Funjabi

So how’d that Reading to End Racism program work out?

This is not so much the product of active positivity as it is extreme restraint around expression of what I’m actually thinking

@sentimentbot.bsky.social
I also want to play, please

One of the most telling ways of how we ended up here is Americans are fine with terror as long as they don't have to make eye contact with it.

It is wild that people in the US are just now identifying imperialist motives for foreign intervention as if Steve Miller invented the concept. How do you all think we became 13 whole colonies which have, over time, expanded into 50 states? It’s literally, like, our main thing

I am prepared to have long ass conversations with any Coloradoans who use a TANF freeze as an opportunity to talk about TABOR repeal instead of the decades of budgetary mismanagement by our elected officials and cabinet heads

I really despise the way that nobody can respond to anything without re-litigating the last election cycle. If your first thought when a major global event happens that impacts 10’s of a millions is “heh remember those voters who said…” you have terminal pundit brain. Have some humanity.

Some parents want happy kids. Some parents want manageable kids. Some just want their kid to date someone white

I’m FREE!!!!!

Wow, you really went that extra mile… in the opposite direction of anything that helps you or the other parties involved reach a proportionate and desirable outcome.

I have included you in my gratitude journal.

We’re at the point where we have concentration camps and slave patrols and the people with the most safety think a mean joke is the pinnacle of resistance

Westerners are good at, “Look, here’s what I own,” but are entirely unpracticed at not owning.
They’re trained to demonstrate selfhood through possession & are unpracticed in non-ownership. This is the root of the homelessness/billionaire paradox; belonging without owning is illegible in the US

The lesson was:

Watch when you’re tempted to concede your power and negotiate with noise.

Noise is how people without leverage simulate authority.

The traveler responded, “If others hear the dog barking at me, they might believe I deserve it.”

The elder replied:

“ਜੋ ਸੁਣਦਾ ਹੈ, ਉਹ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਹੀ ਤਿਆਰ ਸੀ।”
Anyone who believes the barking dog was already prepared to take that dog at its word

Then she got angry, gathered her nerve, and approached the elder who was responsible for the dog with a formal complaint.

The elder (who had been observing the situation) responded,
“Why are you negotiating away parts of yourself with an animal whose job is to bark?”

When that didn’t make her fear disappear, she tried to comfort the dog and use gentle words to explain, “What you’re doing scares me.” This, too, failed to work

At first she flinched, crossed the street, looked for a different route. But she couldn’t avoid that house and that dog indefinitely, so she tried to bargain with it. Maybe a few scraps of food reserved from her previous night’s dinner.

I also often heard the saying, in response to nonsense people: ਜੇ ਕੁੱਤੀ ਭੌਂਕਦੀ ਏ, ਤਾਂ ਭੌਂਕਣ ਦੇ।”
Literally, this means “If a dog is going to bark, let her keeping barking.” It’s a shorthand reference to a longer story:

A traveler passed a house every day where a dog on a chain barked at her as she passed.

This story was not told to make me precious and kind and frilly, nor was it entertainment alone. It was taught so I would never confuse indispensability with safety

On the fourth day the woman returned the rope, but it had been cut shorter by half.

She said
ਹੁਣ ਜਿੰਨਾ ਪਾਣੀ ਮਿਲੇ, ਉਹੀ ਕਾਫ਼ੀ ਹੈ।
“From now on, any water we collect is plenty”

The villagers understood then how dangerous it is to not notice quiet, devoted hands. They learned:

Access is not ownership

So the strongest men dug their own well, but the water table was deeper than they expected, the earth collapsed around them, and they were buried along with their egos.

One day her husband who was frustrated by all of the time she spent feeding others said:

“If you weren’t here, the water would still be here.”

That night, the woman cut the rope.

The next morning, the villagers gathered, shouted, demanded and accused her of cruelty.

She said nothing.

She was so constant that the people stopped noticing her hands. The hands that made that rope and pulled that weight up from the well. Then they began to complain about the rope being lowered too slowly.Then they said the water tasted wrong.

Each morning, people came to her with their vessels. She tied a rope around each one and lowered the vessel into the well to collect water.

My grandmother, like so many Punjabi matriarchs, organized the world for me through story. I miss her a lot today and remembered this parable in particular:

There was a village where one well fed everyone.
The woman who stewarded the land & well did it because it was her role, dharma, & power 🧵

God I forgot how much fun life is when I’m with people who read, play music, produce melanin …

Valid if you never drive & don’t live in a country that produces more than half the world’s carbon emissions.

Someone who has proximity to & relationships with firefighters (who have a 15% higher risk of cancer than the rest of us) is gonna joke bc it’s a release valve for doing the hard stuff

It was 4 inches of snow. We call it winter around here

That “Ungrateful” train ain’t ever late.

These people will do anything BUT normalize access to transit....