this is all just stuff that makes me happy. Me: T, also know as Sugartits and Aunt T, queer, cis, angry feminist. Icon: agentsalex. This blog is in favor of punching Nazis.
"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?
This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.
reading this deposition that just got dropped where someone sued musk and ohhhh my god it is this funniest thing ever . i can see why his lawyer tried to keep this confidential . they’re both maybe the biggest idiots . this is like ace attorney
genuinely first two pages he says that he thinks ben’s lawyer is the one who is actually suing him and admits he has no clue what the lawsuit is about .
I don't think Mark can ever top "INDEED, MR. JONES, INDEED" and "AND THAT IS HOW I KNOW YOU LIED TO ME" from the first Sandy Hook trial in Texas (not to be confused with Chris Mattei, the attorney in the Connecticut trial), but this part
MR. SPIRO: Do you give these lectures at all of your depositions?
MR. BANKSTON: I do, and you can watch them.
is ESPECIALLY hilarious to me having listened to multiple depositions Mark has had to take in the Sandy Hook case, where he has needed to lecture EVERY. SINGLE. ATTORNEY. at some point in the case about how they're violating Texas Rule XYZ, because they all, to a one, did something seriously ethically questionable during the deposition.
like, YOU CAN WATCH/LISTEN TO HIS DEPOS. HE DOES HAVE TO GIVE THOSE LECTURES EVERY TIME. IT'S NOT EVEN A JOKE.
Tumblr added a bunch of tracking shit to share urls, so now ill teach you how to get rid of them
if you copy a url by sharing on the website, the link will look like this
getting rid of tracking in these is easy, just delete everything after the question mark and you are golden
in the case for the app, its slightly more complicated
first you have to delete at. that appears before tumblr(.)com the other tracking shit on this one has a lot more info, so please, clean app urls. after the first set of numbers, there's a / you have to delete everything after it
i do think the negative interpretations of "im probably nonbinary but i have a job right now" are kind of reaching. it's obviously a waste of time to theorize the op's intended meaning, so instead i think it's better to recognize how the phrase can be a useful framing device to criticize how much of a fucking hassle it is to get gendered correctly. "but i have a job" e.g. will face discrimination that could threaten livelihood; e.g. don't have the mental bandwidth to explain gender to others; e.g. don't have the time and energy for the soul-searching necessary to confirm. all three of these are labor issues. yes you could interpret it as "but being nonbinary isn't important enough to worry about", despite that being a blatantly bad-faith read. it's more useful to interpret it as "but being publicly nonbinary requires a lot of social effort that, in many cultural contexts, will create more problems that you can't afford to deal with". like cmon it's a really good jumping off point for productive conversations about queer labor rights
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
I scheduled this in 2025 to give you all a week to make Moon Day Monday preparations! I think I will order a little rocket cake or bake some moon phase cookies!
Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.
(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)
Are you safe?
Absolutely not. I'm dead. 100% dead.
I might stay alive, but it'll be a really close thing.
I'll take some hits, for certain, but I should be okay in the end.
A few attacks might get through, but nothing concerning.
The attacker might be able to get in one lucky hit. If that.
I am the opposite of worried. I'm 100% safe.
…Look. I've tried picturing this. But I honestly don't know how to answer.
Voting ended onJul 14
(I've run this poll twice before, expanding it significantly for the second run. With about a year passed since that second run, I thought it was time to add another couple hundred names to the list and have another go.)
This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?
Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.
So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.
“How does one hate a country, or love one?… I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love for one’s country; is it hate for one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, from The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
What the heck! As of this reblog, this comic has 21 notes. Apparently a little reblog chain happened, but I don’t really remember noticing. Much higher numbers than my usual 0 or 1. My first taste of success, and I totally missed it!
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
anyways (I say this as someone who is deeply critical of the united states government, military, unchecked capitalism, police, etc) I am SICK of people treating america as if it has no cultural value or positives so….. I love u 85 million acres (bigger than italy) of national parks. I love u harlem renaissance. I love u groundhogs day. I love u sweet tea and fried chicken and jambalaya. I love u apple cider donuts and maizes on crisp autumn days. I love u 95k miles of coastlines and new england fisherman and hand knitted sweaters. I love u halloween where millions of people dress up and give candy to strangers and carve jack o’lanterns. I love u small talk and small towns and potlucks and bringing over casseroles to your struggling neighbors. I love u cowboys and ranch hands and arizonian cactus. I love u appalachian trail and dirtbikes and divebars. I love u sparklers and fireflies. I love u mark twain and toni morrison and emily dickinson and henry david thoreau. I love u rock n roll i love u bluegrass and hippies i love u jimi hendrix and nirvana and CCR and janis joplin. I love u victorian houses and jonny appleseed and john henry and mothman and bigfoot. I love u foggy days in the pacific northwest and neon signs and roadside attractions. I love u baseball and 1950s diners and soft serve. I love u native american art and pop art and poptarts. I love u blue jeans and barbecues and jazz musicians
as a non american i gotta say it i fucking hate those posts that are all like. "noooo why would i do anything on fourth of july fuck fascist america"
you get to barbeque, eat good food, do fireworks and sparklers, dress in unnecessarily patriotic clothes, and most of all, make fun of the british. why would you want to just sit at home moping about america being bad when you could be doing all that? idkidk seems kinda stupid to me.
(also i hate this notion that celebrating your country is an inherently right wing thing to do, therefore playing into right wing rhetoric that all leftists hate and want to destroy the country they are in)
It's also very suburban quasi-woke to me. If you're in a big city, you'll see tons of different groups of folks celebrating the Fourth and realize that this holiday means too many things to too many people to just be dismissed because "America bad."
I loved going to Prospect Park in Brooklyn as a kid and seeing Hasidic families eat kosher hot dogs right next to halal barbeque pits. I loved hearing people speaking Yiddish, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and English in one space, all celebrating side by side.
Every year, the Fourth has meant everything from celebrating that my family was granted refuge in early 1900's Brooklyn to my cousin recently being granted US citizenship.
Like, if people who think they're being righteous had any recent immigrant friends or family at all, they would know that people who just came here really don't want to hear griping about a perfectly good holiday.
& Even when I lived in Japan, it was so much fun to gather my two (2) American friends and go to the one (1) place in my town that sold American-style beef hot dogs (it was literally a vendor in an old samurai house) and then set off sparklers by the riverside.
It's a nice holiday!
And when I was a very earnest kid and cared a lot about history, I would personally read stuff like Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" and Born on the Fourth of July during the day, then go set off fireworks and eat watermelon at night. My mom spent yesterday morning watching a bummer documentary about Project 2025 and urging all her boomer friends to vote, and then she chowed down on a burger. You can/should do both!!
P.S. The fake idea that Americans don't have culture? This is our culture!!
P.P.S. It makes me think about how Muslims fasting during Ramadan is a communal event; it's considered better to break the fast with company than alone (ditto for fasting in Judaism). For a month each year, almost 2 billion people around the world are united by that fasting.
By contrast, Lent for Catholics, at least in the US, is much more of an individualistic self-improvement project.
There's not a lot of value placed on community in general in the West.
So for folks who complain about fireworks: I get it, but it's also important to acknowledge that there is something cool and lovely about being able to *hear* (and see), for just a handful of hours each year, that we're all doing the same thing at the same time all across the country. That we a hundreds of millions but we are also a shared society.
