Research to be Done

lab notes from the life of a geeky, poly, kinky, and curiously intuitive rationalist

[researchtobedone]

It will be progressive organizations that understand the stakes of this election, like Planned Parenthood, and like the people and organizations running phone banks, doing canvassing, donating to the Clinton campaign, and otherwise doing the work of defeating Donald Trump, who will pick up the slack. If you are a protest voter, it is your slack they are picking up. It is decisions like yours that mean Planned Parenthood’s 30 million dollars won’t go to contraception or cancer screenings. It is your decision to protest or abstain that means more money has to be spent to avoid the worst case scenario in this election. That money could be spent on making progress. Instead it will be spent making up for your decision not to fight Donald Trump with every means available to you. So when you tell yourself your conscience can’t handle ticking that box for Clinton, ask yourself how much work someone else is going to have to do in your place to make sure Trump doesn’t win. Ask yourself whose cancer screening should be skipped so you don’t have to swallow your discomfort and tick that box. And make sure you’re comfortable with the answer before you make your decision.

Abstentions and Protest Votes are a Tax on Progress

[researchtobedone]

Abstentions and Protest Votes are a Tax on Progress

Abstentions and Protest Votes are a Tax on Progress

Planned Parenthood is running a 30 million dollar ground campaign to ensure Hillary Clinton wins this election. They are spending money on it that they could be spending providing people with life-saving services. That money could be used to provide cancer screenings, contraception, sex education, abortions, funding advocacy work, or any of the many, many important services Planned Parenthood…

View On WordPress

[researchtobedone]

People Who Will Die If Clinton Doesn't Win

People Who Will Die If Clinton Doesn’t Win

This is not a time for mincing words. Many, many people will die if Hillary Clinton doesn’t win this election. Queer people will die because Trump and the GOP will validate and encourage virulent homophobia, and will support things like conversation therapy which Clinton will fight to end. Shootings like Pulse can happen again, and with this kind of reinforcement of bigotry, they will be all the…

View On WordPress

[pervocracy]

what's the median dick size?

About 5 inches (13cm) long, 4¾ inches (12cm) around, when erect.

It would be sort of shallow to follow that up with “but it’s not the size of the waves, it’s the motion of the ocean,” or some similar platitude, so instead I’ll just point out that it’s not the size of the waves, it’s what you can do with your hands.

[genderqueerpositivity]

I swear I’m at my queerest and most powerful on Halloween. 🎃

[brutereason]

With a hesitant client, Resch often starts with a basic question: “What do you think it would be like if all you could eat was your favorite treat?” “Let’s say is a hot fudge sundae. That’s all that you can eat, just hot fudge sundaes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every day this week,“ she says. "What do you think that would be like? Inevitably, people go, ‘Well, that would be really great, but I bet after a while I’d get a little sick of them.‘” Duh, right? The truth is that sundaes are legal and available, almost anywhere, anytime. The problem is, we don’t walk around with that sense of constant availability in our minds. Instead, we’re all trained to think of sundaes as of an exceedingly rare, almost criminal indulgence. That’s why the primary goal with intuitive eating is reversing that illogical thinking until you have a sincere and total permission to eat hot fudge sundaes — to eat anything — without judgment, restriction, or anxiety.

Gentle Nutrition Principle Description Intuitive Eating (via brutereason)

[researchtobedone]

Hillary Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, and Propaganda

Hillary Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, and Propaganda

Something you may not know about Alexander Hamilton is that during his time as treasury secretary, he was accused of corruption constantly. He was accused of it for years on end, in ways that had little-to-nothing to do with his conduct and everything to do with politics. On February 24, 1794, a committee full of his political opponents was formed to investigate his time at the treasury…

View On WordPress

[sashayed]

The New York Times’ response to Trump’s attempted cease-and-desist letter is literally just NYT attorney David E. McCraw slammin 2 shots of scorpion vodka, leaping onto a table w/ a death’s-head grin & eyes ablaze and yelling “Do it, my guy!!! Haha, DO IT!!!!!” as X Gon Give It To Ya thumps over the sound system and I for one couldn’t be happier

[mothermitski]

@saint-just

[researchtobedone]

Hillary Clinton and Protest Votes

Hillary Clinton and Protest Votes

When I’ve heard people this election season talk about not voting, or voting third party, a lot of people talk about wanting to change things. Voting for the lesser evil, they say, will do nothing to change the system. How will we get real change to happen if we don’t rebel against the system that has made everything so fucked up to begin with? And you’re right. Without work, nothing will change.…

View On WordPress

[outforhealth]

Gonorrhea Might Soon Be Untreatable

~ Condoms ~ Condoms ~ Condoms ~

OK people, we have a really important thing to say about this. OK. Ready?

If you get antibiotics to treat an STD YOU REALLY GOTTA TAKE ALL OF THEM AS DIRECTED. Even if you feel a bit better, or a sore heals up, or whatever. Seriously. When you do not take all of your meds you may not actually clear up your infection. And what happens then? THIS:

Health officials have been warning us about the threat of “super gonorrhea“—a strain of the sexually transmitted disease that is resistant to all known antibiotics—for over a year. But the superbug is here, much faster than previously anticipated. On Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a cluster of gonorrhea infections that shows both decreased susceptibility to ceftriaxone and very high-level resistance to azithromycin. It’s the first time this superbug has been found in the U.S.

[outforhealth]

Reblogging this because ~this is important~

[gleonardrainschedule-deactivate]

I’ve never been so happy to not have sex.

[cagzzzilla]

Reblogging because I tell my patients this all the time and we talk about this at work all the time ☝🏼️☝🏼☝🏼

[goth-aunt]

It’s already happening

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is corrupt. I don’t care if she lies, if she cheats, if she eats bowls of newborn chipmunks for breakfast.

She is literally the only thing standing in the way of a fascist dictator becoming President of the United States with a Republican majority congress that guarantees he can do anything he wants and nothing will be able to stop him.

I was and still am a Bernie supporter, and I hate a lot of things about Clinton, but none of that matters anymore. If Trump is elected, people are going to die. Women are going to die when Roe v Wade is overturned and Planned Parenthood is defunded. LGBTQ people are going to die when conversion therapy is further legalized and more bathroom bills are passed. POC are going to die as Trump rounds up Mexican immigrants, gives more power to the police, and fuels the fires of Islamaphobia. Poor people are going to die as Obamacare gets overturned and further cuts are made to welfare programs. And that’s just in this country. That’s not even taking account the all-too-likely outcomes of Trump starting new wars in the Middle East and having control of nuclear bombs that he’s said he ‘would not rule out’ using.

This is no longer even about ‘the lesser of two evils’. This is not ‘scare tactics’. This is literally life and death. Don’t fuck around and tell me you’re voting third-party or not voting at all, because you don’t have that luxury. 

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

I am delighted that this post has gotten as many notes as it has, but as Election Day grows closer I would like to flush it out with some additional information and facts, particularly for those people who are still considering voting third party and those who still consider Clinton “just as bad” as Trump.

Why you shouldn’t vote for Jill Stein

Why you shouldn’t vote for Gary Johnson

Why you shouldn’t vote third party AT ALL: x, x, x, x (hint, it’s because the electoral college presently makes it impossible for third party to win)

Worried about Clinton’s scandals? John Oliver breaks it down.

Comparison of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ views. They voted the same 93% of the time. 

A comprehensive review of Donald Trump’s corruption

Donald Trump is being sued for raping a 13 year old girl in 1994, and there is merit to the case.

Oxford Economics predicts that Trump’s policies would remove $1 trillion from the US economy, while the Peterson Institute projects that a Trump presidency could cost nearly 5 million US jobs.

Donald Trump repeatedly asked why the US couldn’t use nuclear weapons

Donald Trump’s cruel streak

37 of the most offensive things Trump ever said

Donald Trump unveils plan to make abortion illegal again

Feds investigating Trump advisor’s meeting with Russian officials seeking to influence U.S. election (Trump called Putin a better leader than Obama.)

Trump’s campaign paid his businesses $8.2 million

Trump flies in a plane with gold-plated bathroom fixtures and pays for it with tax dollars

Trump’s financial plan would increase the debt by $5.3 trillion above current levels, Clinton’s by $200 billion 

Trump wants to eliminate food safety regulations

Trump was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against black people

Trump has reaped at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York

Concerned that Hillary Clinton defended a child rapist? She tried to get out of it, but she had no choice. 

The official Republican platform includes banning abortion, overturning marriage equality, no background checks for purchasing guns, declaring coal “clean energy”, religion used as a guide for legislation, a border wall, and pornography declared a “public menace”.

Politifact says that Hillary has made ‘false’ statements 11% of the time and ‘pants on fire’ statements 2%, compared to Trump’s 37% and 17%.

Bernie supporter? Bernie says that now is not the time for a protest vote. Bernie tells you why you should vote for Hillary Clinton. Bernie says that Trump must not become president.

Please do not waste your vote. You can complain about Hillary Clinton as much as you want, but complain about her while you vote for her.

[damaramegido]

I try to avoid politics on my blog, but this is seriously important.

[eerily-twee]

Trans people have beautiful voices

High pitched, squeaky, loud, deep, booming, quiet, all are unique and gorgeous

If you go on HRT or if you don’t, your voice is amazing.

High pitched voices can be manly, or non-binary

Low pitched voices can be feminine, or non-binary

Your voice is perfect, don’t let it stop you from being you

[punlich]

It’s sad too because there’s definitely something to be said about the ways that capitalism uses ssris as a way to prop up a dying working class and how many ssris are pushed on people who they are not effective for or have way worse side effects than benefits for.

But then we have sacks of shit acting like no one should ever use ssris ever and all medical chemical intervention is bad and you need to gargle yak piss mixed with lizard shit to be healthy and it’s like Calm Down, Crystals MacPrayerhealing, An Inhaler Is Not Cocaine

[pervocracy]

At a nursing home I worked at back when I was a CNA, nurses would routinely give Motrin and Tylenol to aides who had back pain from all the undertrained/understaffed/underequipped lifting they had to do.  It was kind of awful because in a way, it was just of enabling the employer’s bad practices and pushing injured people to get back out there and hurt themselves even more.  But in another way, as long as we were all stuck in the system together, it was better to relieve their pain than not.

[researchtobedone]

One of the things this election has made clear is that for a lot of neurotypical people, mental illness a concept to be used when it's convenient to them, and denied when it isn't. It exists only when it makes their lives easier by existing. If someone in their life says they have a mental illness, that's inconvenient, because it means they might have to be uncomfortable, or to accommodate that persons' needs somehow. So they deny it or set incredibly high standards of evidence that must be overcome before they'll consider it. It can't exist here because if it did that would be inconvenient.

But if someone they don't know at all disagrees with them and they don't understand why (in particular, see: liberals responding to Trump or Trump supporters), then the standard of evidence drops to basically zero. Without any study, evidence, or personal knowledge of the person, they're willing to assume that person is mentally ill and vigorously defend that assumption. In this context, mental illness does exist, because it's convenient. The othering effect is convenient, because Others don't have to be analyzed. If you can other someone, your own assumptions and biases don't have to be drawn into question because they exist.

When mental illness relieves these people of responsibility, it exists, and when it might add some responsibilities to their lives, it doesn’t. It is a tool to prevent them from having to do any actual work to help or understand their fellow human beings, nothing more.

To people who do this I say: you are the fucking worst, and I am not your fucking prop.

[pervocracy]

Do you think Hillary Clinton's nomination is illegitimate, was rigged, etc or no?

No?  Or at least not more than normal.  I’m cynical enough to sort of figure all high-level elections have shenanigans behind the scenes, the way I figure all elite athletes are on drugs.  But just as taking steroids won’t make you an Olympic athlete without a hell of a lot of training, fudging some details of the nomination process won’t make you the nominee without a hell of a lot of actual support.

I hate to say it, but I don’t think Bernie Sanders was the Will Of The People.  I think he was the Will Of The Young Urban Leftie Democrats, which–despite all my personal observations to the contrary–are not a majority.  There’s a lot of people out there who feel that Clinton is a more qualified candidate with more realistic plans, and they voted in the primaries. 

I would have preferred Bernie, but I don’t think he was robbed.  I think he was just a little further left than the Democratic party was ready for.  It’s a shame, but it’s not a conspiracy.

[brutereason]

Those of us who work against anti-abortion violence unfortunately know all about this. Valerie Tarico wrote about this form of terrorism following the Planned Parenthood murders in Colorado Springs last November. The pattern she noted there is 100 percent applicable to Donald Trump and his supporters right now – except that we haven’t yet had the major act of violence at the end of the string. As Tarico wrote: “1. A public figure with access to the airwaves or pulpit demonizes a person or group of persons. 2. With repetition, the targeted person or group is gradually dehumanized, depicted as loathsome and dangerous—arousing a combustible combination of fear and moral disgust. 3. Violent images and metaphors, jokes about violence, analogies to past ‘purges’ against reviled groups, use of righteous religious language—all of these typically stop just short of an explicit call to arms. 4. When violence erupts, the public figures who have incited the violence condemn it—claiming no one could possibly have foreseen the 'tragedy.’” This explains Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton to a letter. He has 1) demonized her whenever he can by calling her “Crooked Hillary” and constantly degrading her; 2) organized a convention around which the central theme, repeated over and over, was that Clinton is a criminal who needs to be locked up, clearly using fear and moral disgust as motivators; and 3) is now using violent metaphors (or “jokes,” if that’s what you think his statements were) against her, just short of an explicit call to arms. Now we just have to hope that #4 doesn’t come about – that violence does not erupt. Though, if it does, we know exactly what Trump and his supporters will say: that they never could have foreseen this tragedy.

Trump’s Assassination Dog Whistle Was Scarier Than You Think - Rolling Stone (via brutereason)

[brutereason]

The time and money spent terrorizing citizens with ice cream cones could have been spent retraining the police force on how to confront their implicit biases and deescalate potentially dangerous situations. Or it could have been spent doing anything other than pulling over unsuspecting black women and scaring the shit out of them for laughs. Just as abusive relationships don’t end with flowers, abusive police systems don’t end with ice cream. Anything short of commitment to justice for those abused and killed by police and commitment to fundamental change in the criminal justice system is all part of the abuse cycle—designed to keep us afraid and grateful for the ability to be.

The Abuse Of ‘Feel-Good’ Cop Videos - The Establishment (via brutereason)