Redcap's Rant

cis het middle aged fuckwit that likes to call himself queer and dream about other realities.

[felysha]

Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism aren’t marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.

Praying for a safe journey back to the spirit world, Uncle ❤️‍🩹🦅

[felysha]

Today is the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks and Rec). Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who died protecting his transgender husband, on the first day of Pride month. Today we remember him and how he protected his family.

[what-even-is-thiss]

“Why do Americans not simply overthrow their government?”

Well have you ever tried to overthrow the American government? Why aren’t you doing it if it’s so easy, wise guy?

Also given the state of the country right now the people who do take over after the smoke clears are uncomfortably likely to be fascists anyways.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The people in this country right now that are willing and crazy enough to attempt an overthrow of the US government already tried and failed, if you’ve somehow blocked January 6, 2021 from your memory. Somebody died during their attempt, actually.

[spackotutto]

Who the fuck says simply? Nobody is surprised that it's hard but from Europe it looks like Americans are doing next to nothing to end their fascist government.

No organising. No waves of new party members. No violence against ICE. There hasn't even been any repression and you still won't even fight back. I can understand the reason people don't want to put themselves in these situations. I don't understand why someone would make a post defending inaction. To me you sound like a German in 1933: "Yes the NSDAP is bad but let's not do anything against them because it might be dangerous to us".

Did you really think that would sound like a good argument?

[what-even-is-thiss]

People are organizing to protect their neighbors from ICE all the time and protesting both small and large things constantly. A lot of people and local governments are suing the current administration and almost 90% end up winning their lawsuits. Investigative journalists continue to do their work despite threats from the feds. We are doing stuff constantly. You just haven’t heard about it because it’s hard daily work that doesn’t make for fun and flashy international headlines.

[aro-pancake]

But we don't hear about it.

I think that's the whole point of what @spackotutto was saying.

I'm in Brazil, and I only learn about the bigger actions because I have friends from the US, but I also hear a lot about how they're scared of the whole situation (revolution rarely comes without bloodshed), and I still didn't know about half the stuff you mentioned up here.

It's a matter of what gets to us outside the US rather than "simply"

[what-even-is-thiss]

Within the US if you pay attention you notice a constant stream of lawsuits and protests and investigations. Right now we’re preparing for the congressional midterm elections and some gubernatorial elections which could be huge. If we can manage to flip both the senate and House of Representatives to being majority Democrat they can block a lot of the more harmful things this administration is attempting.

These aren’t the sorts of stories that make it to international news but they’re happening constantly. New progressive candidates, voting districts being rewritten, lawsuits blocking harmful actions, investigations exposing the corruption, people delivering groceries for their immigrant neighbors.

These are all things that are happening constantly but they’re also kind of local news.

So know that we’re getting shit done.

We’re not fighting the US military though.

[handsaniti]

“Why am I not hearing about the things that I’m not bothering to research?” - Europeans and Canadians for some reason

[getangrystayangryusa]

@spackotutto

The two upper pictures are from Minneapolis, MN. Bottom left is San Francisco, CA; bottom right is New York, NY. These are anti-ICE protests. Here's an article from The Irish Times reporting on some of what's going on, with specific focus on Minnesota. Also on the topic of organizing, the people of Chicago have organized aganist ICE through neighborhood watches and whistle signals. Here's an article from Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, a German political education institution, focusing on Chicago's efforts. Other cities have been following their example.

As for "no waves of new party members," Mississippi flipped a few seats recently. Florida. Texas. They aren't the only ones but it's midnight here and I'm crawling into bed. If you're actually interested in doing literally any digging at all, you'll find more information along these lines in other states. We're working on it.

As for "no violence against ICE," their agents are scared to show their faces. There's a reason they wear masks. Going after them while they're in uniform and armed is basically suicide, but the ones whose names have been leaked are looking over their shoulders whenever they step outside. From CBS News, "The Department of Homeland Security announced last fall that its officers have experienced a 1,000% increase in assaults, and a sniper attack on the Dallas ICE field office in September was believed to be motivated by anti-ICE views."

"You guys still aren't fighting back" several of us have been killed fighting back.

Even if none of this were true, making a post about why we haven't gone for the big one (tried to overthrow our federal government) isn't 'making a post defending inaction.' Those are two different things. I'm really not sure where you got the idea that the only action worth anything at all is if we all throw ourselves against the meat grinder of the US military-- that's the implication of your statement, so I can only assume that's your belief-- but I heartily fucking disagree.

[flower-cute-posts]

i think we've invested enough in ai infrastructure actually (Available HERE)

[inside-my-gay-mind]

this is what public transportation should connect to

[ca-rolinee]

finally someone with urban planning experience

[inside-my-gay-mind]

[gatheringbones]

“Life after menopause is exceptionally rare in animals. It can evolve only in creatures where grannies help younger family members survive. Only human, killer whale, and short-finned pilot whale females routinely live for substantial periods after they stop breeding. Like humans, killer and pilot whales have roughly twenty-five to thirty childbearing years, then can live another thirty or so. And as Ken’s just explained, some live a lot longer. Up to a quarter of the females in a group are postreproductive. These whales are not waiting to die; they are helping their children survive. As human children often benefit from their grandmothers’ attention, killer whale grandmothers boost their grandkids’ survival. A rather bizarre twist of killer whale society is that killer whale mothers remain crucial to the survival of their adult children. When older killer whale females die, their adult children start dying at high rates, especially males. Male killer whales who are under thirty years old when their mothers die suffer a tripling of the annual mortality rate compared to males in their age group whose mothers are still alive. Male killer whales who are more than thirty years old when their mothers die face death rates more than eight times as high as males in their age group whose mothers are still living. Daughters under thirty show no mortality increase after their mothers’ death. But daughters older than thirty when their mothers die have more than two and a half times the death rate of same-age females whose mothers are alive. Males’ handicaps of the extra drag of their huge dorsal and pectoral fins and the extra food required for their immense size (at around 20,000 pounds, males can be one-third more massive than females) seem to make them reliant on their working mothers for food. Females don’t have the males’ impediments, but while raising young, females may rely on food shared by their no-longer-breeding mothers. Adult females share essentially all the fish they catch, and more than half goes to their children. Adult males share their catch only about 15 percent of the time—usually with their mothers. While no one fully understands their strange death pattern following the loss of a mother, extreme parental care is likely at the root. Toothed whales are the world’s champion nursers. Short-finned pilot whales continue to produce milk for up to fifteen years after the birth of their last calf, likely nursing other females’ young. In bottlenose and Atlantic spotted dolphins (further study might reveal others), some females never give birth. Denise Herzing dubbed them “career females,” because their role in society does not include motherhood. They might be infertile. They might be gay. But their contribution is crucial: they do a lot of babysitting. When Herzing entered the ocean with a visiting nine-year-old girl, “White Patches, the eternal babysitter herself, had never seen me babysitting a young human before. Her excitement vocalizations were audible and electric and she continued to swim around us, eyeing the human youngster attached to me.” (Researchers sometimes call babysitters “aunts.” That’s precisely who they often are.)”

— Beyond Words, by Carl Safina

[dailycatsblog]

[slidey-boi]

going for a worn chipped enamel paint look, only really used a metallic paint marker for the weathering. Gonna try to bust out a search and rescue themed demi-trainer next

[audley-and-cherry]

My least favorite things about anti- UBI discourse is always the techbros whining that "nobody is going to work anymore! People will just watch Netflix all day!" and I have 2 responses:

1) Who the fuck cares. Who the fuck cares what people do with their time! That's kind of the fucking point!

2) People aren't going to stop laboring. Housework (look, it's right there in the word!) will still need to be done. So will maintenance on our homes and personal spaces. Children will still need carers, as will the elderly and disabled. There are millions of examples of ~work~ that we do all the time, uncompensated, that won't suddenly stop because we aren't forced to sell our labor to provide corporation's profits.

I'm not surprised that what is traditionally women's work is invisible to these dipshits, but it never fails to anger me.

Anyway. Join the IWW.

[sleepyowlet]

Field studies have been conducted in several countries now, and the result is always the same - people will just flop about for a couple of months to recover from the burnout most people who have a job live with, and then they look for something to do. Some get a job with reduced hours, and some start doing charitable stuff like volunteering in soup kitchens and teaching others to do whatever their particular skill is. They socialize more, they are happier, and on average, people will work more, not less.

But the thing is, employers suddenly have to think about how to make their jobs appealing enough for someone to come and do them! It's hard to find someone to work for you for long hours under horrible conditions, if they can just choose not to; which shows you how voluntary our current system actually is.

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶People won't stop working! If so, fuck it!🎵

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

I'll be making sure we still have engineers and machinists haha

[the-haiku-bot]

I’ll be making sure

we still have engineers and

machinists haha

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[dracula1992soundtrack]

being online is so scary aren't you guys worried about the world wide spider

[redfagdiver]

It took 36 years for someone to make this joke and by god it was worth the wait

[m0ose-idiot]

I love this so much! Also it triggered a memory and I spent far longer than I want to admit trying to find this 2002(ish) pic from Aussie cartoonist Judy Horacek

[anosci]

i love this!

i did a bit of digging and found that some bloke named Simon Brooke used the OP's joke as his email signature at least as early as March 14th, 1995 according to this quoted text. it takes a while to find a preserved copy of something Simon said but here's an example from mid-96:

[redfagdiver]

My bad

[its-not-a-pen]

oh fun fact, i model most of my own drawings! here's me with a teacup, a pair paintbrushes, and the hanfu i made from an old bedsheet. shout out to my Director of Photography, Alex (bottom left).

ok lets talk about my throught process behind this drawing!

i wanted a cool visual metaphor for the one-sided power dynamic between the sovereign and the subject. something about objectification, and the way society reduces the art and artist to mere consumables. oh and of course, the violence inherent in a feudal system that's covered by a veneer of civility. the cannibal is dressed in silk and eats with silver chopsticks out of a lacquered bowl. in a smiliar way, the IRL first emperor consumed his citizens to satisfy his own hunger for glory. he created the Great Wall, built a network of roads connecting the whole country, dug the world's largest cannal--and worked millions of people to death in the process.

Gao Jianli is very passive and resigned throughout this entire ordeal. the Small Jianli's represent different parts of his psyche. some sit there in a stupor, or hang percariously between two states, or whisper in the king's ear in an attempt to change his mind. others take matters into their own hands by climbing directly into the bowl.

left: 5000 years of Chinese costumes right: lacquer plate from the Warring States period, 300s-200s BC.

Qin Shi Huang's clothes were inspired by this the woman in this pic. i thought the white-on-black swirls absolutely ate. man it's so nice that during the first 1000 years of chinese history men and women wore basically the same clothes, really makes things easy for me.

my favourite part of the drawing is actually that table. it's hard to get that good glossy finish and im pretty proud of myself ngl. the fancy dinner plates filled with absolutely nothing represents the lack of satisfaction QSH finds in his titles and status.

left: 19th century drawing of qin shi huang.

right: western han ceremonial dress, the long crown is a holdover from the qin dynasty. art by 纯狐公子 from "Book of the Later Han Dynasty·Records of Vehicles and Clothing" by Gengzi Zhongyan

[byebyebitches2024]

new genre of videos youtube’s algorithm has decided I needed to see

[charl0ttan]

dog i gotta move like yesterday

[ominous-signs]

Has anyone else sent this yet? Because I think it belongs here.

(The Japanese text says "Evacuation Ladder", btw.)

Official ominous sign

[certified-door-posts]

certified door post

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You can’t Abstain your way to a Better World.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

The Burger still gets made, even if you go Vegan. If you don’t buy it, it just winds up in the trash. If you want to do something meaningful about waste, you need legislation: It must become a crime to waste food in those ways.

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

You need Government.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

STOP PROPOSING INDIVIDUAL SOLUTIONS TO COLLECTIVE PROBLEMS

[astra-the-dragon]

individual and grassroots activism and campaigns are essential starting points, but they can only scratch the surface alone. they get us social capital and leverage and education and fundraising -- those resources must then be applied upon on the large important actors such as governments and corporations.

getting 1000 new people doing Meatless Mondays is hardly noticeable, but if 100 of those people join a mailing list and 10 out of them go to the governor's office to convince her to block the expansion of a local factory farm -- that can be potential actualizing into effective change.

[chronivore]

[escuerzoresucitado]

[distantwave]

[theonion]

Assuring Americans that a routine medical exam had confirmed the president had no pressing health concerns, Capt. Sean Barbabella, the director of the White House Medical Unit, claimed Wednesday that Donald Trump was a perfectly healthy 9-foot-tall 35-year-old. “After concluding his physical, I can say with confidence that President Trump exhibits normal vitals for a titanic behemoth born in 1991,” Barbabella told reporters, adding that the commander-in-chief’s cardiovascular health was so exemplary that he had finally cracked the three-minute mile. Full Story

[witchofanguish]

[mahead-ithurt]

Always remember that the EU did a study in 2013 about the effects of piracy on media publishers and found that there is no correlation between piracy and sales! (And then they tried to hide that study bc that's not the result they wanted)

So piracy is at worst not even a problem, and at best it's free advertisement.

Source: (the link to the actual study is in the article)

EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn't hurt sales - Engadget

In 2013, the European Commission ordered a €360,000 ($430,000) study on how piracy affects sales of music, books, movies and games in the EU