HEIGHTENED SHENANIGANS

30+, usa, queer, she/her. i queue into infinity. "usa 2024", "uspol", and "ameripol" (formerly) are the usa political tags. every reblog is either a shitpost, nerditry, or scary uspol news. sometimes even UNscary uspol news, if we dare. be the trash you want to see in your fandom. elasmata at ao3, pillowfort, mastodon.social. if you've been blocked by me it's because i found your posts annoying and i couldn't filter them with tags (or possibly a tumblr error, as happens). message me if you want to be unblocked.

[the-irreverend]

And stay safe everyone!

[drpepperwhoree]

remember that pride is still a protest

[lexbians]

gmail = garry's mail

[64mpg]

i should be able to donate my excess shame to those in need

[fairycosmos]

look. i don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don’t think they’re tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don’t think my acne is beautiful. i don’t think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they’re human. and i don’t think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don’t think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness.

[serotonin-sunrise]

fun fact: this POV is actually called “body neutrality” and it’s SO MUCH more accessible/realistic for a lot of people. it’s based on the idea that the way we look is the least interesting/important thing about who we are, and that our bodies are worthy of respect regardless if they fit the mold of the current beauty ideals.

[leveragecentral]

every leverage dynamic ⮎ alec hardison & eliot spencer & parker

you scared? you're damn right. i'm not. i got the best thief and the smartest guy i know chasing this guy.

[tragic-cosmic-magic]

[interestingmistakes]

Reblogging this manually. Op doesn't want credit for fear of being terminated.

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[manuciruja]

i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users

[alhashimis]

Alec Hardison + conscience & heart of the team

LEVERAGE (2008—2012) LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION (2021—)

[amysantjago-deactivated20170516]

maggie is my personal hero 

[bemusedlybespectacled]

not to get philosophical on main but the trolley problem REALLY IS such a good litmus test for morality even if you try to introduce options either than pulling the lever or not pulling it in a way that honestly does kind of mirror real-life political situations

"I would simply dismantle the tracks/create a third track!" cool. and you're planning on doing this in the next ten seconds? because while you're trying to take the tracks apart – which, yes, would be a good permanent solution to the issue of tying people to the trolley tracks – the trolley is still going to hit those people. like. that's a great long-term fix and you can and should absolutely do that, but that doesn't help the five people tied to the tracks right now.

"I would find the guy tying people to the tracks and stop him!" fantastic. again, great long-term solution to permanently solve the problem. but since you can't go back in time and catch the guy before he put those people on the tracks, you still need to decide what to do with these five people right the fuck now. like, stopping him later on isn't fixing the current issue of people being actively tied to the tracks right this second.

"why am I the only one making a decision in this scenario? I'm not the only person with agency in this situation!" I mean, you kind of are, that's why you with the lever are the only one able to save the people (the trolley is specifically a runaway trolley, meaning it's out of control), but regardless: why are you assuming that the passengers/trolley driver/etc. aren't doing anything? what if, despite their best efforts, the trolley is still out of control? hell, even if they’re all deliberately fucking with the trolley, what does that have to do with your choice?

[prof-grace-aspen]

“Well I refuse to participate in this”

You are still making a choice, a choice that will result in 5 deaths.

[doomhamster]

YES. EXACTLY.

The person who tied those people to the tracks is to blame for them being in danger in the first place - but if YOU could save at least some of them, at no risk to yourself other than having to make a morally difficult choice, and you don't? That's on you.

[elaienar]

An issue I have with the trolley problem is that it (and the real-life choices it's meant to represent) often ask the hearer to assume two things that are not true:

Human worth is quantifiable such that it is better to save five humans than one human (that is, one human is worth less than five humans)

When someone says, "You are obligated to act and the only morally viable options you have are ones that harm people," they are accurately representing the reality of the situation.

(The second one could be true ever.)

I have a not-well-thought-out third issue which I will vaguely outline as "you should make decisions based on ideas about the most good [according to the problem-proposer's idea of good] you could achieve rather than based on an understanding of yourself and your limits and values and responsibilities and your understanding of the reality of the situation."

And the final issue in this post is that trolley-problem issues I tend to see presented when the trolley-problem-issuer hopes to overwhelm their counterpart's moral compunctions by making them feel guilty, which naturally makes me think less of the issuer's moral sensibilities and ability to reason, and so makes the argument even more unconvincing.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

That’s literally part of the trolley problem, though.

“I refuse to pull the lever because deliberately committing murder ‘for the greater good’ is still an evil act” is a valid answer to the trolley problem.

“I refuse to pull the lever because the existence of the situation is not my fault, but killing someone on purpose would be my fault” is a valid answer to the trolley problem.

It might not feel like it, because many people instinctively think “of course five is more than one” or “of course you should save people if you have the ability.” But those are assumptions people make that inform their choice in the trolley problem, not assumptions made by the trolley problem itself.

[cakesandfail]

Discworld x Tolkien crossover where Vimes arrests the One Ring for being an accessory to murder

[whenflowersfade]

@copperbadge

[copperbadge]

Vimes is so mad about having to say it, and Carrot genuinely can’t understand why.

[nongunktional]

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

[scifiseries]

[valtsv]

i'm like a fujoshi but for dead people

[valtsv]

if you could see the thread i'm hanging on by you would not say these things to me

[geckyjuno]

my bedsheet is pregnant and it's. the rest of my laundry

[muppetyaoi]

another one for the collection, gang.