i am shaking a lot right now and my heart is in my mouth and i’ve been crying on and off and on and off for the past two weeks, and i know that none of you give a fuck about brazil, and that none of you care about politics outside of the ones that directly affect you, but i am terrified. as a bissexual, socialist, umbandista, brazilian woman, i am terrified. and i am begging you to care.
in this year, we hold presidential elections. these elections are the most important in the history of brazil, for a very simple reason: now, that we are on the second round, we either elect a far-right candidate with authoritarian tendencies who flirts with fascism, or we elect a center-left candidate who belongs to the party that was in power for from 2002-2016, before a coup occurred mid 2016.
one of the candidates is fernando haddad, the man seen on this gif:
he was the mayor of são paulo, has been called by the new york times a ‘visionary’, was considered the greatest mayor of latin america, as his time as minister of education made over 100 federal, free institutes, ensured that the history of africa was taught in schools. he has a bacharel degree in law, a masters in economy and a phd in philosophy. he is currently a professor at an university. he gave free buses to children in public education, who could not afford it otherwise, lowered the corruption in the state of são paulo, created a better system for women to denounce harrassment and assault, and overall did a lot of good. i’m not going to spend 3 hours finding different sources for this, because you all don’t actually care.
the other candidate, is jair bolsonaro, and he is not the “tropical trump”, he is not our version of berlusconi. he is worse.
he has praised general carlos alberto brilhante ustra, who is known as the mastermind behind the tortures that occurred during the dictatorship. when he praised him, he did so when voting to impeach our former president dilma rouseff, who was tortured during the dictatorship, and fought for freedom. he has said that “if the crisis gets worse, we’ll shut down the congress” and install a dictatorship. he has said that the dictatorship should have killed more people, and tortured less. that it should have killed 30.000 people. that it should have killed our then president fernando henrique cardoso. he has said that his son would never marry a black woman because he gave him education. he has said that gay people are only gay because they were not beaten as children. he has said that indigenous people are lazy and greedy, that immigrants are the scum of the earth. he has said that women should earn less because they get pregnant. he has said that he would not rape a congresswoman, maria do rosário, because she is not worthy of it. he has said that his daughter is a woman because he got weak and could not produce another man. are you horrified yet? do you understand the problem yet? do you care yet?
in the beginning of the year, marielle franco, a poor, black, bissexual politician was executed. a street was named after her. here’s what people in his party did:
he is leading the polls currently, around 54-58% against 42-46%. ever since the first round of elections, last sunday (07/10), over 50 cases of assaults to people against bolsonaro have been reported.
here are some of them:
a black man was stabbed to death 12 times for saying he voted for haddad.
a woman had a swastika carved onto her belly for walking around with a shirt that said “ele não”, not him, the name of a campaign against bolsonaro.
a swastika was painted in front of a university, alongside the saying “get out blacks”
in different stadiums, football crowds sing “hey, fruit, beware, bolsonaro is going to kill f*gs”
to make things more worrying, the united states, who has knowingly backed up a military coup in 1964, has donated 96 BULLETPROOF MOBILS TO THE BRAZILIAN ARMY.
here are some cartoons on american newspapers:
if you want to get informed, if you care enough to do so, here are some sources in english:
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve started teaching tarot cards to other people is that they have a tendency to think that every card has an individual meaning and it is their duty to memorize 78 complex sets of meanings before they can begin reading for others.
That’s simply not true.
It’s also incredibly inefficient and totally kneecaps you when you move on to learn another deck (and try memorizing ANOTHER 78 complex sets of meanings). Cards exist in relation to one another. Understanding those relationships lets you remember meanings quicker, better understand how cards in a spread might be connected, and give much smoother readings.
If you’re learning Tarot for the first time or looking to bush up, here’s my advice after reading cards for 10 years. Please, learn from my mistakes.
Tarot is a language
In the same way you learn letters
and string them into words and then string words into sentences to communicate,
tarot is a language you learn so your intuition can communicate more fully with you and others. And like a language, it’s often best to start with the phrases that you’ll use the most.
Practice: Go
through your deck and pick out no more than 12 cards that are really calling to
you and look up those meanings. Write them down if you’re up for it. Go through your deck and pick out no more than 12 cards that give you a
feeling of unease and do the same. Notice any reoccurring symbols?
Tarot is a story
How you understand that story may vary on your
tradition, your experience level, your aims. Most standard Tarot decks follow the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana as he becomes more skilled and then more enlightened. A similar pattern can be seen in each of the suits. The Court Cards are less narrative in my opinion but a similar progression can be seen.
Practice: Take out each of the suits one at a time and lay
them out in a row. Read the meanings of each card and see how the story
progresses. Write down a summary. Do the same with each of other suits’ courts and the major arcana.
Tarot is a system
You aren’t fluent until you know the language
well enough to speak smoothly and in most situations. Similarly, it takes
understanding Tarot at a high level to give the best quality readings and read
without a book. No card exists in isolation and just like when they show up in a reading, you must read them in relation to the rest of the spread - it helps a lot to know them in relation to the rest of the deck.
Practice:Lay every card in your deck out like this (pardon my bad MSPaint job). Major Arcana up top and Court Cards off to the right and all the numbers lined up with the Fool and World left hanging. Pick one of the cards that resonated with you in the first exercise and look at how it relates to all the other cards in the deck. If it’s the 8 of Pentacles, what do the other 8′s look like and speak to? What do 8 (Strength) and 18 (the Moon) in the Major Arcana connect to it (if at all)? How does it relate to the rest of the story of the Pentacles?
Hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
THANK YOU for posting this. I can’t stand tarot as flash cards; there’s so much more to them. I know them so deeply that these methods are more in tune with how I read. Flash cards are helpful, but 100% regurgitation of information isn’t the art of tarot.
this is genuinely the most beautiful thing i have ever seen
This is a book store called El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, Argentina! You can have coffee while sitting on the stage. One of my favorite places in my city.
shoutout to all the young people with chronic pain – those of you who have to fight to be taken seriously by your doctors and family and everyone around you, who have people deny your pain because they say you’re “too young” to know what pain is, those of you who struggle to go to school or work every day and those of you who are unable to do these things because of your pain.
what you’re going through is real and you’re so strong for making it through every day. you deserve to be supported and cared for and you deserve to be believed when you tell people about your pain. 💕💕💕
A lot of transguys or masculine people aren’t comfortable with wearing a bikini top, so they get stuck wearing shirts in the summertime, or settling for something that doesn’t make them feel confident.
The Rhodes siblings are currently fundraising for the Bareskin Top, which comes in four skin-tone options, on Kickstarter
