Something I hope we can all agree on

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Fuck, and I mean this with all imaginable disrespect, the BAFTAs.

I wasn’t going to put my two cents in on this one. As a white guy with no particular disabilities it’s probably safe for me to sit it out, and I don’t really need to have an opinion on every single thing that happens. But I learned a couple of things today about the BAFTA’s setup for this event and their reaction to John Davidson yelling the N-word at Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan, and … man, seriously, fuck these guys.

In case you’ve been off-planet: John Davidson is a British disability activist who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, specifically the version known as coprolalia, which is the unwanted uttering of obscenities and slurs. There was a movie made about him, called I Swear, and that film was up for some awards at the BAFTAs, so Davidson was invited. Lindo and Jordan were on stage to present an award unrelated to Davidson, and he shouted the N-word, and all hell broke loose.

Now, to be clear: people with disabilities have the right to exist in public. Black people also have the right to exist in public without having the worst slur in the history of the English language shouted at them. How one chooses to sort out those two rights when they come in conflict with one another is something that I’m going to allow people with better qualifications to address, and if you want there are any number of posts and videos out there of people talking about that.

But go read this article from THEM magazine.

I was already aware that the program was aired in the US on a lengthy (two hours, I believe) delay, and I believe it was broadcast on a short delay even in Britain. And apparently the BAFTAs did see fit to edit it out when an award winner said “Free Palestine!” at the end of his acceptance speech. Two things I was not aware of, however, were that:

  1. The BAFTAs deliberately set up a hot mic near Davidson, and
  2. Davidson also yelled “Pedophile!” at host Alan Cumming, who is gay … and they edited that out too.

The amazing thing is it’s Davidson himself who is calling them out in this article. You would think “Hey, the Black guys weren’t the only people I yelled horrible slurs at” would not be much of a defense, but it’s really starting to look like the guy yelled a whole bunch of offensive shit that got edited out and the only thing they left in was the N-word. “Pedophile” gets edited out. “Free Palestine!” (not from Davidson, but still) gets edited out. Half-a-dozen uses of the F-word get edited out. The N-word? Nah, that’s fine. It can stay.

That’s a huge fucking problem, and it’s racist as fuck, but it’s a problem that can be laid directly at the feet of the BAFTAs, and not John Davidson. On top of everything else, apparently nobody from BAFTA said anything to Lindo and Jordan afterwards, which is just insane.

I also read another opinion piece, which I can’t find now, that included the words “John Davidson can’t spend his whole life apologizing,” which … I feel like he kind of can? And maybe should. People apologize for things that happened inadvertently all the Goddamn time. You apologize when you hurt someone’s feelings and you feel bad about it. Davidson, by all accounts, seems to be a lovely person, and I cannot imagine that he enjoys yelling racial slurs at people. I don’t feel like apologizing when you do yell racial slurs at people is that big of an ask. This is not a perfect analogy, but I’m a big motherfucker. I try my best to keep all of my body parts to myself in public, particularly when I’m in the midst of a crowd, but the very nature of being large and surrounded by people means that occasionally I bump into them, and anybody that isn’t paying attention and runs into me is very likely to end up on the ground. And do you know what happens when that happens? I apologize. Every time. Whether it was my fault or not. I apologize and I check to see if the person is okay. It’s not an imposition, it’s kind of a required part of trying to be a good person. And it’s not especially complicated, either.

Again, I don’t feel qualified to comment on how to handle the intersection of guy-who-inadvertently-shouts-racial-slurs and people-who-get-racial-slurred-at as a matter of policy. It feels unfair to tell Davidson he can’t be in public and it’s deeply fucked up to keep Black presenters off the stage in case Davidson yells something. But what I do feel comfortable with is the idea that, however you do handle this, you definitely don’t handle it by doing what the BAFTAs did. I can identify fucked-upedness without having to solve society’s problems. And what they actually did is completely fucked up, and some heads need to roll because of it.

In which no one is surprised

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

There is no force on Earth or in Heaven that could compel me to watch the State of the Union tonight. It used to be a thing I made sure to pay attention to; I am fairly certain the last one that I watched was during the Obama administration. If anything of significance happens I can find out about it on BlueSky afterwards like everyone else.

Nothing of significance is going to happen.

Today went well, although I’ll admit I may possibly have checked my phone more often than was strictly reasonable this morning to make sure that there wasn’t another snow day. A few of the super rural districts around here had a delay, but most didn’t, and the roads were clean and dry on the way in to work. Tomorrow will mark 2/3 of the school year gone, which is crazy to think about. I still haven’t done an office referral in 2026.

(Typing that will guarantee that I have six tomorrow.)

Anyway, I’m off to play Nioh 3 until all the jibber-jabber is done with and then maybe I’ll turn my phone on. Or maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow morning. I finally started Ken Liu’s All That We See or Seem and so far it’s been much better than the early reviews led me to believe, so maybe video games, books and sleep will cap off my evening. We’ll see.

In which it happened again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Yet another Goddamned snow day today, an asynchronous one at least, but my schedule for the next couple of weeks is tight enough as is and I can’t do new instruction on asynchronous days. So today involved a lot of keeping an eye on my email and Nioh 3. This also means that unless next week’s planned teacher inservice day gets cancelled, I’ll go until at least the second week of March without a five-day week. That’s got to be a record, at least during my career. Covid doesn’t count.

As far as I know, there’s no precipitation predicted for tomorrow at all, so hopefully I’ll get to go to work like a big boy. What did you do today?

On parenting a fellow geek

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, ParentingLeave a comment

I am too old for Pokémon.

That is more literal and less insulting a statement than it might seem. I am about to turn fifty this summer and I spend a positively unhealthy proportion of my income on comic books and Legos. I spend so much money on Legos that I am noticing that the technically-proper singular (it’s “Lego,” not “Legos,” believe it or not) is starting to sneak into my vocabulary; I am not someone who can accuse anyone of being too old for anything they enjoy except under circumstances of the most rank hypocrisy.

No, what I mean is I was born a couple of years too early for Pokémon to be a part of my youth. This is the real dividing line between Gen X and the Millennials, people; if Pokémon was a part of your childhood or late adolescence, or your friends’ childhood or late adolescence, you’re a Millennial. If it wasn’t, you’re either a Gen Xer or a girl, and we all know girls don’t count.

(That was a joke, shut up.)

My son has been into Pokémon since he was three or four. He has absorbed all of this shit entirely on his own, because his mother and I don’t know a damn thing about it. And he has only just now, at the ripe old age of fourteen, decided that he wants to learn how to play the game. And he is putting together a “deck,” which is a thing you use for card games, apparently, and he and I spent two hours at a soon-to-be-going-out-of-business card and game store today searching through thousands and thousands of bulk Pokémon cards in hopes of finding the exact cards he wanted.

We were, all told, more successful than I might have guessed going in. That thing up there, or at least one of them, is a Toxel, and goal #1 was to find a Toxel card. We found a few different ones and he just kept adding goals as we continued to sort through huge boxes of cards; I kept one eye out for the stuff he was looking for (any “dragon” types, any cards in Japanese, just for the hell of it, fairy types, and a half-dozen or so specific Poképeople) and another out for anything with a ridiculous enough name that I wanted to buy it. We were spending $20 for all the cards we could fit into a specific box, and that was hundreds of cards, so I really could grab any card I found momentarily interesting without worrying about whether it was any good or he was going to reject it. He announced that he wants me to play with him; normally my son expressing a wish to spend time with me under any circumstances is a great thing; that said, I’ve managed to avoid getting into CCGs for all this time for a reason– I know how my brain works and these shits can get expensive when you’re not taking advantage of a store closing.

He said something about wanting to learn Magic: The Gathering the other day, too, and I told him he was allowed to play it as soon as he got a job and could buy the cards himself. I will happily give him a car on the day he gets his driver’s license; I draw the line at Magic cards.

The punch line is he’d rather have the cards.

I’m not sure if that makes me a winner as a parent or not.

Adulting!

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

Took the old garage lights to the dump— did I mention we installed new garage lights?– got our taxes done, and knocked a couple of test holes in a wall today for a “weekend project” we have in mind that no doubt will take six months to finish. I feel like that’s a Saturday, right?

I have four letters of recommendation to write tomorrow, all for the same scholarship, and the building can only nominate one of the kids who apply to the next round. I am supposed to send the letters directly to the school counselor and I am genuinely tempted to write a real letter for the clear best choice and have the rest of the letters say “I choose that other kid.” I’m not going to do that, of course; I’ll make the best case I can for each of the kids, but I think the choice is pretty clear at least among these four. I think the world will forgive me if I use a common framework for the four letters, though. Hopefully. After that I have a week of lesson plans to write– for some reason I really want this week settled before I get to school Monday morning– and after that a combination of threats and prayers toward nature, because apparently despite it being nearly 70 degrees earlier this week we have a winter storm headed our way again? And, no. There are not going to be any more winter storms. Indiana had tornadoes yesterday, and it is an ironclad rule of the universe that tornadoes and snow cannot coexist in the same week. Just … no. I threatened to kill God on Bluesky the other day and it received a startlingly positive response; nobody wants to make me follow through here, right?

Today is the 61st anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, and while I freely admit that I did think when I purchased the above book about Malcolm X that I would read it during Black History Month, specifically starting it today was a happy accident. I could tell you without looking it up that Malcolm was killed in late February of 1965, so I knew it was soon if we hadn’t just missed it, but if I’d gotten the 21st right it would have been a lucky guess. I’m startled at how fast February has flown by; I have about 30 books I need to read in the next seven days, and my wife and I ought to figure out what we’re doing for our eighteenth anniversary at the end of the week.

Yeah. Eighteen years. I am so old that I have been married for eighteen years. Madness.

Fell asleep in my chair again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

My “I’m going to sit and read for an hour” time lasted fifteen minutes again, and God damn it, I’m getting to bed early tonight. It’s been a while since I’ve been as constantly tired all the time as I have been for the last few weeks, and it’s got to stop.

Well, that’s new and dumb

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I have talked about this before: possibly the most consistent aspect of my teaching career has been my weekly trivia question. It’s had a few different incarnations over the years, but the way it usually works is that I post a question on Monday and, for those who choose to participate, an answer is due by the end of the school day on Thursday. Anyone who gets it right gets a piece of chocolate or a Jolly Rancher or something similar on Friday. No one has to participate; it’s purely for an excuse to hand out candy.

The kids can find the answer to the question any way they want, including ways that might be considered cheating in other contexts. The only rule is that I will not tell them the right answer or confirm that their answer is right. They can look answers up however they want, they can ask each other— every so often I will seed a completely ridiculous answer to see how far I can get it to spread— or they can ask other teachers or staff members. Everything’s legal.

The picture above is not the exact same picture I used— it’s the same march, from a slightly different angle— but I can’t find a high-res version right now to use on the site, and the exact picture doesn’t really matter all that much anyway. The question is “Name any two people in this picture.” Which, okay, isn’t exactly trivia, but whatever, my game my rules.

Martin Luther King, obviously, is a gimme, although my students have shown the annoying habit of deciding any Black man in a black-and-white photo is King regardless of whether he looks anything like him. So they really only have to identify one other person, and the fact that King is linked arm-in-arm with the woman next to him (who has “Not Rosa Parks!” written in my handwriting underneath her) is kind of a hint as to who she might be.

Anyway, one of my girls turned in an answer on a half-sheet of paper. She wrote “Coretta Scott King” at the top of the paper, “Martin Luther King, Jr.” in the middle of the paper, and her own name— kind of important if you want your candy— at the bottom. Relevant: she is Latina and has a very obviously Latina name.

As I was going through the answers this afternoon, I discovered that one of my students in a different class period had obviously fished her paper out of the basket they get turned into and copied her answer. Now, again, technically this isn’t cheating. It’s kinda gross, but it’s not cheating. However, he’s not getting any candy tomorrow.

Why not? And how do I know his answer was copied from hers, specifically? Take a moment and think about it. See if you can come up with the reason. It’s cool, I’ll watch a video while you’re thinking about it:

This young man also wrote three names on his piece of paper. At the top was Martin Luther King, Jr. At the bottom was his name. And the third name? The one in the middle? Was the name of my other student, in all her Mexican glory. A fellow student in his grade at his school.

Now, I warn them: they can find out the answer however they want, but if I get an answer that I think betrays an exceptional lack of thought being put into the process, I reserve the right to make fun of them the next day. Usually this happens when I have a question beginning with the words “Which President …” and get someone who was never President as an answer.

I will have a grand fucking time mocking this answer tomorrow, I tell you.

(Also, left to right: Bayard Rustin (in the stocking cap), Philip Randolph, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Ruth Harris Bunche, Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther King Jr, Coretta Scott King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Hosea Williams in the dark coat with the child in front of him. I recognized Randolph, Lewis, Abernathy and both Kings without looking them up, and I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t recognize Rustin.)

Today’s highlights

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I bet, at your job, whatever it might be, you didn’t have to tell anyone that taking their pants off was inappropriate. You probably also didn’t have to tell anyone to take the staple out of their nose.

I had to do both of those things before 10:30 this morning.