Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ‘70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”
— Johann Hari, Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?
so are we just supposed to ignore kendrick lamar having lyrics about killing trans women? “toupee drop and a dude just popped out t of that tank top and bra / and when i say du du du du, bitch that be k-dot” ? he’s talking about shooting and killing a woman when he finds out she’s trans aka trans panic. he’s a vile transphobe, why are you platformong him?
think you've got the wrong lyrics there
Toupée drop and her two tits pop
Out of that tank top and bra
And when I say "Doo-doo-doo-doo," bitch, that be K. Dot
and notably in context he is. not talking about murdering the woman he's rapping about here? from the genius annotations
A Toupée is an artificial hair piece, for all practical purposes, a wig. Toupée, like touche and en garde, is a french word.
Toupee is being used here in the sense of a convertible…like drop the top…when Kendrick is driving and drops the top on his convertible, his girl can’t help but get a little loose and let the girls out.
This ["doo-doo-doo-doo"] is Kendrick’s signature ad-lib likely developed from his song “Cartoon & Cereal.” This ad-lib is meant to resemble gunshots. This is something Kendrick came used to due to his upbringing in Compton, a city known notoriously for its high crime rate.
K-Dot was Kendrick’s original rap name, and has now become an alter-ego. While Kendrick himself is laid back and calm, K-Dot is the more aggressive Compton side.
but thanks for sending me three separate asks about how kendrick lamar loves killing trans women. nothing about this feels racist at all
Kendrick noteably has a song about his uncle (a trans man) and his cousin (a trans woman) that is probably up there as one of his most heartfelt songs of all time, but I remember on an old blog where I once posted one thing about Kendrick and someone immediately jumped into my inbox berating me for talking about an antisemitic artist (and similarly to the above anon, they had completely confused their information).
I know Kendrick isn’t perfect, but I used to talk about a lot of artists on my old blog and coincidentally it was only the Black artists that had multiple people explaining to me exactly why I shouldn’t listen to them, with baseless and incorrect information that they hadn’t bothered to look up properly. I don’t just think this anon is being racist, I know they are because the second you mention a rap artist, it seems like every white person on tumblr has to crawl out of the woodwork and try to hide their overall disdain for Black artists with random excuses as to why those artists are the most dangerous and violent people alive.
You’re not slick. You could’ve spent five seconds searching up “Kendrick Lamar and trans women” into Google and you’d immediately be linked to Auntie Diaries, but you decided to choose a misheard lyric in a song that didn’t mention trans women once and berate someone for sharing a single Black artist. I’ve seen these games before, anon!!
And not just any Black artist, either, but one who is like… actively trans supportive! I’ve said it before, but Kendrick Lamar has done more for me as a trans man than pretty much every white popstar that tumblr loves to put on a pedestal for simply saying “protect the dolls” once in an interview. Kendrick’s not the perfect ally, but he sure as hell is a genuine one.
Anyway, go listen to Mr Morales & The Big Steppers.
StumbleUpon once sent me to a supercut of Lion King, Lion King 1 1/2, and Lion King II, the main edit being that the scenes of Lion King and Lion King 1 1/2 were interspersed so that they happened in the order they actually happened.
The Bored Button - "Press the Bored Button and be bored no more."
The Useless Web
Cloudhiker - "Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet" (not really a rebrand, it's a different person running it but they have the same intention in mind)
Astronaut.io - "These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you)."
Marginalia - "This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed."
the funniest and most tragic moment in steven universe is the scene that implies that Pearl pulls bitches like a professional dog walker but doesn't know how phones work so her place on earth is being a life-changing futch fling for every dyke on the east coast there's probably a gay bar in maryland where they talk about the twiggy bird chick that eats milf pussy like it's the last edible thing on earth and they dont even know about the city full of thousand year old neon lesbian amazons who are pent up 24/7 from The War and leaving room for jesus cause they're always hanging out with their softboy nephew who might be the second coming of christ
A fun thing about computer skills is that as you have more of them, the number of computer problems you have doesn't go down.
This is because as a beginner, you have troubles because you don't have much knowledge.
But then you learn a bunch more, and now you've got the skills to do a bunch of stuff, so you run into a lot of problems because you're doing so much stuff, and only an expert could figure them out.
But then one day you are an expert. You can reprogram everything and build new hardware! You understand all the various layers of tech!
And your problems are now legendary. You are trying things no one else has ever tried. You Google them and get zero results, or at best one forum post from 1997. You discover bugs in the silicon of obscure processors. You crash your compiler. Your software gets cited in academic papers because you accidently discovered a new mathematical proof while trying to remote control a vibrator. You can't use the wifi on your main laptop because you wrote your own uefi implementation and Intel has a bug in their firmware that they haven't fixed yet, no matter how much you email them. You post on mastodon about your technical issue and the most common replies are names of psychiatric medications. You have written your own OS but there arent many programs for it because no one else understands how they have to write apps as a small federation of coroutine-based microservices. You ask for help and get Pagliacci'd, constantly.
But this is the natural of computer skills: as you know more, your problems don't get easier, they just get weirder.
I once had a bug in a program that would only show up on one specific computer, but the problem would go away if you connected the debugger or added logging, which just made it absolutely infuriating. Turned out the ram in the computer was half unseated, so I'm kind of impressed that the computer didn't have bigger problems than a very, very occasional trash and weird bugs and software like mine. No, it wasn't my machine. It belonged to someone else.
obviously bigotry isnt rational but "women are naturally worse at spatial reasoning and math" is a wild opinion to have when women have historically been the primary textile producers in a lot of societies. have you ever seen a tablet weaving pattern
Seeing a lot of people talking about how Delta is suspending flight perks for members of the US congress. Not seeing anyone talk about how fucked up it is that they are allowed to take flight perks in the first place
hey yeah i get it but youre harshing the vibe rn nobody wants to hear about the irreversible damage that cars have done to North America and the whole world by proxy
listen I'm sorry that your dad went home, researched highspeed rail, and started the argument with you again when I wasn't there umm no I'm not going to apologize no I actually umm yeah I've been brushing up on my talking points sorry but bob doesn't stand a fucking chance he can meet me in the market place of ideas
A recent conversation in a discord group reminded me of something important. If you're on the younger side (under 25 or 30) and you haven't seen all the incredible, dark and disturbing fantasy films that came out in the 1980s and late 1970s, then I would strongly encourage you to do so. There was something so dark about that genre during that time that I absolutely adore and that isn't really around in modern films for children and young adults (once they learned that it traumatized a whole generation of us).
My faves in case you need any recommendations. (Some of these are really not appropriate for children, so keep that in mind lol).
The Dark Crystal - 1982 - the Skeksis will give you nightmares. I am honestly very proud of the remake for being just as disturbing if not more so than the original.
Watership Down - 1978- NOT FOR CHILDREN - Jesus Christ why did so many of our parents show us this film at a formative age? It's all about trauma and death and displacement and there's literal blood and murder. Not a G Rated Film. Still, it's very good. Loads better than that CGI remake from a decade ago.
The Secret Of NIMH - 1982 - Incredible movie. Minor disturbing elements. Probably my favorite on the list. It's just a great adventure story with real world issues (animal experimentation, mental health problems, disabilities) and there's even a lovely romance. Highly recommend.
Legend - 1985- This film is just straight up disturbing. Yes, there's a lot of beautiful shots of unicorns and sexy, 20-something year old (insane Scientology wack job) Tom Cruise and gorgeous Mia Sara, but there's also torture, madness and literally the Devil (Tim Curry is the entire reason you should watch this film)
Labyrinth - 1986 - I only really have two words. David. Bowie. My 10 year old self found out about a lot of burgeoning kinks while watching that man prance around in eyeliner and a codpiece. It's a wonderful adventure as well - if you ignore the blatant romantic and sexual tension between Bowie and an underage Jennifer Connelly (none of us could)
The NeverEnding Story - 1984 - Lots of disturbing imagery in this one! The Nothing was fucking terrifying, and the creatures in this world seemed uniformly creepy, but still incredibly well done. Love the adventure of it.
The Princess Bride - 1987 - Not technically a kids film maybe? Lots of adult themes and adult jokes, but safe for kids imo. I adored it and still do. Incredible performances by Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. R.O.U.S, Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! (need I say more?)
The Last Unicorn - 1982 - A beautiful film with stunning representations of innocence, good and evil. Just gorgeous really. I should rewatch it as it's been 20 years or so.
The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.
Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.
So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.
Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.
As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.
As more and more people are being forced to switch to Windows 11, Microsoft's most AI-malware-ridden OS yet, I've been putting together articles and links for how to undo the damage and save your battery, your RAM, your disk space, your privacy, and your sanity from this bullshit.
FIRST:
The easiest way to get rid of the majority of the bullshit that Windows is forcing on us, as of October 2025, is this one-stop-one-click debloat solution from a modern day hero:
A simple, lightweight PowerShell script to remove pre-installed apps, disable telemetry, as well as perform various other changes to customi
It's very easy, even if you're not tech savvy or get scared of pop up windows saying "ARE YOU SURE?" Yes, you are sure, I promise. This program takes maybe two minutes and will save you SO MUCH pain, time, and money (and exploitation).
Now that you've done that, here's the cleanup, to catch the little shit that the debloat might have missed (most of this will already be done by debloat, but hey, it's good to double check).
Microsoft wants to put AI everywhere on your PC, but you can take back control.
Even just reading about some of these features makes me angry. Fucking Copilot and "Discover" AI scrapers are in Notepad. NOTEPAD. And then there's this uncanny valley garbage:
No uncanny valley video calls for me, thanks! (Also, what else is it doing while it scans your face and listens to your calls? What else, microsoft? Because there was a lot of memory being assigned to this program for a simple "smooths your skin" add on).
Tired of Microsoft pushing ads throughout Windows 11? Here are the settings you can tweak to turn them off and reclaim some privacy.
The truly insane number of places they have stuck ads on your own home computer is sickening. Become Unmarketable.
Bonus:
Some background programs you probably don't need that are taking up space and how to remove them (Microsoft forums, 2024)
Your Samsung Galaxy Phone comes with 22 apps you don't need (Android Police, 2025)
How to disable the AI in firefox (still the only browser that lets you do this permanently) (Windows Report, 2025)