I have loaded the vibe trebuchet and launched into the world a large number of bublasuars, Ivysaurs, and Venusaurs. The reason for this is not clear to me. Although I do have reasons for having done so...

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One of the most common tricks used by woke Social Justice activists to defend their view is to de-legitimize criticism by attacking the motives of the person who is opposing them. The goal is to undercut the moral authority and social standing of anyone who disagrees with them

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If you criticize the views of woke Social justice Activists they'll attack your motivations and imply that you're not being honest about your true motives. The goal is to make the audience suspicious of your intentions so they won't trust you or believe anything you say.

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By attacking your motives the woke activists can both discredit you while getting the audience to raise their level of skepticism toward you. This tactic is sometime referred to as "poisoning the well."

It is a dirty tactic, but it is effective.

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Here @BrandonLBradfor attempts to smear Conservative Black thinkers by claiming the reason the Right listens to conservative blacks is to assuage their own insecurity. The implication is people don't really care about the ideas of conservative blacks, they just use them...

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This implies that the ideas of conservative blacks are not worth listening too, and that even if conservative blacks had good ideas, nobody would care any way. This is the sort of pure cynicism that typifies Wokeness.

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A huge mistake people make is to think of postmodernism, post-structuralism, intersectionality, Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, 4th wave feminism, and Critical Theory as being separate and distinct, having nothing to do with each other

This is a massive mistake.

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These disciplines are connected. They are not like individual academic factories producing different theories. The fact is that the ideas that are produced in various disciplines cross-pollinate and influence each other. The theorists make use of and share each others ideas.

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These fields are akin to ingredients used by activists to make the stew of Critical Social Justice.

Mix some postmodernism here with some intersectionality there, add Critical Race Theory and 4th wave feminist post-structuralism and *taste test* YUMMY...Social Justice!👨‍🍳

4/
Take a look through the activist literature and you'll see that they pull from all these theorists as they see fit and as they find it useful.

An excellent example of this is the book/website: "Beautiful Trouble." You can see how this dynamic works in that book.

5/
You all know the old trick about how "postmoderns" and Marxists are totally different? Well that was true at one time, but woke activists will gladly take ideas from both the Postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault (1st pic) and the Marxist Antonio Gramsci (2nd pic)

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Mini Thread:

Every time I think there is no more postmodernism in Christianity, I find more postmodernism in Christianity.

This time @KaitlynSchiess

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We start out with acknowledging a shift in how "truth" is thought about.

Which, I mean, yeah just read some Stanley Grenz and you can see it coming. It is called *taps mic*
🥐🦭🥐🦭🥐🦭🥐🦭

POSTMODERNISM

🥐🦭🥐🦭🥐🦭🥐🦭

3/
Pic 1: We are sinful and as such we are epistemicly flawed

Pic 2: Because we are flawed and imperfect we must adopt the philosophy of Richard Rorty: "The truth is out there but we can't get it."

Although she hedges slightly with "every time."

4/
Next "There is no universal basis for evaluating our environment."

This is her argument for that:

1. our perspectives are limited,
2. our communities suffer from generational and structural biases,
Therefore:
3. there is no universal basis for evaluating our
environments.

5/
This whole argument (much like the whole essay) is totally confused.

For one, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. She goes from different perspectives and people have bias directly to there is no foundation for the discovery of truth.

now....

[THREAD: WHEN GREECE RULED INDIA]
1/89
Some time in the 7th century AD, Sanskrit writer Bāṇabhaṭṭa did a biography on his patron, emperor Harshavardhana. It was titled Harṣacarīta and is said to be the first biographical work from the subcontinent.

2/89
Besides abundant references to the Greeks (as Yavanas, derived from Ionians), the book recounts a curious incident of king Vatsapati being ambushed by soldiers emerging from "the belly of a sham elephant."

This section may or may not have been lifted from an earlier work.

(Thread)

To My Old Master: this letter was written in August 1865 by former slave Jourdan Anderson to his old master, Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, who had the audacity to send him a letter asking that he return to work on the plantation.

See next tweets.

"Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me... 1/

... than anybody else can.

I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. 2/

I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. 3/

It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. 4/

#3/thread on Angkor wat

Christianity and islam may be the largest religion of today’s world but Sanatan dharm has the largest religious monument in the world in the form of Angkor wat. It is situated in combodia and spread across over 400 acres / 1.6 km².

It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, which encouraged an international effort to save the complex.
It was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. In Khmer, the Cambodian language, Angkor means "city" and Wat means "temple grounds".

So Angkor Wat means "Temple City". Its original name was Vrah Vishnuloka or Parama Vishnuloka, meaning the sacred dwelling of Vishnu in Sanskrit.
But, it gradually turned into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century & is still used for worship today.

Angkor Wat was initially designed and constructed in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II, as the king’s state temple and capital city. It was built without the aid of any machinery, as there was no machinery available at that time.

Evidence for these dates comes in part from inscriptions, which are vague, but also from the architectural design and artistic style of the temple and its associated sculptures.

Another aspect is that the five central towers of Angkor Wat symbolize the peaks of Mount Meru,

Would you like to live in a UFO? Well in 1968 you could, thanks to Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. He created the Futuro House and for a while it was a worldwide sensation!

Let's take a look around...

The Futuro was a round prefabricated house initially designed as a ski chalet. Quick to build and easy to heat it reflected the optimism of the times.

Inside the spacious Futuro were all the 1960s mod cons: a central cooker/heater, reclining chairs, funky furniture and cool, crisp lines. Did it have shagpile carpets? Of course it did!

The Futuro was made of fibreglass- reinforced polyester and was light enough to be towed to any location. You literally moved house.

But its futuristic design caused an immediate backlash: Futuro houses were banned from many municipalities by zoning regulations because they didn't 'blend in' with the environment. Production was halted in the mid 1970s.

The greatest treasure looted from the Ethiopian people at Maqdala in 1868 isn't in the BL or V&A. The Kwer'ata Re'esu, the most sacred icon of the Ethiopian people, was stolen by a representative of the Queen, later sold by his heirs & remains hidden in a bank vault today. 1/10

The original painting, by an unknown Renaissance master, was brought to Ethiopia in the 16th century and became the talismanic icon of the Ethiopian people, a symbol of Imperial authority. Oaths were sworn on it & it was carried into battle at the head of the Emperor’s army. 2/10

Copes of the Kwer'ata Re'esu icon are ubiquitous in early Ethiopian art - here is one painted in the so-called Second Gondarene style in a late 17th century manuscript. 3/10

Its importance to the Ethiopian people is incalculable. In 1744 it was captured in a battle with Sudanese Muslims & later returned on payment of a ransom. James Bruce, a visitor to Ethiopia in 1768, wrote: "all Gondar was drunk with joy" on the return of the "quarat rasou”. 4/10

After the Siege of Maqdala it was stolen from the Emperor Tewodros' palace by Sir Richard Rivington Holmes of the BM, later the Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle, who took the painting - not for the British Museum or the Royal Collection - but for his own private collection. 5/10