One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.
Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.
But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.
That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.
Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.
Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.
I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.
Murderbot and Gurathin attempting to weaponize each other’s asexual autism and ending up weaponizing that against themselves in the process because they’re The Same is genuinely my favorite part of the show so far
Gurathin: Haha! I will force you to make eye contact, which will cause you stress due to your aversion!
Murderbot: Right. Did it occur to you that you’re also eye contact averse, so this is going to distress you almost as much as me?
Gurathin: …no I did not consider that. Fuck. Fuck
Murderbot: Well while you’re busy regretting that - haHA! I will force you to watch your coworkers getting it on, which will distress you due to your sex-repulsion and discomfort with breaking certain boundaries!
Gurathin: Mm. Did it occur to you that you’re also sex-repulsed, and that in order to broadcast that to me, you have to be watching it yourself, so this is going to distress you almost as much as me?
Sorry, sorry, but manipulative hurt/comfort is fucking cocaine to me. The predatory aspect of it. The vulnerability—500% better if the hurt party knows they’re being manipulated and is past the point of caring. The juxtaposition of sweet and sharp flavours. Barkbarkbark
call your loved ones, speak to them. listen to a new album from band you’ve heard about but didn’t have time to get into. water your plants. draw a cat. but please don’t give up, and keep living.
bad times come and go. but you can’t see good times if you’re not here anymore
ALT
also see this tweet which saved my mental health more than once on the span of last 5 years
Hot take but I really do think that some of y’all need to consider how/why/when/how often you’re making fun of straight people for being straight
I do it too, I’m not going to pretend I don’t make jokes about the hets, or the down with cis bus, or whatever
But I recently befriended a cis, straight dude and I have watched him be dismissed, degraded, and unambiguously insulted for the perceived “crime” of being straight — all in queer environments where he is allegedly “completely welcome” and surrounded by “friends”
This guy is not a toxic person! But I have seen him be made to feel so small and like his comfort and safety in those spaces are conditional on his silence and acceptance of being treated like a human dunk zone, and I think that some of y’all have had so much shit from straight/cis people that the second you feel like you’ve got an inch, you want to luxuriate in the perceived catharsis of bullying someone who— actually —doesn’t deserve it
And until he very, very carefully mentioned to me in private that it makes him feel bad, I didn’t even clock that I was involved in doing that, that it had become so instinctive for me to make casual jokes like that, and that— well meaning or otherwise —I had been contributing to an environment that made someone I really really like feel like shit
So, I dunno, I think maybe some of y’all should think about that too
Coming back to say that while a lot of the responses to this post have been mainly positive, some folks have an attitude that it should be something that my friend— or any cis, straight man —should just be able to get over, because fuck ‘em, that’s why, because they’re in a queer space and they should shut up and accept it, because you suffer as a queer person and they should have to suffer too— regardless of whether or not this specific person has done anything to wrong you
I’m gonna say this point blank— you’re a tar pit if you think this way
Your suffering does not make you special, you are not granted brand new permissions to be belligerent and cruel because you have been treated poorly, straight people aren’t an oppressed class, no, but they’re people who are entitled to the same amount of basic decency that you, yourself, are entitled to
It feels good when you’ve been treated like shit to then go forward and treat other people like shit. That’s what you’re admitting. Does it make you feel good to do harm? Are you proud of that? Are you comfortable with being that kind of person? Because I dunno about the rest of you— but I realized I wasn’t, and it turns out it’s pretty fucking easy to change
i don’t know why this isn’t common sense but uh calling men whiny/sensitive/hysterical/emotional etc is not a cutesy gender-reversal-fighting-against-the-patriarchy
WHEN THE MAN IN QUESTION IS TRANS.
Better yet, don’t use men being emotional as an insult, period.
Doing so perpetuates toxic masculinity that is so often shoved onto men since birth, that feminists also say should be overcome and left behind.
You can’t push for healthy masculinity when you’re also perpetuating toxic masculinity.
You can’t push for healthy masculinity when you’re also perpetuating toxic masculinity.
it’s never fighting the patriarchy to call men whiny, sensitive, hysterical, etc., bc as a matter of fact, this behavior actually reinforces the patriarchal idea that men should never be emotional, unless that emotion is anger or carefully restrained joy. i think a lot of self-proclaimed feminists don’t actually learn about the patriarchy and how it works, and just get the idea in their heads that anything they say about men/boys that’s negative, and anything they say about women/girls that’s positive is feminist.
this is how you get people saying things like, “men are inherently dangerous and women are inherently safe,” and thinking that’s feminist, when that’s actually a very prevalent misogynistic line of thought. men = strong = dangerous and women = weak = safe. there’s nothing feminist about that. men and women are all people and neither inherently dangerous nor inherently safe. all men and all women experience a wide range of human emotions, including anger, fear, sensitivity, sorrow, joy, and many other complex emotions.
One of the happiest moments of my life was seeing Kung Fu Panda with my dad and hearing him laugh out loud in public. My dad is a rather stoic man. But it made him laugh like that. And it also made him realize he didn’t do enough things that could make him laugh.
I drew this mini-animation recently and decided to make a post with a couple of other dancing arts. Some of them are pretty old, but I’ve freshen them up a little bit.
All jokes aside, it’s possible that JD Vance killed the pope.
When an elderly person comes down with a serious illness, for the sake of their recovery, indeed their survival, they are supposed to avoid anything that may strain their weakened systems.
They are meant to avoid stress.
Which is probably at least part of the reason why Pope Francis sent his second to speak to JD Vance instead of doing it himself.
And Then… JD VANCE INSISTED TO SPEAK TO THE POPE HIMSELF.
Knowing that the pope was still recovering from PNEUMONIA at his advanced age.
Still, like an entitled american, he demanded to speak to the pope himself. Despite having been met by his political equal in status, it wasn’t good enough for JD Vance.
It just might have been the final straw for an elderly man who was fighting off a serious infection to have to take the time out of his already busy schedule.
The complete lack of empathy that JD Vance brought to the Vatican, that he had already been scolded for by the leadership of the religion he claims to follow, can very easily be considered a contributing factor at the very least.
It’s not a stretch to theorize the pope might have survived had JD Vance not come calling.
do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets
her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.
remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.
>research shows testosterone HRT is not a contraceptive so you still need to use protection!
>ok. do you know if it has literally any effect on fertility whatsoever?
>lol no
>ok. so hypothetically how would a trans man on HRT know if he’s pregnant?
>well silly girl :) you just check your period :) if you missed your period you might be pregnant! duh!
>ok. testosterone HRT stops your period after, like, 3 months though
>[windows error sounds] well then you can usually feel your breasts get heavier and more tender :)
>ok. what about people who don’t have mammary glands anymore? how would that even work?
>listen i don’t know. why don’t you have a pregnancy test?
>those tests work by detecting a specific hormone. does HRT interfere with this hormone by either making it undetectable or stopping its production entirely or anything? how do i know the test itself is reliable?
>have you tried the morning after pill?
>the morning after pill is also hormone-based. how do i know it’s reliable? does taking testosterone HRT have any impact on its efficiency? could it potentially cause an adverse reaction? could a trans man with updated ID documents even access it in the first place since the pharmacy only delivers it to people they think, at a glance, could be pregnant?
etc etc
like i dont know . i keep thinking of that doctor i saw three times at the goddamn hospital and to whom i explained the concept of taking hrt (prescribed) (controlled) (medical setting) three times and i still don’t think he actually understood. “but you look different!” bingo doc that’s what it does! “but … can it actually change your body? :o” bingo doc ! that’s what an “”“hormone”“”“ does . that’s like its whole thing actually. that’s what , it does ,
it’s like the people at work (transcription) (remote office work) (linguistics) (spelling) (grammar) (writing) (language) (grammar) being confused at the concept of "pronouns”. “what do you mean by "pronouns”?“ cindy my belovedest ! i think the problem might not actually be that you don’t know about The Transsexuals? i think you might actually just be worryingly bad at your job. you know? the job which is "know about grammar”? that job? the grammar job? the job that is about knowing grammar rules? that job? the one that you have? cindy? cindy. cindy look at me. CINDY,
Has anyone figured out what’s so viscerally wrong with this woman yet
She’s so one dimensionally evil you guys 😭😭 how is she real
read this and remember it. read this and remember that she is going to use the profits of her fucking ego-stroking reboot to decimate trans rights. read this and remember that every time you pay into her IP, you are emboldening her to hurt us more.
our lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.
trans lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.
Can we erase the idea that low-wage workers being visibly human on the clock is “unprofessional.” It does not hurt customers to see cashiers drinking from water bottles or sitting on chairs. But water deprivation and forced standing are both established forms of torture. Hope this helps 😘
the entire appeal of the croissant is that it is a layered pastry item. it has a light flaky texture. the layers are in there specifically to create a fluffy, airy eating experience. that’s the intention of the lamination process. having so many layers of butter and thin pastry dough make the croissant puff up when it’s baked so that when you bite into it the pastry has a texture similar to puff pastry. the entire point is to fill the pastry with air. therefore any trendy hybrid variant of the croissant such the “cruffin” or the “cronut” or the worst offender of all the “croffle” which involve jamming the unbaked croissant or compressing it into a flat shape completely betray croissant as it was originally intended. they defeat the nature of the croissant by forcing it into something it was never meant to be, removing the unique core of its identity, killing its appeal and thus its entire reason for being. now am i saying you can’t enjoy a cronut or croffle? of course i would not say this. you can enjoy any pastry you want to enjoy because it’s your time on earth. i want you to enjoy your croffle. you should enjoy your croffle. also, you can commit any sin you like and i can’t stop you nor do i want to. i won’t hear your arguments because you don’t need to convince me. but you must understand, as you eat it, that the croffle should not exist. it is a mistake. it is an insult not only to the croissant but to me as an individual. i am not french
This reads as someone with a strong moral code (people should be free to experience joy without arbitrary regulation, you don’t have to like what other people like but your discomfort is your own problem) trying to maintain their faith in a time of hardship (they keep doing weird shit to croissants)
ill be so honest this read of my character in such a fraught croissanted context has me tearing up with the raw joy of being seen
in absolute tears about the pride module at my work
HOLY SHIT GUYS, I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS POST TO TRY MAKE THE SONG AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT WHEN I DRAGGED THE TRAINING AUDIO OVER THE BACKING TRACK AND IT LINED UP PERFECTLY
The slur songSLRSLR
Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work…
Tagging @batshit-auspol because as an Australian you’re the only big account I know who might share (sorry).
I was listening to this at low volume on my phone while at my parents’ place and it got my mum and dad roaming the house looking for whoever’s phone had an alarm going off
Me, starting a video that says it’s going to explain how Victorian poorhouses fucked up the concept of charity forever: ok, show me what you’ve got
Video: it starts with the ideas of the Christian philosopher –
Me: DON’T SAY IT DON’T FUCKING SAY IT
Video: – John Calvin
Me:
Who (he asks, half to piss you off and half because he genuinely doesn’t know)
You can’t piss me off with that question, because unless you were raised like I was - deeply religiously and within an Evangelical Protestant family - you will probably have never heard of John Calvin.
In short: John Calvin was a French theologian during the Protestant Reformation. He was a philosopher in the same way that ebola is a living thing, or the same way that C4 on a bridge revitalizes a riverfront. If you’re familiar with the way that many people say that Reagan is to blame for everything shitty about modern American politics, well, they’re half right.
A lot of it is actually John Calvin’s fault, but that’s just because his shit philosophies are responsible for ~90% of the shit you hate about American life, period.
I’m British but wow
Good (actually terrible, but) news: John Calvin is also responsible for fucking up where you live!
Anglicanism’s major tenets were formed largely by Thomas Cranmer attempting to negotiate a “middle way” between Lutheranism & Calvinism. Many aspects of Calvinism were adopted into the Reformed traditions central to Anglican theology & the via media, or middle way, is unfortunately basically just two shitty people playing tug-of-war over the exact way in which Anglicanism would be terrible. This is so foundational to the Church of England that it is addressed in the 3rd paragraph of the opening section of the Wikipedia page on Anglicanism.
Sorry to be the bearer of shitty news! John Calvin is the Worst!
Calvinism, in brief, for those unaware:
Free will isn’t real. God makes literally everything happen, and if you complain about it you’re complaining about God.
Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Fuck you, that’s why. Are you questioning God?
God already decided if you’re going to Heaven or Hell, probably before you were born. There’s nothing you can do about it. It doesn’t matter if you try to be a good person, or if you accept Jesus, or if you go to confession, or if you saved five thousand orphans from a burning building. If God ~mysteriously~ decides “fuck you, burn forever”, that’s your fate.
However, God likes to show little signs of who he likes. Say, having lots of money, or being hot, or not having horrible illnesses. Good things happen to “the elect”, who are people God likes. Bad things happen to everyone else.
Rich people are probably going to Heaven, and they’re just better than you, because that’s God’s secret sign that he likes them more than you. Why? Because fuck you.
If bad things happen to you, it’s probably because you deserve it and you’re going to Hell. Likewise, if you’re poor, ugly, or disabled, you’re probably going to Hell.
All of this bullshit has of course had a heavy influence on:
Capitalism, because having money isn’t a sign that you’re exploiting people, it’s a sign that God mysteriously wants you to have nice things. Nothing you can do about it, free will isn’t real!
Imperialism, because if you succeed in taking over a place and stealing all their stuff, that’s a sign that God likes you. If God liked them, it wouldn’t have happened, so you’re really following God’s plan. And torturing people who are already going to Hell barely even counts, they probably deserve it!
American exceptionalism specifically. Consider the above, and mysteriously, all the native people start dying, leaving vast tracts of land for your people to settle. Well, gosh! God genocided a continent to show that it was secretly always ours! He must really like us!
Witch trials, debtors prisons, insane asylums, &c. They aren’t hot or rich, so by definition, they’re probably evil and deserve for bad things to happen to them!
… and half of the other shitty things that happen in our society, basically. Calvinism is horrific and it underlies a lot - especially in the US and UK, because the Puritans and Roundheads were mostly Calvinists.
(This was the religious freedom that the Pilgrims were seeking. The freedom to be horrible antisocial creeps.)
This is a pretty good basic summary, yep.
This is Netherlands erasure. Our entire literary tradition is about how Calvinism wil mess you up. Every year there is a new memoir or film about having been traumatised by Calvinism.
There’s a line of a song about a calvinistic childhood that goes:
“I know one thing, if God exists, He is not a Calvinist.”
At no time did I say Calvin only fucked up the US or the US/UK. He’s responsible for fucking up an awful lot of countries on at least 3 continents.
I have a motto, and that motto is “if there is something wrong in America, an early modern motherfucker is at fault.”
That motherfucker is frequently John Calvin
Like genuinely about 90% of what’s wrong in the US rn is either down to John Calvin or Ronald Reagan.
This post has way too many notes and they’ve been clogging up my notifs for a month, but these are the first ones I’ve seen that Get It. Thank you. This is exactly it.
I wasn’t talking about the absurdity of companies trying to advertise cars or vacations that no one can afford, like everyone in the notes seems to think. There are plenty of people who can afford them. Fewer than there used to be, but corporations aren’t starving.
I was talking about the invasive way advertisers have taken over every modicum of available space and how it’s no longer possible to turn anywhere without advertising being pushed on you, despite the fact that most people don’t have the kind of expendable income that these companies are trying to extract from them. The less money the average person has to throw around, the more aggressively they’re hounded to hand it over. Where people used to be able to afford a new car and a vacation and still throw expendable income around, they now save up for one or another big purchase (those who can afford one, and that population has significantly dwindled). People limit their other spending, and in response companies descend on our consciousness, on every last bit of space they can squeeze their presence into, like pigeons onto a handful of seeds thrown on the ground.
You have to sit through advertisements to watch something on youtube only to realize the video is, itself, an ad in disguise. You can’t pump gas without a little screen blaring at you wanting you to buy things. Billboards and bus benches weren’t enough, they have to be energy gobbling screens now so five companies can sell you shit while you wait instead of just one. Every available surface is screaming at you to BUY THE THING. Where you used to be able to play a game on your phone, now you can’t get through more than a round of any without having to sit through ads to keep playing. Ads that are pushing other games to you that have more ads. Games based on making working class jobs look fun. Be a barista and fulfill every order or the customers will be angry! Lolololol! Work at a hotel and don’t fail, making the demanding customer angry is failing don’t fail! Hahahahahahahaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaa it’s fun! Run a farm and make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make more money to buy more things to grow and sell and and and! Even in your free time you should be thinking about your place in the market economy! Or worse, they’re ads for predatory games, whether they’re “play our game and win real money!” bullshit or “doctors want you to play this to avoid alzheimer’s [if you’re old play this game where we’ll exploit your confusion about technology to sell you more things.]”
Every free moment you have, every free surface you come across is another opportunity to sell you something. We aren’t able to get a break from it in our free time in our own home unless we constantly take steps and make effort to, like installing ad blockers - which youtube and other websites are constantly working against - but those don’t even work on your phone or tablet. And the closer to home the advertisement, the more it targets you specifically, because your personal devices, that should be your personal, intimate, private property and space, are exploited to collect data on you to wrench every last cent from your wallet. They want to get to know you, not because they’re curious about you, but because they want your money. They don’t just see you as a wallet with thumbs, they do so unabashedly and brazenly and aggressively.
This post wasn’t about the content of what’s being advertised to us. It was about the relentless, instrusive aggression with which advertising invades our privacy and personal space and every inch of public space. We are exposed to hundreds of images daily, none of which are art or even remotely creative or inspiring, but instead demand our attention and our money while ignoring that both have been stripped bare by the mere need to exist from one day to the next.
This post was about the insidious way advertising has embedded itself into culture and consciousness, so much so that in a post trying to call this out, most people’s immediate reaction is, “yes, the problem is that I can’t afford the thing being advertised” and not “why can’t I go three seconds without being advertised to” in the first place. That advertisers continue to pour money into new ways to insert themselves into the average person’s life when it’s absolutely fucking pointless.
Not to detract from this great post but if you have an android device you can use YouTube ReVanced (https://revanced.app/ is the only real website) to avoid ads and sponsors and to have commercial videos labeled, and there are actually ReVanced versions of a bunch of popular apps with the ads removed, like Reddit, Instagram, etc. Though again, your device has to be android because apple does not let you do anything but precisely what they decide you can.
You can use a service like NextDNS on pretty much any device that connects to the internet to block ads in websites and apps at the level of the internet connection itself with essentially no hassle or management other than the setup which consists of typing in a string of numbers in a specific settings screen on your device.
There are ways to avoid ads digitally, at the very least, physically, not so much, and of course google will keep spying on you.
“the current system of criminal justice/imprisonment is inhumane and should be replaced” okay cool I’m with you
“and the best way to do this is by letting the public exact violent justice on anyone it believes has committed a crime” I am begging you to learn literally anything about the history of lynching in the united states
At least two people are interested, so here are my thoughts on the anti-intellectualism surrounding queer histories and why it matters:
There’s a common misconception that historians are being homophobic or oblivious about queerness, and it’s parroted by not just conservatives but also progressive and queer folks. This tends to call into question historians’ credibility. That’s a huge problem now—misinformation abounds, and delegitimizing history as a discipline harms us. Historical memory and interpretation is a valuable skill, and one that needs to be fostered. My post was an attempt to bridge that misunderstanding between historians and others interested in historical topics. Pardon any typos, as I was metaphorically rampaging and you can’t go back and edit stories.
Also: @qqueenofhades is who to talk to about Richard I and queerness.
like its always been a joke but those girls rlly truly donot gaf what happens or whats said to other women they supposedly care about protecting, half the support ive seen from terfs on here for jkr isn’t even related to her books just the fact that she doesnt like trans women but if u mention she very openly is racist to people of color including women of color (shocker) all of a sudden that doesnt matter or is a acceptable mark as long as xyz tgirl gets run out of a pilates class, like u bunch r so unserious, never beating the hate group allegations when yall cant even hold the line on anti racism 😭
ALT
ALT
