kiramanell

Your work is getting more artsy and beautiful by the minute. And so do you. ❤️

Consider my 'Thanks' a pre-emptive 'Like.'

Lovely picture. ❤️ And that overgrown 'cat' (what is it, like a baby tiger?) is a fine addition too. And that's one wickedly awesome bathing suit. 🤩

For all the $LL I have spent on avi stuff, *shudder*, I just invariably return to my Chloe. 😳 And even though I'm not really 16 any more, of course, I really strongly identify with her, somehow. I call this one after an Avril Lavigne song "When You're Gone"

You're really very good at this 'autumn-style' scenery, as it were. ❤️ And, next to your always amazing looking avis, your sense of fashion is sheer unparalleled. 👍 Gorgeous, as ever.

I'm really liking this. Beautiful sideshot and lighting. ❤️

Awesome! 👍

Awww, stop it, or you're gonna make me cry. 🤗 Honestly, I cherish your very kind comment. ❤️ Thank you! N.B. I meant it when I said it, this morning: I am rather spending time here than elsewhere, bickering about politics. This is The Good Place.

Unknown teenager, unknown city, unknown bedroom... I call it 'Grounded.' N.B. I could only save it as a 88% quality .jpeg file, because forum restrictions. Good thing Flickr doesn't limit size like that.

Hehe, thx. 😍 N.B. I know you were supposed to be 'cute AND psycho', but LOL, all I saw was cute. ❤️

Absolutely 100% adorable! Like a strawberry icecream stairs, LOL, with an avi next to it who's possibly even sweeter! ❤️

En passant, the blatent police brutality, as whole, as I've seen it the last few weeks, bothers me greatly too. The 1st Amendment clearly protects "the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances (!)." And it's your 14th Amendment which specifically states "No state shall (..) deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'" Since the latter is clearly not happening, I'd say the protesters have a very not only a perfectly legit, but Constitutionally protected/mentioned-even right 'to petition the government for redress of grievances' (which is the right to make a complaint to one's government, without fear of punishment or reprisals.) So, tl;dr, don't send in military police; don't use batons to beat peaceful protesters, don't fire rubber bullets; and, FFS, don't attack the press! In 1776 already, the second year of the American Revolutionary War, the Virginia colonial legislature passed a Declaration of Rights that included the sentence "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments." Trying to make the press the 'enemy of the state' is more of a Trump thing, really, in his Make America White Again attempts at creating a Dictatorship. Half the time, as seen in that vid from nappyheadedjojoba, the press/social media is heavily censored already. If we can no longer see what the police are doing, then be afraid, be very afraid.

You ask an excellent question.

What about those -- and this is going to bake your noodle, later on -- who are protesting, precisely because they've been treated roughly?!

Indeed. 'Race' and 'ethnicity' are not synonymous. Not even close. There's the overall human race, like you say (= species). And then races amongst ourselves. White is a race, black is a Race, Asian, Jews, but not much more. Ethnicity is something completely else: 'the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.'

That was pretty sad, Luna; especially "the darker-skinned children reject the darker-skinned doll more often." Was any explanation ever offered?

It's never 'OK', in the absolute. It's also equally common, in any kind of revolt, to tear down hated symbols of oppression, or to defile them. When Sadam Hussein was deposed, people ripped posters of him off the walls, took their shoes off, and started beating the hated image with those shoes. And no, your 'historic icon' is not the same; yet, at the same time, is it so hard to have to some empathy for ppl who express their anger on hated 'objects' of the oppressor? Some there be, for instance, who will take extreme offense at someone burning the flag in effigy. That is their right. But it equally my right to understand where those ppl are coming from (hasn't actually happened in these protests, faik). In fact, if I'm unwilling to look past the spray-paint defacement of a statue, and grasp what manner of oppression those icons represent to someone else, then I probably shouldn't even pretend to 'get' their cause.

"If the President is taking notes, THAT's what a 'perfect call' look like!" 😜 I LOL-ed, hard. 😂

Or when you only do so for 9 minutes, and he no longer gets up.

I share some of the concerns for all too radical social justice movements. But the latter, by definition, are born from injustices. So, a few sharp edges, even radical ones, are to be expected. But Black Lives Matter, as a thought, an ideological statement to be carried towards becoming reality, I don't see how anyone could ever be on the opposite side of that.

That would be nice. Those threads always leave me feeling soiled somehow, afterwards, and icky for having participated. Either I apparently say hurtful things, or I see others saying hurtful things. Whatever is happening, those threads always wind up with me feelling less clean, and seeing most everyone hurting, one way or the other. Only the most simplest of photo threads still seem safe. The rest, although I can certainly be enriched by them, still always leave my soul stained somehow.

If you include 'Copy' items in your search, gachas shouldn't show up in the first place.

In that I, almost as a given, really, assumed black ppl would pretty much like the idea of others rallying for their cause of not being discriminated against. Your reply to him put a dent in that notion of mine, so it was a bit of a learning moment for me, is all.

I thank you for posting this. Ashlyn's reply to Dan was... intreresting. Unexpected, really, but therefore good, as it were, because it threw me off a bit on how I had pretty much assumed most black ppl might react to non-POC ppl supporting their cause. For the same reason, I value your own input (over what I might have thought). I can never truly understand life in a black community, of course; much like I can never truly grasp what it must have been like to have been a Jew during WW 2. Nonetheless, I feel, my lack of true knowledge despite, I should still speak up. Like that engraving at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts (by Martin Niemöller): They came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. (...) Then they came for me, And by that time no one was left to speak up.

Wonder whether that's even legal. But having seen all recent police brutalities just captured by cell phones, it's evident something's very rotten in the State of Minnesota.