Tootfinder

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Nacirema people is their insistence that they do not participate in practices of which they clearly do. Equally unusual is the fact that, unlike other sacrificial cultures who raid neighboring tribes for victims, both slaves and victims for human sacrifice are only taken from within the society. In fact, there is a very strong cultural taboo against sacrificing or enslaving those from other tribes.
They are aware of the rituals of human sacrifice in other tribes, but claim such rituals to be inconsistent with their society. Yet their human sacrifice rituals are some of the most elaborate in the world. These rituals are so important that there is a whole part of Nacirema society dedicated specifically to arguing about who should and should not be sacrificed, restraining and feeding the potential victims for the years during which these arguments take place, and ultimately preparing and administering the ritual poison.
This is strangely similar to their approach to slavery. Both human sacrifice and slavery were once a much larger part of Nacirema society. Their human sacrifice rituals now take far longer and happen far less often, but at no point have they ever recognized these ritual sacrifices as such. Meanwhile, the Nacirema do acknowledge that slavery was part of their culture once. During the time when they did recognize their practice of slavery, they did raid other tribes for slaves. Now they follow the same complex ritual for slavery as they do for human sacrifice.
It is strange that, by following this ritual and only choosing victims from within their society, they seem to become incapable of seeing their behavior for what it is.

This framing doesn’t even touch the crucial forces of ego and identity formation and craving for belonging that are the bedrock of fascist movements like MAGA. Others are thinking productively about that, and it’s at least as important here!
That belief-as-identity phenomenon is also time-based. Somebody posted about those Young Republicans and their Telegram messages grooming and being groomed for fascism, and that’s right: it’s not just the existence of the fascist space; it’s the sustained process of drawing people in over time.
5/

Good proposal, a no-fly zone above Ukraine, NATO/EU can do this, it is non-escalatory and saves delivered weapons and material from europe from destruction.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/15/europe/poland-nato-no-fly-zone-ukraine-russian-drones-i…

NATO should impose no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect against Russian drones, Poland says
Poland’s foreign minister has suggested that NATO states should consider imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect the alliance’s territory and people from Russian drones.

Day 23: Thi Bui
Indirect CW: parental neglect, war, intergenerational trauma
Bui is the author of "The Best We Could Do", a graphic memoir which explores her relationship with her parents and unpacks some of the intergenerational trauma coming out of the Vietnam War. It has a lot of wisdom to offer about both dealing with troubled parents as a 1.5th-generation immigrant, and it delves deeply into her parents' histories in Vietnam and the complexities of the situation there both in the north and in the south. It's beautifully illustrated and very nicely plotted together given all the disparate threads it is working with.
I haven't read any of Bui's other work, but it looks like she's published a picture book for kids as well as a series of short comics during the pandemic. Besides Oseman who also writes non-illustrated fiction and the two manga artists Ice mentioned, Bui is the first graphic novel author I've included here, but I've actually got quite a few of them in my longer list, one of whom may make it into the 30 I'll include in this thread. These days I'm reading a bunch of graphic novels since they're easy to get through, and the variety of stories and perspectives in that space is wonderful these days, with a huge array of indie stuff that probably never would have gotten off the ground in traditional publishing/comics spaces.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Are there any admins on social.tchncs.de.? Is anonymously spreading lies about over 30 families in Gaza allowed on this instance?
This anonymous coward has been chased off of every server he’s been on and yet he’s still here, still attacking people suffering from genocide and famine.
(And yes, some folks copy posts from others. We’ve asked them not to. But they’re trying to survive genocide, not win social media awards.)
Also (see his second post) we’re not attempting to r…

Linux Is Best (@Linux@social.tchncs.de)
Attached: 2 images 1 of 2 First, let me say: what’s happening in Gaza is absolutely awful. But what’s also awful is that there are dishonest people taking advantage of others during a crisis. In one photo, from Facebook (my job, where I work), we had a woman claiming to be a 36-year-old mother of two children, ages 4 and 7. She spaced out the URL in her post, hoping it wouldn’t get flagged by spam filters (it did). The very next day, someone on the Fediverse posted the exact same messa…

WSJ restructures its health, science, and education teams, with the health group moving back under the business team, after separating during the pandemic (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/wsj-restructures-…

WSJ restructures health, science and education, makes layoffs - Talking Biz News
Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker sent out the following on Wednesday: Dear all, Today we are announcing changes to how we structure our health, science and education teams at The Wall Street Journal. The health group is returning to the business team after becoming a separate coverage area during the Covid-19 pandemic. Coverage of […]

Smash-and-grab thieves in Seattle made off with an estimated $2m in diamonds, luxury watches, gold and other items in a daring midday jewelry store robbery that took just about 90 seconds, police said on Friday.
Video from the west Seattle store’s surveillance cameras shows four masked suspects shattering the locked glass front door with hammers and then ransacking six display cases on Thursday.
One display held about $750,000 worth in Rolex watches, police said in a statement, and…

Chicago is in Cook County and now courts are safer.
"Cook County’s top judge signed an order barring ICE from arresting people at court."
"...bars the civil arrest of any “party, witness, or potential witness” while going to court proceedings. It includes arrests inside courthouses and in parking lots, surrounding sidewalks and entryways."

Cook County judge's order bars ICE from arresting people at court in Chicago area
Cook County’s top judge signed an order barring ICE from arresting people at court. The county includes Chicago, which has seen a federal immigration crackdown in recent months. Detaining residents outside courthouses has been a common tactic for federal agents, who have been stationed outside county courthouses for weeks, making arrests and drawing crowds of protesters. The order, which takes effect Wednesday, bars the civil arrest of any “party, witness, or potential witness” while goin…

It should be noted that the Nacirema absolutely do kill those outside of their tribes during highly ritualized combat. In fact, they are known and feared by many surrounding tribes for their war-like nature. But the previously mentioned taboo seems to be against the execution of the ritual for either enslavement or sacrifice of outsiders for sacrifice or enslavement within tribal territory. Similarly, the Nacirema will not seize slaves during their war raids to bring within their territory. However, it does seem that the tribute system which the Nacirema impose on other tribes favors slavery.
The Elihcian people even tell stories of a chief who tried to end a slave-like practice among their people and refused tribute to the Nacirema. The chief of the Nacirema send emissaries to plot the murder of great chief of the Elihcian with the strongest nobles who were the largest slave owners. The war chief of the Elihcian, a friend of the Nacirema chief, then took over the tribe, enslaved many and paid even more tribute to the Nacirema chief. Many tribes to the South of the Nacirema have very similar stories.
Strangely, again, the Nacirema do not see themselves as war-like. Rather, they see themselves as peaceful. When talking about war and war-raids, they will even sometimes use a phase that means "maintaining" or "sustaining peace" to describe them.
Again, it seems to be the use of ritual that allows them to declare slavery and human sacrifice as "justice" and to declare war as "peace."