Today's Document
Discoholic 🪩
ellievsbear
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
cherry valley forever
Jules of Nature
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almost home
KIROKAZE
DEAR READER
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
NASA
if i look back, i am lost
wallacepolsom
Sade Olutola
pixel skylines
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$LAYYYTER
@theartofmadeline
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@shoulael
It just struck me that this is Pride Month. Like yes, I know June is Pride Month, but that's always been intellectual.
But I realised yesterday that, four years ago to almost the exact day, I finally embraced my belonging on the aromantic spectrum. In the years since I've also come to terms that I am on the asexual spectrum as well. That was somewhat harder to do.
ppl use crab bucket metaphor to describe the lateral social violence of oppressed people, but tbh I think it's more like how sometimes when chickens are kept in such abysmal horrific close quarters conditions with no ability to make decisions or control any aspect of their lives, they just start violently attacking each other, to the point where some factory farms where this is a problem simply cut or trim parts of their beaks off so they can't do as much damage. because this is more cost effective than providing them with more space, species specific enrichment, appropriate lighting, etc, and the system we live under prioritizes cost effectiveness over the well-being of alive creatures.
it would be a mistake to think that this represents the natural behavior of chickens.
it would be a mistake to think that the social displacement harms we do to each other as marginalized people under a great deal of stress, under capitalism, represents the natural behavior of people.
human beings, however, possess the ability to learn to identify when we are engaging in this type of lateral social violence, and the ability to prioritize developing alternate coping mechanisms that cause less harm to the other people in our communities, and leave us with more energy to address the actual causes of our suffering.
I understand why optimization culture has boomed so hard in the past several years.
Something big happened that most of us could do very little about. The world became openly unstable in ways people could no longer politely ignore. Institutions failed. Safety nets frayed. The future got harder to imagine. So a lot of people started reaching for control wherever they could find it: morning routines, dopamine detoxes, habit stacks, sleep scores, screen-time limits, supplement protocols, productivity systems, “nervous system regulation,” whatever the app-store priesthood was selling that week.
I get it. I really do.
But I’m going to pull a phrase people love to use when they want to sound emotionally mature: trauma explains behavior; it does not excuse it.
Because at some point, “I am trying to regain a sense of agency in a chaotic world” turned into “everyone who doesn’t live like me is undisciplined, addicted, immature, morally weak, spiritually degraded, or secretly begging to be rescued from themselves.”
And that’s where I get off the ride.
I’m not saying optimization is bad for everyone. Some people genuinely benefit from tweaking parts of their lives. Some people like routines. Some people feel better with stricter sleep schedules or less social media or more deliberate habits. Great. Wonderful. I’m sincerely glad when people find something that makes their life easier.
The problem is the culture around it.
The culture is ableist because it treats “functioning” as a moral achievement and assumes everyone has the same body, brain, energy, pain level, sensory needs, executive function, and recovery capacity.
It is classist because so much of it quietly depends on flexible schedules, disposable income, safe housing, nutritious food access, leisure time, privacy, and the ability to refuse exploitative work conditions without immediately risking survival.
And it is Puritanical because underneath all the soft wellness language is the same old suspicion of pleasure: too much comfort will rot you, too much rest will weaken you, too much fun will corrupt you, too much convenience will make you less human. You are always supposed to be renouncing something. You are always supposed to be proving that you can suffer correctly.
That’s the part that bothers me.
Not “I tried changing this habit and it helped me.”
Not “I personally feel better when I do less of that.”
But the constant creep from personal preference into moral hierarchy. The assumption that a “better” life is always a more controlled life. The belief that every impulse must be interrogated, every pleasure audited, every habit optimized, every moment made legible to some invisible performance review.
And honestly, I think a lot of people would rather accuse everyone else of being addicted, lazy, dysregulated, or broken than admit how scared they are of being alive in a world where control is often partial, fragile, and unevenly distributed.
By all means, arrange your life in ways that help you. But the second your coping mechanism turns into a cudgel against people with different needs, different limits, different joys, different bodies, different schedules, different resources, or different definitions of a life worth living, it stops being self-improvement and starts being social pressure.
we need to have a conversation about how the "everyone is 12" theory of politics now doesn't only apply to conservative men who want to kick the bad guys' asses and then go home and eat a steak their bangmommy made just for them (NO VEGGIES!!!) but also to adult women who are literally afraid of other people having sex and being sexy. it's like there's been this massive regression among women in their 20s where we've gotten rid of feminism and replaced it with a new form of purity politics that requires never saying anything bad about another women unless you find a new and creative way to call her a whore. the misuse of "she caters to the male gaze" as a new form of enlightened slut shaming, labeling any woman who wears a short skirt or has sex with a man as "not a girls' girl" and "a pick me," the intense overreaction to celebrity affairs or even just shit like the summer house mess where a woman is now dating another woman's ex even though there was no overlap and the "relationship" was just kind of a situationship that fizzled but now these little girls are online demanding both people involved in the new relationship lose their jobs and not get any brand deals, the panic over mildly sexual content in literally any capacity like ads or an instagram post in a crop top, the compulsion to link everything back to the epstein files, the monthly meltdown over sex scenes on tv and in movies. everyone is 12 and AFRAID of sabrina carpenter.
a helpful guide
and yeah i don't think it's a mistake that there are basically two ages a woman can be, which is a literal child whose brain isn't developed yet so nothing she does is ever her fault bc she is constantly in some state of being groomed by malevolent ((forces)) so she needs to be told what to do by an authority figure who knows better, or a disgusting monstrous crone (over 30) who wasted her fertile years being a girlboss so she should just pack up her dusty vagina and move into a home bc nobody will ever want her again and it's embarrassing for her to still be out there enjoying her life. it's just pathetic that so many women who consider themselves progressive and even feminist have internalized this dichotomy which is indistinguishable from the way right-wing men view them
“It is troubling to see that attitudes towards gender equality are not more positive," said Julia Gillard of King’s College London.
>Particularly among Gen Z, our data shows an interesting duality: they are both the group most likely to agree that women who have a successful career are more attractive to men but are simultaneously most likely to agree that a wife should always obey her husband and that a woman should never appear too self-sufficient or independent.
Incredibly stupid things are happening
I know these two things seem contradictory, but there’s nothing a conservative man loves more than to tear off an angel’s wings. There are plenty of women that would willingly choose the obedient SAHM lifestyle, but these kinds of men always seem to go for the opposite. Why? Because it’s a power play. There’s no need to break a horse that’s already broken, and that would do nothing to validate that man, his ego, and his place in a world he sees as designed for him.
Another factor is that these men avoid dating conservative women who already want the lives they want them to have because those women's standards are too high. Specifically, such women expect to be the obedient stay at home mum, but they also expect their men to be the masculine ideal from the other half of the equation -- they tend to look down on their men if they cry, they expect them to be able to financially provide for the household, they want them to uphold their end of the bargain. You see this again and again in groups of conservative men who go out of their way to date liberal women; there is a power play, to tame someone untamed and bring her into line with his expectations, but there's also her lack of expectations of him. They want a woman who will do all the household and keep the home but ALSO will not reject him for not being able to afford to finance the family alone. They want a woman who'll respect and obey him but ALSO be fun and relaxed and let him show whatever emotions he wants. They want the Perfect Trad Wife who won't expect him to be the Perfect Trad Husband.
You see the same thing in conservatives who complain that all their leftie friends are abandoning them, but who won't just hang out with right wing friends instead. They don't want to hang out with other righties because a group of righties quickly becomes judgy and hateful and socially competitive, and is only fun to hang out with when they want to vent, whereas their leftie friends were more relaxed and fun. They want license to be unpleasant and expect unreasonable things of others, but want the people around them to be pleasant and not expect unreasonable things of them.
I see it brought up a lot that it's a reaction to their own lives. These men are Big Mad about the fact that they were mostly shuffled from school to childcare to bed, and didn't get that idealised upbringing they feel robbed of. They're told childhood used to be freedom to roam, safe neighbourhoods, a caring mother at home waiting with supper on the table, etc, and without anyone telling them the truth... these guys believe it. The broad narrative is that the past was so much better. They're mad, and they want society to "go back to how it was before women had rights."
That means benefiting from her now (her earning money is still beneficial to him) and then getting reactive and upset when she wants to keep doing that after they have children. It's a thing of, "why don't you want those happy smiling family moments I never had?"
The whole obedience thing is just part of the right's idea that society needs patriarchal structure to function well. These guys have been fed this idea that feminism destroyed their childhoods, it destroyed how society works, it broke all of the systems that functioned "just fine" before women were able to do shit for themselves.
Feeling important to someone is also another thing. Cis men do not feel valued in society anymore. I hear it all the time. I eyeroll at it, but that's how they feel. They don't feel the benefits of equality (because they don't notice that cis women are still doing the majority of the fucking work) so they rebel against it. How dare they not be made to feel happy and important, valued, etc like men of the past were. They don't have social capital like they used to, that unearned respect just for being a man (usually a white man) in a society that catered to that. Instead of fighting the broader systems that are bringing everyone down in equal measure, they rail against the easiest target.
And also, these men have been embraced by the right wing. Leftists do have more fun, we do have a lot of amazing causes and forge really deep friendships, but we're also incredibly squabbly and miserable from the outside. Nobody hates leftists more than other leftists, right? Personal ideology matters, we spend a lot of time trying to be very good and will take up arms against (what seems from the outside) extremely arbitrary things. There's so, so much drama, so much to learn. Say the wrong thing and you'd likely get yelled at. We as leftists do REALLY suck at onboarding people who'd otherwise be sympathetic, because we'd rather split hairs over something minor. There's no funding behind our ideologies, there's no slick websites and presentations, just people shouting a thousand different messages. Being a leftist for most of my life, I can easily gum onto what people are talking about, but for the average person, who feels their future has gone wrong, who wants purpose, it's very overwhelming. I have no idea what to do about this, it's just something I've observed.
The right wing does not project a face of hardship, but of being wronged and needing to return to greatness. They're warriors, they're big men, they're tough and they are respected by each other. It's a lot more alluring to someone who feels wronged by a society that used to cater to them. They offer quick alliances. Ideology and personal convictions actually matters a LOT less in those circles, just adhere to the broader points and you're good. It's a group dunk session on the people you're told to hate, and you're invited as long as you toe the line. If you get cancelled, well, that's your personal failing, and usually it's not permanent. It's very big-tent politics. You slowly get indoctrinated by people with the money and time to explain to you exactly why you need to think like they do. Think of all the streaming sites they have. It's an entire sphere of influence the left simply does not have the funds to compete with. So they get saturated with these patriarchal ideas and this idea that they were wronged, and must make it right through xyz. Obedient women are just one brick in that building.
It's one of those things where you just stand there and sigh, cross your arms, etc. I've watched so many men go down this fucking path. My own father, a boomer, fully believes this shit now, when he used to encourage my mother's jobs and independence. He cheated on her (and got kicked out) within the past year, because of all the manosphere slop whispering in his ear. How dare she not cater to his every whim and instead need to work. How dare he not feel "important as a man."
Those Gen Z men are headed down a very similar rabbit hole of ruining their lives because they can't take a fucking L and respect the person in front of them.
science has always been political. what gets studied. what doesnt. who gets to do the studying. on and on and on.
scientists on this post: yuuuup 👍
people who aren't scientists: um actually ☝️
I left research science for a multitude of personal reasons but a big one was that my autistic arse just could not keep up with the politics. Trying to increase your profile and your work's appeal for grant money (both critically important factors for succeeding in science) by carefully tailoring your work focus, grant proposals and papers to attract the interest of various grant committees focused on what research is in fashion and also to try to maximise the number of references to your papers in other people's papers takes so much time and just isn't interesting.
People in the notes are all like "yes sometimes The Government or The Lobbyists remove funding from sciences that might reveal things that they do not want known" and yes yes covid and climate change and vaccine denialism and racism and all that, but it's not just the obvious stuff. When I was working in labs, metagenomics was the next big thing, so EVERYTHING was metagenomics. If you worked in environmental or medical microbio, there was an 80% chance that you were taking some mud or poop or something and doing metagenomics on it whether or not it was the best way to analyse what you wanted to analyse, and bam, that was a paper, possibly two, it kept the lights on. And if 100 labs run 100 experiments where they do metagenomics for random things to do with the human body, then at a 95% confidence interval, 5 of them will find a completely nonexistent correlation for any random thing you can think of if they happen to check their data for it, and they need to keep the lights on and the PhD student who's running the experiment needs a paper so even though that wasn't what they were looking for, bam -- everyone's seeing that men and women have different microbiomes in their large intestine! People with autism nave different microbiomes, people with MS have different microbiomes, kids who are vaccinated have different microbiomes so watch out! And there's not enough papers to do a review paper for six or seven years, and when that review paper is done only other scientists will read it, because Everyone Knows that vaccines alter your microbiome so stay away from them, and Everyone Knows that men and women are so so different because why else would their large intestines be so different? Look at this paper!
And the psych guys are doing MRIs because that's the Next Big Thing, and any bias culturally relevant enough will get positive papers for it because the 100 labs will check their 100 papers and the 95 that show no difference at 95% confidence are of course never published because there's nothing to say. And the medicine guys are running ten thousand seaweed extract experiments to kill cancer cells, and their confidence intervals do tend to be better, but there is no defense against an industry where the only way to survive is to publish and the only way to get funding is to look into something that the grant committee wants you to find something interesting about, and you'd better find that something interesting even if you kind of have to publish your study before repeating it to check for that confidence interval -- someone else will repeat it, or you will once the paper's out, but you've got to get the paper out. And that paper had better be useful for other scientists to reference, even if you have to change the tone and the implications and choose which results are worth referencing, because getting more references is how you keep your job and how you convince the next grant committee.
Big Bad Government Lies About Covid is a problem, but it's not the problem. A perfect government with a massive science budget does not solve the problem. The system of research is inherently political because it is inherently competitive and because it deals with numbers and statistics that are not intuitive to humans.
Weird Fantasy (1950) #18 written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Joe Orlando, with editor Bill Gaines
So he said it can't be a Black. So I said, "For God's sakes, Judge Murphy, that's the whole point of the Goddamn story!" So he said, "No, it can't be a Black". Bill just called him up and raised the roof, and finally they said, "Well, you gotta take the perspiration off". I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, "Fuck you", and he hung up.
Al Feldstein, Tales of Terror: The EC Companion
Just to add context for those not aware of the impact of this story.
The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.
They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.
The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.
The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.
The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.
Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.
Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.
The black character was not a caricature, or comedy relief, he was a main character in his own right, a human who "simply" was black.
When I was a professor I fucking LOVED teaching this comic. You can read the full thing here (and please read the letters to the editor at the bottom as well—including a message from Ray Bradbury).
I'm so glad people added the appropriate context here. Genuinely, this is one of the most important panels in the history of comics.
Time for my special brand of rent lowering gunshots: I don't care about people who cheat and neither should you.
People are often trapped in abusive, loveless relationships they can't escape from and it's common for the victims of this to find love and support from someone else. This especially happens to women (it's common enough that dramatized versions of it are a common story trope, my favorite being the song Vincent by Brian Fallon, but that's neither here nor there), gay and trans people (both often get in marriages and relationships before they know and after coming out are threatened physically or financially, and it's very common for religious abuse to happen in these scenarios), and polyamorous people (I have had to help coach so many poly people through situations where they came out to a partner and their partner threatened their life or housing, many poly people who think they're getting into a poly relationship but the other person demands a monogamous one suddenly and threaten them, and many relationships where someone was like I get to be poly, but you don't and you dating anyone else is cheating - this person actually wrote a semi successful callout about the person they were abusing).
These situations are very, very common and not expecting these people to fall in love and want to be with people that actually make them feel loved is just stupid. Abused people deserve love even during the abuse and it's a common tactic for an abuser to accuse a victim of cheating and abuse.
"you're telling me I can't be mad bout someone cheating on me" nope. You can be mad at that. Even a friend of someone being cheated on can be mad at that. What I'm saying is you shouldn't give two fucks about other people situations unless you are actually connected to it. It's not your relationship, you don't know what's real and isn't. "You don't understand you've never experienced this!" I have, and after being cheated on I came to these conclusions and forgave them. They were signs of bigger problems in the relationship that had to be dealt with. "I don't have to forgive them!" No you don't, I'm not saying that.
But I'm saying that people are way too ready to talk about cheaters, as a solid group, deserving death or abuse or whatever. Yes, cheating can be a method of abuse, but it can also be a freedom from abuse.
Annie Glass
Wire sculpture
This piece is called Shake by the way
WH Auden, “Partition”
maybe y'all didn't notice but fat people who don't hate ourselves sure did notice that people were obsessed with shitting on fat people in the late 90s and early 2000s (conservative political time) and now are again (fascist political time), coincidentally while the market for weight loss has become a 90 billion dollar industry due to glp1s.
you are not immune to propaganda. it makes some people a whole hell of a lot of money for you to hate fat people and fear becoming (or staying, I think like 70% or something of the US is fat) one of us.
a lot of the fearmongering over fatness comes from studies directly funded by the weight loss industry...i think people don't really realize or think about the fact that research can absolutely be influenced and skewed by its funding. there is also research that shows that an amount of the negative health outcomes for fat people come from anti-fat bias. if you go to the doctor with concerns and the doctor simply tells you to lose weight, your problem is neglected and you may not even bother going to the doctor with the next problem.
every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.
the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.
some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.
you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.
some resources to learn more here:
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/feeling-fat-may-be-worse-for-you-than-being-fat-idUSTON079061/
A study spanning almost four decades and involving more than 100,000 adults in Denmark found that those with an 'overweight' body mass index
there's so much crazy shit once you go down the rabbit hole. for example, BMI was not invented by anyone with a medical background. it was never meant to measure individual health.
The U.S. weight loss industry reached an unprecedented high in 2023, estimated at $90 billion, largely driven by surging sales of the widely
Evidence is mounting that our body fat supports everything from our bone health to our mood, and now, research suggests it also regulates bl
just gonna reblog this forever because i love fat people and we deserve fuckin basic human dignity and respect regardless of our weight
the more i talk w/ leftist friends the more i start to realize that they think culture is only defined by food or "traditional" (i.e. "ethnic") garb and nothing else
mentioned how white americans do in fact have a common culture and they genuinely thought i was joking. culture isnt something only granted to the Cool People of Color. just feels like among progressive groups there's this dichotomy created in which only the virtuous oppressed minorities have culture and anyone who is privileged some sort of void cultureless being
As someone with a background in anthropology, culture is everything and everywhere. It's so all-encompassing it's hard to even wrap your head around. Everything you do, say, think, eat, wear is wrapped up in culture. Even being deliberately counter-cultural, by consciously defying the expectations of your culture, is still an engagement with culture (often by adopting a sub-culture).
Sure, it's the “simple”, “surface-level” things that people tend to think of, like
In your culture, how many meals a day are you generally expected to eat, and when are you expected to eat them?
In your culture, which clothes are considered “formal”, and when would you wear such clothes?
But it's also so much more:
If you were dating someone, at what point in the relationship would you be expected to introduce them to your parents? That's culture!
How much respect is given to artists? Are people like poets or musicians revered as an integral part of society, or is the predominant attitude “get a real job”? That's culture!
How much value is given to education? What's considered more socially embarrassing - academic failure, or academic achievement? What's the intellectual landscape? Do people tend to respect experts, or denigrate them as “elitists”? That's culture!
Which things are generally considered to be “high culture” or “low culture”? Which kinds of media and art are considered “for the masses” versus “for the elites”? That's culture!
How are politicians treated? Do people tend to respect them as their “betters”, their “leaders”? Or are they assumed to be lying, conniving, corrupt, the worst of society? What kind of thing would end a politician's career? That's culture!
What's considered more egregious behaviour - bothering other people, or asking someone to stop bothering other people? That's culture!
If you were attending a job interview, how would you want to come across? How would you be expected to dress and behave? Would it be better to come across as very bold and confident, or humble and subservient? That's culture!
If you found yourself in a tricky situation - say, broken down at the side of the road - would you confidently expect strangers to come and help you? Or would it seem really weird for some random person to come and involve themselves in your situation? That's culture!
How are you expected to communicate? Is it seen as rude to be very blunt and straightforward, or is it considered rude to beat around the bush and make allusions and try to soften what you're saying rather than quickly getting to the point? That's culture!
I could go on (boy could I go on). This is so not meant to be all-inclusive; this is just a tiny sample of the things that make up “culture”.
To put it bluntly, a lot of the time the word “culture” seems to be used to mean, essentially, “the things that make people of colour different from white people”. Oh, this guy eats this different kind of food; that's culture. This lady wears these clothes to a wedding; that's culture. But we white people, we don't have “culture”; we just do what's normal. But it's all culture! Everything! All of it! And culture isn't just the result of where in the world you come from - class, occupation, rural/urban location, minority status, political affiliation, all these things and more can result in cultural differences even within a small area. Multiple cultures often co-exist, blend, overlap, and borrow from one another within the same place, which is especially noticeable in places with legacies of migration. People bring different cultures from around the world, and these interact with the dominant culture in all sorts of interesting ways. But a culture being dominant doesn't mean that it ceases to be a culture.
Claiming that certain groups of people (generally, whoever is the dominant majority group in a particular context) “don't have culture” is just as dumb as when people claim they “don't have an accent” simply because their accent is the most common one where they live. There is no “default”, every deviation from which is “a culture” or “an accent”. Everyone has an accent. Every community, everywhere, has culture(s). If you aren't aware of your culture, or don't think you have an accent, you're probably just so used to being considered “default” and “normal” that it doesn't occur to you that no such thing actually exists.
people still watch south park? where was that one really good post that basically decried everything wrong with the show and the creative process from like a year ago again?
Here’s the post.
Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.
I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.
Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:
every AI work tool out there is like "did you know you're wasting up to 90% of your time on pointless busywork that could be automated away? and i look inside and the "busywork" is like. learning how something important works or double checking the reading on the safety valve. AI companies love to say "why would you waste time learning that in the moment when, instead, you could always ask me about it later?" and it's like. the point isn't to "have access to that information", the point is to know it. The AI can only tell me how to fix that air compressor if i can tell it what the problem is, and even then its instructions might not warn me of potential hidden dangers or might not see that i've got my screwdriver on the wrong screw or might not even be telling me the truth. I need to know how the pump works. I need to know which lines lead where. I need to understand the system I am working with. If something goes wrong I need to know how to fix it, because by the time something tells me how to fix it, it might be too late.
someone please add the abigail sims poem chatgpt fucks my wife i am too high to deal with the results that duckduckgo search is giving me to sift through right now.
In the late 1800s, the Philippines was on the verge of winning its freedom from Spain when the United States arrived, appearing to be an ally in the fight for independence. However, behind the scenes, the two powers staged a fake battle in Manila to make it look like the Americans had won. This led to the Treaty of Paris, where Spain sold the entire country to the U.S. for $20 million without asking a single Filipino for their input. While the Filipino people thought they were finally free, they were actually being traded from one master to another, leading to a brutal war and over 40 years of American colonial rule.
Even after the Philippines officially became its own country in 1946, the U.S. kept a tight grip through unfair trade laws that gave American companies the same rights to Philippine minerals and land as the locals. This created a system where the country's massive natural wealth was shipped away to benefit foreign corporations and whats little left was pocketed by powerful local politicians, leaving the general population in poverty despite living on such rich land.
It’s honestly adorable that after centuries of Western nations helping themselves to resources, wealth, and labor from these regions, the moment people from those same places move West for a better life, they’re told to “go back home.” Oh, absolutely—just point me to which “home” you mean. The one that was looted? The one destabilized for profit? The one still recovering from the generosity of colonialism?
there you go dear internet stranger, proud of ya for making through this year
