Author | Lightnews

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 2d

I love baseball, but I hate both of these teams and my football team - the 🦅🦅🦅 (current Champs) - is doing ok, so it's totally football season, but I really, really, really, really do enjoy that maybe this game will go on forever, because my other option is Team Meteor.

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

From what I can tell, it's even more pronounced than German and High German.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

I live in a smaller city just next to NYC (literally). We're the most diverse city of our size in the nation.

Between here and New York, if I *don't* hear multiple languages a day, I probably didn't leave the house.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Most Americans don't even know that we're WEIRD for having A/C everywhere.

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

On a linguistic note:

My FIL grew up speaking Sicilian with his grandparents. He had to learn modern Italian to be understood in the mainland when he started traveling there for work.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Don't discount what happened after WWII.

Sicily was devastated, and the US swept out those in power, leaving a vacuum. The only organized power left was the Mafia...

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Meanwhile, in the NYC metropolitan area, people are more likely to play the game of, "who can identify that language!"

In a positive way.

Always fun to see how far the tourists were willing to travel.

Or, humbling, how far from their families the immigrants are, and how hard that is.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

My husband is 100% Italian-American.

But he's half Sicilian.

Here in the US?

Just Italian.

In Italy?

....YIKES.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

I made a point of ignoring her except to be exceedingly civil.

She made herself look awful, to the point that another flatmate - her best friend - called her out.

(I had practice from a narcissist mother. I gray rocked the fuck out of that pair.)

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

When I studied abroad in London, a flatmate's father had escaped Hungary to the US.

She was SO FUCKING RACIST and used slurs I had never heard before. She was all for the war in Iraq, and couldn't stand me because I was against it.

...And then she watched Passion of the Christ.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Deliberate blindspot?

If they learned about it, they'd eventually have to make amends.

And they can excuse themselves about the abuses against the peoples of the Americas, because Canada and the US *made it worse*.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

The UK seems *continually shocked* when a former colony goes, "oh, fuck this shit" and leaves.

It's happened enough that you'd think they'd catch on.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

I can't decide if that's narcissism or a guilty conscience.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

...Basically, while all the countries that got colonized are slowly dealing with the fall out from said colonization, Europe goes around acting like they didn't do all that damage and ignoring how it rebounded on them.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

And heaven forbid one of those players was BORN in that country?

No, no, nope, can't possibly be French or Italian, just someone who was born there, has citizenship, but has the wrong kind of parents.

(Also, hey, European fashion houses, we SEE YOU.)

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Also, as an American, I fully realize our deep-seeded racism problem re: sports and athletes.

But the Europeans - the French and the Italians in particular - are SO happy to have players from Africa play for them... so long as they embrace the horrifically racists chants at them.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

Ok, as someone with French-CANADIAN ancestry, a thing that pisses me off about the French is THIS.

Liberte, egalite, fraternite

But only if you speak French, are Catholic, and have 20 generations of French ancestors IN FRANCE.

And they sent my ancestors to Canada, but fuck us, we're not French.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 3d

I have a German ancestor who used to translate Slavic poetry into German.

In an effort to convince Germans that Slavs were *human* and had culture.

...This was the 19th century, not the middle ages.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 4d

*takes notes on good insults*

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 4d

I'm an actor.

Public speaking is a related, but different skill.

You actually need LESS emotion, because you need to be clear at all times. Sometimes even stoic, so the audience can have their own emotions.

Public speaking is about conveying information. Acting is about a story.

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 4d

Look. There's a reason we have college majors in theatre and film. There are world-renowned POST GRAD programs in acting.

It. Isn't. Easy.

It isn't easy to do, it isn't easy to make a career out of it, and getting the training isn't easy, either!

And, no, the degrees aren't worthless.

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 6d

People keep saying this but I strongly disagree that most people can successfully perform an emotion on camera or speaking in front of a crowd if you merely authentically experience that emotion. It's much harder than you think it is. bsky.app/profile/inep...

ineptitudinous.bsky.social @ineptitudinous.bsky.social · 6d

It's still galling that a Democratic politician would need speech training and acting classes to learn how to convey anger at the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. So many Dem politicians are Turing Test failures, trapped somewhere in the uncanny valley between human and robot.

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 4d

Given what he did to the Art Deco buildings he destroyed in NYC?

His buildings are commonly known as death traps.

Reposted by Rebecca Robinson Overholt

Santiago Mayer @santiagomayer.com · 5d

I really think that we need to talk more about the fact that Republicans have basically quietly abolished the House of Representatives

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Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 5d

....Oh, so the left is cool with Nazis?

Rebecca Robinson Overholt @julephenia.bsky.social · 5d

Also, REALLY good lotion and soaps and things.

I get all my shampoo and stuff from there. Considering my hair is about 2 1/2 feet long...

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