if you moralize to people in the global south about piracy youre going to hell btw. no atonement no take backsies. guaranteed hell forever permanently.
omg there’s a newborn in the notes
Look for all my fellow ass backwards Americans and the European as well, let me tell you a story.
A few years ago me and a Brazilian friend (they/them) had a joke that I owed them a sandwich because they burned one while in a VC with me.
A year later I sent $20 USD to them for the bit, about what I paid for my lunch at Subway at the time (before tips).
They texted me worried about how much money I sent them and if I was sure. Because with the exchange rate at the time, that was almost 100 BRL. I had assumed 1 BRL simply bought less (in local goods), turns out the pricing is, well its close enough that it is about 100 in spending power equivalent.
It is my understanding (though I could CERTAINLY be wrong) that Brazil is one of the nations in the Global South that is doing better relatively, and also that the exchange rate has worsened for BRL since.
However, many game devs simply set the price in USD and then forces everyone to pay that price. You know how some books have a slightly higher price listed in CAD if its printed on? Imagine if instead of like, 20 USD 22 CAD that book cost 100-120 CAD. That would be absurd right?
If you can’t see the problem with condemning piracy in the Global South after that explanation, then I suppose you’re deserving of whatever shit lands in your lap next.
Also, just for the record, we get you a lot more stuff than you realize. A lot of whistleblowers/ leaks/media archiving is done in the global South/spreads from there. It’s a genuine underground and public industry that a lot of us grew up learning to do and it matters. Because yea, the system is designed to make media completely impossible to afford
if you moralize to people in the global south about piracy youre going to hell btw. no atonement no take backsies. guaranteed hell forever permanently.
omg there’s a newborn in the notes
Look for all my fellow ass backwards Americans and the European as well, let me tell you a story.
A few years ago me and a Brazilian friend (they/them) had a joke that I owed them a sandwich because they burned one while in a VC with me.
A year later I sent $20 USD to them for the bit, about what I paid for my lunch at Subway at the time (before tips).
They texted me worried about how much money I sent them and if I was sure. Because with the exchange rate at the time, that was almost 100 BRL. I had assumed 1 BRL simply bought less (in local goods), turns out the pricing is, well its close enough that it is about 100 in spending power equivalent.
It is my understanding (though I could CERTAINLY be wrong) that Brazil is one of the nations in the Global South that is doing better relatively, and also that the exchange rate has worsened for BRL since.
However, many game devs simply set the price in USD and then forces everyone to pay that price. You know how some books have a slightly higher price listed in CAD if its printed on? Imagine if instead of like, 20 USD 22 CAD that book cost 100-120 CAD. That would be absurd right?
If you can’t see the problem with condemning piracy in the Global South after that explanation, then I suppose you’re deserving of whatever shit lands in your lap next.
Also, just for the record, we get you a lot more stuff than you realize. A lot of whistleblowers/ leaks/media archiving is done in the global South/spreads from there. It’s a genuine underground and public industry that a lot of us grew up learning to do and it matters. Because yea, the system is designed to make media completely impossible to afford
if you moralize to people in the global south about piracy youre going to hell btw. no atonement no take backsies. guaranteed hell forever permanently.
omg there’s a newborn in the notes
Look for all my fellow ass backwards Americans and the European as well, let me tell you a story.
A few years ago me and a Brazilian friend (they/them) had a joke that I owed them a sandwich because they burned one while in a VC with me.
A year later I sent $20 USD to them for the bit, about what I paid for my lunch at Subway at the time (before tips).
They texted me worried about how much money I sent them and if I was sure. Because with the exchange rate at the time, that was almost 100 BRL. I had assumed 1 BRL simply bought less (in local goods), turns out the pricing is, well its close enough that it is about 100 in spending power equivalent.
It is my understanding (though I could CERTAINLY be wrong) that Brazil is one of the nations in the Global South that is doing better relatively, and also that the exchange rate has worsened for BRL since.
However, many game devs simply set the price in USD and then forces everyone to pay that price. You know how some books have a slightly higher price listed in CAD if its printed on? Imagine if instead of like, 20 USD 22 CAD that book cost 100-120 CAD. That would be absurd right?
If you can’t see the problem with condemning piracy in the Global South after that explanation, then I suppose you’re deserving of whatever shit lands in your lap next.
Also, just for the record, we get you a lot more stuff than you realize. A lot of whistleblowers/ leaks/media archiving is done in the global South/spreads from there. It’s a genuine underground and public industry that a lot of us grew up learning to do and it matters. Because yea, the system is designed to make media completely impossible to afford
So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that’s what’s on my passport. I’m pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.
I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office… and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn’t be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?
So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that’s what’s on my passport. I’m pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.
I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office… and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn’t be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?
always blows my mind as a european when people talk about states like “yeah theres nothing in ohio/montana/wyoming/etc” because i look at a map like but. but theyre so big. every state could qualify as its own country what do you mean theres nothing there. and then i ask people from those states and theyre like “yeah theres nothing here” what do you mean theres nothing there!!!
What’s in the steppes of Russia, or the northern forests of Scandinavia? What’s in the Sahara desert?
id like us to sit here and identify some key differences between the sahara desert and ohio for a moment
as a former Ohio resident I think that the key difference is that the sahara probably has more jobs unrelated to meth
untapped meth market in the depths of the sahara desert
like obviously it’s still gonna be a rough 4 years, and i’m not dismissing any legitimate worries. i’m just hoping this might ease some anxieties just a little.
if anyone else has some similar pieces of practical information that can dispel some of the panic, please feel free to share them!
stay vigilant and keep fighting, but try not to despair. try to keep a calm and level head as we head into the new year.
incredibly, the architect behind both the building that melts cars in london and the building that burns people in las vegas foresaw this exact problem happening for BOTH buildings, did not do anything to prevent it, and describes the effect as “phenomenal”. King
i looked up pics of people cooking eggs in the building’s reflection and
Use 1337x.to rarbg or rutracker, highly moderated public torrent trackers, because Pirate Bay has long been shut down, unmoderated, and cloned by some shady actors AND use Mullvad VPN (or any other vpn but mullvad is the best definitely) to protect your ip address while you torrent, bind it to qbittorrent and do not use utorrent anymore either because it is littered with adware.
OR if you don’t want to pay for a VPN, use direct download or streaming sites. Please y’all just take one pass through on the r/piracy or r/freemediaheckyeah mega threads to find whatever you want for free and also not infect your computer with Trojan viruses.
^^^ yes!!! Thank you sm.
If any of those terms made you go ????? and you think pirating must be So Hard, I wrote a verbose but easy to follow guide a while back for total beginners!
Use 1337x.to rarbg or rutracker, highly moderated public torrent trackers, because Pirate Bay has long been shut down, unmoderated, and cloned by some shady actors AND use Mullvad VPN (or any other vpn but mullvad is the best definitely) to protect your ip address while you torrent, bind it to qbittorrent and do not use utorrent anymore either because it is littered with adware.
OR if you don’t want to pay for a VPN, use direct download or streaming sites. Please y’all just take one pass through on the r/piracy or r/freemediaheckyeah mega threads to find whatever you want for free and also not infect your computer with Trojan viruses.
^^^ yes!!! Thank you sm.
If any of those terms made you go ????? and you think pirating must be So Hard, I wrote a verbose but easy to follow guide a while back for total beginners!
Thanks for the advice, Mr FB of I! That’s the same thing my very good friend the Nigerian prince told me, too, so our MUST be true!
I did take a look at the article, and that vpn bit is like any good bullshit stew: you have to start with a marrow of truth:
Why not use a VPN to encrypt all of your online traffic? “Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface,” CISA’s guidance fairly explains. “Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies.”
So the takeaway here isn’t “never use a VPN” - it’s use a useful and reputable VPN. Go research their reputations, especially in forums that talk about things that end in *arr. Look at the countries they’re situated in.
It’s very FBI to say that you should never try because you might fail.
And how do you research a VPN? A good starting place is to look at who owns them, and who they are owned by, and you can see that with the VPN Relationship Map
If you click on an entity in the map, you’ll get a lot of information about them, including their contact information, where it’s based, who owns it, how many breaches they’ve had, how many times they’ve had their servers seized, government requests for information, and audit information.
I had a server tell me about how he was harassed into going to a church baptism ceremony by a not so close friend and to get them off his back he agreed
He decided some time before that of he was going to be forced to do this her might as well have fun with it right? So he goes to lush and buys one of the black bath bombs, and cuts it in half.
Now fast forward to the day of and he is wearing a small harness under his shirt that is keeping both haves of the bath bomb one either shoulder blade.
He volunteers to get baptised
They take him up put him in the white robe and then he waits for his turn. Now the friend who invited him had no clue what he is doing. They are pleasantly surprised to see him participating.
Honestly. A mistake on their part.
I only knew this guy for a max of 45 minutes and I could already tell this dude was a chaos entity.
So his turn comes up and they go to dunk him and the water immediately starts to foam and turn black and he starts screaming like a banchee jumps out the water and hisses at the priest
Everyone fucking lost it and her was banned from ever attending that church again.
So yeah all in all seems like a great thing to do for a hilarious story
I want all animals to become sapient enough to produce art specifically because I want to see what sort of sex homunculus caricature each species would create if given the ability to draw
Like we’ve already got the anime waifu with the needle-waist and watermelon-bazonkas and borzoi-legs and bug-eyes. Now show me a fucked-up stupid beetle as drawn by a horny beetle. I want to see what a cartoonishly sexy lion looks like according to lions. I want to see the most ridiculous drawing of a peahen that would have the peacocks squaring up by the fountain.
We give this power to ostriches and they just start drawing people
Australia had to restrict this particular color of glass bottle because male giant jewel beetles found them SO irresistibly attractive that many were not mating with females
There’s certain hobbies and interests that aren’t inherently conservative or regressive but do attract a lot of people who are those things or worse and when you’re a progressive person involved in those hobbies hearing that someone else is interested in your hobby usually has to involve some “But are you normal about it?” conversations before you get too excited
Someone: I think the Vikings are really cool. I like Viking metal and stuff like that.
Me: *threateningly holds up plastic fork* Answer me quickly. Do you have normal opinions about immigrants?
age of sail/napoleonics, allotment/food gardening, keeping chickens, golden age detective fiction, Celtic languages, Waldorf/steiner-montessori parenting - not even touching on permaculture; do not touch on permaculture - foraging and food preservation, the lord of the rings, horses -
Military history. Dear god, military history.
“so are you into historical costuming in the way where you do lots of primary source research and half your friends are queer, or the way where you get all your information from the 1970s Little House on the Prairie show and run a blog talking about your ten kids and Godly Helpmeet husband?”
Brave and Firefox have a feature to remove this. LOTS of sites track like this, not just Youtube. Get in the habit of copying clean links!
yeah you just have to remove everything after the ? and it will work just fine
Not everything after the ? those parameters also contain the playlist and starting timestamp for example, so you might want to keep those. As the post above says, delete the “si=…” up to the next & or the end of the url, whichever is first
This isn’t just youtube btw. Anything after ? in a url is additional info that’s passed to the web site and can be anything from the page number of a large collection to tracking data.
Sometimes the key name is obvious, like sort=ascending, or page=4. Often though, especially if the programmers don’t want it to be obvious that it’s for advertising or identification purposes, they’ll call it by a single letter or abbreviation. Generally any value that’s a long jumble of text/numbers is used for tracking purposes because it needs to be unique. It can (and should!) be deleted when sharing links.
Also, if you are copying and pasting a tumblr link and can take the time to delete the ?source=share from the end, please do, as it seems to make the link behave much better and avoid some of that “open in app” or “behaving like you aren’t logged in” nonsense.
This captures everything I love about being online
This reminds me of the time that I asked if anyone had resources on the history of Shinto and while nobody had book recs, turns out an actual Temple Maiden followed me on Tumblr and was down to chat.
Tumblr has a startling number of well informed insightful people with names that reference obscure hentai.
People are downright interesting when they’re not being duct taped into one box or another.
The world is fucked when historians and linguists and mathematicians and artists of all kinds are forced to work jobs that suck the soul out of them because they didn’t get the right bit of paper from the right building or be born in the wrong place or something
seriously think about how many absolute geniuses spend their free time mastering some obscure realm of knowledge but have to mop up shit for 8 bucks an hour, or pick vegetables for a nickel
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
This captures everything I love about being online
This reminds me of the time that I asked if anyone had resources on the history of Shinto and while nobody had book recs, turns out an actual Temple Maiden followed me on Tumblr and was down to chat.
Tumblr has a startling number of well informed insightful people with names that reference obscure hentai.
People are downright interesting when they’re not being duct taped into one box or another.
The world is fucked when historians and linguists and mathematicians and artists of all kinds are forced to work jobs that suck the soul out of them because they didn’t get the right bit of paper from the right building or be born in the wrong place or something
seriously think about how many absolute geniuses spend their free time mastering some obscure realm of knowledge but have to mop up shit for 8 bucks an hour, or pick vegetables for a nickel
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
so much rage for anyone who tells the story of the radium girls like “ohoho weren’t people in the 20s fucking stupid” and not like “corporate greed has always cost people’s lives and health”
History Lesson:
The Radium Girls were factory workers who painted glowing markers on watches. They pointed their paint brushes with their lips after being told do so and that it was safe for them to do so by their managers. The paint had radium in it to promote the glow.
Dentists became the first people aware of the medical complications happening amongst all the women working in this factory. Complaints of loose bones, teeth, ulcers, etc. began to circulate amongst the staff.
Eventually, the girls started to die. The first one’s jaw literally came off her skull before her death as a result of radiation poisoning.
Perhaps all of that you could say was “stupidity” on behalf of the workers and corporation.
But what came next wasn’t. The corporation, the U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, lied to the public and said that their workers were dying from alternate causes such as syphilis. They continued to instruct their staff to work business as usual, perpetuating more deaths and illness amongst their staff so their product could continue to be made.
The Radium Corp offered to change the method of painting dials, but the alternative brushes slowed down work and they were paid by the dial. To continue earning the wages they needed, the girls were forced to continue to use the brushes that they had to wet with their mouths.
The girls eventually took the matter to court. They took it to court eight times because Radium Corp continued to appeal until 1939.
As a result of their win, which provided a settlement to each girl a lump sum, a yearly stipend, and medical expensed paid by the company, LABOR LAW changed to ensure that companies could be held accountable for not properly protecting their employees from disease. New health regulations and standards were put in place to keep workers safe and they stopped using the brushes after that point.
(I don’t have the data to say if there was a corresponding wage increase to factor for lost wages due to a slowing down after new regulations were made).
The point, though, is that this company willfully knew that its staff was geting sick and dying from the procedures they put in place, and lied to their staff and started a public smear campaign saying these women had sexually transmitted diseases instead.
That’s not on the “stupid” women, that’s corporate greed.
I’d also like to add that they were intentionally delaying the court case so there would be less girls left alive to be there. Even after they’re caught, they are still heartless shits. Don’t ever forget these poor women and the company that thought cycling through workers and leaving a trail of bodies was worth making more money at the top.
One of the best stories I ever read as a child was a fantasy novel by some local dude selling books out of a suitcase on the sidewalk downtown, and I don’t remember what it was called or who the author was, and it’s so obscure that no matter how many elements I remember, I’ve never been able to find it through web searches. I only vaguely remember the story - it was a love story, something about a tower on an island and two characters on a quest to discover their forgotten past. They fall in love and at the end the only way to stay together is to allow themselves to forget again, and you realize that they’re right where they started, in the exact same tower, and they’re doomed to go on this same quest over and over again, never completed, but that also means they’ll fall in love over and over again forever. And I remember how that ending blew up my little child brain into a million pieces.
I don’t know what happened to the book, and I’ll probably never read it again, but if you’re somewhere out there and you were once selling fantasy novels from a suitcase on the sidewalk in the suburbs of Chicago, and if you ever felt like your writing never meant anything or went anywhere except a hundred copies you had printed yourself and sold for almost nothing, please know that your story buried itself in my young brain and has probably shaped my worldview in ways even I don’t understand.
There are a lot of sweet, well-meaning folks in the notes advising me on how to search for this book, and I want you to know that I will never find this book. And that’s okay.
This author self-published, which at that time meant he paid out of his own pocket to print 100 copies and sold some but not all them for cash on the sidewalk in one small town. E-books weren’t a thing. There is no digital record to find. Even if I remembered any of the names or details, it wouldn’t be searchable. No librarian has it in a catalogue.
The vast majority of books written before the modern day are lost media. Countless artists poured their hearts into stories that were read by few and lasted only as long as the paper they were printed on. Most of the art ever made has been destroyed or thrown away. Most of the music ever written will never be heard again. The expectation of permanence in art is very new, and even now, there are millions of works of art that will never be recorded or posted or shared. Millions more that will never even be completed.
Creation, with few exceptions, is a mandala. A vulnerable song performed for dear friends by a campfire, but the singer soon forgets how it went. A poem shared in a coffee house that rattles the audiences’ bones but will never be heard again. A sketch of a lover on hotel stationary that the maid will throw away tomorrow. Our current reality exists by the influence of art that no one remembers.
Please tell me that y'all won’t go back to tiktok once Trump gets whatever nefarious concessions he wants from the company and “saves” it. Like, you all NEED to stay gone. Stay on Xiaohongshu or move to other platforms or create a new one or whatever, but don’t go back to whatever Trump-appeasement monstrosity TikTok is about to become. Don’t do it.
there’s like this bizarrely common belief among white usamerican straight dudes that food that tastes good is like…gay or something and im so thankful that my dad and grandpa and brother aren’t like that
like they legitimately believe eating the blandest hunk of meat in the world makes them manlier. somehow.
what is THE worst thing you’ve ever drank. all liquids acceptable. please tell me what it was, bonus points for why
Hey whoa hi. Hello. I am looking directly into your ear canal. What do you mean you drank a tube of virus concentrate.
So, I was working in a lab, right? My job in the lab was preparing a pure, concentrated enough sample of virus. This is tricky since, y'know, viruses require hosts to replicate, but you then need to get the host cells (and the pieces of the host cells that died!) out of the sample while still keeping the viruses. Once I’d finished and the samples had been sent to the database for analysis as well as a second one sent to be frozen for future reference, there was still some left over that needed to be disposed of.
I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.
Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can’t knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was “sterile rot”. A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube’s inefficiency as a shot glass.
(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)
(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)
(for science.)
You have a fitting blog title
this post is getting 50k easy
ALT
This WOULD be how humanity would go out though tbh
what is THE worst thing you’ve ever drank. all liquids acceptable. please tell me what it was, bonus points for why
Hey whoa hi. Hello. I am looking directly into your ear canal. What do you mean you drank a tube of virus concentrate.
So, I was working in a lab, right? My job in the lab was preparing a pure, concentrated enough sample of virus. This is tricky since, y'know, viruses require hosts to replicate, but you then need to get the host cells (and the pieces of the host cells that died!) out of the sample while still keeping the viruses. Once I’d finished and the samples had been sent to the database for analysis as well as a second one sent to be frozen for future reference, there was still some left over that needed to be disposed of.
I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.
Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can’t knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was “sterile rot”. A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube’s inefficiency as a shot glass.
(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)
(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)
(for science.)
You have a fitting blog title
this post is getting 50k easy
ALT
This WOULD be how humanity would go out though tbh
Yep, this. What the hell do people think desk jobs consist of? Even if you’re just forwarding paperwork you need to know your shit, because that paperwork can mean a license for a local small business owner, for example, or making sure a kid gets extra assistance at school. You don’t wanna fuck that up, right? Then you gotta know your shit, and not talk out of your ass.
And that’s not even talking about being, say, a tax consultant or lawyer, this is “only” about being a “paper pusher” who takes in applications and forwards them to the right person. Or who takes in invoices and makes sure they’re paid on time, which will ensure the survival of the businesses that your company is doing business with.
Just because it’s not heavy physical labor doesn’t mean it’s unskilled.
And I know this says “passable”, but still, pushing one paper somewhere wrong can fuck up a person’s application for insurance payout, or a craftsperson’s income and existence, y'know, existential shit like that.
Let’s focus our ire the right way. Give the bosses shit, not your fellow worker.
Not to mention that the Klamath dam removals are literally just about as far away from LA as is possible while still being in the same state.
Here’s a diagram for anyone who doesn’t get it:
Green is where the Klamath dam removals that are being vilified happened. Red is LA. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they have nothing to do with each other.
But also like. How would more dams have helped? More water in reservoirs, meaning a drier landscape, drier plants, less water downstream?
The Klamath dam removals are an enormous ecological victory and they’re trying to strip it away. Absolute lunacy.
wait a bunch of ppl ( in mexico i belive) got togheter and made a mini movie where everyone is poorly pretending to be french in retaliation for the dogshit emilia perez musical this is awesome tjhey all have little mustaches drawn on with sharpie and are spealing the worst french ever
you can tell this was filmed in latam pq en el fondo se ven paredes sin rebocar
“The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I’m not a trannie or a fag so I don’t care, just give ‘em the medicine they need.”
“This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility.”
One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.
Someone who says they don’t care if dudes wear dresses and makeup is a better ally than someone who says they’re a safe space for women and non-binary people. I am not joking.
yeah I went to a gay bar recently with my husband tumblr user beemovieerotica, and a VERY confused capital S Southerner straight man in cargo shorts and a trucker hat showed up
apparently he (who through my drunken memory I remember only as Earl) liked some woman, and she told him that he wasn’t cultured enough and needed to attend his first drag show (she also flaked on him)
Now I’m reasonably androgynous and was wearing makeup, a short leather skirt, and black heeled boots, but still when this guy came up to me when I was standing off alone and asked “So. Do you come here often?” with a very earnest expression, I thought. Surely not. This guy doesn’t think I’m a straight woman does he????
Anyway I start talking with this guy and he has no idea what the fuck is going on but he is just a very kind and earnest dude and asked a lot of questions (while asking if it was alright if he asked those questions). I track down my husband and friends and I’m like y'all. We need to make sure that Earl has a Good Fucking Time tonight.
Man was completely out of his depth. At one point they put on a puppy auction to raise money for Pride, that started with a 6 ft drag queen in all her glory leading a leather pup out on a leash to the tune of that damned RSPCA “in the arms of the angels” song
We look at Earl. Nervous. He squints, laughs, and then goes “I was wondering why people were dressed like that!” He turned to me and asked “So they’re like dogs?” And I said yeah pretty much. And he just chuckled and went “Yeah I thought so with the tails! Never seen this before!”
When the first drag king came out, Earl looked at me wide eyed and went “There’s a dude version too?!” And I said yeah they’re called drag kings. And he said, low, “Drag kings.”
During one of the queens performances, he frowned, shook his head and told me, “Your legs are better than hers.” in a tone that implied he thought there was some travesty taking place and I should also be getting paid
When he found out I was there with my husband (and that I am not a woman) he profusely apologized and said “I’m so sorry, it’s dark in here and I thought you were a hot chick! I wouldn’t have said nothing if I knew you had a husband, I’m so sorry about that.”
When beemovie invited me to the dance floor with him later and I still had a drink in my hand, Earl said “Oh don’t worry about that I can hold your drink, you get on out there and shake your ass with your husband!” Then before we left, Earl bought me drinks for “Putting up with me all night and answering everything. Y'all helped me have a great time tonight.”
like. You gotta recognize there’s going to people who have never had interacted outside of their of their own community. This includes you. And just because your community is familiar with all the right vocabulary and how to correctly say something, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to support you. If someone like Earl shows up, confused and out of their depth but kind and curious and earnest, you gotta have patience and truck through the small things, so when he goes back to his friends and his coworkers and they snicker asking how the drag show was, he can genuinely talk about how included we tried to make him feel and that he had a great time
![[Image Description: A hyper-accurate MSpaint study of a screenshot from Portal 2. It shows a scene from the beginning of the game, where Chell holds Wheatley with the portal gun as Wheatley explains which lever to pull. There are about two hundred levers, spiraling up the elevator they stand on. End ID]
ID credits: @fagdykevash](../media/a422f448103eb95a94aeb50a1598a63fa60823ce.png)
