These days, lots of public libraries have a "library of things" collection where you can check out kitchen appliances or yard tools or toys, and, as a children's library assistant, the most popular library of things item that I handle regularly is a plastic scepter thingy called like "unicorn princess magic wand". And whenever I check it out I make a big show of looking at the little kid and being like "do you solemnly swear to use your unicorn princess magic powers only for good and never for evil?"
And pretty much without fail, the little kid will get the world's most mischievous grin and go "I'm gonna use it for EVIL!!!"
I kind of wish that the polarities of violence and sex in popular culture were reversed. Like, I wish that writers and filmmakers needed to justify up the wazoo their decisions to show a murder on screen when "they could have just done it tastefully in shadow or something," but no one even batted an eye at a sex scene. I kind of wish that erotic video games were the norm but FPSs were a considered a weird and loser-ish thing to play.
I mean, I really wish that you didn't have to justify either, but it bugs me that, of the two, killing is the one that you can use in wholesome family friendly entertainment but fucking is the one that you forever need to shield your children from even knowing about.
I don't think that this difference is innocent, either. Like, I think that sexual repression is a good means of control whereas the state always needs an army of young men who are willing to kill people.
listen. I understand if you dont want to see sex in a movie. But im begging you to think about how the prevalence of murder and acts of harm being portrayed in media vs. the censorship and hush-hush nature behind sex affects our relationships with it.
think about what this post is saying about the normalization of violence and demonization of eroticism. How sexual repression and the indulgence of violence lets a society be guided in a certain direction.
If you dont want to see a sex scene in a movie, thats fine. But this isnt about personal preferences. This is about how culture is shaped by what we choose to show. For the love of god.
I am a horror movie fan who loves gore and violence and murder, you know, a sicko, and I also think it is extremely weird and unsettling that violence is so much more accepted in media than sex. Compare the kind of violent content you can put in a PG-13 movie with the kind of sexual content allowed. It's fucked up!
Obviously I don't want anyone taking away my horror movies and replacing them with softcore porn or anything, that's not the point. Just... maybe we should be less worried about kids seeing a depiction of consensual sex and more worried about stuff like, idk, being taught that incredibly bloody revenge is a normal way to respond to being harmed, or that the right way to handle criminals is to explode them, or some of the things I think might do more lasting harm than the simple fact of violent imagery.
There was an episode of Deep Space Nine. Back in the... late 90s? I think? That featured a lesbian kiss. This being two or three decades ago now, they received many letters of complaint, a number of them claiming it meant the show was no longer Family-Friendly.
One of the writers responded to one of those letter, asking if it would have been more appropriate for the women to shoot each other with a phaser. He was answered in the affirmative, and his response was that if the person felt it was better for his children to see an act of violence than an act of affection, he might want to reconsider his definition of family-friendly.
hiiiiiiiii its me again. long time no see. im dj aka damone. im a blak s.asian disabled bi woman
i just got kicked out of an abusive home with basically nothing but my medication and my laptop, and i live in the middle of fucking nowhere, have no one in the area, no license, and i need to sort out accommodation, food, and other essentials for me and my cats tonight and for the next few days most likely.
im australian and our dollar is dogshit so anything helps more than you know. love u.
Become a supporter of damone today!
poll to make this less "woe is me" (though please do not get it twisted. its at least a little woe is me. but look theres a button to press)
would you consider yourself a pessimist, optimist, or realist?
hello hi some quick updates: the most important is that my accommodation has been extended, but it ends on friday the 31st (it is the 29th today)
after this im likely going to need to find somewhere else to stay and its much more expensive to stay in this town, funds are running out, and so i need to try and get somewhere in the city
ive also added stripe as an option on ko-fi alongside paypal
as always, thank you all so much for your help so far, i would have been utterly fucked without you especially with how much bureaucratic bullshit hoops ive had to jump through and wait on. i will be trying to fund as much as possible on my end as well. any help has been and will be much appreciated. ily
more updates below, much longer. very long actually. slightly rambly sorry ↓
ive received a one off crisis payment of $400 from centrelink, and im going in today to lodge the physical dsp forms ive filled out as i cannot scan and upload them from here
my caseworker has been trying to secure me a spot in a refuge but right now they have yet to get back to her and i am not able to take this into my own hands. i have to wait, as i cant self refer or follow this up on my own behalf
several places are available to take my cats, but they wont be able to until theyve either gotten their boosters or i can get the records to verify their shots are still in date. im waiting on hearing back if the clinic has found them, but in the meantime ive booked an appointment as early as i was able to for the 11th of august to get their shots. however its a matter of finding somewhere to stay until then, once theyre boarded ill have a lot more flexibility. if i can get them in somewhere earlier i will do so immediately even if its out of pocket, but i wont be able to before accommodation runs out regardless
i was able to get some winter clothes so i have some warmer stuff for this abysmal fucking weather. some shirts, pants, a jumper, and hoodie. im gonna get some socks and gloves today i think. fuck winter
ive been cooking so any costs have been kept fairly low in terms of food, at least as far as possible w the price of groceries.
i have applied for other payments and rebates to see if i can squeeze anything else from the system rn from services, as well as having what little super i had released
ill need to pay for transport to the city for me, my cats, and some of my belongings to get there. public transport isnt an option in terms of what i need to take and my own physical limitations with disability, but once i find somewhere to stay and dont need to take my cats everywhere with me to adhere to policy, im very adept at navigating public transport so that should be a relative non issue funds wise beyond time crunches and less accessible locations. even if i were to just send my belongings ahead to the city and take public transport with the cats, courier fees are about $400
i HAVE negotiated my way into being able to pick up some of my things from the house, mainly extra clothes, any records i can get, some personal valuables.
i will potentially be making a gfm to help with the rest of the rental and moving process so i can get as much of my shit as possible from the house that i cant take this week and store it, try and get some basic secondhand furniture and appliances, get some driving lessons to get my p plates so i can retrieve my car and also use it to move things, and try to secure stable housing long enough to find my footing so i can completely remove any dependency on my abusive family permanently
if and once i secure as spot at a refuge, the cats are handled, and i have a moment to properly figure myself out while the dsp application processes, i will be renewing my rsa and trying to find some small shifts that wont fuck up the application (i need to keep my hours under 14 a week, which... w my physical state wont be difficult unfortunately), save, get my p plates so i can get my car, and overall get as much of my shit together as possible
i am very confident that once my dsp is sorted out, i can find a stable few shifts a week bartending, and i have my p plates for my car, i will be quite functional and be able to afford my own stupid fucking baka life. ive been spending the past few months budgeting, working on applications and gathering evidence for my dsp, rental hunting, and meeting with caseworkers and specialists, i know that once i have stability, ive done my best to ensure maintaining it is within my ability, and im as certain as i possibly can be in my current state, that i will be fine. its just getting the fuck out of here and finding somewhere long enough to give me the chance
so my current priorities will be accommodation in the weird limbo phase, transport to and from places as necessary, and groceries
Having your interests mocked as a kid and general low self esteem will have you insulting the things you like even when they're generally considered very good. Because you like it, and historically when you like something it's stupid and not worth anyone's time. So you will say nonsense like "I recommend this book/game/film, but it's okay if you hate it, it sucks, I really enjoyed it but that's because I'm an idiot" and you are recommending them the Citizen fucking Kane of that particular media type. And importantly: you need to stop doing this it is killing you
Trapped between being militantly pro-choice and deeply concerned about the erosion of abortion rights and thinking the way that people talk about pregnancy/motherhood/children on this hellsite is pretty gross and borderline misogynistic.
To expand on this a bit more, at the risk of sounding like That Guy, a lot of people on here don't seem to realize the right to choose to have children has been something that's been forcibly taken away from people as well. I live in an area with a pretty large Native population, a group that has, historically and even to this day, been subject to forced sterilization. They're not the only ones, either. Other ethnic minorities, disabled people, etc have all been subject to eugenics and had their reproductive rights undermined in the other direction to promote what dominant society considers a """pure""" population. Even a lot of the modern anti-abortion movement still disproportionally favors making more white people above all else. Saying that not having children is always the right choice and that keeping a child is always the bad, regressive choice, frankly, comes from a position of privilege. Like everything else, it depends.
Pro-choice goes both ways, and everyone should have the right and medical support behind whatever option they choose without discrimination. Simple as.
And can we please stop this over-the-top disgust over the bodies of pregnant people please please please y'all are so happy to defend all sorts of disabilities but then dissolve into a misogynistic froth when pregnancy comes up
Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851
Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later
Kid survives
1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family
Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair
This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies
Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence
Bologna falls the next year, 1859
Kingdom of Italy forms 1861
By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more
(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)
(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)
Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”
The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”
What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.
Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.
Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic
I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.
Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.
This mindset is so valuable to cultivate, evict that stupid little perfectionist from your brain! Do stuff kinda shittily! Dont have the energy to make food? Cool eat a bag of chips, make real food later. Give your teeth a 5 second brush who cares. Doing dishes and you get sore three minutes in? Put that shit on hold, you can continue later- but now you have clean cups.
People like to make fun of the whole laundry-on-a-chair thing, but yknow what if you dont have it in you to spend time n energy on folding it, chair it. You still have clean clothes. If you only have 10%, and you give 10%, then youre giving your 100% in that moment. Its so so so important to respect the 100% part rather than focus on the 10, cause anything is better than nothing
Labubus are blind bags but they're also blind bags with some of the most insane dark patterns stacked on top. The online store for them has a thing where they tell you what you got the second you order it online so that you can immediately try again if you didn't get the thing you wanted.
There's also a shake feature that is designed to encourage you to buy more than one by narrowing down the possibility space on a crate of options so that if you're hunting a specific model you can verify that it's guaranteed to be in one of these three IF you buy all three right now!!!!!
I just thought of this post, which was actually how I learned what Dark Patterns are, because I tried to cancel my Adobe Acrobat subscription, and it took much longer than I anticipated because several times throughout the process it felt like it was intentionally trying to trick me into thinking I'd cancelled my subscription when I actually hadn't yet.
Please read up on Dark Patterns and learn how to recognize them.
hey guys remember when you were in school and you saw how adults treated you and your peers and you thought "man. when i grow up i'd never do this. i will never be the annoying old asshole talking about how different it was when i was a kid, when i clearly grew up in a different time. i will never blame the kids for things they can't control." do you remember that? haha me too. anyways can you guys stop making fun of "ipad babies" and start seeing children as people
I cant even go and see some street food trucks without their damn menus having AI images on it. you have a camera. take photos of your goddamn food. I would rather see a photo of the most weirdly lit burger than the fake monstrosity you're showing me.
i get asked fairly often what my opinion on k9 units is and this might surprise people, but i actually don't really like to talk about the animal welfare concerns surrounding k9 units (and MWDs as well, but i get asked about those less often)
i think dwelling on the animal welfare aspect of it sort of distracts from the main issue, which is that these animals are being used as living weapons against marginalized people (predominantly black people) and even if they were treated like royalty I'd still want them abolished altogether
and also i think it's insulting to the people getting savaged by these animals for us to quibble about whether or not the poor heckin pupperino is being abused
my notifications are once again devolving into a spirited debate about the ethics of actions that could potentially make someone uncomfortable, and at risk of sounding like someone about to get a lot of irate anons I think we're frankly giving way too to much moral weight to hypothetical discomfort
the thing about discomfort is that it's an extremely nebulous category that can be triggered by virtually anything and that's far too broad a category to have any inherent moral quality to it. like. my mom was mad uncomfortable when I stopped shaving. that didn't mean I was doing violence against my mom it just meant she needed to get over herself. many such cases it must be said.
