1/ The “I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most extraordinary speeches in American history. You should read it again. First, a few thoughts about the common American heritage Dr. King relied upon in calling Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work of freedom.

1/ Jassa Singh Ahluwalia & his role in the history of Shri Harmandir Sahib (A Thread)

2/ Jassa Singh was born in 1720/21 at a village called Ahlu in the Lahore District of Punjab.

3/ Jassa Singh was educated in Delhi, in Persian, Arabic & more, under the care & supervision of Mata Sundari Ji.

Mata Sundari Gurdwara in Delhi.

4/ In 1733, Jassa Singh's mama, Thag Singh (ਤਾਗ ਸਿੰਘ), requested Mata Sundari Ji's permission to take Jassa Singh back to Punjab.

5/ At first Mata Ji refused but eventually gave permission for Jassa Singh to go with his mama, giving Jassa Singh a blessing and weapons, informing him, it was now the right time to take up arms.

Consider that Late Registration came out in 2005.

A 15 year old would only know Kanye as a maga hat embarrassment.

The Selfish Gene came out in 1976. Anyone under 44 only knows dawkins in his bigot form.

The milkshake duck time horizon

Dawkins, for instance, has now been a bigot for much longer than he was a respected scientist.

Kanye has been an embarrassment for much longer than he was a talented rapper.

It's like how a 120-year old has spent half their life as an elderly person.

At some point, the milkshake duck has been one so long that no one remembers the milkshake anymore.

It's just the racist duck, or the terf duck, or the virulently islamophobic duck. Or all three, and for brevity simply called the asshole duck

The Kushana Empire was founded by Mahārājādhirāja Kujula Kadphises, a Shaivite Hindu convert from his ancestral Steppe religion of the Yüeh-chih. He was not a Buddhist, as popularly believed.

A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.

The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.

Emperor Kuja Kadphises had converted to Shaivism, a Mathura inscription from the Tōkrī Tīla mound (Maṭ village) clears up previous confusion (Based on him being called "satyadharmasthita" or 'steadfast in the true dharma' people speculated he was a Buddhist)

This is incorrect.

The Mathura inscription applied the same epithet to Emperor Huvishka (satyadharmasthita) but explicitly says the Kingdom was conferred upon its founder by Lord Shiva (Sarva is the epithet of Shiva). This makes it clear Kujula Kadphises had adopted Shaivism & the Kharoshti script.

This also makes sense, when we realize his son, Emperor Vima Kadphises was also a devoted Hindu Shaivite (and in his coins we clearly see a trishulin ithyphallic shiva with a tiger skin).

So his son had just been continuing his father's tradition & upbringing.

Mines had always had a large female element in their workforce; women were generally employed to carry coal to the surface. It was only in 1842 – with the Mines Regulation Act – that women and young children were banned from working below ground.

The following passage is an extract of a book that was published by Robert Bald, a mining engineer at Alloa, in 1812.

Robert Bald, A General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland, Chiefly that of the River Forth & Lothian, to which is Added an Inquiry into the Condition of the Women who Carry Coals under Ground in Scotland, Known by the Name of Bearers, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Waugh and Innes, 1812

In those collieries where this mode is in practice, the collier leaves his house for the pits about eleven o’clock at night, (attended by his sons, if he has any sufficiently old), when the rest of mankind are retiring to rest. Their first work is to prepare coals, by hewing

them down from the wall. In about three hours after, his wife (attended by her daughters, if she has any sufficiently grown) sets out for the pit, having previously wrapped her infant child in a blanket, and left it to the care of an old woman, who, for a small gratuity,

If you think "It's not censorship unless the government does it," I want to change your mind.

It's absolutely true that the First Amendment only prohibits government action to suppress speech based on its content, but the First Amendment is not the last word on censorship.

1/

Here are some kinds of private speech-suppression that I think most of us can agree are censorship: when the John Birch Society burned mountains of rock records and novels - or when Tipper Gore's PMRC pressured record stores to drop punk, metal and rap albums.

2/

Or the Comics Code Authority, which signed up all comics publishers and retailers to block comics if they contained anything unfit for small children, which stunted American comics for generations while their European counterparts created entire sophisticated genres.

3/

Or MPAA ratings, in which a secret group of censors (falsely described as frequently rotated, randomly selected parents - really they're long-serving studio insiders) decides whether movies get NC-17 ratings and thus be blocked from nearly every screen in the country.

4/

(You can learn more about this from Kirby Dick's unmissable doc, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," which documents both how the MPAA misleads the public about ratings, and uses them to block LGBTQ