Last night, I read the entries from "African-American" through "Agency for International Development." I also caught up on the news.
I'm in the US, and I am more relieved I bought a print encyclopedia with each passing day. I made this purchase at exactly the right time.
The entry for "African-Americans" is about 20 pages long. Like every other entry I've read so far, its contents are straightforward, agreed-upon, documented facts.
If we weren't living in the worst of timelines, I could call them "uncontroversial." In a different timeline, I might even find reading them pointless: everybody already knows this.
But we don't live in those imaginary, much more relaxing timeline. We live in this one. And I know that some of the things in this entry - and in the entry for "Agency for International Development," aka USAID - would start a straight-up fight at family Thanksgiving.
Because we live in a timeline, and under a regime, that has decided that actual, documented, basic facts about how previous humans conducted themselves and society are controversial. Offensive. Bad. And in that regime, the largest corporate squatters on the Internet are happy to keep the rats in their cages confused about documented basic facts, if it keeps those rats pushing the cheap dopamine bar.
(This is not intended to insult those who are still on the major social media sites. Until about a month ago, I was one of you. The further I get from that experience, and the more my brain recovers from it, the more I realize how incredibly poisonous and damaging it is. They are hurting you on purpose and making you think you are choosing it.)
I did not expect reading an encyclopedia to be a healing experience. I certainly did not expect it to be a rebellious or revolutionary one. Yet here we are.
N.b. - if you are curious about the contents of the "African-Americans" pages but don't really want to read a 20+ page encyclopedia entry, I highly recommend the "And Still We Rise" exhibit at the Wright Museum in Detroit. It's the same basic information, but the exhibit is more engaging.