Eclectic

[roanart-blog1]

Happy National Coming Out Day

I love you guys <3

[papasmoke]

It is funny that Hitlers last moments of life were pure misery and terror before he blew his own brains out, it is funny that Luis Carrero Blanco was blown up by a bomb so powerful it sent his car flying over a 3 story building, it is funny that Ronald Reagan got shot and that his wound led to health complications that plagued him for the rest of his vile life, it is funny that Margaret Thatcher lived in constant fear of assassination by the IRA, it is funny that Mussolini ended life looking like a prized ham in the deli section, and it is funny that Trump might die from covid.

[papasmoke]

America is the least educated country in the world when it comes to American history

[badgraph1csghost]

For any of my followers who may genuinely have this question:

Gay people know Reagan as the president who laughed at AIDS and did nothing because “all the right people” (aka us gay people) were dying from it.

Reagan is the president under whose auspices the incarceration rate of Black people on drug charges ballooned to caricaturishly high levels.

Reagan is the president that abolished the air traffic controllers’ union.

Reagan is the president who espoused the flawed “trickle down economics” theory, cut federal funding for state welfare programmes by 80%, froze the federal minimum wage while taxes and costs skyrocketed, and established the capital gains tax cuts that set our corporate feudal state into motion.

Reagan is the president who gutted federal assistance programmes, purging the Social Security disability rolls, and caused my own grandfather to die because he could no longer afford to buy both food and medicine.

Then of course, there’s the Iran-Contra Affair, Star Wars (not the film, but the space based missile platform), school prayer, blah blah blah

But American History textbooks only remember him for “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” treating him like he alone was the force that united East and West Germany and brought the Soviet Union to its knees.

[stormesandshowers]

Oh y’all: and so many fucking war crimes/human rights violations across the world. We literally trained death squads in so many places, such as in Guatemala where the UN implicated those death squads in participating in genocide against the indigenous population.

[jehovahhthickness]

I wanna be that CEO that pays their employees 70K a year like that white guy I be seeing all over the Internet. I can’t remember his name.

I’m not gonna be like Jeff Bezos but I do wanna be a multimillionaire 😂😂😂

[jehovahhthickness]

He took a pay cut. I’m not doing all of that. Ima just pay my people well and give top notch benefits.

[jehovahhthickness]

It gets better.

[desperate-acts-of-capitalism]

We are definitely going to talk about this guy on Buisness Desserts

Employees are not costs to be reduced, they are investments, they are assets that appreciate in value

[jehovahhthickness]

Absolutely

[doebunnybooks]

For the person commenting on not taking a pay cut, he HAD to change his lifestyle to be able to afford to pay his employees a living wage. He talked to accountants and they helped him break the numbers down based on data about the cost of living and various factors about the commute, housing issues, etc. All inspired by his best friend going nearly into debt over medical costs meanwhile he had several houses, a jet, and drank champagne daily.

He sold stock, houses, and changed his spending and as a result, his employees were overall happier and the way they worked improved. They all bought more shit and had more kids and did all the consumption people want for us while also enjoying their work and their boss enough to band together and buy him a fucking Tesla as a thank you.

And you know what he realized after taking his pay cut? He didn’t need the champagne or the girls or the “lifestyle” of being a billionaire. He feels fulfilled in his work and with the people he’s surrounded himself with and he feels that he’s made a step in the right direction that other businessmen and billionaires should follow.

Please read the article and his statements on twitter because it’s eye-opening to see that you CAN be successful doing things ethically. 

[stele3]

Update: during the pandemic, Dan Price cut his salary to $0 so that he could keep paying his employees.

[cowboybaedling]

What a lovely man

[the-a-j-universe]

And to be clear.

He was only ever a fraction of a Bezos.

He did this with far less to his name. Bezos could too just as easily. He’s just a bad person, unlike Price.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[thenaturaldisesther]

[comment by Reddit user Sam474:

I think people aren’t giving the internet enough credit.

You grow up being told how great capitalism is and then you get online and find out that people in other countries have the same standard of living we do but without the constant fear of bankruptcy.

You grow up thinking “going to the doctor is expensive, don’t get sick and if you do don’t go until you’re sure you HAVE to” and then you find out most of the developed world can go to the doctor for free, or at least for a very affordable rate.

You grow up thinking “Work hard and be successful and you can retire at 65 and travel a little.” and then you get online and find out pretty much all of Europe gets weeks and weeks of vacation time a year and is doing their travelling in their 20s and 30s and loving it.

The list goes on and on. I grew up in the conservative south and it wasn’t an uncommon conversation starter when I was a kid for people to open up with things like “What church do you go to?” and so that’s what I thought the world was. Church and working for the weekend and be careful to save your pennies and not splurge and don’t get sick. It wasn’t until the internet appeared that I realized how differently a lot of people live and how much more appealing a lot of that sounded.

When you hear that someone else had a kid and it didn’t cost them any money, got a year off to raise it, gets free daycare, and goes to spain twice a year for vacation it’s pretty hard to still feel content with your 60 hour work week, 2 weeks off a year that you’re discouraged from actually using, and health insurance as your second biggest monthly bill.]

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

And from a European perspective, you grow up hearing everybody talking about how great the US is (because we get a lot of American TV and films, and America as a nation never seems to neglect an opportunity to blow its own trumpet) and people talking about how we should be more like them, and then you hear stuff like this…

[vereel]

I live in Belgium.

On September first I'm unemployed again, if I don't find a job.

I'm not worried. My healthcare for the year is paid. I'll get unemployment benefit for the (hopefully short) time I'm between jobs. So I'll be able to pay my mortgage and other bills. I have a college degree, savings, I've paid all my hospital bills without issues. I can afford my ADHD meds without any issues.

I see all these deprecating posts joking about millennials never bring homeowners. But half my friend are homeowners. I'm 29. I bought my apartment when I was 27.

Politicians and big businesses have been bleeding you dry and they got you thinking that everyone is living like this. But we're not. America isn't the norm. It's the exception.

[latenitewaffles]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

reblog if you are a trans cyborg, you support trans cyborgs, or you just really hate Laura Ingraham

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

[arcticfoxbear]

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

[arafaelkestra]

To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.

[radioactivepeasant]

Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts

[crazy-pages]

Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.” 

[val-ritz]

“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?” “Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.” “What, the molten rock?” “Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–” “You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?” “Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”

[wuestenratte]

Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

[networkentertainment-offici-blog]

“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

[arcticfoxbear]

My new favorite Humans are Weird quote

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

aka The History of Alaska

[unicornempire]

Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.

[reformed-roark]

“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”

[down-sizing-deactivated20180211]

“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”

[galaxystew]

Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”

[exvind]

Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible. 

“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-” ‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’ “What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.” ‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’ “….you….you are going to die, you know this right?” ‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’

[strangenewclassrooms]

“Listen, lad. I’ve built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was molten magma. All those aliens said I was daft to build a castle on a molten planet, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the magma. So, I built a second one. That sank into the magma. So I built a third one. That spontaneously combusted, turned to ash, then sank into the magma. But the fourth one stayed up. An’ that’s what your gonna get, lad – the strongest castle in this solar system.”

[lochtayboatsong]

“I’m gonna need for you to explain ‘hurricane parties’ to me again.  You humans have the technology to track these apocalyptic storms of wind and rain and predict where on the landmass they’ll hit up to a week in advance.  And you…have social gatherings during them?”

“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength.  Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”

“Oh good.  Category 3 is what again?  Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”

“No no, Category 3 starts at 175 kilometers per hour.  You left off the one.”

[onnastik]

I’m sure I’ve reblogged some version of this before, but I needed the STRONGEST CASTLE IN THIS SOLAR SYSTEM on my blog.

[antigonesghosts]

“This planet is so cool!”

“It’s a planet completely made of ice.”

“Yeah! Let’s send some scientists! Or I could be the youngest person there!”

“You’d die, it’s below freezing level!”

“But the blizzards are so pretty!”

“The storms of dEATH ARE NOT PRETTY!”

[darker-than-darkstorm]

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”

“No, of course not.  Nobody ‘sent’ anyone, they just went up there on their own.”

“They WHAT?”

[human-portalz]

Oh my fuck nuggets, the actual thread

[little-ladynightshade]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

[slipping-into-madness]

[eilti]

This is legit.

[appendingfic]

It’s actually not the same thing

Because with $1,000, that might be the money you need for rent - $65 could be the prescription you need til the end of the month. Despite being 6.5% of the amount, it could be the difference between you actually eating that week.

But a person with $1 billion has their every need and desire met. They don’t have to worry about rent or food or medicine. They could fund the research for the cure if they caught a never-before-seen disease. $65 million may be 6.5% of that, but it will make no difference in their ability to support themselves.

tl;dr It’s actually less morally defensible for the billionaire to keep the money

[whitepeopletwitter]

[feministism]

[thatsthat24]

Probably Not the Best Source 👩‍❤️‍👨

[shubbabang]

pokemon

Patreon | Webtoon

[thatmissannie]

Imagine: Its 2025. You're getting pulled over. A community representative approaches to let you know you have a taillight out. They don't need your license and registration, they don't write you a fix-it ticket. You're back on the road in less than five minutes. You swing by the store and grab a new light, not because you're afraid of what the city will do to you, but because you respect your community and know that having all your lights working is part of the driving privilege.

Your neighbors got into a loud spat a few weeks ago and without fear or hesitation, called a domestic assistance number. A counselor arrived and was able to talk the couple down and suggest solutions for their disagreement. No one was hurt, the kids participated in the discussion, and it's been quiet ever since.

Your friend has been struggling with addiction and you fear they might be a danger to themselves or others. You call a substance abuse specialist and they talk you through ways to help your friend get treatment. They offer to send an agent out to speak with your friend directly and provide information on harm reduction centers in your area.

Black and brown people are no longer being exploited through tickets and fines to pay for police. Trust is slowly being fostered in the community.

Teachers are being paid a living wage and students are being given more time, attention, and education. Books are up to date and classrooms are optimized to keep up with technology.

Trump is out of office.

It’s been a very long time since the name of a murdered black person was used as a hashtag.

Casual racism is no longer tolerated. The KKK has been classified as a terrorist organization. The Confederate flag isnt flown and has been removed from any official state flags or insignias. Most Confederate monuments have been taken down and placed in storage or museums.

You trust the investigation force to deal with crime the same way you trust firefighters to put out fires.

That's what 'defund the police' looks like. What we've seen in the last few weeks shows how overreaching and power-drunk many officers are. We asked too much of them and then called them heroes despite evidence to the contrary. We let them think that they could get away with anything, including murder. Its time for change.

Copied and pasted.

[homopower]

Read this post, then reread it again.

[kjuw89]

Signal boost

[ahnsael]

It’s not about the end of “to protect and serve.” It’s about bringing it BACK to “to protect and serve” as opposed to “act as judge, jury, and executioner and violate peoples’ rights because cops are scared people with power who are dealing with things they were never trained to deal with, or who were trained WAY wrong on how to deal with it, or who are just assholes to begin with.

“Some people” are just mad that cops would no longer be randomly arresting/killing people who those “some people” see as lesser beings.

[nz45south]

I present to you a drama, comedy, horror. This story killed me three times.

[konoko]

[whitepeopletwitter]