"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.
You know what I know I'm usually pretty silent but I need you all to understand the horrible impact SpaceX and Starship has had on South Texas.
Yes, fuck those ugly ass cyber trucks but FUCK that Space Center.
Starship genuine danger to the people who live here. It's to the point many of the people here when they heard the explosion joked that it was probably another one of Elon's rockets.
This is a horrifying pattern we are becoming numb to, we hear about a planned test launch and brace ourselves for more debris.
Several of Musk's attempts at rockets, especially after the deregulation, have resulted in catastrophic explosions. Want the list? Here are a few!!
December 9th, 2020- Starship serial No. 8, or SN8. Exploded upon landing.
February 2, 2021- Starship SN9. Exploded upon landing.
March 3rd. 2021- Starship SN10. Landed in one piece. Fire at the skirt caused an explosion.
April 20, 2023- Starship. Exploded once more. Debris scattered in Port Isabell.
March 6, 2025- Flight 8. Spun out of control and exploded in a mass of fireballs. Planes had to be grounded due to the mass explosion and the debris are stills scattered in the ocean.
And now we have the most recent and the worse one yet.
June 18-19, 2025- Starship 36 during a GROUND test caused a mass explosion, the looming mushroom cloud causing locals in Cameron to believed they had been bombed.
The loser describes this it as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" instead of what they are: fiery failures locals have to deal with as a result.
Pretty much everyone locally knows Elon Musk and his negative impact on our home, people who have had the unfortunate curse to have worked with him and the center call it Cultish, 8 members of his staff who spoke out against his behavior and sexual harassment were all fired.
Its a well known fact he hates the people here, and he goes out of his way to find employees who are not from this area and move them down here.
Musk has tried to encourage even more white people to come down to South Texas and live in his "Starship City". An attempt to gentrify and push out local citizens.
Rebekah Hinojosa, a local Activist with Another Gulf Is Possible, even had her home unlawfully entered by police after an alleged graffiti on a mural he commisioned (which didn't even obscure the mural).
This article is a good read on everything Musk has done to South Texas
One day last month, Juan Mancias, the chief of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe of Texas, and two companions headed to Boca Chica village, a bays
I am TIRED of this going unnoticed and unheard of the People of The Valley. I need you to stop laughing and start taking this seriously.
If you want to read more on all the insane shit this man has done to South Texas here are a few more Articles I would Recommend
South Texas groups sue Texas for letting Elon Musk's SpaceX dump wastewater without permit, SpaceX's Starship explodes in space, which Musk calls a 'minor setback', What Is Starbase? Elon Musk Builds a SpaceX City With Shops, Worker Housing and Its Own Mayor — But Texas Locals Aren't Happy
I honestly thought I knew everything about slavery. Not so.
The owner of this particular plantation had it built by slaves for 3 years. Every brick was handmade. Over 120,000 bricks on 2,000+ acres of land (this place was huge.) The clay used for the bricks came from the Mississippi River. The majority of the slaves are buried under the Levees and water. Some are buried with their Masters. Not allowed to live with them but could be dead with them.
Before you enter the house, there’s a list of slaves who lived here including their age and how much they were purchased for. 124 total. Some slaves were worth as little as $25. As young as 5 years old.
On this particular plantation, the owner was big on punishment…he used noise making neck restraints. Imagine three 4lb balls around your neck with bells inside. Children were restrained by ankle locks that connected between their ankles.
This was a sugar cane plantation, one the worst practices to involve slaves because of its danger. A lot of slaves were decapitated, amputees and killed from the fields and machinery. A lot of kids lost their lives creating sugar. Speaking of children, a child stood in the living room and operated the fan with a string while guests ate dinner. As young as 3 years old.
Here’s what shook me even further: Before the Civil War, a lot of slave owners were going in debt and could not afford their properties and were not producing enough cotton and sugar to maintain their lifestyles. Slaves were used as HUMAN CREDIT CARDS. Slaves were a guaranteed line of credit. You could get HALF of your property’s value depending on how many healthy and able slaves you owned.
My people were human credit cards and lines of credit to BANKS. We were property. We were labeled as equipment and nothing more.
There is no such thing as a good slave owner. They owned my PEOPLE and used them as checks and balances. This cycle continues with prison and brutality. I do not want to hear shit about “Why can only Black people say this or that?” I don’t want to hear shit about “we’re all human.”
And by the way, not one of those slaves are at rest. Those spirits were so alive, you could feel their presence, their pain and someday, their revenge.
The front of the house and yard. This plantation was huge. Just thinking about my ancestors tending to all this land…
SOME of the enslaved names, ages, race and purchase price.
The living room.
Interior.
The dining room. That piece hanging above the table is ORIGINAL to the house. That’s the fan that a slave as young as 3 years old had to operate manually with a string.
The view from the balcony in the main hallway. This is how they looked over the slaves while they worked in the yard.
*sigh* Names of the enslaved that occupied the shacks. Children included. Their names are written inside one of the shacks. I’m not sure if there are other names inside other shacks because I could only handle 2. After I saw the punishment equipment, I left.
Slave Shacks. These are NOT the original shacks. These were built to imitate them.
Slaves for Sale Ads.
The landscape of Slavery throughout the United States in 1860. JUST 1860. Let that sink in.
Note: The last time the home was OWNED by a Louisiana citizen was 1972. This is her original bedroom, her lipstick is STILL on the dresser. This is why the house has been updated since slavery times because it was occupied up until 1972. Regardless, this used to be where house slaves slept.
My late father was the one who taught me to be cynical about advertising, for all that putting up ads was literally his whole job. He taught me from a very young age that advertising is expensive, and they tack that cost onto the price. That if something is heavily advertised, you can count on the fact that there's an identical product out there, usually even manufactured in the same factory, that's cheaper because they don't spend all that money on advertising.
A German friend walked me through Lidl, turning over items to show the factories where the items were manufactured and what expensive brands they correspond to, we did taste tests on some of the more pricey food things later and they were the same product. learning about food manufacturing was a hobby for her.
European glasses and sunglasses are made in the same Italian factories that make the luxury ones, they have the same quality control and warranty. You are paying €100 for a logo.
Some things cost more because they are actually made with better quality materials and where the workers are properly compensated, others are the same product as the off brand version with the brand name markup. It takes a lifetime to learn the intricacies which is why consumer advocacy associations and legal protection by (truly) independent agencies is crucial.
I will say as a great enjoyer of the Cis Hetero Romance Novel that if anywhere on the cover the author is described as writing good dirty talk you are inevitably going to run into a sex scene where the dude starts spouting off some shit like "I'm going to put my hard dong in your cute little pussy and freak it sensitive style"
to be clear many romances struggle with bad sex dialogue but there is a direct correlation between an author being specifically praised for it and the likelihood that what she's actually writing is "I can't wait to eat your tight hole like a bag of airplane pretzels"
wedding dresses are white specifically so that if the bride goes axe-crazy you can rest assured you will see the blood stains all over her and it'll be sick as fuck
And you know what? Even if the guy with all the money should change his heart *right this minute* and donate billions to a cause as good as world hunger:
...Nonetheless, whether he does or not... he will still die, like all the rest of us, regardless of who may be at his bedside, alone in his head: alone. By himself. No one there to mitigate the pain, to be telling him how important he is, to make what's happening okay in any way whatsoever. He will cross the bar alone. And there is nothing he can do to stop it.
Nothing he can do with the science we have in this day and age will change that. Nothing invented in the next twenty, thirty, *fifty* years, will change that.
Is he a schmuck? Yes. Is he vastly wealthy and powerful (in the in-this-life mode) beyond the dreams of almost all of us? Yeah, sure!
Will it avail him at the moment when, eventually, beyond any ability of his or those he's paid to keep it running, his breath stops? NOPE.
...The comfort associated with this may be a bit on the chilly side. But (leaving aside folks' personal beliefs about what happens on the far side of the Last Breath) all his personal bullshit in the physical world will swiftly come to nothing.
Let's wait our time. I may not see it: but some of you will, and will be able to say, "Well THAT's over, finally."
(sigh)
Okay, that's my annoyance for the day. ...And now who wants some tea?
I am deeply confused by people who are deeply confused by the appeal of WFH jobs. Like - you enjoy commuting? You enjoy shivering by the bus stop at ass o'clock and then being stuck in traffic for however long twice a work day regardless of what else you need to get done? You enjoy exclusively eating lunches that can be eaten cold or respond well to be microwaved? Incredibly alien perspective.
Some of my old-timer colleagues tell stories of having to take midnight calls with teams on the other side of the world, back before WFH, even back before you could call people on the computer. So they were essentially hanging out in the office all evening and then taking a phone call. No matter what benefits people name about in-person collaboration or whatever, WFH has had a huge quality of life benefit on this type of white collar work. I had a few months last year where I had multiple after midnight calls each week. So much nicer being able to just roll out of bed, and then have a late start the next morning!
I am 100% WFH. I did some back of the envelope math once, and I calculated that working from home saved me something like $30k per year. Not that it's "worth" $30k to me (actually, it's probably worth more), but that I literally have an extra $30k of disposable income in my bank account specifically because I can work from home. Now, I am likely an edge case; I don't think that a typical person would be able to realize that amount of savings. But WFH allows vastly more flexibility in living arrangements, which would not be possible with a traditional workplace environment.
