#mytwocents — Public Fediverse posts

@tferrer @casfetera.bsky.social Estaría bien que comenzaran a ocupar otros espacios, aunque crean que no deben dejar otros. Puedes seguir teniendo tu cuenta de tuiter (perdón, de Twitter, que tuiter.rocks es otra cosa) pero publicar principalmente y PROMOCIONAR otras redes como el fediverso o bluesky. #mytwocents #ejerciendodecuñado

https://www.europesays.com/3286522/ Should I Budget for the End Times? #advice #budgeting #business #money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #power

Should I Budget for the End Times?

My Two Cents Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Personalfinance #advice #budgeting #Business #money #mytwocents #PersonalFinance #power
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/868843/

Da un po' non notavo un certo snobbismo del Fediverso verso chi usa ancora altri social. L'unico pensiero: anche meno se si vuole veramente arrivare alle persone e portare un ragionamento diverso che inneschi comportamenti diversi. #mytwocents

https://www.europesays.com/ie/648347/ The Woman Who Teaches Rich People to Give Their Money Away #advice #budgeting #Business #Éire #IE #Ireland #Money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #PersonalFinance #Philanthropy #power #Relationships

@fucinafibonacci @societa Ciao! Una considerazione a latere. Non sdoganare l'uso del termine remigrazione. È nocivo alla comunicazione in generale e normalizza un concetto che, a parer mio, non dovrebbe essere normalizzato.
#MyTwoCents

Beyond the Myth: The Truth About the Black Family, History, and Fatherhood

Table of Contents

• Introduction: The Power of Dual Lineages
• 1. The Historical Record: Resilience Over Fragmentation
• 2. What the CDC Data Actually Shows About Black Fathers
• 3. The Extended Kinship Model: The “Village” Structure
• 4. Economic Shocks, Policy Traps, and the Impossible Choice
• Conclusion: Rewriting the Narrative
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Bibliography & Recommended Reading

Introduction: The Power of Dual Lineages

Next week, I will travel to South Carolina to attend my maternal family reunion, a gathering that centers around my great-great-grandparents and the 13 distinct branches under their ancestral tree. A few weeks later, over Labor Day weekend, I’ll join my paternal family reunion—which centers on my grandparents’ lineage and commands 13 branches of its own. Having attended both for decades, I don’t just know my immediate family; I know all forty of my first cousins intimately, along with second, third, fourth, and fifth cousins spread across the country.

Like so many Black families across the country, our reunions are not just a quick afternoon barbecue—they are structured, weekend-long events. We kick off with a Friday night welcome gathering, spend all day Saturday building bonds through family activities and our grand banquet, and culminate on Sunday morning by worshipping together at the annual homecoming service in our ancestral home church.

In many ways, the family reunion is a key ingredient in the enduring strength of the Black family. Its roots extend directly back to Reconstruction, when formerly enslaved people placed “Information Wanted” ads in newspapers like The Christian Recorder, searched church registries, and traversed states to reunite with relatives torn apart by forced sales. Hundreds of thousands of these ads were published—concrete, undeniable proof that Black Americans valued legal and physical family bonds the moment they gained freedom.

Yet, despite this deep-seated culture of kinship, there still exist an old common and tired narrative that the Black family is fundamentally broken, defined only by single-parent homes and absent fathers.

This week, we are looking past the soundbites. We are examining the history, the structural economics, and the actual empirical data to tell the real story of the Black family.

1. The Historical Record: Resilience Over Fragmentation

The persistent myth that Black family instability is a long-standing cultural trait collapses under historical analysis:

• Post-Emancipation Determination: Following Emancipation in 1865, Black Americans demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to formalizing legal marriages and reuniting severed family trees.
• Historical Two-Parent Baseline: Landmark research by historians like Herbert Gutman (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom) and sociologist Andrew Billingsley proved that from Reconstruction through the mid-20th century, the vast majority of Black children—typically 75% to 80% or higher—were raised in stable, two-parent households.
• Preserving Roots During Migration: As the Great Migration (1910s–1970s) dispersed millions of Black families from the rural South to urban centers, families established annual multi-day summer “homecomings.” Often centered around the ancestral home church anniversary or Emancipation Day, these weekend-long gatherings were designed specifically to ground northern-born children in their Southern heritage and ensure no branch of the family tree was lost to time.
• Formalization in the Modern Era: Following the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots in 1976, leaders like Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women and scholars like Dr. Ione Dugger Vargus helped formalize reunions into structured institutions equipped with executive committees, bylaws, and organized genealogical tracking.

2. What the CDC Data Actually Shows About Black Fathers

When critics cite census statistics on household structure, they frequently conflate marital status with parental absence. A census statistic counts roofs and tax filings, not relationships—a child whose father lives three blocks away, eats dinner with them, drops them off at school, and pays for their needs is listed on paper as living in a “single-parent, father-absent household.”

When the Federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—through its National Center for Health Statistics (Report No. 71)—evaluated fatherly engagement across the United States, the hard empirical data dismantled the “absent father” myth:

• Daily Caregiving in the Home: Among fathers living with their children, 70% of Black fathers reported bathing, dressing, or washing their children daily (compared to 60% of white fathers and 45% of Hispanic fathers). Furthermore, 41% of Black fathers helped with homework daily (compared to 28% of white fathers and 29% of Hispanic fathers), while also leading in metrics like reading to and playing with their children daily.
• Sustained Non-Residential Engagement: For fathers who do not reside in the same household, Black fathers consistently demonstrated higher levels of active engagement than non-residential fathers of other racial backgrounds. 49% of non-residential Black fathers played with their children several times a week (higher than non-residential white and Hispanic fathers), and 16% talked to their children daily about their day.
• The Media Silence & The Narrative War: Despite the explosive nature of these findings, the report received surprisingly little mainstream news coverage or follow-up promotion from political commentators. This silence has led many analysts to argue that the data was intentionally downplayed because it destroyed a lucrative, decades-old negative narrative. When a government study proves that Black fathers are overwhelmingly present in their children’s lives, it exposes that the “absent father” trope was never about factual data—it was about narrative control.

The CDC’s findings highlight a critical distinction: legal marital status is not a proxy for parental love or active responsibility.

3. The Extended Kinship Model: The “Village” Structure

Mainstream commentary often judges family health through the narrow, post-WWII Western ideal of the isolated nuclear family (two parents and children in a suburban home). Sociologists have long documented that Black family structures draw from a rich heritage of extended kinship networks:

• Biological Kinship Networks: Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins regularly co-reside or live near one another, sharing daily responsibilities like childcare, financial pooling, and eldercare.
• Fictive Kinship Systems: A vital element of the Black family structure involves “fictive kin”—trusted family friends, godparents, “play cousins,” and church elders who are formally integrated into the family. Research shows nearly two-thirds of Black Americans actively participate in fictive kin networks.
• Visualizing the Family Tree: To navigate these vast networks during large reunions, families routinely use functional tools like color-coded T-shirts assigned to specific branches (such as descendants of a particular sibling or great-grandparent), making complex lineages instantly understandable to younger generations.
• Investing in the Future: Modern reunions do not just look backward; they invest forward by establishing dedicated family scholarship funds, talent showcases, and formal banquets to celebrate the academic and professional achievements of the youth.
• The “Village” Impact: A child raised by a single mother in this framework is rarely isolated; they are anchored inside a robust, multi-generational web of support and guidance.

4. Economic Shocks, Policy Traps, and the Impossible Choice

When critics look at the rise of single-parent households beginning in the mid-20th century, they often ask a naive question: “Why would a father leave his family just to let them collect government assistance?” This framing completely ignores the brutal economic realities and structural traps engineered against Black men during that era.

• Targeted Employment Denial: During Jim Crow and the industrial shifts of the 20th century, systemic employment discrimination specifically targeted Black men to prevent them from establishing financial independence. In many regions, employers intentionally hired Black women for low-wage domestic or service labor while completely shutting Black men out of gainful employment.
• Strained Breadwinner Dynamics: In an era where a man’s dignity and societal worth were tied directly to providing for his household, preventing Black men from securing employment created immense internal tension. Being unable to provide while his wife worked created profound frustration and emasculation—a dynamic designed specifically to destabilize the household.
• The “Man-in-the-House” Rule: Federal and state safety net programs (such as early Aid to Dependent Children/AFDC) actively enforced regulations that cut off housing and financial assistance to a mother if an able-bodied adult man lived in the home. The welfare system did not care if the man was systematically denied a job; his mere physical presence disqualified the family from receiving aid.
• The Heartbreaking Sacrifice: Faced with a system that denied him work and punished his family if he stayed, many Black fathers made an agonizing, selfless decision. They physically stepped outside the household so their wives and children could have food and a roof over their heads. What critics mislabel as “abandonment” was, in many cases, a cruel sacrifice forced by hostile government policies and economic sabotage.
• Deindustrialization & The Marriageable Male Pool: As unionized manufacturing jobs vanished from urban centers in the 1970s and 1980s, sociologist William Julius Wilson documented the collapse of the Male Marriageable Pool Index (MMPI). Wilson proved that marriage rates dropped because the ratio of employed young Black men to women plummeted—demonstrating that declining marriage rates were mathematically tied to job loss, not a loss of cultural family values (an economic reality now seen across working-class communities of all races).
• Mass Incarceration: These pressures were compounded by the escalation of the “War on Drugs” and mandatory minimums, which physically removed millions of working-age Black men from their communities and labor markets during prime parenting years.

Conclusion: Rewriting the Narrative

When I stand in South Carolina on Sunday morning surrounded by dozens of my first cousins, listening to the choir in our family home church and honoring branches stemming back to my great-great-grandparents on my mother’s side and my grandparents on my father’s, I am not looking at a fragmented culture. I am looking at the enduring triumph of a people who refused to let their lineage be erased.

The next time a critic tries to reduce the Black family to a talking point, hand them the data. Point them to the CDC reports showing devoted fathers, the historical archive of “Information Wanted” ads, the systemic economic traps forced upon our households, and the generational strength of our weekend family reunions. The Black family is not broken—it is, as it has always been, a masterclass in resilience, kinship, and community.

Glossary of Key Terms

Bibliography & Recommended Reading

• Billingsley, Andrew. (1968). Black Families in White America. Prentice-Hall.
• Gutman, Herbert G. (1976). The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925. Pantheon Books.
• Jones, Jo, & Mosher, William D. (2013). Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006–2010. National Health Statistics Reports, No. 71. National Center for Health Statistics, CDC.
• Vargus, Ione Dugger. (1988). The Family Reunion: An Essential Institution for African American Extended Families. Temple University Press.
• Williams, Heather Andrea. (2012). Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. University of North Carolina Press.
• Wilson, William Julius. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. University of Chicago Press.

#MyTwoCents aka #DueSpicci (2026)
Zerocalcare and Cinghiale struggle to keep their neighborhood hangout afloat as money problems pile up, communication breaks down and their personal dramas spiral out of control, testing their friendship and resolve.
#TVThemeTunes #TVIntros #TVMastodon 📺 🎬

The Architecture of Evasion: Why America Has Never Been Colorblind

By Edward Odom

July 4, 2026

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Pre-Colonial Baseline: Status Over Skin
3. The Invisible Architecture of 1787
4. The Physical Barriers: Resurrecting the 1920s
5. The Narrative War: Reprogramming the Collective Imagination
6. The Supreme Court’s “Colorblind” Gaslighting
7. The Trajectory of the Soil
8. Glossary of Key Terms
9. Bibliography

Introduction

Today is the 250th Anniversary of our nation. As the fireworks are painting red, white, and blue across our skies, I can’t help but think of the colors our nation is frantically claiming to ignore: black and white. Black and white could have been the colors of our flag. There is not a single move in the building of our nation that wasn’t framed by these two colors. The irony is that even if a person could be completely “colorblind” (which is physically rare), they would still see black and white.

The bold truth is that America has never been colorblind. It was founded on a color-conscious compromise, preserved through color-conscious warfare, and structured by color-conscious laws. The fight we are seeing today over immigration, media representation, and birthright citizenship is simply the modern frontline of that 250-year-old design.

The Pre-Colonial Baseline: Status Over Skin

To understand just how deeply this design has warped our collective imagination, we must recognize that for the vast majority of human history, skin color did not determine a person’s social status. Prior to global colonization and the rise of the transatlantic slave trade, the concept of “race” as a hierarchy simply did not exist. Human beings did not organize societies or measure a person’s worth by the amount of melanin in their skin; instead, identity was governed entirely by lineage, geography, allegiance, and class. Wealth, noble birth, and military power were the universal currencies of human value.

History provides undeniable proof of this ancient baseline. Long before the modern era, individuals of African heritage occupied the highest echelons of power, intellect, and authority across global empires. In the Roman Empire, North Africans achieved immense prominence, serving as elite military commanders, celebrated philosophers, and high-ranking senators. Most notably, Septimius Severus, a man born in Leptis Magna (modern-day Libya) with North African ancestry, rose to become the Emperor of Rome, ruling over a vast domain that spanned from Britain to the Middle East. Similarly, throughout medieval and early modern Europe, historical records and art reveal African knights, diplomats, and nobles navigating the royal courts on equal footing with their peers. In this pre-colonial world, a Roman citizen met an Ethiopian not through a lens of white versus Black, but through the lens of Roman versus foreigner, or elite versus commoner. The modern preoccupation with color had to be deliberately invented, codified, and weaponized to justify the economic exploitation of millions.

The Invisible Architecture of 1787

It was this invented colonial hierarchy that was baked into the very masonry of 1787. When the Framers gathered in Philadelphia to draft the original Constitution, they chose to leave the definition of “citizenship” completely blank. This silence was not a mere oversight or a failure of imagination; it was a high-stakes, deliberate act of political evasion.

Under British common law, the Framers had been raised on the principle of jus soli—the right of the soil. It was the simple, baseline assumption that if you were born on the dirt of a territory, you belonged to its political community. But to codify that definition in 1787 would have forced a fragile, nascent Republic to answer a question that would have instantly torn it apart: Are Black people citizens?

In the North, free Black men owned property, paid taxes, and in several states, held the right to vote. In the South, human beings were treated as chattel. Southern delegates made it clear that they would walk out of the convention if the federal constitution dared to grant the rights and immunities of citizenship to Black Americans. To keep slaveholders at the table, the Framers chose strategic ambiguity. They left citizenship undefined, creating an invisible architecture that protected the right of the bloodline over the promise of the soil.

They baked color into the very machinery of our democracy. The Three-Fifths Compromise artificially inflated the legislative power of slaveholding states, while the Electoral College was engineered specifically to ensure that the direct popular vote of a more populous North could not override a South whose political power rested on the backs of an enslaved, disenfranchised population. Color was made the silent lynchpin around which every subsequent structural decision in American history would revolve—from the Missouri Compromise to the Civil War, and from Jim Crow to the present day.

The Physical Barriers: Resurrecting the 1920s

A century ago, as the nation marked its 150th anniversary during the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, a deeply revealing battle took place over who owned the American narrative. The Ku Klux Klan—then at the absolute zenith of its mainstream political power—petitioned the city for a three-day celebration, including a massive parade at the newly built Municipal Stadium. To ease public anxieties, Klan leaders offered a calculated compromise: they would march unmasked and forgo burning crosses, attempting to rebrand their venomous white supremacy as mainstream, “100% American” patriotism.

Though city officials initially quieted the deal and granted the permit, a fierce coalition of religious and civic organizations successfully forced the mayor to revoke it. Barred from the birthplace of liberty, the furious Klansmen gathered on the outskirts of Philadelphia, burning massive fiery crosses into the night sky. While they were blocked in Philadelphia, they succeeded in marching tens of thousands strong down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. That era’s panic culminated in the Immigration Act of 1924, which openly used racial quotas and outdated census data to explicitly favor Northern Europeans and lock out the rest of the world.

A century later, that identical demographic panic has put on a “facially neutral” legal suit. The modern policy apparatus is leveraging broad executive powers to resurrect the spirit of the 1924 quotas. The current administration’s aggressive enforcement of nationwide expedited removal allows immigration officers to bypass judicial review, placing an immediate, high-stakes documentation burden on individuals. While written in race-neutral terms, its practical execution falls overwhelmingly on immigrant communities of color, who face the highest risk of profiling in workplace sweeps and neighborhood checks.

Yet, in the very same breath, the administration has utilized its emergency authority to carve out an exclusive, fast-tracked pathway—adding 10,000 refugee slots specifically designated for white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity. The bureaucratic mechanisms hide behind legal language, but the structural outcome is an intentional echo of the past: using the blunt levers of state power to protect a physical color barrier.

The Narrative War: Reprogramming the Collective Imagination

This frantic political retrenchment is happening precisely because the gatekeepers of the old hierarchy realize they are losing the narrative war in the culture. For nearly a century, early cinema, television, and traditional textbooks acted as the primary delivery systems for racial conditioning. They reinforced the manufactured rule that intellect, authority, romance, and nobility were the exclusive birthrights of whiteness, while Black and Brown people were systematically relegated to the margins as caricatures, servants, or passive victims of history.

Because that programming was so immersive and lasted for generations, it requires an equally intentional, widespread effort to reprogram the collective imagination. This is why the modern pushback against multi-ethnic casting in historical and fantasy dramas is so fierce. When audiences watch House of the Dragon depict Black actors as ancient, wealthy, dragon-riding nobility, or when shows like Bridgerton and the iconic 1997 Brandy and Whitney Houston version of Cinderella present worlds where skin color carries zero political, social, or genetic hierarchy, it induces acute cognitive dissonance in the socialized mind.

Critics hide behind cries for “historical accuracy,” yet they easily accept fire-breathing dragons, flying carriages, and magic while claiming that a Black queen or an Asian prince “breaks the realism.” This betrays a profound cultural truth: for many, whiteness is treated as a more rigid rule of history than gravity or biology. By displaying Black and Brown individuals occupying spaces of supreme elegance, power, and high institutional status, modern media acts as a form of visual counter-programming. It strips away the colonial invention of race and forces the viewer’s brain to return to an older, human baseline where status and character matter more than skin color.

The Supreme Court’s “Colorblind” Gaslighting

Because the culture is successfully unlearning its conditioning, the gatekeepers have retreated to the highest court in the land, exposing a profound philosophical hypocrisy. For decades, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has fiercely championed the doctrine of a “colorblind Constitution” to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and outlaw affirmative action, arguing that the law must never see race.

Yet, just days ago, on June 30, the mask slipped entirely in the landmark Trump v. Barbara decision. While the 5–4 majority successfully struck down the administration’s executive attempt to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, the dissenting opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas laid bare the selective weaponization of history. To argue against birthright citizenship, Thomas abandoned his long-held “colorblind” narrative. He suddenly argued that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was an explicitly race-conscious, remedial measure meant only for freed Black enslaved in 1868, rather than a universal right of the soil.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brilliantly leveled in her concurring opinion, this is a deeply cynical and myopic treatment of the law. It proves that the doctrine of “colorblindness” is used strictly as an instrument—wielded as a shield to strike down equity for Black Americans, but instantly discarded the moment a literal, colorblind reading of the Constitution protects immigrant children of color.

The Trajectory of the Soil

The Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th) were not a localized spot-treatment meant to freeze America in a specific historical moment; they were a sweeping, universal “anticaste” reset designed to ensure that the soil, not bloodlines or ancestry, dictates who belongs to the American political community.

On this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, true patriotism requires us to have the courage to look directly at the blueprint. Media representation, immigration policy, and constitutional law are not separate, isolated battlefields; they are the interconnected gears of a single machine. The fight we are witnessing today is the natural friction of a society trying to unlearn its conditioning while an old system tries to enforce it. The gatekeepers of the past will continue to use the law to shrink the circle of who counts as American, but the true trajectory of this nation belongs to the creative and courageous work of widening it.

Glossary of Key Terms

• Afrikaner: A South African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch, French, and German settlers who colonized the region starting in the seventeenth century. Their historical language is Afrikaans.
• Birthright Citizenship (Jus Soli): A legal principle meaning “right of the soil.” It dictates that nationality or citizenship is automatically granted to any person born within the territorial boundaries of a country, regardless of the citizenship or legal status of their parents.
• Colorblind Constitutionalism: A legal theory asserting that the U.S. Constitution completely prohibits government institutions from considering an individual’s race for any purpose, whether for discriminatory practices or remedial, equity-focused policies.
• Expedited Removal: A statutory procedure under U.S. immigration law allowing low-level immigration officers to rapidly deport non-citizens without a formal hearing before an immigration judge, unless the individual can immediately prove a continuous physical presence in the country.
• Judicial Instrumentalism: A practice where judges selectively apply specific legal philosophies (such as originalism, textualism, or colorblindness) not as fixed, neutral methodologies, but as strategic tools to engineer a preferred political or ideological outcome.
• National Origins Quota System: A discriminatory immigration framework established by Congress in the 1920s that capped global immigration and heavily favored Northern and Western Europeans by calculating visa distributions based on historical, white-dominated U.S. census records.

Bibliography

Legal Cases and Executive Documents

• Trump v. Barbara, 608 U.S. ___ (2026). (Supreme Court decision affirming birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment and striking down executive restrictionism).
• U.S. Department of State. (2026). Presidential Determination on Emergency Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2026: Special Allocation for Afrikaner Ethnic Minorities. Federal Register.
• Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). (Supreme Court ruling that falsely claimed Black individuals were never intended to be citizens under the 1787 Constitution).

Statutory and Legislative History

• Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Pub. L. No. 68-139, 43 Stat. 153. (Statute establishing the National Origins Quota System and banning Asian immigration).
• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (The Hart-Celler Act), Pub. L. No. 89-236, 79 Stat. 911. (Legislation abolishing national origins quotas and establishing the family reunification preference system).
• U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 2, cl. 3 (The Three-Fifths Clause); Art. II, § 1, cl. 2 (The Electoral College Clause); Amend. XIV, § 1 (The Citizenship and Equal Protection Clauses).

Historical and Sociological References

• Kendi, I. X. (2016). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books. (Documentation on the invention of racial hierarchies during early colonization).
• Sesquicentennial International Exposition Archives. (1926). Records of Public Safety and Executive Permits: The Revocation of the Ku Klux Klan Day Permit. City of Philadelphia.
• Southern, P. (2001). Severus: The Black Emperor. Routledge. (Historical analysis of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus and North African integration into Rome’s ruling class).

The Architecture of the Silence: Juneteenth and the Power of Withheld Truth

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. From Watch Night to the Isolated Coast
3. The Dual Harm of Modern Censorship
4. The Ultimate Goal: A Divided Working Class
5. Glossary of Terms
6. Bibliography & Further Reading

Introduction

Today marks exactly five years since Juneteenth was officially recognized as a federal holiday. It is a milestone that naturally invites us to look back at the historical timeline. But as I reflect on this watershed moment in American history, I find myself looking at it through a dual lens: that of a technical professional who thinks daily about how information moves, and that of an amateur historian who understands what happens when that movement is intentionally stopped.

When we talk about Juneteenth, we often treat it as a story of a slow-moving past—a consequence of an era before smartphones and instant messaging. We tell ourselves that it simply took two and a half years for the news of the Emancipation Proclamation to travel from Washington, D.C., to the coastal docks of Galveston, Texas.

But a 900-day delay isn’t a problem of slow transmission. It is a record of a dominant class weaponizing silence to hoard an illicit economic advantage by any means necessary.

The tragedy of Galveston wasn’t that the news couldn’t get through. It was that the people who held the power in Texas—the plantation owners and local authorities—knew exactly what the law said, and actively chose to suppress it. By keeping the truth hidden, they bought themselves two more years of stolen, backbreaking labor to pull millions of dollars worth of cotton from the earth. They didn’t just delay a message; they aggressively ran out the clock to milk an illegal system for every last drop of profit they could extract.

This historical pattern of holding onto systemic advantage at all costs is something I understand on a personal level.

I grew up in South Carolina and started first grade in 1968. The landmark Civil Rights Act had been passed into law in 1964, legally outlawing segregation. Yet, four years after the highest law of the land declared equality, I sat in a strictly segregated classroom for my first two grades of school. South Carolina was notoriously slow to adhere to the Civil Rights laws, quietly preserving their segregation practices for at least five years after they became illegal. Even at six years old, I distinctly remember sitting in the “colored only” section when my grandmother took me to the doctor.

The lesson of Galveston, and the lesson of my own childhood in the 1960s South, is identical: those who hold a systemic advantage do not give it up easily. When a dominant group benefits from an unjust system, they will intentionally throttle, delay, and ignore the law of the land to squeeze every last drop of privilege out of the status quo before the door is finally forced open.

From Watch Night to the Isolated Coast

Growing up in South Carolina, the story of Juneteenth wasn’t actually the focal point of my youth. In my community, our historical and spiritual foundation was centered around the Watch Night Service.

Held on New Year’s Eve, this deeply rooted tradition commemorates the night of December 31, 1862. In African American churches across the South, people gathered in the flickering candlelight, anxiously awaiting the midnight stroke that would bring the Emancipation Proclamation into effect. That was a moment of shared truth—a communal celebration happening in real-time, built on a network of faith and whispered hope.

But Texas was a different story. Safe from the immediate presence of Union troops, it became a geographic pocket where the truth could be suppressed by force. When President Lincoln signed the proclamation on January 1, 1863, the legal reality changed instantly, but the functional reality in Texas was kept in a state of artificial silence. Tens of thousands of people remained in bondage simply because the gatekeepers refused to hand over the key to the truth.

The Dual Harm of Modern Censorship

Last fall, I wrote about the enduring role of misinformation in shaping American history—how deliberate lies have been manufactured to distort our collective reality.

But Juneteenth forces us to confront a different, perhaps more insidious tactic: the power of withholding the story from the next generation.

We see this playing out vividly today in the relentless push to ban books and restrict educational curricula regarding Black history and identity. To understand the true gravity of this strategy, we have to look at the dual harm it inflicts on our children.

On one hand, the architecture of censorship is designed to rob Black children of their inheritance. In 1865, the truth was withheld to trap people in physical bondage. Today, the suppression of our history is a calculated attempt to keep Black children from understanding the immense power, resilience, and brilliance of their own lineage. If you can erase the victories of the Civil Rights movement, the profound organizing of the past, and the structural realities of systemic triumph from the classroom, you leave children without a blueprint for their own liberation. It is an effort to keep them from realizing that the very systems that restrict them today have been challenged and shaken before.

But the mechanism doesn’t stop there. The other, equally vital target of this modern gatekeeping is white American children.

By legally filtering what a white child can read or learn about our nation’s systemic past, the architects of these bans are intentionally creating an artificial silence. If you can control the narrative a child receives, you can shape their worldview as an adult. When the raw truth of history is withheld from them, they grow up insulated from the realities of systemic injustice, entirely unaware of the structural advantages and disadvantages that still shape our world today.

The Black community has a long, unbreakable tradition of passing down our own history; our families, churches, and community leaders will always ensure our children know who they are. But a closed school library door forces a devastating split: it starves Black children of the formal recognition of their power, while starving white children of the objective truth of their reality.

The Ultimate Goal: A Divided Working Class

The key to eradicating division and hate in this country lies entirely in teaching the next generation the unvarnished truth of our history. But the powers that wish to preserve the existing power dynamics know this. They understand that a shared understanding of the past leads to a shared empathy in the present—and empathy is dangerous to the status quo.

By keeping white children in the dark about the structural barriers built into American history, these gatekeepers ensure that the next generation preserves the old, divided narratives. The ultimate goal here isn’t just ideological; it is deeply practical. It is to keep the working class fractured.

When you keep people divided along cultural and racial lines, they spend their energy fighting one another over manufactured grievances rather than looking up to see who is actually benefiting from their division.

Juneteenth stands out in our history because it marks the exact moment where freedom and truth finally collided. It reminds us that rights on paper mean very little if the systems around us are designed to keep us from understanding them. If we want to honor those who stepped into the light in Galveston in 1865, we must actively dismantle the modern walls of withheld truth. We must ensure that the gates to our shared history remain open for every child in America—because a generation that knows the truth is a generation that cannot be divided.

Next week, we will go inside these pockets of withheld truth to examine the fallout of this strategy—and how denying our shared history directly fuels the modern phenomenon of “the white man’s grievance.” Stay tuned.

Glossary of Terms

• Artificial Silence / Latency: The deliberate withholding or delaying of information by an institutional gatekeeper to prevent a population from acting on the truth.
• Civil Rights Act of 1964: A landmark federal law in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and legally ended segregation in schools and public accommodations.
• Emancipation Proclamation: An executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved people within Confederate-held territory were legally free.
• Gatekeeping: The process through which information is filtered, withheld, or controlled by individuals or institutions in power to maintain structural control.
• Juneteenth: A federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States, specifically commemorating June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation—two and a half years after it was signed.
• Systemic Advantage: Social, economic, or political leverage built into the infrastructure of society that benefits one dominant group over others, often preserved through the manipulation of laws and information.
• Watch Night Service: A historic tradition in African American churches held on New Year’s Eve, tracing back to December 31, 1862 (“Freedom’s Eve”), when enslaved people gathered to await the midnight stroke that brought the Emancipation Proclamation into legal effect.

Bibliography & Further Reading

• Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. Russell & Russell.Explores the economic motivations behind the resistance to emancipation and the post-war efforts to re-establish control over Black labor.
• Gordon-Reed, Annette. (2021). On Juneteenth. Liveright Publishing.Provides the essential historical context of Galveston, Texas, detailing how geography and isolation allowed plantation owners to suppress the reality of emancipation.
• Kendi, Ibram X. (2016). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Bold Type Books.An analysis of how racial narratives and the suppression of truth have historically been constructed by elites to justify economic exploitation and keep the working class divided.
• Anderson, Carol. (2016). White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury Publishing.Traces the history of structural pushback and rolling delays following major civil rights advancements, echoing the resistance to desegregation seen in the late 1960s.
• Glaude, Eddie S. Jr. (2020). Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Crown Publishing Group.Examines the psychological consequences of what happens when a society refuses to teach its true history, particularly how it leaves white Americans insulated from systemic realities.

What It’s Like to Treat Ultrawealthy Shopping Addicts

My Two Cents Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you…
#NewsBeep #News #Personalfinance #advice #budgeting #Business #Finance #Money #mytwocents #PersonalFinance #Power #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/645780/

What It’s Like to Treat Ultrawealthy Shopping Addicts

My Two Cents Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Personalfinance #advice #budgeting #Business #money #mytwocents #PersonalFinance #power
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/711750/

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https://www.europesays.com/3071804/ What It’s Like to Treat Ultrawealthy Shopping Addicts #advice #budgeting #business #money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #power

The Agitation of Truth: Why the “Silent Majority” is Wrong About Black History

Table of Contents

1. The Illusion of “Moving On”
2. The Anatomy of Agitation: When Facts Feel Like an Affront
3. The Monolith Trap and the Demand for a Corporate Manager
4. The Institutionalization of the Blind Spot: The War on Memory
5. The Co-Optation of Culture: Confusing Heritage with Hollywood
6. The Anatomy of Silence: Arming the Engaged Supporter
7. Conclusion: The Horizon of Facts
8. Glossary of Key Concepts
9. Bibliography & Data Sources

1. The Illusion of “Moving On”

Every so often, well-meaning readers—both supporters and detractors of My Two Cents—will send me a message asking a variation of the same question:

“Ed, why do we still need to focus so much on Black history? Haven’t we moved past that? For the most part, people understand the contributions. We should be able to just move on.”

It’s a comfortable argument. It paints a picture of an America that has calmly graduated past its racial blind spots, a place where Black excellence is so widely accepted that highlighting it is redundant. But I have a counter-question: If society has truly “moved on,” why does highlighting Black culture still cause so much immediate, visceral panic?

If everyone truly understood and accepted these contributions, a simple post about the depth of Black heritage wouldn’t read like a psychological battlefield.

When I published my recent article, Race vs. Culture: Decoding America’s Blind Spot on Black Heritage, I argued that a profound double standard prevents many Americans from seeing Black heritage as a rich, resilient ethnicity rather than a political grievance. I didn’t have to wait long for data. Within hours, my Facebook comment section transformed into a living laboratory, perfectly illustrating every psychological defense mechanism, media-driven myth, and double standard I had just written about.

The raw agitation of the detractors proved that the work is far from over. But more importantly, the nature of the thread revealed the true reason we cannot “just move on.” We aren’t writing to change the unchangeable minds of internet trolls. We are writing to build an intellectual armory for the people who want to stand up for truth but need the hard data to do it.

2. The Anatomy of Agitation: When Facts Feel Like an Affront

The moment you highlight Black achievement or address historical trauma, a specific segment of America experiences an existential crisis. They look at history through a zero-sum lens: they believe that if one group gets a spotlight, their own history is being dimmed.

Take a commentator on my post named Robb, who countered my article by writing about his family’s European lineage and sarcastically demanding “reprisal money.”

Robb Nordell: “My ancestoral linage is Scotch/Irish. Dutch. Norwegian a Swede. I want a WHOLE month ta Celebrate. O Yaa. An I want a couple hunnert thousand bucks cause those nasty ole British peoples was mean ta me an shootin at me. An an an.”

When I laid out the cold, historical facts—that the British government didn’t spend 250 years legally banning his ancestors from owning property, reading, or keeping their own children, followed by 100 years of legal segregation—Robb immediately pivoted. He left the historical argument entirely and began complaining that “white mountain men explorers” weren’t getting enough credit.

Robb Nordell: “Yaa so all them Nasty Ole white mountain men explorers had nothing to do with settling this country. One a them was my great great great uncle so I want reprisal money. It’s only fair Right”

This is the defensive equalizer mindset. It tries to equate a family history of adventurous exploration with centuries of state-sanctioned human trafficking and systemic wealth stripping. It’s a failure of basic logic driven by a fear of facing the facts of how American wealth was actually built.

Then there is the Navy veteran, Bob, who tried to use a 50-year-old sea story about a Black mechanic making a mistake in 1974 to argue against “raising up American culture.”

Bob Gillette: “BALONEY! I was in the Navy from 74 to 80… Powers that be decided there weren’t enough Negroes in the FTG rating. Reason: Negroes could not pass the minimum requirements. Solution was lower the requirements. When I got to the fleet, I saw a direct result… we had a Negro machinist mate clean the diesel injectors of a standby generator, using crocus cloth guess where all the particulate went… Right into the injectors plugging them when the ship needed the standby generator for power… the same Negro was later promoted to E7 despite these major malfunctions… So much for raising up American culture!”

When I pointed out that technical mistakes and bad troubleshooting happen in every engineering department on earth, committed by people of every race, Bob conceded the point—but then immediately doubled down, asking why the majority of bad examples in his memory were Black.

Bob Gillette: “Yes, bad troubleshooting happens in every department in the world committed by people of every race. But why are the majority of the bad troubleshooting examples are done by Negroes?”

That is confirmation bias in its purest form. If you are conditioned to believe a certain group is less capable, your brain will actively log and remember every mistake they make to prove yourself right, while completely ignoring the white colleagues who did the exact same thing. When a white person fails, it’s an individual training issue. When a Black person fails, folks like Bob universalize it to judge an entire culture.

3. The Monolith Trap and the Demand for a Corporate Manager

Perhaps the most exhausting double standard comes from the commentators who treat Black America not as a diverse group of millions of individuals, but as a monolith that must be policed.

Another reader, Eugene, jumped online to declare that Black America is “self-destructing” and “imploding,” pointing to viral internet videos of youth acting out.

Eugene E. Conrad: “I can describe ‘blackness’ in 4 words. No. Child. Left. Behind. Teenage girls twerking at graduation while their mother’s applaud them. Meanwhile they can’t read at the same level as an average 10 year old white kid. Blackness means lack of brain function.”

He then placed the burden directly on my shoulders, telling me that things will only get worse until I and other Black professionals “hold them accountable” and force them to “be different.”

Eugene E. Conrad: “When the accomplishments of an entire race are overshadowed by the colossal failures within that same race, that isn’t cherry picking… Your race is self destructing and it’s not my fault. It’s only gonna get worse as long as YOU don’t hold these YNs accountable and continue to allow them to be face of black america. You want people to view you differently? Be different.”

Think about the staggering intellectual bankruptcy of that demand.

When a working-class white community faces a collapse of social order, an educational crisis, or the ravages of the opioid epidemic, nobody blames “white culture.” Nobody logs onto a white systems engineer’s page and demands that they go “hold their people accountable” for corporate fraud, mass shootings, or the destruction of rural infrastructure. White Americans are always granted the grace of being judged as individuals.

Black America is not a franchise with a corporate manager. We do not have a human resources department. I am an engineer, a professional, and a builder—and I don’t answer for the actions of strangers any more than Eugene answers for the criminals who crashed the global economy in 2008.

When confronted with this reality, Eugene finally lost his temper, hurled the cliché accusation of “delusional victimhood,” and declared:

Eugene E. Conrad: “My guy, you literally are blaming everybody else for not seeing the accomplishments of black people and I’m telling you, in no uncertain terms, that it’s the fault of other black people. You will never agree with that and I do not care. Carry on with your delusional victimhood. I’m done. I’m right, and I’m done.”

There it is. The absolute confirmation of the blind spot. He openly admitted that because some Black people fail, he is justified in ignoring the thousands of Black inventors, scientists, and professionals whose work impacts his life every single day. He was standing in the digital public square debating a Black systems engineer, completely blind to the irony that my very existence invalidated his original, ugly premise that “blackness means a lack of brain function.” When the data shattered his bias, he didn’t adjust his view; he just plugged his ears, screamed “I’m right,” and ran away.

4. The Institutionalization of the Blind Spot: The War on Memory

It would be a comforting mistake to look at the comments from Eugene, Bob, or a particularly vitriolic reader named Brian and dismiss them as just the unhinged rants of internet trolls hiding behind keyboards.

Brian’s comments dropped all pretense, sinking into raw eugenics, historical fabrication, and explicit profanity:

Brian OHara: “What culture. Stealing drugs violence killing raping etc… violence in black people they’re born that way they’re born violent and they’re taught violence… nobody wants to be around you people really you just f***** entertainment for people…”*

But the reality is far more dangerous than one angry man online. The vitriol in my comment section is simply the raw, unpolished version of a massive institutional movement happening across America today.

Right now, we are witnessing a coordinated, legal push to remove Black history from public schools, rewrite textbooks, and censor museum exhibitions. This erasure is being executed under a highly manipulative guise: the claim that teaching the full truth of Black American history is somehow “unpatriotic,” divisive, or designed to make white Americans feel guilty.

But let’s look at the logic.

When we celebrate the founding fathers, nobody claims that studying the Revolutionary War is an attack on modern British-Americans. When we build museums to honor the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation in World War II, nobody views it as an affront to German-Americans. We correctly understand that honoring those who built and defended the nation is an act of deep patriotism.

Yet, when we highlight the thousands of Black inventors who pioneered the technology we use every day, or when we archive the architectural, scientific, and legal triumphs of Black Americans, the gatekeepers of this new mythology experience an immediate panic. They view the insertion of Black truth as a subtraction of their own value.

Instead of expanding access to the full, rich tapestry of our shared past, this movement seeks to enforce a fragile, white-washed mythology. They want to sanitize American history until it is nothing more than a bedtime story that protects comfort over facts.

This institutional censorship is the ultimate justification for why My Two Cents and platforms like it are critical. When the state attempts to lock history out of the classroom, independent platforms must become the new classrooms. When museums are pressured to soften the rough edges of truth, we must become the keepers of the archive. We are not just writing articles; we are fighting a rearguard action against a deliberate attempt to enforce cultural amnesia.

5. The Co-Optation of Culture: Confusing Heritage with Hollywood

When detractors aren’t hiding behind viral videos, they lean heavily on mainstream entertainment to justify their bias. Another commenter, Rod, tried to argue that modern hip-hop culture proves that the community is holding itself back by promoting violence and anti-Christian standards.

Rod Weikum: “Your culture should be part of what raises you up. If your culture is holding you back and creating harm to yourself and others, it’s t is time to reevaluate it… I see a subculture in the hip hop Era that through music promotes violence, drugs, and anti Christian moral standards this country is based on… It is not limited to the black culture but seems more prominent to me. I might be out of touch.”

Rod was at least honest enough to admit he was looking at life through a media bubble in Wyoming, which allowed for a deeper conversation about the mechanics of culture versus commerce. Because here is the nuance that folks in a bubble miss: hip-hop is a genuine, brilliant branch of Black American culture. It was born as a grassroots youth movement right here in New York, where kids used poetry, turntables, and dance to speak truth about their daily lives, struggles, and communities.

The destructive shift didn’t happen culturally; it happened corporately.

Massive media conglomerates and record labels—predominantly owned and operated by non-Black executives—realized decades ago that shock value, weaponized negativity, and materialism sold records to a massive, global audience (the majority of whom happen to be suburban white youth). Corporations co-opted a grassroots art form and heavily monetized its most toxic elements because drama drives profit.

What the detractors are watching on their television screens isn’t the heart of Black culture; it’s a corporate-packaged product. Real Black culture isn’t found on a record label’s balance sheet. It is anchored in the exact traditional values Rod claimed were missing: faith, family, deep community charity, and love of neighbor. It is lived out every day in our churches, our historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and our neighborhoods. But as long as America confuses what Hollywood monetizes with what a community actually values, the blind spot will remain.

6. The Anatomy of Silence: Arming the Engaged Supporter

This brings me to the most critical realization of this entire experiment, and the real reason My Two Cents exists.

While the Bobs, Eugenes, and Brians of the world were loudly typing out their fury, I noticed another major demographic on my page: the silent observers. I know they are there; the analytics show them clearly. They are the supporters who read the articles, nod along in agreement, and watch these comment-section battles unfold from the sidelines.

It is easy to wonder why more voices don’t join the fray. But as I look closer, I recognize a profound truth: silence is often a deliberate choice, not a lack of conviction.

Many of our supporters are highly informed, deeply educated, and fully equipped—they simply choose not to engage in online debates. And I don’t blame them. Wading into the toxic comments section of a social media post takes an emotional toll, and protecting one’s peace is a perfectly valid boundary. I do not criticize anyone for choosing to remain silent.

But for those who do have the desire to engage—whether online or at the office water cooler—there is often a different barrier: they want to speak up, but they feel they lack the specific historical tools or data to instantly dismantle a double standard.

When a troll drops an unhinged rant filled with fake history or weaponized anecdotes, the average person doesn’t always have the specific Department of Justice statistics memorized to throw back at them. They don’t have the precise timeline of 350 years of legal wealth-stripping right at their fingertips.

That is why this platform exists. We aren’t writing to change the unchangeable minds of internet trolls; you cannot educate someone who is deeply committed to their own ignorance. The true mission of My Two Cents is to serve as an intellectual armory. It is about providing the hard numbers, the historical context, and the unassailable logic so that when our allies choose to stand up for truth in their own daily lives, they are fully armed, confident, and ready.

7. Conclusion: The Horizon of Facts

We are constantly told by a comfortable, passive majority that America is “past this,” and that highlighting Black history is a redundant exercise we should simply “move on” from.

But the sheer, existential panic that explodes in a comment section the moment we celebrate our heritage proves that the mythology of racial hierarchy is still very much alive and well. People do not get this agitated over things they believe are irrelevant; they get agitated because truth threatens the comfortable fictions they use to justify their worldview.

We will be ready to move on from highlighting Black history when highlighting it no longer causes a meltdown on social media. Until then, we will continue to look through the clear lens of data. The facts remain our shield, the history remains our foundation, and arming the truth-tellers remains our work.

Good riddance to the mythology. Welcome to the data.

Glossary of Key Concepts

• Availability Cascade: A self-reinforcing process where a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or viral social media algorithms). In short: if an image is loud and repeated constantly, the brain incorrectly assumes it represents the baseline reality.
• Confirmation Bias: The psychological tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses while ignoring contradictory evidence.
• Corporate Co-Optation: The process by which a grassroots cultural movement or art form is taken over, redefined, and commercialized by outside corporations to maximize profit, often stripping away its original community-building intent.
• Defensive Equalization: A rhetorical strategy where an individual attempts to minimize or neutralize historical, systemic injustices faced by another group by comparing them to surface-level hardships or unrelated historical milestones within their own lineage.
• Monolith Myth: The reductionist belief that a highly diverse demographic group shares identical thoughts, behaviors, and motivations, and can therefore be held collectively accountable for the actions of individual strangers within that group.

Bibliography & Data Sources

1. U.S. Department of Justice & Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. National demographics of offenders, demonstrating individual statistical distribution across all racial groups.
2. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The Nation’s Report Card. Longitudinal data controlling for school funding disparities, socioeconomic status, and zip codes, demonstrating that educational outcome gaps are driven by resource distribution rather than inherent ability.
3. National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Legislative tracking and curriculum briefs via the African American History Act of 2026 (introduced by Rep. Mfume and Sen. Booker), detailing the preservation of Black historical resources amidst federal and state curriculum restrictions.
4. The Center for Educational Equity. The War on History: Curriculum Restrictions and Civil Rights Scrutiny in K-12 Districts (2025-2026 Update). Documentation regarding the withholding of public school grants and targeted efforts to eliminate advanced racial history curricula across major school districts.
5. George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. (Foundational historical text on the corporate co-optation, consolidation, and monetization of independent Black music genres by major media networks).

Yesterday, a new piece in the Zerocalcare story was dropped. Zero is part owner in a hole-in-the-wall cafe. He hasnt talked to Seco in a long long time. And Sara is fighting with her sig-o. And, also needs to ask Zero a big big favor.

It is animated by Doghead Animation. It can be found Netflix in its native Italian, or dubed in Eng.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGrKuPe1tQ

#Animation #MyTwoCents #AdultAnimation #Comedy #Anthro

A Call to Action: A Historical Response to Backlash

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Myth of Ignorance
2. The Modern Frontline: A Direct Reaction to 2020
3. The Historical Landscape of Reversal
4. The Anatomy of Recovery
5. The Strategic Playbook for the Present
6. A Call to Action: The Power of Selective Patronage
7. Glossary of Key Terms
8. Bibliography

1. Introduction: The Myth of Ignorance

There has always been a convenient claim of ignorance, a collective posture of denial, whenever Black Americans pinpoint how we are targeted and discriminated against in this country. For generations, our systemic grievances against “the man” or “they” were met with defensive deflections: What man? Who is “they”? Why would Black people be targeted? It is an astonishing framing, posed as if slavery did not anchor this land for 250 years, followed by another century of apartheid under Jim Crow. While most will not deny the existence of the Ku Klux Klan or overt white supremacist groups, there remains a stubborn refusal to admit to a systemic, institutional assault against Black rights.

Truthfully, even we were not always able to pinpoint the exact mechanics of the machine. We felt the harassment of the police, we felt the sting of negative narratives, and we knew we were treated poorly with diminished rights—but in our youth, we still struggled with the systemic “why.”

Learning history changed everything for me. I have written before about the books my uncle—the first college graduate on my mother’s side of our family—placed in my hands: foundational works on Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, and Stokely Carmichael. In college, Black history courses opened my eyes to Africa and its great nations, universities, kings, and queens. After college, I joined the African Peoples Organization, where every week we sat at the feet of guest speakers, visionaries, and authors like Ivan Van Sertima, John Henrik Clarke, and Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan.

This is how I learned the true history of my ancestors. This is how I learned all of American history, not just the sanitized, selective narratives taught in public schools. When you learn all of history, the “who” and the “why” cease to be a mystery.

When asked, I have always been able to explain exactly what systemic racism is and give a rational answer as to why it persists. So, when I look at current events—the latest coordinated assault on the rights of African Americans—I am neither shocked nor surprised. The erosion of voting rights, aggressive gerrymandering, the aggressive dismantling of DEI initiatives in corporate America and universities, the state-sponsored censorship of Black history literature, and the deliberate defunding of the Fair Housing Act are not isolated incidents. I recognize them for what they are: the latest implementation of what scholars, civil rights organizations, and legal analysts describe as an intense, coordinated “backlash” designed to systematically dismantle policies established to advance racial equity.

The rollbacks use a synchronized strategy: a Supreme Court ruling alters a precedent, political groups instantly scale that ruling into sweeping legislative challenges against schools and corporations, while state houses concurrently redraw maps to suppress the political power of the very communities fighting back. The data confirms that the structural floor is actively being pulled back across multiple pillars of civic and cultural life. These are interconnected, structural rollbacks.

2. The Modern Frontline: A Direct Reaction to 2020

To understand the precision of the current rollbacks, we must trace them directly to their catalyst: the global racial justice uprisings of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. In that cultural moment, the overall tone regarding civil rights shifted dramatically from passive acknowledgment to corporate and institutional action. Multibillion-dollar corporations pledged massive budgets to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Elite universities pledged fair access and holistic admissions. The nation experienced a profound, collective reckoning with systemic bias.

But history teaches us that an equal and opposite force always follows such progress. Today, that progress is being systematically undone, not through overt violence, but through sophisticated legal, cultural, and political defenses designed to sanitize the rollback under the guise of universal virtues.

The Legal Defenses: “Colorblindness” and True Merit

• The Rationale: Opponents argue that any corporate policy, fellowship, or admissions criteria that considers race—even to remedy centuries of documented disadvantage—is inherently discriminatory. They invoke a strict interpretation of “colorblindness,” weaponizing the civil rights era’s own language against it.
• The Language: Public directives and legal filings argue that DEI policies “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement… diminishing the importance of individual merit and aptitude.”
• The Pivot: By framing DEI as a direct threat to “merit,” opponents reframe themselves as protectors of qualified individuals (often highlighting white or Asian applicants) who are allegedly bypassed by “ideological box-checking.”
• The Reality / Impact: This strategy effectively removes critical pathways for minority advancement and professional development. By generating intense legal uncertainty, it creates a widespread chilling effect that pressures corporations and universities into quietly dismantling or sanitizing their diversity programs to avoid costly litigation.

The Cultural Defenses: “Parental Rights” and “Age Appropriateness”

• The Rationale: When removing Black-themed literature and censoring history curricula, the architecture avoids mentioning race entirely. Instead, the focus shifts to protecting children and defending parental authority over public education.
• The Language: Conservative school boards and advocacy groups assert that “refusing to stock a book in a school library—especially one that includes explicit scenes or heavy themes—is not the same as banning it… Parents have both the right and the responsibility to demand that schools protect children’s innocence.”
• The Pivot: By framing the removal of literature by authors like Toni Morrison or James Baldwin as a matter of “protecting innocence,” any resistance from educators or civil rights groups is spun as an attempt by the state to “indoctrinate” children behind parents’ backs.
• The Reality / Impact: The actual result is the systemic erasure of Black literature, culture, and structural context from public view. It isolates young readers from diverse perspectives and aggressively polices the classroom, leaving educators fearful of teaching verified historical facts regarding systemic racism and slavery.

The Institutional Defenses: “National Unity” vs. “Divisive Ideologies”

• The Rationale: The justification for targeting sacred cultural institutions like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture centers on national cohesion, claiming that focusing heavily on slavery and segregation creates unnecessary societal fractures.
• The Language: Policy directives demand the prohibition of federal funding for programs that “degrade shared American values or divide Americans based on race,” calling instead for public spaces to exclusively reflect a “heritage of consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union.”
• The Pivot: Curatorial adjustments—such as erasing references to systemic white supremacy during Reconstruction or removing profiles of figures like Harriet Tubman from federal portals—are defended as “content corrections” meant to remove partisan bias and restore objective, patriotic historical accuracy.
• The Reality / Impact: This administrative overreach actively sanitizes public historical narratives of racial terror and structural oppression. By forcing top leadership out and imposing strict political oversight on exhibitions, it replaces authentic historical documentation with romanticized, nationalist propaganda.

The Political Defenses: Preventing “Partisan Distortions”

• The Rationale: When state legislatures redraw maps to split up historic Black communities and dilute their voting power, they exploit a major judicial loophole: partisan gerrymandering is legally permissible, while racial gerrymandering is not.
• The Language: Lawmakers defend these aggressively altered maps by stating they are “driven entirely by partisan goals—trying to maximize seats for our political party—and that any disruption to minority voting blocks is merely an incidental byproduct of political geography.”
• The Pivot: By labeling the surgical destruction of Black voting strength as simple, everyday partisan politics, lawmakers shield their maps from constitutional challenges in federal courts.
• The Reality / Impact: This legal shield directly dilutes minority voting strength and cripples the core protections of the Voting Rights Act. It allows politicians to surgically carve apart concentrated Black communities—such as the recent splitting of Memphis—and scatter their voting blocks into rural, predominantly white districts, effectively suppressing their ability to elect representatives of their choice.

The Rhetorical Shift at a Glance

3. The Historical Landscape of Reversal

This current moment is not an anomaly, nor is it a malfunction of American democracy. It is a continuation of a predictable cycle that has repeated since the founding of the republic. Every single peak of Black political, economic, or social progress has been met with a calculated, institutional valley of counter-mobilization—a “Redemption Cycle” designed to restore the racial status quo.

The Historical Ledger of Progress and Backlash

• Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) to the Slave Legislation of 1705
  • The Progress: Poor Black laborers and white indentured servants united in an interracial, populist uprising against the planter elite, demonstrating the terrifying power of cross-racial solidarity.
  • The Backlash: The elite responded by passing the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, legally codifying hereditary chattel slavery, dividing laborers by race, and creating legal privileges for poor whites to break the multi-racial alliance.
• Reconstruction (1865–1877) to Jim Crow
  • The Progress: The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments led to unprecedented Black political mobilization, establishing Black electoral majorities across the South and sending Black men to Congress.
  • The Backlash: The “Redemption” era brought the immediate removal of federal troops, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorist campaign, and the codification of Jim Crow laws (poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses) to completely disenfranchise Black voters.
• The Great Migration & WWI to the Red Summer of 1919 and the Nadir
  • The Progress: Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans migrated to Northern cities for economic independence, while 350,000 Black soldiers served in Europe, returning home with money, mobility, and a refusal to submit to subjugation.
  • The Backlash: The Red Summer of 1919 saw white-led racial massacres detonate in over three dozen cities. Black veterans were targeted and lynched in their uniforms, coinciding with the rapid rebirth of the Second Ku Klux Klan to enforce labor dependency.
• Parallel Wealth Accumulation to the Destruction of Black Wall Streets (1920s)
  • The Progress: Blocked from the white economy, Black communities built thriving, self-sustaining parallel economies, amassing generational wealth in enclaves like Greenwood (Tulsa, OK), Rosewood, and Ocoee, Florida.
  • The Backlash: Coordinated white mobs, frequently deputized by local law enforcement, physically liquidated these towns through arson and mass murder, explicitly destroying Black capital to enforce absolute economic dependency.
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to Massive Resistance and School Closures (1950s–1960s)
  • The Progress: The Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal,” handing a monumental legal victory to the early civil rights movement and mandating public school integration.
  • The Backlash: Southern leaders organized “Massive Resistance.” Rather than integrate, entire counties (such as Prince Edward County, VA) defunded and completely shut down their public school systems for years, funneling white children into private, state-subsidized “segregation academies.”
• The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to Mass Incarceration
  • The Progress: The legal architecture of American apartheid was successfully dismantled by federal legislation, securing federal protection for voting, housing, and public accommodations.
  • The Backlash: The political system shifted toward the “War on Drugs” and hyper-policing. By utilizing racially disparate sentencing policies like mandatory minimums, the state constructed a system of mass incarceration that stripped millions of Black Americans of their liberty and voting rights.
• The Election of Barack Obama (2008) to the Election of Donald Trump
  • The Progress: A multi-racial coalition successfully elected the first Black president, representing a symbolic and political breakthrough that signaled a changing American demographic landscape.
  • The Backlash: The immediate rise of populist ethno-nationalism, birtherism, and a political movement explicitly centered on “taking our country back,” culminating in a complete capture of the federal judiciary.

The Historical Comparison Matrix

4. The Anatomy of Recovery

The history my uncle handed me, and the history I studied deeply, is not a chronicle of despair. It is a blueprint for survival. Black culture has never been passively crushed by these valleys; it has historically navigated them through a cyclical blueprint of recovery.

The Operational Mechanics of Resilience

• Institutional Repurposing (The Parallel State): When the state becomes hostile, the culture turns inward. Following Reconstruction, the Black Church expanded far beyond a spiritual sanctuary, functioning as a bank, mutual aid society, and insurer. Simultaneously, when public funds were withheld, Black communities established Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), creating a parallel pipeline of professionals who would eventually dismantle Jim Crow.
• Spatial and Geographic Re-anchoring: When localized terror becomes absolute, migration is used as a strategic relocation of leverage. The Great Migration was not just a flight from danger; it concentrated Black voting power into critical northern congressional districts and packed Black capital into dense urban centers like Harlem and Chicago’s South Side.
• Creative Resistance and Narrative Capture: Violent political suppression has routinely triggered an immediate explosion of artistic subversion. Following the Red Summer of 1919, the Harlem Renaissance rejected respectability politics to define an unapologetic Black aesthetic. Decades later, the Black Arts Movement established independent publishing houses and theaters, ensuring our history could not be erased by mainstream publishers.
• The Formalization of Underground Activism: When explicit resistance is criminalized, everyday spaces are converted into subversive networks. Just as spirituals once mapped the Underground Railroad, the post-civil rights era of municipal neglect birthed Hip-Hop culture—functioning as an independent journalistic medium that broadcasted structural realities to a global audience when mainstream media refused to look.

The Cyclical Blueprint of Recovery

Ultimately, Black culture recovers because its survival strategy has never relied on the permanence of American political goodwill. The recovery structure is built on a foundational understanding that when the external environment becomes hostile, the internal community must become completely self-reliant. By turning inward to fortify its institutions and outward through un-ignorable creative brilliance, the culture transforms the trauma of the backlash into the fuel for the next era of progress.

5. The Strategic Playbook for the Present

Because the modern 2025–2026 rollback relies heavily on federal defunding, judicial manipulation, and institutional capture mechanisms, trying to “repair” the broken federal guardrails in the current political climate is a losing battle. The path forward requires accepting that the floor has been pulled back, turning inward to build fortified parallel systems, and using state and local leverage points to wait out the crest of the wave—exactly as the culture has done in every generation prior.

Our strategy must shift immediately to three distinct fronts:

Deep Decoupling and Private Philanthropic Enclaves

We must intentionally decouple our cultural repositories and tracking systems from federal reliance. Following the administration’s threats to freeze federal funding for the NMAAHC, we must aggressively build independent, private endowments for Black museums and historical archives to insulate them entirely from shifting political administrations. Furthermore, as federal portals purge data on civil rights compliance, our legacy civil rights organizations must scale privately funded, independent data repositories to continue tracking systemic inequities.

The State-Level “Firewall” Strategy

With the Supreme Court effectively eviscerating the remaining core of the Voting Rights Act by permitting racial vote dilution under the guise of partisan maps, the federal courts are no longer our shield. The struggle has moved entirely to the state level. We must focus exclusively on passing state-level VRAs—modeled after New York and California—that outlaw minority vote dilution under state law, while pressuring state attorneys general to use state housing laws to aggressively fill the enforcement gap left by the 59% budget cuts to HUD.

The “Underground Library” and Corporate Counter-Risk

To defeat local book bans and anti-history curricula, we must render the physical classroom obsolete as the sole arbiter of education. We must deploy geofenced digital libraries to drop free, un-censored e-books directly to mobile devices inside censored zip codes, while resurrecting the 1964 Mississippi “Freedom School” model—establishing weekend, community-run cultural academies to teach our history directly to our youth. Concurrently, in the corporate arena, we must protect minority recruitment pipelines by shifting our language from race-conscious metrics to bulletproof socioeconomic and geographic indicators, preserving access while neutralizing legal liability.

Summary of the Recommended Recovery Playbook

6. A Call to Action: The Power of Selective Patronage

Defensive firewalls and parallel institutions are only half the battle. True resistance requires us to leverage our most potent, un-ignorable asset: our economic and cultural non-cooperation.

The American apparatus has always valued Black culture, entertainment, and labor immensely—but only when it is compliant, quiet, and highly profitable. It is time to strip away that compliance.

If a state participates in these structural rollbacks, it must no longer profit from our brilliance.

• To our elite Black collegiate athletes: Avoid attending or playing for universities in states that have aggressively shut down campus DEI offices and stripped minority scholarships. Your labor generates hundreds of millions of dollars in television revenue and merchandise for these institutions. Redirect your generational talents to fortify the infrastructure of our HBCUs or states that actively protect your humanity.
• To our prominent performers and artists: Avoid scheduling your national tours, concerts, and cultural events in Red States that are actively banning our books and censoring our history. Starve their local entertainment and tourism economies of your massive revenue.
• To our Black organizations, fraternities, sororities, and professional networks: Avoid hosting your national conventions, galas, and conferences in hotels, stadiums, or auditoriums within hostile states. Pull your millions of convention dollars out of their tax bases and intentionally inject those resources into municipalities that have passed protective civil rights firewalls.

I understand how difficult this is. We are engrained in this economy. It was not easy for those walking to work and school during the “Montgomery Boycott”. I know that this would be difficult for all of us but I believe we must pair this total withdrawal with an intentional “buy-cotting” movement, consciously contracting with independent, Black-owned vendors, security firms, and production companies to recirculate our capital internally. When we collectively withdraw our labor, our culture, and our dollars, we force local business owners and chambers of commerce to become the ones lobbying hostile legislatures to stop the rollbacks. History shows that the machine only pauses when its gears are choked by a lack of profitability. It is time to stop financing our own erasure.

7. Glossary of Key Terms

• Autarky (Economic): A state of economic self-sufficiency or independence where a community maintains parallel internal markets to survive external exclusion.
• Backlash Momentum: A structural, reactive counter-mobilization by dominant political or racial structures specifically designed to reverse civil rights advancements.
• Colorblind Legal Theory: A judicial philosophy asserting that all legal and corporate classifications based on race are inherently unconstitutional, intentionally disregarding historical disparities or remediation needs.
• Cracking (Gerrymandering): A redistricting technique where a concentrated minority voting population is divided (“cracked”) across multiple districts to dilute their voting power and prevent them from electing a preferred candidate.
• Institutional Decoupling: The deliberate process of separating community cultural, data, or financial assets from state and federal funding structures to shield them from shifting political control.
• Nadir (of American Race Relations): The period from the end of Reconstruction (1877) through the early 20th century when racism, segregation, and racial terrorism reached their peak in the United States.
• Redemption Era: The historical period following Reconstruction where white Southern Democrats (“Redeemers”) violently reclaimed political control of state houses and instituted Jim Crow legislation.
• Selective Patronage: The strategic, organized application of economic boycotts and intentional spending (“buy-cotts”) to enforce political or corporate accountability.

8. Bibliography

• Anderson, C. (2016). White rage: The unspoken truth of our racial divide. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Carter, K. (2026). Banned and buried: The color of censorship in American education. UIC Law Review, 59(3), 523–550.
• Draper, F. M. T. (2025, August 21). Defending the ‘Blacksonian’ is defending America’s truth. Word In Black.
• Franzese, P. A. (2026). Federalism and fair housing: State innovation amidst federal retrenchment. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 53(4), 971–1002.
• Gedeon, J. (2025, August 20). Trump administration’s anti-woke campaign targets Smithsonian museums. The Guardian.
• Grad, R. J. (2026). DEI under scrutiny: Doctrinal shifts, litigation risk, and emerging threats to civil rights law after SFFA. Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, 21(2), 145–182.
• Hoover, O. S. (2025). Let freedom read: Exploring Mississippi’s defiance of national book banning trends. University of San Francisco Honors College Repository, Article 1099.
• Moseley Braun, C. (2025). Moseley Braun calls Trump ‘insane’ after assault on National Black Museum. The Chicago Crusader.
• Pitts, M. (2026). Underruling voting rights. New Mexico Law Review, 56(1), 45–78.
• Sherman v. Black Voters Matter Fund, No. 3:26-cv-00424 (M.D. Tenn. May 11, 2026).
• Showkat, M. (2025). The backlash effect: How diversity, equity, and inclusion programs influence employee engagement and organizational commitment. Cogent Business & Management, 12(1), 2598192.
• Southern Poverty Law Center. (2026, February 5). Erasing the past: The Trump administration’s attacks on history since 2025. Hatewatch.
• The Guardian. (2026, January 8). Trump’s assault on the Smithsonian: ‘The goal is to reframe the entire culture of the US’. The Guardian.
• Washington Post. (2026, May 15). The Smithsonian’s most contested exhibition is back on view, mostly intact. The Washington Post.

https://www.europesays.com/2989233/ What People Are Giving Up Just to Pay Their Bills #advice #budgeting #business #money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #power

https://www.europesays.com/uk/959452/ What People Are Giving Up Just to Pay Their Bills #advice #budgeting #Business #Finance #money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #power #UK #UnitedKingdom

https://www.europesays.com/ie/484383/ What People Are Giving Up Just to Pay Their Bills #advice #budgeting #Business #Éire #IE #Ireland #Money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #PersonalFinance #power

@gzornetta considerazione da una persona con problemi ad accettare il proprio corpo: le foto che accompagnano questo tipo di articoli mostrano quasi sempre corpi perfetti o giù di lì. Nessun corpo rappresentato somiglia mai al mio corpo imperfetto.
Al messaggio (scritto) di inclusione si accompagna spesso un messaggio (fotografico) di corpo stereotipato.
La realtà è diversa? Sicuramente sì. Ma non sono questi articoli a mostrarla veramente.
#MyTwoCents

En mi opinión, estamos utilizando tanto el botón de "Advertencia de contenido" en los toots, y muchas veces con razones que (también en mi opinión) son tan mundanas, que creo que está perdiendo algo de sentido… y está dificultando un poco la lectura del feed.

Pero ojo, que cada persona utilice Mastodon como le venga en gana, faltaría más…

#MyTwoCents #LaOpinionQueNadiePidio

Netflix Italy has unveiled a first look at new animated comedy 'My Two Cents' ('Due Spicci') from Zerocalcare and Movimenti Prod.

#Netflix #MyTwoCents #DueSpicci #Zerocalcare
https://www.animationmagazine.net/2026/04/netflix-reveals-animated-comedy-my-two-cents-from-italian-creator-zerocalcare/

@leodurruti il sentimento di milioni di meridionali rimarrà legato agli insulti razzisti che ci ha dedicato. Non dimentichiamo e non perdoniamo, senza retorica meridionalista, ma ha iniziato la sua carriera aizzando odio nei nostri confronti. Possa bruciare all'inferno #mytwocents

J'ai assez dit à quel point certains points stratégiques de LFI me sortent par les trous de nez, mais quand je lis ces 2 titres à la suite, je me dis que le PS, que j’exècre encore plus, devrait vraiment faire gaffe : ils n'ont vraiment pas la dynamique pour eux, ils devraient y aller mollo sur les trahisons, là ...

#Politique
#MyTwoCents
#PS
#LFI
#LaGaucheLaPlusBeteDuMonde

‘I Lost $300,000 to My Husband’s Secret Day Trading’

My Two Cents Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you…
#NewsBeep #News #Personalfinance #advice #budgeting #Business #Finance #hardpaywall #Money #mytwocents #PersonalFinance #Power #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/398557/

https://www.europesays.com/ie/311310/ ‘I Lost $300,000 to My Husband’s Secret Day Trading’ #advice #budgeting #Business #Éire #HardPaywall #IE #Ireland #Money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #PersonalFinance #power

Wow! "Blood & Sinners" ist für 16(!) Oscars nominiert! Das ist Rekord!
Und ja der Film ist unfassbar gut!
Aber: hätte er das vor 20 Jahren bekommen? Eher nein. Vor 30 Jahren? Garantiert nicht.
Und die Korrkurenz heute? Eigentlich nicht vorhanden. Endlich wird Innovation belohnt.
Hoffe er räumt ab! #oscars #mytwocents

With elections around the corner, is this a proxy message from incumbency vampires—using jewellery firms as messengers to flatter the tribes?

🧛‍♂️ Incumbency Vampires & Poll Season Satire
When the same system that bruises workers suddenly feeds them biryani and gold praise, it’s not empathy—it’s electoral choreography.

🎭 Satire Served Hot
In poll season, even honesty gets monetized.
And every sovereign returned becomes a sovereign strategy.

#MyTwoCents #JustTolded

https://www.europesays.com/ie/275558/ Help! I Have ADHD and My Finances Are a Mess. #advice #budgeting #Business #Éire #IE #Ireland #Money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #PersonalFinance #power

https://www.europesays.com/uk/683877/ Help! I Have ADHD and My Finances Are a Mess. #advice #budgeting #Business #Finance #money #MyTwoCents #PersonalFinance #power #UK #UnitedKingdom

Help! I Have ADHD and My Finances Are a Mess.

My Two Cents Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you…
#NewsBeep #News #Personalfinance #advice #budgeting #Business #CA #Canada #Finance #Money #mytwocents #PersonalFinance #Power
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/396393/

#MyTwoCents

Una mia riflessione -forse banale e sicuramente non richiesta- sul periodo storico che stiamo attraversando.
Non avevo abbastanza caratteri e allora ho deciso di metterla qui sotto.

#7gennaio #Trump #Maduro #Venezuela #capitalismo #Gaza #GazaGenocide‌

#MyTwoCents #IA

Je pense que les catastrophes climatiques vénères nous tomberont dessus avant que la bulle IA éclate

Afgelopen week interviews met trainer Vanderbiest, met Hassana Bandé, een dubbelinterview met Marsa en Miras en een interview met Van Brederode zien passeren in de pers. Meer aandacht voor KV Mechelen dan in in jaren gezien heb. Om dan vervolgens een flutwedstrijd af te leveren tegen Standard Luik gisteren. Ik heb liever dat er wat minder aandacht gegeven wordt in de pers en wat beter gepresteerd wordt op het veld dan omgekeerd. #KVMECHELEN #Malinwa #mytwocents

@evacide as a NON-parent myself.. but IT Pro for 30’s +. The internet is not designed for anything that can’t vote. #mytwocents

“Tron:Ares” 9/10 popcorns 🍿 - BRILLIANT and transformative visual effects, production design. Mind blowing sound and music. Jared Leto is PERFECTION in this movie. Highly recommend seeing it w/ best sound system and the biggest screen available. #mytwocents #movies #nineinchnails

#Humpday

I never understood the meaning of this hashtag/saying, until I finally saw it in a post which also said "We're over the hump!"

Strange how some things we just accept as normal things and use them, without giving it a second though.

I've started to challenge and review new things I hear now, and feel way better about my absorption of new things!

#2cents #My2Cents #TwoCents #MyTwoCents

#MyTwoCents

Quelli che esultano quando dei migranti annegano, quelli che solidarizzano con chi bombarda ospedali e scuole, quelli che da anni danno della "Gretina", quelli delle bambole gonfiabili ai comizi, quelli che prima vogliono conoscere la "matrice", quelli che l' assalto alla CGIL era uno scherzo, quelli che usano "buonista" da anni come insulto… ora, spalleggiati dai media, gridano al "clima d'odio".

#IlSottoSopra

#15settembre #Kirk

#MyTwoCents

Adesso che la corsa alla santificazione sta, forse, scemando, possiamo ricordare che il mondo della "#moda e del lusso" e un mondo che si basa su #sfruttamento del #lavoro, con paghe di 2/3 € all'ora e senza diritti?

#Armani #10settembre

https://diogenenotizie.com/il-lato-sporco-del-lusso-multa-dellantitrust-per-armani/

@mina Well, Mastodon was neither intended nor designed for „overlong posts (in threads)“ (there are weblogs for that). Therefore, you cannot blame (nor re-educate) the system, nor its users, nor a „culture“(?) for not following some non-existing rules you imagine for such cases. 🤷 #MyTwoCents

Un par de cosas voy a decir sobre lo de los vídeojuegos a 90€.

Una, que lo ha anunciado Nintendo, pero podria haber sido cualquiera (personalmente, creía que los primeros que iban a atreverse eran Rockstar con GTA6). Tal y como está el mercado...

Y otra... Menos quejarse a voces de los 90€ y más NO COMPRAR los juegos a ese precio abusivo. Si no venden el producto, puede que se vean forzados a bajar precios.

#videojuegos #nintendo #myTwoCents

Trump’s newest tariffs expected to affect Europe and prompt countermeasures like retaliatory tariffs.

In addition, Trump’s move could hurt foreign automakers (which is probably the point) and the foreign automotive market in general.

The chairman of BMW said, “If you overdo it with tariffs, it sends a negative spiral to all market participants. (There are) no winners in that game.”

#USA #Europe #trump #tariffs

( #MyTwoCents — Trump seems to be quasi-mercantilist.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/business/trump-auto-tariffs-europe.html

/2

“HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. ‘HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.’”

(I wonder if he has heard of long COVID?)

#USA #CDC #health #PublicHealth #COVID #LongCovid #MyTwoCents

And there are so many business implications here that could negatively affect the consumer. In the short term, at least, the effects of sudden, drastic change could drive up prices.

/4 #MyTwoCents

I like that somebody is addressing the US processed food situation, but why does everything have to be a threat w/ them?

And is RFK Jr. basically the FDA now? All by himself, he tells all food manufacturers to remove all food dyes from their products by a certain time— or else.

Why not incentivize the behavior he wants, both from food manufacturers & consumers? And perhaps HHS could run a healthy eating program if the #Trump admin doesn’t fire too many employees first.

/3 #MyTwoCents again

/2

“The Secretary made clear his intention to take action unless the industry is willing to be proactive with solutions.”

#MyTwoCents —

It’s an unrealistic goal. And he is not their boss.

(regardless whether it would be beneficial to public health to remove artificial dyes, and yes, it’s true that other countries have made more strides than the US in this area)

#MyTwoCents —

#Musk acts like people are numbers he can throw around as he pleases— kick them off the job and order them back again (notice it wasn’t even a job offer— it read like an order to report back to work like they’re in the military or something).

Depending on the person situation, they could just say no and not come back to work.

/2

‘“I really don’t feel sorry for them,” Habba said. “They should get back to work for the American people, like President Trump and this administration.”’

(which ‘American people’? 🤔 As far as I know, veterans who served their country in the military (many with disabilities) are American people - #MyTwoCents )

~ #Trump adviser Alina Habba says veterans fired by DOGE are perhaps 'not fit to have a job at this moment' ~

#USA #USGov #USGovernment

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/trump-adviser-alina-habba-says-veterans-fired-doge-are-perhaps-not-fit-rcna194721