They would be impacted the same way - but you are looking at the amount rather than the equation.

Also, it’s important to make sure that even the rich would pause at the cost of a fine. They need to fear the law just as a poor man does. 

Oh no… rich people facing fines that might actually make them consider not doing illegal things because the punishments might actually hurt them… how unfair… -V

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Finnish person here. Our speeding ticket system owns and only people who bitch about them are people who wanna break the laws - the loudest whiners are the rich people who think they can just pay their way out of trouble and that’s why we have laws like that.

400 dollar ticket.

Person making 10 dollars an hour: “Fuck, I better slow down”

Millionaire driving a Jaguar: “LOL 400 DOLLARS, FUCK THAT, NYOOM”

Compared to a proportional ticket.

Person making 10 dollars an hour and must pay 400 dollar ticket: “Fuck, I better slow down.”

Millionaire who must pay 100,000 dollar ticket: “Fuck, I better slow down.”

Like wtf. Some people have been so brainwashed by capitalism and worship of the rich that they literally can’t tell the difference between fairness and unfairness anymore.

It IS fair. The fact that it flies in the status quo so much should make you think about that status quo.

So I was rereading Harry Potter, when I came across this and thought- what if instead of Cedric Diggory, Cassius Warrington had been chosen to compete in the Triwizard Tournament?

Imagine Dumbledore calling out the name of the Hogwarts champion and it isn’t a Gryffindor, or a Ravenclaw, or even a Hufflepuff, but it’s a Slytherin. A student from a House most people hate.

Imagine Cassius Warrington getting up, and three out of four Houses are booing at him and shouting things like “NO!” or, “We can’t have a Slytherin champion!” or demanding a retry. But he’s a Slytherin- he’s been dealing with this shit since he got sorted, so he keeps his head high and joins the other champions.

Imagine Harry trying to catch Warrington alone because he doesn’t really want to associate with Slytherins (plus Malfoy has this tendency of being around the guy ALL THE TIME since he got chosen), but at the same time he’s also fair enough not to want him to walk into the first task unprepared.

Imagine Warrington walking over to Harry a few months later, and Ron and Hermione both jump into a protective stance, wands out, but instead of attacking Harry he just tells him to stick the egg underwater. (Because Slytherins don’t forget those who helped them out).

Imagine Warrington and Harry helping each other out in the labyrinth.

Imagine Harry being devastated when Peter kills Warrington- because Voldemort doesn’t care what house they’re form, a spare is a spare.

Imagine the uproar that causes among the Slytherins, because some of their parents really are Death Eaters and they know what really happened.

Imagine Slytherins fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts and shouting “This is for Cassius!”

Imagine Harry returning with Warrington’s body, and the crowd realizes what’s happened, but Warrington’s parents don’t show up. There’s no one to mourn him, to cradle him in their arms and cry for their son. The Slytherins know why. His parents were Death Eaters, too.

Imagine Slytherins reaching out, asking for help from classmates from other houses. They’re terrified, truly terrified because the being their parents claimed would never hurt them because they’re pureblood, they realize that he does not care.

Imagine Slytherins in the 5th book sneaking off to join Dumbledore’s Army, to learn more about who Voldemort is without their parents acting as a filter. 

Imagine the shock when they’re told what he’s really done.

Imagine that a few talented Slytherins went with Harry and the others into the Ministry of Magic. The others are a bit wary but they prove themselves as friends.

Imagine them being confronted by Lucius Malfoy in the the Hall of Prophecy, and when the Death Eaters descend, they know that any one of them could be their parents.

Imagine the shocked gasp of a Death Eater as they realize their own child, a pureblood, is standing defiantly with Harry Potter. They choke back a cry. They can’t let their child know that they were about to duel to the death.

Imagine a DA Slytherin facing off against their own Death Eater parent. That they make the decision to let their child defeat them, because in that moment, they realize that they love their child more than they fear Voldemort. They go down, mask unveiled, and the Slytherin kid has to be dragged from the fight before he gets killed.

Imagine Book 6 Slytherins getting more friendly and cooperative with the other houses. Two years of Voldemort terrorizing the muggle and Wizarding world, two years where their parents just up and leave some days, cringing from the pain in their arm, two years after the death of the first Slytherin pureblood, Cassius Warrington, killed by Voldemort’s right-hand man, and they’re slowly hitting the breaking point.

Imagine Slytherin kids keeping tabs on their parents, sending the information to Harry, who shares it with the Order of the Phoenix, and hoping that their parents won’t be killed.

Imagine Book 7 Slytherins low-key rebelling against the new oppressive Hogwarts staff.

Imagine the final siege on Hogwarts, where Slytherins stand proudly by their fellow houses, knowing full-well they could be fighting their own parents. Some Slytherins know their parents were in the fighting. They hope to find them first and sneak them away. Their fellow students understand. Professor McGonagall allows 7th Year Slytherin, Pansy Parkinson, to duel a death eater in her stead; her father is under that veil. She knows it.

Imagine the aftermath of the battle; every house suffered loses. Slytherin students crying over the deaths of friends they made in every house.

Imagine a Cassius Warrington statue made in his honor, the first Slytherin to fight and die nobly with Harry Potter, the boy who lived, in the face of ultimate evil. He was a true Slytherin, and it’s in his name that Slytherin children and their families have cut all ties with the Death Eaters, denounced Voldemort, and are finally living in peace.

Imagine a story in which Harry wasn’t in love with his fellow champion’s girlfriend, but after her boyfriend’s death just hugs her so long, so hard, and says “he wanted to win for you. You should know–you should know he won, he did it for you” and gives her the best hug and shoulder he knows how to be because her parents aren’t there either and she must know why.

Imagine Harry staring over her head at everyone else until Hermione steps up–it doesn’t take long, but it takes long enough that when she does all eyes are on her as a source of motion–and says “we’re never going to forget this. They’re not going to get away with it” and the girlfriend just latches onto Hermione and everyone is in wands-out stance convinced she’s about to attack the shit out of Hermione, and then the girlfriend stares into her eyes and says “do you promise me” and Hermione just gives her this super-firm nod and says “I promise” and the girlfriend just collapses on her, sobbing. 

Imagine Dumbledore trying to give some flowery speech about inter-wizard solidarity while glossing over why, because Slytherins have always been a touchy subject, and Ron gets to his feet and says “Professor, I need to say something important” and Dumbledore is so surprised he just cedes the floor, and Ron–after that awkward moment when he realizes everyone is staring at him–says he didn’t know Warrington particularly, but he knows how Warrington and Harry played. That each was always cheering on the other. Both wanted to win, but neither was willing to undercut the other by underhanded means. He finishes up saying “I think–I think it’s important everyone should know he died being what a champion should be. Because he could have abandoned Harry and instead he stood up with him to play the game the honest way, and he died for it. And–and Slytherin House should be proud, and we should all be proud, because Warrington was a good bloke.” He sits back down all flustered because he didn’t actually stand up meaning to make a speech. And then Pansy Parkinson stands up before Dumbledore can take back control of the room and says “I want to tell Weasley thank you.” And all of Slytherin House raises a glass–to Warrington, to Weasley, to Potter–and the other houses follow suit. Many years later, Wizarding scholars will say that was the moment Voldemort truly lost.

Imagine later that summer. Harry gets several owls on his birthday, all unsigned. The birds are plump and pretentious and well-cared-for. He will never know which Slytherins sent him their treasures: parchments with hexes developed by the Death Eaters; a strange locket that will only open if he whispers a special spell but that always shows him the picture he most needs to see; a page torn from a potions book that, brewed properly, will allow him extra time to summon a Patronus by giving him a few crucial seconds not just of happiness but of bliss. It doesn’t matter. Harry knows these gifts not as birthday gifts but for what they really are, and he treasures the locket and copies out the potion to send to Hermione and Mrs. Weasley, and when first summoned by the Order of the Phoenix he marches straight up to Dumbledore with the hexes and says “I can’t tell you where I got these, Professor. But they’re in use by the Death Eaters and I think you should have them.” Months later, Sirius will recognize the spell Bellatrix shoots at him, and will dive out of the way just in the nick of time.

The final battle. Everyone is there. Sirius somehow ends up herding a group of Slytherins. They all stare at him and he at them, across a centuries-old divide Voldemort has only succeeded in deepening. Then he remembers the hexes. Harry’s locket, now tucked under Sirius’ shirt because Harry’s friends are with him in this battle but most of Sirius’ are dead. The moment that happiness potion saved Remus’ life, his very soul. Snape’s final words to Harry, finally seen not as mockery but real true advice. What Harry said Voldemort said–his first words in his new form. They are kids, and they are sharing the same kind of hurt he once wouldn’t admit to, watching his mother burn his name off the family tree. “When we go in there, it’s going to be hell,” he tells the Slytherins. “Some of you are probably going to die. I might go down too, and if I do I want your best curser in the front. But I want you all to remember one thing. There are no spares.”  Later retellings of the battle never fail to mention the moment a group of angry, screaming teens burst into the Great Hall, wearing their green and silver as the badge of honor it should be, shouting NO SPARES, NO SPARES at the tops of their voices in between hexes and curses and the occasional physical punch. When Hermione is present, she always interrupts the storyteller to be sure everyone knows about the moment Blaise Zabini shoved her to the floor, dropped on top of her, fired off three curses in rapid succession and said “stay alive, Granger, we need you” before jumping back to his feet and vanishing into the melee–how, for all anyone knows, those may have been his last words, and she will not let his sacrifice go unnoted. 

The aftermath. Malfoy holds out a hand to Sirius, badly injured on the floor. Sirius asks how Malfoy is willing to trust him. Malfoy nods at his chest. “You’ve got my godfather’s locket,” he says, and when Sirius and Harry finally speak after the battle Harry gives his full agreement to the very first thing out of  Sirius’ mouth. They give the locket to Malfoy. Sirius grits his teeth and closes his eyes and opens them and says “He probably saved my life, giving Harry that.” He doesn’t say thank you. Malfoy hears it anyway.

The school reopens under a single banner: the four Houses united. The House rivalry is reduced to just that–a competition in fun–with those deep divides slowly healing to scars, and eventually away to nothing at all.

Imagine it.

When we stand, we stand united as one

And then there would be no hope for any uprising of evil, no users of the dark arts would dare to attack. There would be no neglected Slytherins turning to a darker cause. The unity Cassius Warrington’s death caused would come to save the world, time and time again, as would-be-Voldemorts find no followers. No children will ever have to fight their parents, or family. There would always be peace. 

oh christ somebody added to it and now i’m a soggy emotional wreck

I’m crying because this is what slytherins should have been and truly are

This is beautifully written and I wish it was in the books xx

This is such a fantastic read. A Slytherin triwizard champion sounds awesome.

Best Harry Potter post

I’m crying of hope and happiness

This. This post here is why I don’t bother with the books anymore. This is a better, more fulfilling outcome than the books could ever be (haven’t read the last one yet, probably now never will). 

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ATTENTION fake Harry Potter fans, the following works are NOT part of the Harry Potter canon: Harry Potter 1-7, Fantastic Beasts, The Cursed Child

The following works ARE part of the Harry Potter canon: A Very Potter Musical, A Very Potter Sequel, A Very Potter Senior Year, Potter Puppet Pals

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My Immortal I’m so sorry my dumb bitch ass forgot to list you as canon oh my god