allegories for oppression in media that rely on innate or biological characteristics making someone 'different' will never work for reasons that should be obvious
"uhhhhhh but what if there WAS, like, this species that is just ontologically evil and can't help it" you have rocks in your brain
allegories for oppression in media that rely on innate or biological characteristics making someone 'different' will never work for reasons that should be obvious
"uhhhhhh but what if there WAS, like, this species that is just ontologically evil and can't help it" you have rocks in your brain
i feel like it’s entirely possible to acknowledge the material harm that addiction causes and the trauma that a lot of people have from addicts without being super shitty to addicts in general
i feel like you can talk about the way you’ve personally been hurt by addicts without literally calling addicts the scum of the earth
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
as much as everyone loves "the power of love won't save us, we need the power of incredible violence" i'm sorry to rain on your parade but we've actually tried that about ten million times as a species, and you'll be shocked to hear the power of incredible violence, without the power of love behind it, is just brutality. the power of incredible violence has been ruling (various parts of, and then the entire) world for the past 5,000 years. ours is not that damn special.
like yes use that gun you found but WHY are you using it? on who are you using it? what would make you stop using it? is your goal to live in a world where every problem is solved by violence, or is your goal to do the violence necessary to live in a world where that necessity is unthinkable?
they were threatening to KILL two random assholes from the newspaper for asking questions about like, mishandled money and light wiretapping. in 2026 you can be spoken out against by other government employees establishing a surveillance state and using public taxpayer money to fund golf courses and outright stating your intentions to go against multiple constitutional amendments and nothing will happen
Maybe this is a controversial take but honestly, I don't care even if you only mean cis men when you say "kill all men" or "all men suck" because you're contributing to bioessentialism/gender essentialism and generalizing an entire group of people to be bad and even perpetuating the idea that men who do shitty things to them because "they can't help it due to being men". You're not dismantling the patriarchy, you're contributing to it.
I’m actually going to reblog a thing just because this is really important.
As someone who has epilepsy and used to have several grand mal seizures a day, I’d also like to add that “offer help” can range anywhere from keeping the person calm to explaining to them where they are and what they were doing to even just telling them they should sit and rest for a while longer (lack or coordination is common, and it can be hard to walk straight or see clearly).
It’s okay for them to take up to a half hour to fully regain their bearings and sort out what they were doing prior to the seizure. Just answer any questions calmly and be there for support.
If they come around and you start to panic or shake them or ask them what the heck is wrong with them they are going to freak out and panic too.
I cannot stress it enough that this is bad.
If someone has a seizure and they come out of it, please. please stay calm.
They are likely disoriented and confused, even if it’s only for a minute or two, and you don’t want them panicking on top of that because they can have another seizure as a result.
Just to add: if the seizure lasts longer than 15 minutes, call an ambulance. There’s a good chance of brain damage at that point and they need medical attention. That’s why you time seizures.
Love how in progressive spaces a minority group can espouse discomfort, frustration, endorse discrimination, even explicit hostility against majority/oppressive groups, and it's acceptable because they've Been Through It and it's Understandable given what they experience at the hands of that group.
But Jewish people must prioritize other bigotries above antisemitism, must cater to the groups that have and are targeting us, must assure them that we would never feel so much as distrust towards people chanting for our literal eradication. You feel the discomfort in your body reading that? The compulsion you're experiencing right now? Yeah, I feel it too writing this - I've toned it down twice. Why is that.
Users on Kalshi will even allow users to bet on whether drug trials for potentially lifesaving drug trials will succeed.
Every single executive at these prediction market companies needs to be broken on the wheel. Like we need to revive medieval torture methods specifically for them. and we need to do it now
hey folks, I’m gonna introduce you to two very important fandom terms and they are watsonian and doylist
they come (obviously) from the sherlock holmes fandom, and they are two different ways of explaining something in a story. say I’m a fan and I notice that, in the original books, watson’s war wound is sometimes in his leg and sometimes in his shoulder. the watsonian explanation is how watson (that is, a person within the story) might explain it; the doylist explanation is how sir arthur conan doyle (a person in real life) would have explained it.
sherlock explains the migrating war wound by making the shoulder wound real and the limp psychosomatic. the guy ritchie films explain it by having the leg wound sustained in battle before the events of the film and the shoulder wound happen onscreen. the doylist explanation, of course, is that acd forgot where the wound was.
this is very important when we’re discussing stuff like headcanons and word-of-god. I see this when people offer watsonian explanations for something, and then a doylist will say something like “it’s just because the author wrote it that way,” and I see it when a person is criticizing bad writing/storytelling (for example, the fact that quiet in metal gear solid v is running around the whole game in a bikini and ripped tights) and someone comes back with “but there’s an in-story reason why that happens!” (that reason being she breathes through her skin).
there’s nothing wrong with either explanation, and really I think you need both to understand and analyze a text. a person coming up with a watsonian explanation has likely not forgotten that the author had real-life reasons for writing something that way, and a person with a doylist interpretation is likely not ignoring the in-universe justification for that thing.
but it’s very difficult (and imo often useless, though there are exceptions) to try to argue one kind of explanation with the other kind. wetblanketing someone’s headcanon with “or it could just be bad writing” is obnoxious; dismissing someone’s criticism with “but have you considered this in-universe explanation” is ignoring the point of the criticism. understanding where someone is coming from is important when making an argument; acting like your argument is better because you’re being doylist when they’re being watsonian or vice versa is not.
it’s been 5 million years but this thing still gets notes with like “can someone explain this to me in a shorter, easier way” so here it is:
watsonian: the enchantress cursed the eleven-year-old prince from beauty and the beast and all of his servants because fairies don’t understand why humans would think that’s insane and unfair. I am using in-universe evidence to explain why the character might think or act a certain way, as if belle and the prince and the enchantress are real people.
doylist: the writers didn’t realize that the prince would have been eleven when he was cursed until it was too late to change it, and the servants are also cursed because talking furniture is funny and allows for unique character design. I am explaining this plot point based on an outside knowledge of how writing works and how writers think.
To use some other, possibly more familiar terms: Watsonian is “in-universe”, Doylist is “meta”.
Watsonian: “Batman doesn’t kill the Joker because killing is a fundamental betrayal of Batman’s personal values.”
Doylist: “Batman doesn’t kill the Joker because the writers would lose their most popular villain.”
Both are true, but true from different perspectives and for different reasons.
Just so we’re clear, if I point out that you did something racist, that’s not the same as me thinking you’re irremediably terrible. You did a racist thing.
You think you don’t do racist things, homophobic things, etc? You do. I caught myself in fat phobic and homophobic lines of thinking/speech just this morning. I’m fucking gay married. Nothing disqualifies you from acting in a way that reflects the society you exist in. We are obliged to fight it. Why not fight it in honesty and with camaraderie?