Blackout Tuesday

What is your connection to black people?
Do you have black friends?
Do you understand how black people live?
Or is it just the stuff you see on TV?

It's not the job of a black person to fucking educate you on what you can google.

Embracing cultural diversity like a healthy balanced diet. You can't rely on mayonnaise and be healthy

You are not a missionary, you don't need to actively look for a black friend to give you a zoo insight. You need to try and go through the experience. You need to be part of the community, be part of the struggle, not be the tourist of the goddamn experience.

You want everything except the struggle : Cultural Appropriation.

They think they are not racist because:
-They have a black friend.
-They don't attend a kkk meeting.
-They watch Tyler Perry or like Beyonce.

A lot think they are fine and not racist, but then when it comes to a black man telling a white person you are not following the rules, the response is much different from what they would give to another white person. Black people in different professions are spoken to by whites like they are less of a person, and these white people firmly believe they are not racist when they are constantly acting on built up cultural and social biases towards black folks.

Shout out to white folks who suddenly have access to some minority within a controlled environment, where they are in charge and in control, and think of them as amusing and some exotic animal in a zoo.

White supremacy is a spectrum. There are biases and features that you should actively fight.

This is not an overraction. The anger is not misplaced. The pain is not misplaced. People seem more worried about a fucking window than a broken neck. Surprised that this country didn't burn any sooner.

Whomever is willing to listen to me is not part of the problem. I am preaching to the choir. It boils down to the white people posting, the ones that are linked to racist ass aunties and grandmas and friends. That's where they should start, the white people that are problematic in other white people's lives. Speak up, black folks can't do it, they will be fired or arrested. But if you are the white person sitting next to them, you pipe up you speak up. They will listen to you.

Educate yourself on the laws and the system that was set to keep black folks under the foot, educate yourself, educate yourself, EDU-CATE YOUR-SELF

Posting it Again because fuck

Around 15:00-17:00 lies a peaceful tomb for my mind. There, the are the fleeting talbo moments that summarize the amount of affection I have for this creator.

Affection is a euphemism.

Ramadan is Eerie this Year

Fasting abroad brings its own strangeness to the table. I got used to it since India, but with corona and the knowledge that everyone is keeping off the streets and the mosques and the exceptional Ramadanic night life, I can't help but reminisce on some moments of my last Ramadan in Morocco.

An hour or so before the sunset, everything starts coming to an emptiness and stillness, so much that fifteen minutes before the sunset and the call to prayer, the landscapes are deserted metropolis from some eerie sci-fi.

In my days in Casablanca, I would go by the corniche in Ain Diab around those times, back when people didn't think of taking the iftar by the sea and still thought it ridiculous to pay 120 MAD to break the fast in a low quality buffet just to avoid cooking, to be at the coffee shop as early as possible or to get the sunset by the sea experience along with the iftar.

So the corniche would be empty, and the place would be eerie. On both sides, closed and quiet nightclubs and restaurants, coffee shops with settled and exhausted people just waiting to eat and/or smoke. Then as I would go beyond the known area, I would arrive to the empty side of the corniche that extends to the small island of Sidi Abderahmane, the land of magic and voodoo and cards reading and few sex workers.

And that was the place that drove the eeriness to the penultimate level. The uneasiness and crippling melancholy mixed with some sort of resigned fear settled. And I know people from the island could discern a solitary figure hesitating to walk through the connecting bridge and shyly going few first steps, before giving up because of the deep conviction that it was a very stupid if not bad idea.

I don't know why but right now, I feel like everyone cooped up inside for Ramadan and keeping away from the streets is sharing in some sort of eeriness, and maybe it's that brand I used to feel by the empty corniche near that island, and maybe it's the one I would have felt if I had dared to walk to that place.

Damn, just thinking about it gives me chills, eventhough I am pretty far away from that land.

I had to move out

First and last time I get in a colease with a stranger. Last time I am taking a roommate unless it's absolutely necessary, also will do anything to not end up in a situation where I would have to get a roommate in the first place.

She wasn't the worst. The attitude was bad enough, and to actually bother me when I am barely in the house to start with, ouf ouf ouf

But then with Corona happening, her severely compromised immune system, her obvious unwillingness to do something about it and stay in a colease with someone still going outside, I had to put the money and "not my issue" aside and actually move out.

It's funny how her attitude was always "not my problem" but somehow, every one of his problems became mine.

I am so relieved I am getting away from this chick that it doesn't hurt as much to pay rent in two places for two months at this point.

Nostromo Nostalgia Kicking in at Work

Batch Gueye - Shape Shifters

"I am confused, I am shocked, because I have never seen anything like this."

The Gentlemen On Rewatch

I will do neural networks later, but first I apparently need a bi-monthly refresher of this movie now