Don't mind me

Stuff I like: Stormpilot, Check, Please!, Disneyland, Canada, Broadway musicals, books and the liberal agenda

[pollen]

you should really get comfortable believing in love and magic and whimsy or you’ll continue to live a half-life for the rest of the time you have on earth

[liberalsarecool]

Staged. Mid-terms are coming to wipe out Republican Congress. Trump has one move: fake an assassination attempt.

The bad actors are MAGA.

[keydekyie]

"It would have been easier if you'd just said yes."

original

[soycrates]

Gentrification creates a stifling homogeneity in urban areas that makes it less suited for the everyday lives of the lower class and more suited towards the leisure and tourism of those with expendable income.

An old, decrepit laundromat gets replaced by an upscale bakery? And people are mad? It’s not that the poor hate organic vegan cupcakes, it’s that most of us don’t have a way to do laundry in our own home.

Run-down corner stores replaced by hand-made designer clothing boutiques? We don’t hate your eco-fabric shawl, but I can’t eat that for dinner after work like I could have a can of beans I grabbed from that corner store when I don’t have time to take the bus to the real grocery store after work.

What gentrification brings in and of itself is not typically bad, it’s that gentrification brings institutions of leisure and pleasure and makes it so that the poor have to go farther out of their way for basic necessities. It turns low-income living spaces into local tourist attractions. It can even create food deserts by putting restaurants, grocery stores, etc. in that the majority of the lower class cannot afford.

Imagine if someone totally renovated your house and turned it into a mini theme park - they took away your sleeping space, where you prepare food, where you clean yourself and get ready for your day, and replaced it with things that will please people who are visiting, who have their own homes they can go back to, who are here not for their entire life but just as a distraction from their otherwise mundane existence. It’s not that you hate theme parks, it’s not like you’ve never been to a theme park and vow to never visit one again. It’s just that you need to live! To survive! And the leisure of those who have more than you should not invalidate your existence.

[soycrates]

I am glad this has made the rounds. Some people feel a dense misunderstanding or misinterpretation concerning gentrification, and I think it helps to hear a description/explanation of what gentrification is from those who are both affected by it and educated by the culture from which it hails. I and many others enjoy some of the delights of gentrification while simultaneously having their livelihoods threatened by it. 

[henstomper]

dude it's just politics, it doesn't matter. all it does is shape every single aspect of the society you live in from the second you are born until forever

[ramenyul]

project hail mary is like i'll make you believe that friendship will save the world. i'll make you remember that our society rests on the backs of teachers and scientists. i'll make you see that even the most cowardly can be brave. i'll make you horny for sandra huller. thank you greatest scifi film of the last 10 years

[ceevee5]

[templepriest-motherfucker]

Say it with me folks:

“Eat the rich” means 1%ers and billionaires

middle class is closer to poverty than being a multimillionaire

“The rich” does NOT include children of billionaires (come on we’re at least slightly better than the plagues of Egypt)

Upper middle class children SHOULD NOT feel guilt over having money

Being aware of privilege and using your privilege to help others IS NOT a guilt trip

Constantly feeling guilty helps no one

Billionaires, however, should feel guilty over hoarding wealth.

Upper middle class is NOT rich

Black Lives Matter

Trans rights are human rights

[kelila-rivka]

My uncle was one of the top surgeons in the country. He was upper middle class definitely. When he got cancer, his insurance didn’t cover all the treatments he would need and after 5 years he drained his savings on cancer treatments (while still working most of that time) and eventually died because he couldn’t afford the expensive treatments that might have saved him.

If you are upper middle class and you get sick, it will likely bankrupt your family. It’s fucked.

[olddukeofficial]

For all of the idiots in the notes ^

[dancinbutterfly]

Honest to god - even if you make 6 figures a year? you're closer to poverty than true wealth. Check your shit and remember who your real allies and enemies are guys.

[uvradical]

A 6 figure income is a lot right? That’s say: 223,000 dollars a year Which is 112 dollars an hour. Most people would consider that upper middle class. That’s enough money to have a nice house, go on fun vacations. That’s slight more than the average doctor makes.

223,000 dollars is what Jeff Bezo makes in a minute

the well-off and the rich are not the same. 

[simonalkenmayer]

There was a wonderful study done about 15 years ago I think, that shows that people cannot accurately identify their income bracket. Most people who own a home think they are upper middle class when in fact they are closer to the poverty line. Even people living well below poverty often identify as middle class. The wealth gap is even worse now. I wonder if anyone actually knows their financial standing.

[ngkiscool]

This post is from 2020. Things did not improve.

[escapepodding]

The miscommunication in Heated Rivalry is because they're living in different romance types to begin with:

Shane: In some sort of Austen-esque existence where hjs ill-advised flirtation with a notorious rake goes too far. Scandalised by the intimate use of first names he flees, concerned what society and his goodly parents will think, his reputation at stake. He tries to find a proper marriage prospect but alas his heart is lost to the rake! But he finally follows his heart and invites Ilya into his home too (and accepts first name usage!)

Ilya: Smoldering in mirrors and out of windows and getting emotionally wuthered screaming Shane's name on a moor. My man is byronically going through it gothic style

[escapepodding]

Scott Hunter is trying to live his best modern rom com life and is side-eyeing the fuck out of these two. No idea what's going on there and franly doesn't want to

[lavenderprose]

As a married person I do need to tell you all that Shane and Ilya do weird shit all the time.

They routinely have entire conversations where Ilya is very softly smacking Shane's foot the entire time. Shane enjoys the percussive feedback.

Ilya mispronounces the word "Application" and they just sit there mutually whispering 'Aaap-li-caaa-shun' at each other for the next thirty seconds.

Ilya comes up behind Shane while he's trying to make a smoothie and says 'HELPING HANDS' and puts his arms under Shane's armpits.

Ilya sees Shane undressing in the bathroom and yells, "Take it all off!"

Shane carries Anya into the bedroom and holds her over Ilya's chest and moves her paws and says, "Papa it is me. Papa it has been an whole hour since I ate. Papa I am so hungry and sad." then drops her on his stomach.

Shane comes into the home office and grabs a pen off the desk and puts it against Ilya's cheek and says, "Any last words?" and Ilya says, "I wish I had eaten more dumplings."

Ilya spends an entire episode of House Hunters International with his hand down Shane's pants. It's not doing anything in there either it's just keeping warm.

Sometimes they are just mutually awake at three AM for No Reason and they go stand on the porch and stare at the empty street together.

Sometimes they are laying there playing footsie on the couch while on their phones (Parallel play) and Shane says, "Does your mouth ever do that squeezing thing. You know. When you eat." And Ilya says "Explain" and they spend the next ten minutes dissecting whether this is a Human Experience or a Shane Experience.

Sometimes Ilya will put his head on Shane's stomach and say, "Show me your boooones" and wait for Shane to lift his shirt so he can burrow under it.

I just think that we as a fandom need to embrace how Weird married people get about each other. From personal experience I am telling you it is SO FUN.

[stele3]

@completeutterwonderfulnonsense, we have been summoned.

Shane doesn't care much about music but can recreate random meme jingles that he hears perfectly, e.g. the "Oh No" song by Capone. Ilya catches on and they sing them together in public with minimal prompting.

They're driving somewhere with a bunch of clothes in a large duffel bag in the back seat. Ilya remarks that it looks like they've got a wrapped-up corpse in the back. From then on, all large bags of cloth are referred to as "the corpse."

If they get separated in the grocery store or elsewhere, they do loon calls like a game of Marco Polo to find each other again.

Whenever they finish a task together, be it a difficult chore or eating a hearty meal, they solemnly shake hands and say, "Good game."

[piratelilabard]

i think heated rivalry is so good because the most unserious man alive picked up a book from one of the least serious genres of literature and decided to take it more seriously than anyone could have ever imagined

[myboyrozanovv]

It's my solemn conviction that passion projects where one skilled person has full artistic control are one of the only ways to create masterpieces (lord of the rings, heated rivalry, other ones i can't think of atm)

[joeyclaire]

my mom’s trans allyship is on another level

[joeyclaire]

she once called my friend’s deadname “that stupid thing his mom calls him”

[asideoftrashplease]

I was once talking to my 75 year old Chinese dad in passing about a trans friend of mine not getting along with her family and he asked why and I said err, because she's trans, dad.

He asked: "Oh, was she the only son or something before *waves hand*?" and I was like, warily, no she has two brothers. And he responded with a great deal of confusion: "Then what's their problem?!?!"

Later on: "Anyway, even if she WAS the only son, that's not her problem, that's THEIR problem. They should have had more sons if they were going to be bothered about it."

[jackdaw-kraai]

Knowing what I know about chinese culture there’s something so beautifully simple about his logic of “no son to carry on family name/look after them in old age/all the other stuff? Skill issue! Should’ve had more sons! Should’ve kept the family unit strong yourself! Blaming your daughter for your own failure of family planning is W E A K!” and then he learns there are more sons and it completely breaks his train of logic because if yes to more sons then why issue?? You have two others and you’re mad you don’t have three?? Whack. Greedy.

I can already envision him as an ancient lord of a powerful house looking down his nose at the latest messenger bringing gossip from the house of his offspring’s friend and going “now they have a daughter to marry into another family for powerful alliances and two sons to take over her former duties and somehow they’re still complaining about their good fortune? They shall not survive the winter.” and then sipping his tea with all the grim satisfaction of someone about to watch an unnecessary soap opera of drama unfold from a safe distance or something

[asideoftrashplease]

That's a funny image for sure, though I think if there's a typology of Chinese philosophical mentality, there would likely be a spectrum from "Confucian patriarchal lord" to "Buddhist monk / Taoist hermit" and my dad renounced at 18, was a monk for a time, before coming back to work for his family since they were poor 🤷 it was what 3 years after we gained independence from the British so the economy was probs a mess.

When he found and married my mom, he was nearly 45 and they had so much trouble conceiving that he went to a Guanyin temple supposedly "magical" for praying for children. When I was born (not a son, also an only child until now), my mom said, "when you prayed at the temple did you ask for a son?" He said, "Aiya, everyone is asking for sons, so I said any gender is okay. If I asked for a son, maybe we wouldn't have gotten a child because Guanyin's son quota is already used up. Do you want that to happen?" My mom laughed for days about "son quota" and continues to tell people about it today, but her honest answer was: "Any child is okay."

Jokes on them. They didn't specify a gender, so Guanyin Ma gave them a non-binary child!

More seriously: my dad doesn't care about sons. When I told my parents that I wouldn't marry or have children, I thought he might be disappointed, but he wasn't. Then again, maybe I should have expected that, given he tried to become a monk at 18 🤪 I think he said the thing about sons to poke fun at people who care too much about sons because he frankly thinks it's all a bit ridiculous. In his eyes, a child is a child, so what's the point in caring about gender? If the child "changes" gender, does it make a difference?

When I first spoke to my mom about trans issues, still closeted at the time, she said, "I don't understand why they feel the way they do, but they aren't hurting anyone so don't bother them. They are normal people just minding their own business." I said, "I agree, but on the topic of not understanding: Mom, do you think that when we reincarnate, we are always born into a body of the same gender?" In Buddhist stories, there was a lifetime in which Guanyin was reincarnated as a cow or ox, and in repayment for my birth, my dad does not eat beef till this day. Gender or species isn't constant in the cycle of rebirth. My mom said, "No, you're right. Whatever thing that carries on has no gender. I was probably male, human or animal, in one of my past lives." And she has supported trans rights even more ever since.

[cardiacanes]

heated rivalry + reductress headlines pt 3

pt 1 pt 2

+ bonus

[alltoowsll]

GOD BLESS AMERICA. AND HE NAMED EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN COUNTRY

[chaoticpaige]

Shane Hollander + that cute way he stands

[nest-of-shiny-things]

every day people are out here weaving elaborate fictional narratives for nhl players meanwhile pwhl players will just straight up say shit like “we were skinny dipping with team canada while training for the olympics and a shooting star passed overhead and no one else saw it but us and we locked eyes and thus began a secret teammate romance that almost fell apart after we lost the gold medal but the next time our teams played against each other she chased down my team bus after the game to win me back and seven years later we were married and I said in my wedding vows that she was the wish I had always dreamed of and I didn’t realize it until now.” anyway true story and it happened to my girl laura stacey.

[nest-of-shiny-things]

“and now we’re playing in the olympics together again” btw

[k-wame]

C H I L L S