A tower of babble

[demilypyro]

I've gotten a lot of feedback that tells me there is a gaping hole in the market for let's players who like games that are bad

[demilypyro]

Ahh, okay, so it's like how I still play and enjoy Persona 4 and Persona 5, even though I think they are, politically speaking, deeply bigoted and cowardly works. My ability to criticize them doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the good elements, nor vice versa, and thus my criticism is deepened because I don't write the entire game off out of the gate.

[neinkub]

Sylvia Riveras powerful speech against the exclusion of transgender people at the Gay Pride Rally NYC, 1973.

[averybellearchive-deactivated20]

Transcript:

Y'all better quiet down! I've been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help! And you all don't do a goddamn thing for them! And they write STAR, not the woman's group! They do not write women, they do not write men, they write to STAR! Because we're trying to do something for them! But you all tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs! I will not put up with this shit! I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job, I have lost my apartment for gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?! What the fuck's wrong with you all?! Think about that! I believe in the gay power, I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights, that's all I wanted to say to you people. Come and see people at STAR House on Twelfth Street, the people that are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to our white middle class club! And that's what you all belong to! Revolution now! Gay power! Know the gay power!

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

[chutefullofholes]

every time there’s a viral post about Magnus Hirschfeld that fails to mention he was jewish and nazi hatred of his work (and queerness as a whole) was a cause and effect of nazis blaming jews for any and all ‘degeneracy’ i want to Scream Yell Scream. you cannot should not separate what happened to him from that what do you mean ‘remember! they didn’t just hate jews they also-‘ HE WAS JEWISHHHH !!!! he was openly jewish and that’s a large part of why he was persecuted so heavily!!!! why are you leaving that out!!! he is not fodder for your ‘ugh those meanie jews are always so greedy and make the holocaust all about them 😠’ inversion

[jayalaw]

People do this? I thought the whole point was fascists target anyone who is an easy scapegoat, and they burn down the evidence contradicting them. Knowing Hirschfield is Jewish and trans does explain a lot about how he was erased from western history.

[prismatic-bell]

People do this ALL THE TIME. It's more common to see them ignore it than not.

Although I must tell you he was not trans. He was a gay man who did a lot of work into trans studies.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i’ve just seen the craziest image

[cheaphalloweencostume]

[omgthatdress]

OOOOOh this explains a lot to me. In my wonderous experience of researching perfume, I've come across bits of this. One of the best articles I found about the history of aldehydes devolved into a psuedo-scientifc screed on are aldehydes poisonous (they're not), AND that one weird comment about oakmoss being a reproductive inhibitor (I WISH), but yeah, OF COURSE, it's a right wing misogyny campaign that paints anything "femenine" (perfume, cosmetics, skin care, bath products, you know, nice things that many women use to make the misery of life bearable) as unnatural and bad for you.

If you are infertile, I promise you, it's not your fault. :) Cultural misogyny wants to blame infertility on women's actions and virtue SO MUCH when it's really just a biological dice roll. And also, men can be infertile, too.

And if you are fertile and want to be infertile (I'd be so happy if I could never have a period again), I have bad news for you: keep up your birth control prescription and wait until menopause. Or get your tubes tied or whatever. Perfume isn't going to help you.

In the meantime, I'm going to be dousing myself in Opium to keep the anti-vaxxers away.

[vaspider]

Bilateral salpingectomy, baybeeee. There are lists of gynos who will do the operation without you needing to be a specific age or what the fuck ever. Yeeting my tubes (6 years before my yeeterus became necessary) was the best thing I did for my mental health. 4 days of downtime watching trashy TV and no more pregnancy scares, or pregnancy, ever again. Plus if you just take the tubes out, it's one less thing that can turn cancerous later.

[seven--eyes]

Definitely don't look at this excel sheet that has a list of gynecologists who will sterilize you if you're +21 regardless of number of children or marital status.

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

Which do you prefer?

Tampons

Disposable pads

Reusable pads

Menstrual cups

Menstrual discs

Period underwear

Multiple

Other

Free-bleeding

I don’t have periods

Remaining time: 6 days 12 hours

[transmennonite-deactivated20250]

may we live to see the day where the first photo results of your intersex variation aren't graphic photos of igm

[intervexual]

In setting up Intersex Wiki one of the decisions I have been feeling really good about is the policy/practice that the first photos in any article on an intersex variation need to be photos of clothed individuals with their faces visible. Ideally smiling for the camera.

I'm so tired of articles on intersex variations where the visuals are graphic images of genitals & obviously uncomfortable (semi-)naked people with their faces cropped or blurred out.

It has really been a breath of fresh air to instead have humanizing photos of actual (often famous) intersex individuals as the illustrations for intersex variations, e.g.:

It's not always possible to find humanizing photos since some intersex variations are very rare, but I personally think it's been worth the effort to try and hunt down these kinds of photos! 💜

[hydrachea]

> turns on my computer

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software

> disables a new AI fea

[sluttygrandpa]

Honestly, at this point, if you're still bitching about AI but not moving to open-source and nonprofit software/tech/services, you deserve it. Shut up or stop using it. Those of us who've put in the effort to switch to non-evil tech are sick of the purposeless whining.

[hydrachea]

I've been nicely letting everyone suggest open source on this post because it might genuinely be useful to someone but because you've decided to be a condescending little bastard- this might be a hard concept to grasp, but some of us actually have jobs. Some of those jobs also provide us with computers equipped with an OS we have zero say over, to use software we also have zero say over. Kindly get off your high horse and suck my dick.

[sage-nebula]

As someone who has worked in IT for the past 17 years, I'd also like to say that there is often a higher barrier of entry for open-source software / operating systems when it comes to technical knowledge and ability, and those who can't jump that barrier still deserve to not have AI programs installed on their devices without their knowledge or consent. Someone who struggles with Windows is not going to be able to just hop into Linux, especially when they probably have other things going on in their lives and don't have the time to sit down and learn a brand new operating system. Someone who doesn't even recognize that there are different browsers, much less open-source ones that aren't Chromium forks, isn't going to be able to seek out one they can both a.) safely download, b.) install, and c.) use instead of the shortcut they know as The Internet.

And sure, you can dismiss these people as lazy, as stupid, as being elderly and so who cares. But from my 17 years of experience, I can tell you that technical instinct and ability varies widely across the entire adult spectrum. And I can also tell you that people have different strengths, and that just because someone isn't good with computers doesn't mean they aren't smart as hell.

And I can also say, again, that it really doesn't matter.

Companies like Microsoft and Google sneaking AI software into devices and software without the consent of those using the software or devices is wrong. It's invasive and raises major security concerns. People should not have to learn entirely new operating systems to escape this nonsense. It's an unreasonable expectation, and it fails to hold companies like Microsoft and Google accountable for their malicious behavior.

[jesterbells]

Martha and Jonathan find a baby in an ark. There is no note with him, but they see how tenderly he was swaddled, how desperately sent here, and they look at each other and they know. She was on the Kindertransport. He lost his parents to the camps. Martha's eyes say "He is like us." Her voice says, "Moses in the bullrushes."

They take him home. They give him the Hebrew name Kal-El and the American name Clark so he will fit in. They know what it is to be different. There is no Hebrew school in Smallville so they teach him at home, and study Torah together. When he shows special abilities, they wonder to each other if he is the Moshiach. Not for the strength of his body, but for the strength of his kindness. He always seems to be helping others, delivering them from harm, as he was delivered to them. They never tell him this, but they teach him about the obligations without measure. He's a natural.

At school, he is side-eyed for being different. When he displays eccentricities, the villagers shrug and say "maybe it's a Jewish thing." The Kents make sure he values his education, and is always home for Shabbas dinner.

His is bar-mitzva'd at the nearest shul, a few towns over. They didn't know his birthday, so they chose one near Parshat Shemot. Now they worry that was too on-the-nose, but he gives a moving d'var about the obligation to speak truth to power.

As he comes into his own and tries to be a hero, he hides his identity from the public, not out of shame, but to keep his adopted parents safe. They've been persecuted enough.

When he moves to the big city for a job at a newspaper, Pa is so proud he cries. Clark uses his journalistic skills to expose corruption, give voice to the neglected and oppressed, and research his own origins. When he learns the truth about Krypton and his birth parents' desperate bid to send him to safety, Ma and Pa are not at all surprised that they were right.

When Clark brings Lois home, he assures his parents she is a nice Jewish girl, but they're just glad she's a mensch. They step on a glass to remember the destruction of Krypton, and stand under a chuppah quilted by Ma.

A white billionaire spews lies about him, trying to spread fear of the stranger in their midst. He comes out in public and says "There's nothing more American than being an immigrant."

When the government turns against immigrants, he stands on the side of the protestors and protects. Tear gass does nothing to him. He makes himself a shield. He writes article after article in the Daily Planet, making sure the public knows what their government is doing, that immigrants know their rights, that the powerful are put on notice. When they start rounding people up, he says "Never again."

He shows up at immigrant detention centers, armed with miracles. And says "Let my people go."

[jesterbells]

#i'm not crying you are#this hit me right in the feels#weren't many of the og superman creators jewish?

They were! Superman was created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish boys, sons of immigrants.

also thank you!

[itsineffhazbinle]

Look, I can understand everything, but a thing I will never understand is: why do people keep arguing we don't need to see Aziraphale and Crowley do basically anything because they "don't need to talk/clarify things/say they love each other/touch or hug at all"? Do people know that this is Characterization 101, showing growth and conflict through actions and emotions and dialogues, right? No, I shouldn't have to imagine roughly 70% of the things that didn't happen on screen in s3 and were severely needed (no I'm not talking about the kIsS). "They don't need to talk they don't need to clarify stuff they don't need to say I love you they don't need to say goodbye with words no they don't need to..." Ok but then what the heck do these characters do for 90 minutes? Why is everyone suddenly allergic to characters interacting in any significant way? There's a reason I found s3 so frickin boring, basically we get almost nothing from all the characters, 0 emotions, all flat. The only one emoting a little bit was, ironically, Michael, that's probably why I've seen very little hate for her and a lot of people saying "same, girl, same". She was quite literally the only one who, albeit with little screen time, actually making a facial expression or wasn't scared to convey an emotion, one of the few characters that didn't feel like a cardboard box. She followed her character's arc and acted accordingly. A/C? Fell flat for most of their interactions. I guess there's so much the actors could do, with the sparse dialogues and breakneck pacing that barely made space for anything more than a rushed facial expression.

[paulcotter]

love 2 learn new things

[lakemojave]

Happy Pride Month everyone! Remember 4 months ago when the CEO of this platform harassed and chased a trans woman off this website just for posting her transition timeline, then chased her to other social media platforms to continue harassing her, and threatened to call the FBI if she continued disputing the multiple dubious terminations of her blogs that did not violate tumblr's terms of service in any way? And despite tumblr staff insisting that the CEO was acting against their interests, the broad transmisogyny evident in the site's culture and moderation policy has still not been adequately addressed?

[lakemojave]

Remember that staff is continuing to nuke the blogs of trans women even after all of this. Remember this post when they call this site the queerest place on the internet again this month

[lakemojave]

It's 2 years later. It's gotten worse. Happy pride month.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s new remote attestation scheme is every bit as terrible as its old remote attestation scheme

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/12/compelled-speech/#quishing

Long before "agentic AI," we had the idea that software would act as your agent on the internet. That's why the old-fashioned technical term for a browser is a "user agent." Your browser acts on your behalf to retrieve information and then show it to you, in the format you choose. It's your agent:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

This is a powerful and profound idea. It is because browsers are our "agents" that we expect them to accept our directives, say, by blocking pop-ups, or by turning off autoplay sound, or by blocking commercial surveillance trackers:

https://privacybadger.org/

Your browser does all that because your browser works for you. The reason your browser can work for you is that the web is an open, standardized technology. In theory, anyone who follows the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can make a browser, and that web browser can connect to any web server. Browsers and servers are interoperable. It's the same force that means you can put anyone's gas in your gas-tank, or anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, or anyone's milk on your cereal.

But what if manufacturers could dictate those choices to you? What if your light socket refused to use a lightbulb unless it was officially blessed by the socket's manufacturer? What if your dishwasher refused to wash your dishes unless you bought them from one of the manufacturer's "dish partners"? What if your toaster refused to toast "unauthorized bread"?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

It's hard to see how a company could win its market with this strategy. After all, if the dishes are really better than the competition's, you'd buy them voluntarily, without any need for law or technology to force the matter. The only reason to make a dishwasher that refuses a rival's dishes is if the manufacturer's own dishes are ugly, expensive, and/or badly made.

But once a company owns the market – once they've achieved dominance by buying out their rivals; by bribing potential competitors to stay out of their lane; and by engaging in deceptive conduct to trap key suppliers and customers – they could cement their dominance by blocking interoperability, keeping out rival dishes, milk, gas, lightbulbs, shoelaces and bread, capturing their whole market and squeezing it.

That's what Google has done, and that's what Google wants to do more of. Google's commercial behavior has been so unethical, deceptive and abusive that the company just lost three federal antitrust cases:

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/google-loses-the-adtech-monopolization

This thrice-convicted monopolist bribed Apple – more than $20b/year – to stay out of the search market:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/how-do-you-solve-problem-google-search-courts-must-enable-competition-while

They cheated app vendors, ripping them off with sky-high junk fees and onerous conditions that raised prices while lowering the share of your spending that went to the companies whose products you were paying for:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-google-loses-antitrust-case

They cheated advertisers, rigging the ad market to gouge businesses on ad prices and underinvesting to fight rampant ad-fraud, sucking hundreds of billions out of the productive economy for overpriced ads that no one saw:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google

Google wasn't always this way. The "don't be evil" company owes its very existence to the open web ecosystem. When the company started to index the web in 1998, it was playing on an open field, where any web server could talk to any "user agent," even one whose user was a startup like Google, that was making a copy of every page on the server.

For years, Google thrived on the open web, and built open technologies. Android – the mobile operating system that Google bought in 2005 – was presented as an "open" alternative to existing mobile offerings, and as the mobile market collapsed into two companies – Google and Apple – Google always presented Android as the open alternative to Apple's "walled garden."

There were always ways in which Google's "open" Android wasn't exactly open. The company engaged in illegal "tying" arrangements that forced hardware vendors and carriers to lock out versions of Android that were created by Google's competitors:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_18_4581

In other words, even though Google offered a mobile platform that was (mostly) technically open, they used commercial and legal strategies to choke off the market oxygen for alternative Android versions that tried to capitalize on that technical openness.

But life finds a way. The existence of an open, modifiable, tinkerer-friendly mobile operating system meant Android hackers could create alternatives to Google's (de facto) walled garden, which thrived in the cracks in that garden wall. Operating systems like CalyxOS, PureOS and Graphene offered a more private, more secure Android experience, one that was largely "de-Googled," blocking Google's relentless acquisition of your private data:

https://grapheneos.org/

And Google's data-hunger is relentless. Android exfiltrates a chunk of your personal and behavioral data every five minutes. The "resting heartbeat" of Android surveillance pulses and pulses, irrespective of whether you're using your device, and the instant you unlock your screen, that heartbeat quickens, sending even more data to the company:

https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/

All that data has proved irresistible to authoritarian governments. Donald Trump's enforcers have seized on Google data as a vital source of information about the identity of protesters and the location of migrants hunted by ICE:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/google-broke-its-promise-me-now-ice-has-my-data

So there are plenty of reasons why users would seek out these de-Googled alternatives to Android, finding them in spite of Google's illegal commercial tactics to block access to competing technologies. The worse it got, the better those alternatives looked.

Perhaps this explains Google's years-long effort to increase the technical barriers to using modified versions of Android, beefing these up to match the commercial restrictions that stand in the way of a de-Googled existence.

Back in 2023, Google floated the idea of "Web Environment Integrity" (WEI), a set of modifications to web standards that would force your computer to disclose its operating environment to the web servers it connected to, even if you objected to this disclosure:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI was a form of "remote attestation." That's when your device uses a sub-processor (sometimes called a "Technical Protection Module" or "TPM") or a walled off part of its main processor (sometimes called a "secure enclave") to produce a cryptographically signed description of your device and its configuration: which hardware, software, plug-ins and settings you're running.

When you connect to a server, it demands that your device send this "attestation" before it handles your request. If your device won't provide this data, or if the server doesn't like (or recognize) your device and its details, it can refuse to deal with you. And because the attestation is prepared by a TPM or a secure enclave that you can't modify or override, you don't get to decide which facts about your device it's allowed to see.

Practically speaking, this means that remote attestation lets a server refuse to deal with you until you turn off your ad-blocker and your tracker-blocker. It means that the server can discriminate against users who block auto-play sound and video, who block pop-ups, who put the tab in the background when it's playing a mandatory pre-roll ad.

WEI was especially disturbing in light of Google's efforts to kill ad-blockers and privacy blockers through updates to Chrome, an effort that continues to this day:

https://protonprivacy.substack.com/p/google-is-finally-killing-ublock

These blockers are an important part of the dynamic between web publishers and their users. In the real world, when you get an offer, you can make a counter-offer. That's all an ad-blocker is: a way for users to respond to a server whose opening bid is, "How about you give me all your data and let me take over your computer in exchange for showing you this page?" with "How about 'Nah?'"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

We didn't get rid of pop-up ads by making them illegal, or by boycotting advertisers who used them. We got rid of pop-up ads when web users installed pop-up blockers, which made pop-up ads pointless. Take away our ability to block obnoxious digital content and you guarantee that we will be flooded with it.

These kinds of modifications aren't just used to block ads – they're also key to accessibility. People who have photosensitive epilepsy or who (like me) suffer from low-contrast vision problems use add-ons to reformat pages so that we can safely and legibly access them.

WEI's creators said they were only trying to put the web on a level playing field with apps, which routinely rat you out to the companies you connect to. Apps are a source of bottomless enshittification, not least because (unlike the web), they enjoy special, dangerous legal protections that make it very legally risky to modify them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems

WEI wasn't an effort to level the playing field between apps and the web – it was a race to the bottom, an attempt to make the web as enshittogenic as the app hellscape.

Public outrage to WEI killed the project, but Google's commitment to augmenting its illegal commercial lockdown efforts with technical lockdowns never ended. Now, Google has rolled out an experimental "reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification" that uses an app, your camera, and your device's TPM or secure enclave to produce an attestation about your Android device:

https://support.google.com/recaptcha/answer/16609652

This will make it much easier for the apps and other services you interact with to block your device if you run an Android alternative, or if you install a mod that overrides the actions of Google's stock Android:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacySecurityOSINT/comments/1tbdjbj/privacy_concerns_around_googles_recaptcha_mobile/

This is a terrible idea – it's every bit as bad as WEI was. In an age in which Big Tech is ever-more tied to authoritarian governments, redesigning our devices to tell strangers things we don't want them to know isn't just shortsighted, it's inexcusable.

[anneriawings]

OKAY CAN SOMEBODY EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE FUCK YOU SHIP A PACKAGE OF COOKIES TO A FRIEND WHO LIVES IN NEW JERSEY, ONLY TO HAVE IT NOT GET THERE ON TIME BECAUSE IT SOMEHOW ENDED UP IN GUAM?

I JUST

GUAM?

[phantomrose96]

IM CRYING REAL TEARS MAH DUDES THE COOKIES ARE IN GUAM

KATIE TRIED TO SEND US COOKIES OUTTA THE GOODNESS OF HER HEART AND JUST

“OHHHH THESE COOKIES WERE SUPPOSED TO GO TO NEW JERSEY, PHIL? I THOUGHT YOU SAID

[anneriawings]

12/27, 8:37PM CT

ITS STILL IN FUCKING GUAM

[anneriawings]

12/28, 12:18PM CT

THE COOKIES ARE IN HONOLULU GUYS THEY ***FINALLY LEFT GUAM***

[anneriawings]

12/28, 10:22PM CT

THE COOKIES ARE FINALLY ON THEIR WAY TO NEW JERSEY

GO COOKIES GO

@phantomrose96 @cupcakecreeper​ @homebeccer GET READY

[anneriawings]

lol i was looking through my history to find the tracking number page and

[anneriawings]

12/30, 12:39AM CT

@phantomrose96 @homebeccer @cupcakecreeper

holy fuCK HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS

THE COOKIES ARE ALMOST THERE

[phantomrose96]

The saga of Katie’s Guam cookies is my Anime of the Season

[anneriawings]

THEY’VE ARRIIIIIIIIIIVVEEDDDDD THEY’RE ON THE FRONT DOORSTEP

[anneriawings]

COOKIES ACQUIRED

[homebeccer]

THE THRILLING CONCLUSION

also as a bonus visual here’s a rough approximation of these cookies’ journey

[anneriawings]

how the FUCK did this blow up and get so many notes

[anneriawings]

SO FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES, @homebeccer @phantomrose96 @cupcakecreeper AND I WANTED TO KNOW HOW MUCH IT WOULD ACTUALLY COST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO INTENTIONALLY SEND THESE COOKIES FROM TEXAS TO GUAM TO NEW JERSEY AND???????????????

AND 

IT’S

IT’S

IT’S NOT AN OPTION IT’S NOT AN OPTION I CAN’T I-

I COULDN’T EVEN HAVE SENT THESE COOKIES TO GUAM EVEN IF I’D HAVE TRIED 

[phantomrose96]

Cant believe we uncovered the Guam Cookie glitch folks

Its not even an in-game feature

[crowreys-wormstache]

Oh my god it’s back

[anneriawings]

H O W

[anavar-immela]

I’ve had this sort of thing happen.

At least it explained why the package took so long to get here.

[phantomrose96]

I appreciate that they have an Entire Stamp for “Missent to Nepal”

No one said “hey let’s stop missending things to Nepal” they just said “let’s make a stamp for this” and called it a day.

I’m gonna get Missent to Guam tattooed on my arm in commemoration. 

[sharkgal4]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

[offonaherosjourney]

Get Moist von Lipwig in charge of the US postal service ASAP

[korasonata]

Ok I know this is super old now but I work at a post office and I was curious about the price so I did some digging and I still don’t have a definite answer because THE REASON it says “no shipping services available” is because all shipping services were actually suspended to Guam at the time. As in no packages, parcels, letters, or mail or any kind could be sent to Guam. So not only is it mind boggling that it got sent so far in the wrong direction of its intended destination, but because nothing should have been able to get in to Guam period.

You QUITE LITERALLY could not have sent these cookies to Guam if you tried.

[talon-dragonbeast]

i swear people freak out about the tamest shit ever

"they identify as animals" thats nice, sharon

"no but they actually think they are animals" theres a war going on, sharon

"like they wear masks and run around in all fours and even bark at people" sharon the war

[2-point-5]

i like being a lesbian and all, but holy shit, men are so cool. i hope all men reading this have a wonderful day.

[basilpaste]

i like being gay and all, but holy shit, women are so cool!!!! i hope all women reading this have a wonderful day as well!!!!!!!!!

[2-point-5]

[image description: the epic handshake meme. one arm is labelled gay people and the other is labelled lesbians. in the middle it says "fuck yeah bro". end id]

[2-point-5]

hey guys, quick reminder! this post is about uplifting other people!!! tags like 'ugh, but men are gross lol' or 'op has never met a man' are not welcome and will recieve an insta block! men are cool! women are cool! thank you for coming to my fucking ted talk! :-)

[josephbrassey]

Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:

1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.

Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."

2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.

3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.

But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.

But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.

The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.

As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:

"Fuck you. Make me."

I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.

[veteratorianvillainy]

Don't comply in advance