“I’m here to tell you that working with the power who is out to destroy you will never, ever end well,” Aaron John Curtis says. Mohawk by birth, he offers ten reasons why Amazon’s takeover of online retail mirrors the slaughter of Native Americans.
The “Threat” Will Take Care of Itself
Some tribes, upon seeing the European’s appetite for tobacco consumption, believed there was no “white problem.” Left to their own devices, Europeans would smoke themselves to death before they did any permanent damage.
When Amazon began gobbling up book sales, some indie booksellers opined that Amazon was too large. It would overreach, expand too far too fast, and succumb to the sprightly indies who could respond more quickly to changes in the marketplace.
Hey, guess what? The spry booksellers and Just Say Nohawks were both wrong.
Urban nightmare (Mexico City)
The End Game
“Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.” ~ Alanis Obomsawin, Abenaki Nation
Amazon’s Manifest Destiny
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The Power of Cherokee Women
Europeans were astonished to see that Cherokee women were the equals of men—politically, economically and theologically, Carolyn Johnston, author of Cherokee Women in Crisis, says.
“Women had autonomy and sexual freedom, could obtain divorce easily, rarely experienced rape or domestic violence, worked as producers/farmers, owned their own homes and fields, possessed a cosmology that contains female supernatural figures, and had significant political and economic power,” she writes.
“Cherokee women’s close association with nature, as mothers and producers, served as a basis of their power within the tribe, not as a basis of oppression. Their position as ‘the other’ led to gender equivalence, not hierarchy.”
Cherokee Women
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This Is Your Brain on Writing
A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd, Carl Zimmer writes in the New York Times. But if you could peer inside their heads, you might see some striking similarities in how their brains were churning.
That’s one of the implications of new research on the neuroscience of creative writing. For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction.”
Your Brain on Writing
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Rejected Princesses
Wu Zetian
Introducing Wu Zetian, first and only Empress of China — seen here poisoning her infant daughter, Imgur tells us.
Now, that’s actually a bit of a historical inaccuracy, we’re told: the generally-accepted truth was that she *strangled* her young daughter, to frame the old queen and get her out of the way. It worked — both the old queen and the old queen’s mother were executed.
From there, she ascended to be Emperor Gaozong’s predominant consort, and set about eradicating all other claimants to the throne. Early on, her method of choice was a slow-acting poison. As time went on and her influence grew, however, she took to engineering treason charges for her opponents, summoning them to the throne room and making them kill themselves in front of her.
More Rejected Princesses
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Quote of the Day
“The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.” ~ García Márquez , Love in the Time of Cholera
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Alma Alexander
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