What A Time To Be Alive

23 years old. Disabled. Autistic. White. If you want to know what’s wrong with me go ahead and ask, but do it off anon.

[asexualautistic]

I think it's legit if Hitlerkin was like KFF ou a kinnie. I sometimes kin Regina George because I act/personify the villain. And say "you did nothing wrong" but internallly I know that's wrong

I don’t understand what you mean by “was like kff ou a kinnie” and I haven’t seen mean girls so I don’t know your situation but I kin villains as well and I have DID. Because of my situation I relate to villains more often than I do the hero.

And there is a difference between kinning Regina George and OPENLY kinning (or this one claimed to be a reincarnation of) LITERAL HITLER to the point of dressing up like him.

And before people jump onto me about “you can’t control it” I understand that. But… If someone has a factive or kins hitler and doesn’t openly talk about it that’s fine I guess. I can’t control what’s in people’s brains. But this person was posting about it and was almost glorifying it.

And before you go on about how I don’t understand what it’s like having problematic kin.

I’m a komaeda kinnie. I have 5 different alters of purple guy from fnaf. I have a Xehanort alter. I kinned Vriska.

I know all about having problematic kintypes without being problematic myself.

[shamebats]

My child, who spends their entire life being transfered from home to car to school and back, and is not allowed to leave the house or talk to anyone and can only in their wildest dreams imagine a life free from constant surveillance, is very sad. Obviously they're dumb and lazy, like all kids these days.

[whineandcheese24]

kind of a tangent but i recently went to a bowling alley with my friend i'm 19 he's 18 and the woman at the door didn't want to let us in because there was a sign saying under-18s needed adult supervision. everything got cleared up and we were able to go bowl, but i'm still so mad about the fact that kids need adult supervision to go to a bowling alley and arcade. like okay maybe young kids should have supervision but what do you mean middle and high schoolers need to hold mommy's hand while they play video games. kids aren't just addicted to their phones because phones are addicting, we're addicted to our phones because there's nothing else to fucking do

[shamebats]

I'm sure banning kids from online spaces while simultaneously not ensuring that they have access to offline spaces to socialize in (without having to rely on their parents who already don't have time for them) will help them feel better & less alienated from society.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

As I said, one-and-three-quarter years ago:

If you're going to take away kids' smartphones, then give them back the streets.

[fiollaigean]

I deleted the photo for phone storage but I was at a public square kind of space in Cleveland, there were restaurants all around and a little open air market and food trucks and a local band playing. Some flower beds. Benches. a nice spot to sit, hang out, enjoy the outdoors and get some yummy food. And there was a sign saying anyone under 18 there after 4 pm. had to be accompanied by an adult. There was a posted minimum age the adult had to be. There was a posted minor-to-adult ratio. what's more, the sign explicitly made the exception for underage employees of nearby establishments, provided they were there during scheduled work hours (they'll take your labor, but won't suffer you to enjoy the fruits of it)

When I was "under 18" I had a job and friends from different parts of town and options for transportation. I volunteered at a food bank. I had an income and the desire to spend it. and I would have been told to leave if I had the audacity to go hang out in a community space without a grown up.

My parents made the point that teens often cause a Ruckus which can be unpleasant to be around. which is true but 1) adults are just as capable of being a public nuisance and 2) if they can enforce this rule, surely they can enforce rules such as "no swearing" or "no loud music" or "no roughhousing" or whatever else they're afraid will happen if a teenager goes out in public.

It's sad.

[sapphling]

"drug seeking" as a patient label one of the most dogshit stupid concepts of all time. fuuuck everybody look out this guy came in here expecting medical treatment. better watch out in case he goes to a restaurant and starts food seeking

[sapphling]

i hope everyone gets the drugs they want forever even if they don't need them (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

[deadgenerations]

SPEW though is such an insane plot line in Harry Potter. actually shockingly regressive. if she wasn't an insane transmisogynist I think people would talk about it more because she really did spend two books on how wokescolds ruin slavery for the enslaved. Winky is literally a fucking Mammy

[lurker-den]

See, the moment I realized that HP discourse had changed forever was when I saw a post calling out the portrayal of house elves and everyone in the comments emphatically agreeing with it. My first thought was "oh, so we're acknowledging that now?"

People ignored this shit for so long. I don't remember very many people actually trying to defend it (the few that did failed miserably), but it was something you just didn't talk about. Even when Rowling started making cringe additions to the lore (god, remember when that was why she was controversial?) and it became fashionable to rag on her worldbuilding, it was still considered in poor taste to pry too harshly into the house elf thing. Or the goblin thing. Or the squib thing. Or any of the other things. Because everyone still liked Rowling back then, and so they excused it. Sure, if you thought about it it wasn't great, but it was hardly considered a fatal flaw with the series.

And then Rowling went off the deep end and everything changed overnight. People blew right past acknowledging the dodgy aspects of the series and started declaring them evidence that the books had always been trash and Rowling had always been evil. Suddenly, it was the good aspects of the series you'd get backlash for bringing up.

IDK what I'm trying to say here. It's not like the house elf thing and all the other things aren't major flaws with the books, and I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't boycott Harry Potter and anything else that funnels money to that ghoul. I guess I'm just really frustrated with this approach to literary criticism that bases its entire view of a work on its view of the creator. The view that excuses a book's flaws because it likes who wrote it right up until it doesn't. The view that judges a person's morality by that of the people who made the media they like. I just think that it's a really unhealthy way to interact with media and I really wish the community at large could criticize and boycott JK without engaging in it.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I agree that the way we criticise or give grace to aspects of a series shouldn't depend on whether it's fashionable to love or hate the creator. However, I did not experience this at all. I remember people criticising the house elf thing and the racism and the creepy rape culture stuff from the start. People were always pointing out how love potions and boys being preyed on by girls being written as a joke were creepy, and that the negative framing of SPEW and the house elves being oh-so-happy slaves was awful, and the antisemeticism of the goblins and that the wizard justice system sucked in ways that the series never acknowledged, and the whole framing of Slytherin House and indeed the personality-based house system itself was fucked, and a million other things, long before Rowling even started adding cringy (and frequently racist) new lore. Those discussions were popular from the start.

The main change that I noticed was the dropping of talking of positive aspects of the series. It was generally accepted that Rowling's world was terrible and her worldbuilding was shit, and full of any number of horrible implications, but her line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph writing was very good. The big change that I noticed was that writing advice bloggers (the ones in progressive circles, that is) used to use a lot of Harry Potter examples to make their points on skillful paragraph construction, forshadowing and information communication, and the more openly horrible she became, the more they started using other examples instead. The positive discussions disappeared, but the negative ones were there (and extremely popular and productive discussions) from the beginning, people didn't start talking about them after she became openly horrible.

[captain-price-returns]

You’re years too late to be recognizing the threat of US government mass surveillance, bud.

[kosmogrl]

[manwhorewednesdays]

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

[goodluckdetective]

So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.

[giritina]

Women who exclusively date women seems like a better definition of lesbianism than non-men who date non-men to me bc the second definition presents an issue of coercively considering a bunch of people outside womanhood part of a category they dont identify with and is weirdly reductive of womanhood as an identity. It seems better to me that a bigender person who considers themself a woman but also a man be included than someone who doesnt consider themself a woman at all any percent of the time. Partly is my own dislike of being like "im not a lesbian or a woman" and having people be like "well my defintion of lesbianism includes you bc im attracted to you/bc youre not a cis man 😁" (aka: a Female). And wlw centric definitions are more centered around love and self expression VS the discourse bomb that is "what threshold qualifies someone as a non-man". It seems like theres worth in a sexuality that centers woman-spectrum identities of any kind and its odd that so much work is done to make it a category that doesn't revolve around womanhood

[red-garden]

MAGA boomers SHOCKED by 20y/o commie speaking fluent hog

[red-garden]

Hog 201 for anyone interested in trying this:

Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”

Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”

Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”

Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”

State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”

The vast majority of conservatives think of themselves as underdogs being repressed by the government/the elite, and they value personal freedom (specifically their personal freedom, they don’t care about other people). The will almost always agree with leftist points if you can find a way to blame the problem on their vague enemies (useful, since rich people are the root of most problems), and tie it back to their ability to say fuck everyone else. NEVER appeal to science, theory, logic, or human goodness. Make it seem as if you are a paranoid lunatic who trusts no one. They love it.

[dinosaurjam]

#you need to tailor your arguments to people's existing values and priorities if you want to convince them #the flip side is that it's every bit as easy to tailor conservative arguments to convince a leftist audience #so don't get smug #you're not immune to this either <- prev extremely true

[byjove]

I also think it’s cruel to have a bunch of people 70+ in our government. Sitting at the helm of American imperialism and making important decisions on how to ruin as many lives as possible is soooo stressful for aging bodies. They keep dying in office after so much corporate money and effort is spent to get them elected.

[byjove]

Everyone is missing the tone of sarcasm so I would like to say that I genuinely do not give a fuck if these expired old bastards work themselves to death. It’s sad when people are forced to work after retirement age but they are not forced, they are choosing to stay in power and ruin the world for generations to come. I get hit with accusations of ageism every time I mention that there should be age limits for some of these offices so I thought rephrasing it as false concern for the welfare of these fossils might make the point more palatable. Redirect the conversation from what old people can do to what old people should do in their golden years.

[genderkoolaid]

i think genuinely one of the biggest political weak spots on the trans community in terms of actually pursuing liberation is people's aversion to meaningfully challenging the gender binary because it is personally gender affirming for them. so much reactionary bullshit in this community is intimately tied to exorsexism and transmedicalism/

and like. i also don't want to downplay why people would feel like that. you spend your entire life suffering because of being denied your gender. it impacts your identity and your relationships and your work and your everything. and then when there's finally a chance that you may actually be able to cross the great divide that separates the group you are forced to be to and the group you have always felt you belonged in, there is all of this talk about how we should dismantle the groups entirely, when you have barely - if at all - gotten a chance to even exist in a way that doesn't make you want to kill yourself, when the groups are still influencing everything about the world all the time.

but the thing is! we feel this way primarily because in our present culture, to be gendered as cis-binary is to be made human. it is to socially exist, to be seen, to be loved, to have existential, ontological meaning as a person. and nonbinary people do not get to pursue gender euphoria that also makes us human, you understand? nb/gq/gnc people do not have the option of pursuing being socially recognized as you truly feel you are and not wanting to kill yourself. some people can be happy on either side of the chasm and carve out space for themselves there, but too often only on the precarious edge. and the rest of us can only jump off or wait to be shoved off.

do you understand? we don't have the option. our insistence on fighting and deconstructing the binary is not an abstract political choice based on what we speculate would be the most #radical. it is as much a choice made out of trans survival as any binary trans man or woman's pursuit of a passing and stealth life. and plenty of us also do not want the concept of "man" or "woman" to be erased entirely; many of nb/gq/gnc people are men and women! sometimes both at the same time! others want to see new concepts to gain acceptance and social recognition!

but that is the problem with the community's exorsexism when it comes down to it. it is binary gender ideology which provides the foundation for patriarchal ideology and power as a whole, and so as feminists it is the binary we need to challenge (early radical feminists circled this realization, although they failed to develop it productively; intersectional feminism leads us to challenging the gender binary by challenging the related privileged oppressor/powerless oppressed binary). nb/gq/gnc people strain under a binary system and binary culture, and so tend to be more conscious of the binary and the need to challenge it, just like cis perisex women are more likely to be conscious of patriarchy than cis perisex men because they experience a lot more direct and obvious strain under it. all trans people are ultimately oppressed by gender binary ideology and exorsexism, and it goes against trans people's class interests to support it. but a lot of trans people who identify strongly with the binary have, for decades at this point, actively decided to sacrifice the pursuit of trans liberation and liberation from patriarchy as a whole, in favor of keeping the binary in place so they can experience being the ones who benefit from it and wield it against others. like lower-middle class people being fierce defenders of capitalism and taking great pride in self-sufficiency and financial sense and not relying on handouts.

[politijohn]

Abolish ICE

[uss-edsall]

gritting my teeth as "sandy hook was staged" marjorie "jewish space lasers" taylor "christchurch was an inside job" greene "white genocide conspiracy theorist" starts posting things that people largely agree with, and I have to deal with people saying "she makes sense though" as if she didn't spend the last ten years being one of the scummiest fucking people on the goddamn planet

[jewish-rock]

u do not ever, under any circumstances, have to give it to mtg.

[fuckthisshit-ugh]

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

[maeril]

Hi everyone! This is an illustrated guide I made as part of my co-admining work at The Middle Eastern Feminist on Facebook! It will be published there shortly.  The technique that is displayed here is a genuine one used in psychology - I forgot the name and couldn’t find it again so if you know about it, feel free to tell me! Some could say: “Yes but you can use that technique for instances of harassment other than Islamophobic attacks!”, and my reply is: Sure! Please do so, it also works for other “types” of harassment of a lone person in a public space!! However I’m focusing on protecting Muslims here, as they have been very specific targets lately, and as a French Middle Eastern woman, I wanted to try and do something to raise awareness on how to help when such things happen before our eyes - that way one cannot say they “didn’t know what to do”!  I’d like to insist on two things: 1) Do not, in any way, interact with the attacker. You must absolutely ignore them and focus entirely on the person being attacked! 2) Please make sure to always respect the wishes of the person you’re helping: whether they want you to leave quickly afterwards, or not! If you’re in a hurry escort them to a place where someone else can take over - call one of their friends, or one of yours, of if they want to, the police. It all depends on how they feel! For my fellow French-speakers: I will translate it in French and post it on my page as soon as I can :) Please don’t hesitate to share this guide as it could push a lot of people to overcome bystander syndrome!! Lots of love and stay safe! PS: I you repost this cartoon of mine on twitter or instagram, please add me in the post so I can see it, with @itsmaeril :)

[cognitiveinequality]

An important reminder today, and every day.

[cucheallaigh]

This is based off of the Non-Complementary technique in psychology - also known as ‘flipping the script’.

It is a legitimate tactic for defusing a situation that could otherwise escalate to become quite nasty.

Kindness as self-defence – the power of ‘non-complementary behaviour’ | Aeon Videos

People instinctively reciprocate anger with anger and kindness with kindness, but what happens when someone breaks this ‘complementary be

[were--ralph]

I think theyre planning on sacrificing the orange man under the guise of an assassination attempt so he goes down a martyr instead of health issues and that scares me immensely

[were--ralph]

The reason i say this is its the most logical result of his declining health and them denying it. Rn MAGA thinks his health is great despite all the signs because he keeps talking about how good hes doing and they eat him up regardless of how outlandish the claims. If he dies in his sleep it'll be "Iran poisoned him" or some bs that furthers his agenda then the cult transfers to the next person in power, most likely Vance. It also Alternatively let's them blame the Left in an attempt to sway the upcoming elections.

Just 2am thoughts

[geniusbee]

comic for a little seattle anthology i did. this is my cat db cooper :)