Sim Kern - THE FREE PEOPLE’S VILLAGE
@sim_kern
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USA Today bestselling author of DEPART, DEPART! and THE FREE PEOPLE’S VILLAGE (& others), occasional enviro journalist, they/them rep: @RebeccaPodos
Joined August 2014
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Things publishing professionals have told me “don’t sell.”
-scifi
-clifi
-political fic
-trans romance
-neopronouns
-indie press books
Guess what scifi clifi polemic, feat. a trans LI who uses neopronouns, out with an indie press, just became a USA TODAY BESTSELLER?!? 🖕😘
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If any of you are under the impression that our billionaires might succeed in "escaping" to space, while the world burns, let me put those fears to rest with what I know from being the spouse of a NASA flight controller. 🧵
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My 14yo niece stayed up till midnight working on something, when I asked what, she said all her friends were planning to do a PowerPoint party on Zoom, where they’ll just lecture each other on topics that interest them. Hers is on astronomy.
The kids are so, so alright.
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So this billionaire "space race" is nothing more than a dick-measuring contest between Musk, Bezos, and Branson. They are not investing billions to forward science or the bounds of human possibility. They are doing it to be the first rich guy to bounce around uselessly up there./
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The world is burning, and our billionaires are the people MOST responsible, but at least there's no escape for them. They will live and die (alone, like all of us) on this beautiful, precious, one-in-a-gazillion planet.
We should take our wealth back from them and use it better.
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To all the folks trying to recreate school at home, with highly structured schedules & worksheets: we teach that way in schools because of CROWD CONTROL, not because it's the best way to learn. Kids have a rare opportunity here to engage in deep, authentic learning instead. 1/
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And it's utterly despicable when you understand that they're funding it with the hoarded wealth of workers who are struggling just to exist. With ill-gotten money made from supply chains that enslave people and are destroying the future possibility of life on earth. /
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Join me in enjoying the fact that they won't find anything up there but a lot of time to sit with the gaping void inside them, which space certainly won't fill, while forcibly holding their asscheeks to a suctioning toilet seat, bc they're constipated as hell from astronaut food.
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So there's no future where Bezos and Branson are sipping champagne next to their space-pool on Low-Earth Maralago, ok? There's no way life in space could be remotely comfortable or preferable to life on earth in their lifetimes, or for many generations to come, or probably ever./
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Every minute of their day is micromanaged so they can survive. They follow strict exercise regimens to keep their bones from turning to goo. They spend a ton of time studying systems and conducting repairs on equipment that's continually breaking because SPACE WANTS TO KILL YOU /
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For a half-dozen people to exist up on the ISS, it takes a ground team of thousands of people, constantly problem-solving how to keep them alive. Their quality of life is bouncing around in a narrow tube with the same 5 people who can't really bathe for months. /
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But if it troubles you that they might SUCCEED, that those three assholes might ever spend more than a week in space and ENJOY it, let me put your mind at ease. Not in this lifetime. With all their billions, they have no power to make space a better place to be than earth./
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The longest anyone's lived in space was Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, got home, and immediately retired. He'd spent all his life preparing and training to be in space, and found it extremely physically and psychologically grueling to up there for just one year. /
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The only reason they're alive up there at all is because multiple countries have thousands of brilliant, highly-trained engineers and doctors and astrophysicists and computer experts whose full-time job is keeping the astronauts alive and the ISS functioning. /
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I don't know if they realize the futility, if they're AWARE that this whole space race is just a pissing contest to see who can get to zero-G fastest? Or if being a billionaire makes you so delusional that they really think they can buy a Mars colony in their lifetimes. IDK /
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Their sleeping situation is akin to a floating coffin. Their pooping situation is a 20-something-step process in a port-o-potty where everything FLOATS and the door is a plastic curtain. The wifi cuts out at regular intervals. The food is NOT michelin starred, to say the least. /
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A note I got on my short story in workshop.
IDK because she just IS? Has any writer ever been asked, “why is this character white?”
My family is mixed-race, my friends are diverse, do I need a *reason* to write non-white characters beyond reflecting the world?
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Queer white people, don’t we DARE scramble for these breadcrumbs, and decide maybe the system isn’t so bad, and try to turn your Pride back into a parade instead of a protest. We stay out here in solidarity until Black trans people say the work is done. Settle in.
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When something breaks, as it continually does, these teams SCRAMBLE to devise fixes and solutions. And these fixes, lemme tell ya, they are tedious. This year, working from home, I have seen the schematics and overheard bits of meetings, and oh my GOD is it tedious. /
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And the spacewalks where they go out to repair these broken things? It takes dozens of hours of study to do each one. And then it's maybe four, six hours in a suit, with stiff, bulky gloves, all "Drive bolt 7A into dock 31X" until their fingers are shaking with exhaustion. /
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I’m a Jewish parent of a rising college Freshman, and our family has been proudly antizionist for GENERATIONS. I know my kid will be joining her campus SJP on day one. Do we decide where she should go based on which college arrests and beats peaceful protestors least brutally? 🧵
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I don't know who needs to hear this, but:
Punishment doesn't work.
Like every type, for every age of person. No exceptions. We have over a century of research proving this.
And the younger a kid is, the more devastating the long-term impacts on their mental health will be.
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Yesterday, the editor of Canary Lit Mag refused to let me use my pronouns in my own author bio.
After much deliberation, I’m sharing our whole email thread so queer writers will know to avoid this publication.
Transphobia disguised as “protecting grammar” doesn’t fly in 2019.
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Spouse & I have been married 9 years today, and he's still my BFF, so here's some unsolicited marital advice for whoever wants it: 🧵
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My kid is 5. We're a still-masking family. At the beginning of the year, she was one of about 5 kids in her school still masking, so she told me she was going to stop. I said okay. Then she got sick for a month straight. On her own, she decided to start masking again. 1/
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Being nonbinary isn't a trend. It's an exodus.
I didn't hear the term "nonbinary" until I was in my 30's. I didn't realize that existing outside of the gender binary was even an option before that. Pretty soon after realizing there was an exit, I was running for that door.
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Since she started wearing masks again (kn95s), about three weeks ago, she hasn't been sick. So she told me she's going to keep wearing a mask, because she doesn't like being sick. How can a 5yo figure this out but grown-ups really struggle?? Being sick SUCKS?? Like even colds?!?
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STOP TELLING TEXANS TO MOVE! You cannot throw away your HOME and FAMILY and COMMUNITY and SUPPORT SYSTEMS like you’re upgrading an iPhone! There are profound financial, legal, and ethical reasons why people cannot, cannot, ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY cannot move! My god, the privilege!
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Pretty ironic seeing
#LetWomenSwim
as a transphobic hashtag, whereas even though these people insist that I’m a ‘woman,’ I’ve been harrassed 4 times this summer for trying to swim at my gym thanks for their transphobic panic and the fact that I have SHORT. HAIR.
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Bad news for the “back to normal” people: COVID aside, “normal” is rapidly destroying the habitability of Earth, and the extent of systemic change that needs to happen to save you from facing catastrophic climate change in your lifetime is WAY more intense than wearing a mask.
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Extremely tired of people saying things like queer southerners are "ignorant" or "idiots" for not fleeing our homes immediately?? I'm scared what this rhetoric is doing to the mental health of all the queer southerners who CAN'T CANNOT CAN. NOT. LEAVE.
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So here's some ideas of what this could look like instead. For science, take nature walks in a park/bike path, and talk about the water cycle, ecoystems, and biological processes you see. Start a garden. Collect bugs. Set up a science experiment.
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Most fantasy still pushes a pro-divine-right-of-kings agenda, so I’m just saying, if you’re a fantasy writer, today’s a great day to read some of these historical threads on the British monarchy and rethink your whole “Monarchy’s a good thing as long as the king is NICE” angle.
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I'm sure things would've played out differently if she were being bullied for wearing a mask, but we're lucky that the kids in her grade all seem chill with whatever they each want to do.
Again...grownups...struggling with that.
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Paint, paint, paint, draw. The other day, my niece sat at the table and painted for like 6 hours. Why would I interrupt her and say, "Oh your hour of painting is done. We have to do math facts now." No, for once in your life, let the kids paint as much as they want.
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English class? Just read, obviously, but also--challenge your kid to write a book! If they're little--draw a picture book. If they're big, write an entire novel. Help them edit it and query an agent for it when they're done.
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If teachers are assigning grades right now, what they are grading is PRIVILEGE. Without the equalizing force of the school-building and its services, limited as they are, teachers are grading on access to technology, wifi, food and housing security, and ableism. 1/
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What if I told you that you can go ahead and have pets, have kids, and even use straws without climate guilt--because those are all red herrings to distract you from the fact that the actual
#1
, unavoidable, absolutely essential thing we need to do is STOP USING FOSSIL FUELS.
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Social studies--read books that aren't contemporary fiction from your home country. Have international/historical movie time each night. Tell family stories about the parts of history you've lived through, read some more.
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Please keep in mind this editor has stated that they they are in a position of authority over young trans people. So let’s not respond in a way that might radicalize her transphobia or provoke her to take it out on the trans ppl closest to her.
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It’s like a flipside illustration of that trashfire of a conversation we had earlier this week about writing diversity. Not only do white writers expect a character’s marginalization to be the whole point, some can’t conceive of or accept a story that doesn’t totally center it.
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Music--if your kid normally plays in orchestra or band, challenge them to write their own piece of music! Too many kids are forced to only play the music others have written without ever getting a chance to create on their own. And everyone knows one instrument--singing.
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Please don't assign them a worksheet to be due every day. Not only will assigning open-ended, flexible, individualized work be more motivating and enriching, it's a social justice issue. Kids are facing wildly different home environments and access to educational materials.
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Our society is fundamentally changed, we're hearing now at least for 18 months--if not longer. If you're a teacher, assigning kids work remotely, think outside-the-box about what is possible for your students--time, choice, authentic, self-directed, DEEP inquiry.
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PE--learn a dance from tiktok, or put on a ballet and try to copy it, yoga video, if you have access to it, go to a state park and let kids run around in a green space (where you can stay away from other kids), and just BE outside. Bring a soccer ball or a frisbee, whatever.
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Presumably so I’d have room to include her “whole coming-out” story + the history of ever racial incident in her life. Because only then would they feel they understood WHY this character (who talks to trees—that’s the plot) was not a cishet white like them.
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So the character is both Chinese-American AND bi, (such people exist, shocker) and this was just too much for several participants. One guy said if I’m going to keep both those aspects of her character, it needed to be a “much longer” story.
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And math...okay, to some extent, you do just have to sit there and DO math problems sometimes. But there's also counting toys! and tracing shapes! and older kids could run their own epidemiological studies or sign up for free college math electives online.
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Think about the privileged, only child, with a state-of-the-art laptop and a bedroom that locks. And think of the kid sharing a bedroom with two siblings, with no internet at home, parents have just been laid off, and there's no food stockpiled.
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Standing with Palestine is an inherent part OF our Jewishness. The two are inseparable. And several of the colleges that have accepted her have made it clear they’ll beat her, arrest her, point a sniper rifle at her for her Jewishness, & fulfilling the requirement of Tikkun Olam
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TERFs are Christofascist gender police, and if you don’t see that by now, I’m so sorry about all the money you must’ve lost to MLMs and TV psychics.
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-Recognize the lil things you do for the fam & thank each other VERBALLY every time, even if it's repetitive. "Thanks for cooking/doing laundry/etc. Say thanks to each other EVERY DAY. (And you gotta do something helpful every day too, unless it's a real bad day)
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Way too many parents are poisoned by a carceral mindset. This is why your kids hate you once they become adolescents and can think for themselves. It's not inevitable or developmentally normal to loathe your parents. It's just so damn common because so many parents are assholes.
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The explosion in people-you-know coming out nonbinary isn't because it's "trendy." We're not going to slink back into girl and boy forms in a few months, disappearing like Peplum tops or fidget spinners. There's just A LOT of people who've felt trapped by gender all their lives.
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There's absolutely no equity to giving them all the same assignment, every day, and expecting they do it and turn it in on time. As a teacher, or a home-schooling parent, it IS important to provide learning materials. There are lots of kids who can and should take advantage of it
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But please, please be flexible, and understand that your course is now opt-in. For many kids, schoolwork is just not going to be their top priority, because they are facing issues of basic survival (remember Bloom's taxonomy). So post assignments to inspire learning, not force it
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It’s so upsetting to meet college students who are in creative writing programs who have been taught nothing about the basics of how to get their work published—never heard the word “query” or “literary agent” or know about submission grinder. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN 2022?!
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You haven’t just betrayed your party, the values of FDR: support the workers, build the social safety net. You haven’t just betrayed your class and county, handing it back to the rich. You’ve betrayed your SPECIES. Not even that. The ENTIRE BIOSPHERE, the future of life!
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Don’t tell me I don’t have a right to be angry. My child is TWO. We have TEN YEARS. Fuck your vote for 3 degrees warming, more fracking, more deportations, more drone strikes, more private prisons, more billionaires and the doom of the world. FUCK you’re centrist vote.
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You’ve betrayed the future. All our children and grandchildren, bees on the brink of extinction, birds on the brink of extinction, all pollinators, every biosphere on earth in catastrophic decline, you vote for the guy in the oil industry’s pocket. Man, FUCK your centrist vote.
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If you're a brand-new home-schooling parent, I recommend reading up on Montessori-at-home for young kids, or project-based learning for teens. Limit screen time, go with the flow, and let curiosity be your guide. You'll all be much happier, and amazed at what you'll learn.
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I’m supposed to wipe out my family’s savings, scrimp and save and spend every dime on her schooling, and send it to these schools that will put her in harm’s way for peacefully standing up for our values? For sitting on a freaking lawn with other like-minded friends?!?
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Allow natural consequences to occur. Talk to your kids about why you don't want them to do X behavior. Redirect them from destructive and unsafe behaviors. If they're too young to talk to, sorry, you just have to wait until they grow up.
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Thanks to
@Salon
, I got to expand this piece into an essay. The banner art is making me exceedingly happy.
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Oy vey. To the Muskophiles who've found this thread: Everything Musk can do, NASA could do better, if they had the funding. They don't always have the funding, because billionaires hoard our collective wealth, and use it to make redundant space agencies to boost their egos.
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When it comes to teenagers, you cannot control what they think or feel. All attempts to gaslight, punish, guilt trip, and emotionally abuse them will PERMANENTLY damage your relationship. And in a few years, they'll be legally free of you, and might just never call you again.
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If you feel like you're locked in battle with your kid, you need to take several deep breaths and ask yourself what tf you're doing. Parenting should be joyful. You only get to keep them with you for a little while. Abolish the cop in your head.
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Traditional publishing says don’t put COVID in your stories. No climate change either.
But that means our “contemporary” stories are set in a fantasy alternate reality that gets farther and farther away from the real world every day.
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And to other parents of rising freshman, even if your family as a whole isn’t activated on Palestine, there’s a very good chance your kids will be when they get on campus. Are you calling these schools and expressing your outrage at the violence they are meeting on our kids?!
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How dare you not listen to young people, when the world you left us is on the brink of collapse? You may not be there when the seas rise & fires burn, & the crops fail, and the habitable land shrinks to a fraction of what it was, but your children and grandchildren will.
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The universities are racist, antisemitic institutions that will brutalize students who are Arab, or Jewish in the way we are Jewish, rather than divest from a genocide that has killed tens of thousands of people. I’m sick to my stomach over it.
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If you're wondering who I am to make these recommendations, I was a literacy teacher and curriculum director for 11 years. And since the birth of my kid, I've been a Montessori-at-home parent, which turned a lot of what I thought I knew about teaching upside-down.
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I’m experiencing this abortion ban as real grief. It hits at random moments—driving, in the shower. I’m knocked out. My god, there’s no exception for rape & incest. There’s no exceptions for teens, or even pre-teens! Kids! Raped kids forced to carry babies to term. It’s pure evil
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This is BS. You say, “We had no idea,” but I sure TRIED to explain. You had ideas—you ignored them.
You say, “I apologize” to Facebook—but my inbox is empty. No one’s apologized to me!
You got in trouble, but I’m real skeptical whether anything has been learned here 🤔.
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Periodic reminder that a comrade who eats a McDonald’s cheeseburger and shows up to organize/protest is worth 1000 ones who stay navel-gazing in their perfect, vegan, zero-waste kitchen.
“The zero waste movement was never supposed to be for individuals, it was created for companies.” -@ miss.alexandria on TikTok
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Prompted by hearing about someone who gives their 2yo time-outs multiple times a day for developmentally appropriate behaviors. 😡
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I do not concede that writing with singular they/them is “tricky.” It’s no more tricky than using he/she! Have you ever written a scene with two male characters? Or two female characters? Did you figure out how to clarify when the pronoun referent was ambiguous? Cool. Same thing.
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Don't get me wrong. I love NASA! But the wealth that billionaires use for this comeptition is OUR wealth. NASA could use a fraction of that to go much farther in achieving scientific, not ego-driven goals. And the bulk of it should go to improving & sustaining life on earth.
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Democrats are supposed to be able to see an inch past their own self-interest. Democrats are supposed to look out for each other and offer a vision of a better world, but you got nothing to offer. You’re stealing our future out of nostalgia for a past that sold out my generation.
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And--speaking from a place of terrible trauma and experience here-- when teens are constantly shamed and coerced and punished by parents, that's a recipe for self-harm and worse. Gain some fking perspective before you drive your kid into dangerous depression and anxiety.
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Also, if you have a kid aged 3-6, now is an EXCELLENT time to teach them to read. I highly, highly recommend the book TEACH YOUR CHILD TO READ IN 100 EASY LESSONS
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🚨TRANS RIGHTS READATHON! 🚨
March 20-27, all the cool bookish kids on the internet are reading books by trans authors and raising money for trans orgs. 50 booktokkers have already signed on. Do you want to join? Of course you do! Here's how 🧵
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It's ok not to hit every subject every day. It's ok to have a lot of unstructured time. It's ok to have a day where you just do 1 or 2 things. I'd try to limit TV/video games to an hour a day (I know it's hard). And try to have outside time each day, & the kids will be just fine.
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Parenting is a long game. If I’d flipped out on her and made a big deal when she said she was stopping, she would’ve continued not masking AND felt she couldn’t be honest w/me about it. So she’d start lying to me, which would damage the trust between us forever /
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Since this is blowing up, I’ll add some good ideas that’ve come up in the comments—cooking! Not only is it great for teaching reading comprehension & math (assign them to double/halve the recipe), it’s also a pretty fundamental life skill!
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I'm not trying disrespect binary genders. If you are binary, and being a man or woman feels good to you, that's great! But given the history and the oppression associated with gender, is it really so surprising that many of us want don't want to do gender anymore?
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speaking of “adulting,” Maria Montessori was spot-on that chores are great for kids’ development. Millen’ls & gen Z notoriously struggle in their 20’s bc we weren’t taught these. Toddlers can learn to fold laundry, older kids sweep & do dishes, teens can learn to change the oil.
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White climate activists who lament the “lack of a broad climate coalition” are ignoring the global indigenous coalition that has been the most powerful force fighting capitalism for centuries. When climate action doesn’t center whiteness, they don’t see it. /
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@jennelikejennay
Absolutely. If something breaks, we have to send them a replacement. We could just...not.
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Also, cancer. Without an atmosphere protecting them, astronauts are exposed to far more radiation than on earth. The longer you're up there, the more likely it is you develop cancer. At this point, I don't think I need to tell you how far away we are from space hospitals.
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And if you think YOU might like to be nonbinary, but aren't sure you're "enough" of...whatever, I say, screw that self-gate-keeping! The only requirement for not having a gender is WANTING to not have a gender. Welcome to the party! What are your pronouns?
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Sit down and list all the labor that needs to get done--cleaning, childcare, maintenance, etc. decide who'll do what when, and WRITE IT DOWN. I know chore charts aren't "spontaneous" and "romantic," but get over it. Having a family is tons of labor, & being clear reduces conflict
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For people freaking out about: “I said okay.” We have talked w/her for years about COVID, why we mask, and why we ask her to, explaining the science as best we can to a 5yo, but that stuff is pretty abstract, and their brains aren’t great at processing abstract risk at 5 /
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We are saying: you don't get to make assumptions about us anymore, based on our genitalia. We are not complying with your dress codes or unequal codes of conduct. We are not sticking to our portion of the rainbow. We demand to be treated as human, full stop.
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Which, by the way, if you missed that convo, follow the amazing
@frankieonye
& check out his threads on writing diversity.
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Some folks in the comments seem to think a moon/Mars colony is possible. Not in our lifetimes, friends. NASA has been planning the Artemis mission for years, and will continue planning it for years more, and that's going to send astronauts to the moon for a week. ONE week.
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Do you know what a Daddy Long Legs is? Trying to figure out if this is a universally-used term or one of those regional colloquialisms.
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If you’ve been parenting from punishment & this is your a-ha moment, know it’s gonna take time. You’ve done a lot of damage, and it’s hard to break out of a punishment cycle. Stick with it. Every day you treat your kid like a person is good for both of y’all’s mental health.
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