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> The sugar skull tradition comes from the Aztecs.

> fancy skeletons and skulls are popular in our culture because we celebrate death (per the aztecs)

Just a small correction for anyone who is perusing this thread. This is a fun just-so story that a lot of people have come to believe (many Mexicans included, unfortunately) but this is a modern, urban legend. It stems from problematic narratives invented in the 19th and 20th century regarding fatalistic views on indigeneity and mestizaje against colonialism (see: Death and the Idea of Mexico, by Claudio Lomnitz.)

I always feel it necessary as a Mexican myself to push back against this narrative (that our department of education, who absolutely knows better, continues to teach despite pushback from modern academics and scholars.)

The fact is, anthropologists and archaeologists know very little about the nature of rituals and cults in prehispanic Mesoamerica; much of what people think actually comes from 20th century political propaganda.

To quote the Mexican philosopher, Roger Bartra (who coined the concept of a post-Mexican condition, see: Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition)

> The intellectual class in twentieth-century Mexico appropriated the cult of death as it was first celebrated within popular culture, making of the idea of death a symbol of nationalism: Mexicans' “indifference to death” is an invention of modern culture.

> The fact that León-portilla’s Moctezuma accepts “fatalmente” the arrival of the Spaniards suggests that León-portilla, too, finds himself inspired (or perhaps trapped) in one of mid-century Mexico’s most prominent and more labyrinthine mythologies: death itself.

In his critique of historian León-Portilla's work, he points out that after the independence from Spain (and the later civil war), the desire to connect modern Mexican society back to pre-hispanic origins was a useful political tool to create an artificial Mexican national identity out of the antiquated caste system it sought to replace.

While it's tempting to trace the narrative of the “special relationship between Mexico and death” back to the Aztec triple-alliance, it's unfortunately ahistorical & propagandistic.

> Dang, I'm a white guy dating a biracial woman (black/white). People definitely read her as just "black"

It goes back a few hundred years and we've never shaken it. Laws dating from 17th-century colonial America excluded children of at least one black parent from the legal status of being white. Laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent. Some 19th-century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as "mulatto," with one black grandparent as "quadroon" and with one black great grandparent as "octoroon." The latter categories remained within an overall black or African-American category.

> I've heard all these comments before (not often but it happens) and things get more complicated when she mentions she's mixed race.

It's so sad too, because race isn't anything scientific, we invented it. And being "white" is an invention of America. In France, "black" people think of themselves as French. When immigrants came to America they weren't white, they were Polish and German and Dutch and so on. Irish immigrants, who were so oppressed in the North that their treatment would be considered the original sin of America if not for slavery in the South, were not considered "white" until the Civil War. And for Italians it came much later:

> When Italians poured into America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were not considered white upon arrival. Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Slavs and other European groups, at the time called “new immigrants,” sought to overcome their subordination by showing, through their behavior, to be deserving of being considered white. In 1911, Henry Pratt Fairchild, an influential American sociologist, said about new immigrants, “If he proves himself a man, and … acquires wealth and cleans himself up — very well, we might receive him [consider him white] in a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him.” Economist Robert F. Forester wrote in 1924, “in a country where the distinction between white man and black is intended as a distinction of value … it is no compliment to the Italian to deny him his whiteness, but that actually happens with considerable frequency.”

And a little more...

> The construction of the "white race" in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves. The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people.

If this is a topic you're interested in I highly recommend reading "Female Chauvinist Pigs" it's an easy, fun read and in some places opened my eyes to how I was perpetuating misogyny. It also hit on the 'cool girl' trope before Gillian Flynn wrote that paragraph.

Fair enough that definitely happens. I've got a well trained dog that never does that to strangers, but to me she must think she is 20 lbs sometimes. I love it because she is unconditionally loving. I think the main point with both of our points is you should train your dog well so it doesn't freak. I still think little dogs bark much more compared to large dogs in general, but I do have a neighbor dog that is large and barks at the damn wind. They would let it out at 6 AM until 10ish and it would bark non stop. I spoke politely to them and they basically told me to kick rocks. For anyone interested this thing has worked absolute wonders. Dog barks one time and I guess the high frequency annoys it enough to stop it.

Communists are good. Exhibit A. Thomas Sankara

1. He vaccinated 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles in a matter of weeks
   
   
2. He initiated a nation-wide literacy campaign, increasing the literacy rate from 13% in 1983 to 73% in 1987.
   
   
3. He planted over 10 million trees to prevent desertification
   
4. He built roads and a railway to tie the nation together, without foreign aid
   
   
5. He appointed females to high governmental positions, encouraged them to work, recruited them into the military, and granted pregnancy leave during education
   
   
6. He outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy in support of Women’s rights
   
   
7. He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.
   
   
8. He reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.
   
   
9. He redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants. Wheat production rose in three years from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient
   
   And again
   
   
10. He opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”
    
    
11. He spoke in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance.
    
    
12. He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).
    
    
13. H[e forced civil servants to pay one month’s salary to public projects](In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army's provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).)
    
    
14. He refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes
    
    
15. As President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer
    
    
16. A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard.
    
    
17. He required public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen. (The reason being to rely upon local industry and identity rather than foreign industry and identity)
    
    
18. When asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, Sankara replied “There are seven million Thomas Sankaras.”
    
    
19. An accomplished guitarist, he wrote the new national anthem himself
    
    
20. He renamed his country from the derogatory " Upper volta " to " Burkina Faso, The Land Of Upright Man"
    
    
21. His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
    
    
22. Sankara's administration was the first African government to publicly recognize the AIDS epidemic as a major threat to Africa
    
    
23. Large-scale housing and infrastructure projects were also undertaken. Brick factories were created to help build houses in effort to end urban slums
    
    
24. In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army's provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country)
    
    
    
    He led one of the most ambitious programs of sweeping reforms ever seen in Africa It sought to fundamentally reverse the structural social inequities inherited from the French colonial order.
    
    These inequities left a majority of marginalized, mostly rural, poor and women, at the bottom of society, often under the exploitation of a minority of bureaucrats, businessmen, military officers and traditional chiefs. Sankara focused the state’s limited resources on the marginalized majority in the countryside. When most African countries depended on imported food and external assistance for development, Sankara championed local production and the consumption of locally-made goods. He firmly believed that it was possible for the Burkinabè, with hard work and collective social mobilization, to solve their problems: chiefly scarce food and drinking water.
    In Sankara’s Burkina, no one was above farm work, or graveling roads–not even the president, government ministers or army officers. Intellectual and civic education were systematically integrated with military training and soldiers were required to work in local community development projects.
    
    According to Ernest Harsch, author of a recent biography of Sankara, Burkinabe built for the first time scores of schools, health centers, water reservoirs, and nearly 100 km of rail, with little or no external assistance. Total cereal production rose by 75% between 1983 and 1986. In 1984, his government, defying skepticism from the donor agencies, organized the vaccination of 2 million children in a little over two weeks. He also championed environmental conservation with tree-planting campaigns and greening projects.
    
    His informal style of leadership was in a league of its own. Harsch quotes a former aide describing Sankara as “an idealist, demanding, rigorous, an organizer.” This discipline and seriousness started with himself. He had been first among top leadership to voluntary declare his modest assets and hand over to the treasury cash and gifts received during trips. Harsch quotes family members as saying that Sankara told them not to expect any benefits from him because he is president. In fact, by the time of his death, his kids attended the same public school, his wife was reporting to the same civil servant job, and his parents lived in the same house.
    
    Sankara disdained formal pomp and banned any cult of his personality. He could be seen casually walking the streets, jogging or conspicuously slipping into the crowd at a public event. He was a rousing orator who spoke with uncommon candor and clarity and did not hesitate to publicly admit mistakes, chastise comrades or express moral objections to heads of powerful nations, even if it imperiled him. For example, he famously criticized French president François Mitterand during a state dinner for hosting the leader of Apartheid South Africa.
    
    
    Books by Sankara:
    
    We are the heirs of the world's revolution
    
    Women's liberation and the African freedom struggle
    
    Thomas Sankara Speaks
    
    A quote from the book - " Our country produces enough to feed us all. Alas, for lack of organization, we are forced to beg for food aid. It’s this aid that instills in our spirits the attitude of beggars. " -Thomas Sankara
    
    " The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or because of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the triumph of the revolution. Women hold up the other half of the sky. " - Thomas Sankara.
    
    Sankara is often referred to as "Africa's Che Guevara." Sankara gave a speech marking and honoring the 20th anniversary of Che Guevara's 9 October 1967 execution, one week before his own assassination on 15 October 1987

If you'd like to learn how to implement vaccines in a safe manner, I suggest this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1603588248/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

He explains the problem with the current vaccine schedule and teaches you, with facts and science, how to implement vaccines in a way that is safe for your loved ones.

No, those are similar but if you want something to make your clothes smell nice, these:

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Sheep-Premium-Reusable-Softener/dp/B00GA9P5P0

You can put a few drops of essential oil in them and they'll smell up your clothes all nice and when the scent wears off you just reload them.

Here ya go, OP.

Good luck cooking with the kids.

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

https://smile.amazon.com/Smart-Sheep-Premium-Reusable-Softener/dp/B00GA9P5P0

---

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

Honestly, after reading “Medical Apartheid”, I don’t really blame any black person who doesn’t entirely trust medical institutions. The history there... well, it’s not pretty. Not saying going to your local hospital is going to leave you missing a kidney in a bathtub of ice or anything, but reading that left me giving even Dr Seuss some side eye.

Why does that cat need those gloves, anyways?

One. The Drama of a Gifted Child by Alice Miller

Two. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Three. The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone De Beauvoir

Four. The Plague by Albert Camus

Five. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Six. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Seven. The Atheist Muslim by Ali Rizvi

Eight. A World of Three Zeros by Muhammad Yunus

edit: numbers didn’t show

I haven’t read it yet, but I believe the answer to your questions will be found in the book How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev

It’s been on my list to read for a while, but instead I started playing Skyrim

What was your source? There may have just been a misunderstanding. It wasn't invented in the 19th century. Greek was predominant among scholars back then, so Gammadion was used in English to describe the symbol until the late 19th century when it started being referred to in its Sanskrit transliteration.

You can read about that here. Its a really interesting book.

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X

The real killer is dryer balls...

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Sheep-Premium-Reusable-Softener/dp/B00GA9P5P0

DON'T WORRY CITIZENS!

Alice Miller, "The Drama of the Gifted Child"
> WAHHHHH! BEING SMART IS HARD!

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Between the World and Me"
>Everyone's a little bit racist

Simone De Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"
>Existentialist navelgazing

Albert Camus, "The Plague"
> More existentialism, but this time people die

Brene Brown, "Daring Greatly"
>What if being some sort of cuck soyboy was actually kinda badass?

Atul Gawande, "Being Mortal"
> Killing them softly, with his loving take on the role of modern medicine in death.

Ali Rivzi, "The Atheist Muslim"
>Being an edgy teenager, but on "difficult" mode

Muhammad Yunus, "A World of Three Zeroes"
>Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions... also zero sex scenes.

ETA: short, possibly misleading synopses by someone who hasn't read these books.