If you're in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:
The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.
The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.
The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.
The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.
The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.
The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.
The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.
Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.
The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.
If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.
You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.
The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.
Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.
Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.
Veterans' benefits suck these days.
Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.
The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.
The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.
They turn into those eraser shavings and then you swipe them off your desk and they land on the floor and someone steps on them and they stick on their shoe and eventually the person goes home so right now your word is at someones house
In a sense, it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it sounds to think Pepsi would genuinely honour that. Pepsi said that they would, therefore they have to, or else they’re guilty of false advertising. Companies can’t be allowed to say whatever they want in adverts, and when asked to pony up pull “it was just a joke, bro”. To use a slightly less ridiculous example, Fallout 76. One of the preorder editions can with a canvas backpack. But when they finally shipped, the durable canvas backpacks somehow became flimsy nylon. Complaints to publisher Bethesda got the response that the canvas version advertised was a prototype that was too expensive to make, so they handed out the cheap imitations instead. It took like two years in the courts for Bethesda to give people what they actually pay for. And they won because advertising law says you have to deliver on what you promise, even if it’s a Harrier jet. Introducing any level of “it’s just a joke” makes that effectively meaningless.
A similar thing happened with the first McDonald's Monopoly game. Naturally, there were a few pieces that were super rare for the high-level prize sets or one-off big wins. But it gets even wilder - a security guard at the factory that was printing the game pieces STOLE THE TOP PRIZE PIECES and cashed them in through family and friends, and eventually ended up in a whole black market scheme with a drug ring to launder stolen Monopoly pieces and the resulting prizes. The guard actually argued fraud on the part of the printing company executives as part of his defense, claiming that they'd rerun certain prize drawings to keep the bulk of the winnings inside the U.S. (where they would have otherwise gone to Canada).
WAIT HOLD ON I cannot fucking believe when I was like four years old my parents were cajoling me to walk with the family and trying to get me to keep up even though I kept insisting that I was "tired" until they took me to a doctor and found out my LUNGS DIDN'T WORK. how insane that we live in a world where reasonably loving parents think their FOUR YEAR OLD is trying to be LAZY. like they were mortified to be clear. adults are just so trained to ignore children's complaints as untrustworthy, kids just need discipline, they can't possibly speak for themselves. what the fuuuuck.
YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE BTW you should always be trying to take children seriously, especially very little ones but definitely all of them. the most disempowered class basically legally defined as property and most people are like "yeah that's good actually I hate when they Loiter lol they're stupid and loud and i actually think children should stop existing. restrict their personhood more actually"
i wish there was a way to say "you're right, but this is really ineffective and even counterproductive messaging to anyone who doesn't already agree with you" without sounding like an asshole
oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!
“Don’t,” Simon said, stopping Grace with a hand. “I don’t trust it.”
“Can I at least take off my helmet?” Grace whined. “I’ve had an itch on my face for like, the past hour. My glasses are sliding down my nose and-”
“Alright,” Simon snapped. “Just. Keep it nearby.”
Grace sighed in relief and twisted the helmet off his head.
“Human suit inefficient. Eridian space suit much better,” Rocky declared.
Grace huffed. “We can’t just wear a flexible metal polymer and call it a day, Rocky. We’re squishy, leaky space blobs, remember?”
They started to argue the merit of EVA suits versus Rocky’s when Grace noticed Adrian sliding off their seat to climb closer to Simon. He turned his chair over to better speak to them, as Adrian pointed their tall carapace toward him.
“Simon had a nightmare, question?” Adrian asked him, opening and closing their claw with what Grace recognized as a nervous gesture.
“Oh. Uh, yeah,” Simon shifted. Surprising Grace by his openness, he went on, “I didn’t know until now, but I had a feeling that it… the Light, the anomaly, was talking to me.”
“Good hypothesis. Human minds are very active in sleep. Speaking through mind when awake and sleep.”
Simon just nodded as Grace half-listened to Rocky detailing how he would create a xenonite human space suit.
“It is painful, question? To hear the anomaly.” Adrian asked.
“It’s not my favorite,” Simon deadpanned. “But it’s quiet now. M’ fine. Don’t worry.”
His voice grew soft in a way Grace only heard when he talked to Adrian. The teal Eridian swayed slightly, choosing their words before they spoke.
“Always worry,” Adrian said. “I do not like nightmares.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Simon huffed.
“Do not like anomaly speaking to Simon. Light was blaming Simon,” Adrian went on, huffing steam out of their vents that fogged up the interior of their suit.
Grace had the sudden intense urge to run Simon through an FMRI machine. God, he wished he had one of those to see what the activity of his brain during these communications.
“Yeah, well, we had a- a deal,” Simon shrugged, the movement inhibited by his bulky suit. “We said we’d leave each other alone, and…”
He tossed his hand flippantly toward the screen.
“But Anomaly spoke in Simon’s nightmare before Hail Mary Crew sent probes,” Adrian pointed out. “Told Simon lies.”
“I- I don’t know. I mean. It knew we were trying to stop it, so it was trying to scare me, I guess.” Simon let out a bitter laugh. “It worked.”
Grace had long since stopped trying to act like he wasn’t eavesdropping, but Rocky didn’t berate him or hold up the pretense either. To anyone else it would look as if Rocky was focused on the remote and screen of the probe, but Grace knew his best friend better than anyone. He could tell when and what Rocky’s attention shifted to.
“Anomaly is wrong," Adrian stated, voice firm.
“We broke our deal. We’re hunting it and-”
“Adrian heard Simon tell Grace what Anomaly said,” Adrian stated. “Anomaly is incorrect, statement. Adrian, Grace, Rocky will always save Simon.”
Simon froze. Grace felt his brow furrow in confusion. When did Simon say that?
“You heard that, huh?”
His shoulders further hunched, and Grace shoved away his own conflicting emotions to focus on Simon. When Simon had mumbled under his breath, he must have said it. Of course, the Eridians could hear what Grace couldn’t make out. The Light had told Simon that they wouldn’t save him? That the ‘cowardly scientist’ wouldn’t save him. That must have been… terrifying. No wonder Simon woke up screaming. Grace felt anger bubble up in his stomach. An old, vindictive part of him that Grace thought he had long buried resurfaced. He wanted to see the anomaly’s cells under a microscope, dissociated, dissected and strewn into pieces, translucent and incapable of harm like a dead astrophage cell. Nothing but water, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The one good thing about water-based life forms was that Grace knew how water-based life forms died, even if they were alien. He could only hope the sample they tore from the entity was something Grace could work with.
But he shoved down his anger in favor of helping his friend. Jerking from his nightmare, Simon had all but leapt into his arms, so Grace was pretty sure he wasn’t monumentally screwing up by slinging an arm over his shoulder and squeezing him in a side hug.
“It was wrong,” Grace agreed. “You’re part of the crew. We all save each other. Rocky saved me, Adrian saved me-”
“Grace saved Rocky!” Rocky piped up.
“That’s right, bud,” Grace smiled. “We saved each other.”
“And Simon took a spacewalk to try and retrieve Grace when Grace was being a stupid idiot bitch.”
“Whoa! Hey!” Grace exclaimed. “Don’t think I forgot about your language, mister!”
“Am not student. Grown Eridian. Older than Grace.” Rocky whistled.
“Does not give you a pass to go around calling me a- a-!” Grace steamrolled into the next sentence, “-mean words! You don’t even know the cultural implications of that word, do you?!”
“Would know if Grace explained swear words to Rocky like a grown-ass-”
“Hey, hey, hey!”
Their bickering prompted a laugh from Simon, just a small surprised snort that immediately drew Grace’s attention. Simon’s eyes creased as he shook his head, parts of his pulled-back hair falling in front of his face as he ducked his head. Grace felt his indignation freeze alongside his body, stuck watching those dark strands snake over his eyes, squinting with mirth. A smile tugged at his own lips.
“Did you teach him those words?!” Grace breathed, far too… breathless to sound properly scolding, like the wind had been taken from his sails.
“No!” Simon insisted, brow only furrowing a bit when he caught sight of the smile Grace tried to wrestle out of his expression.
It wasn’t amusing, gosh darn it! He’d spent four years safeguarding English curse words from Rocky only to hear him say, ‘Peek a boo, bitch!’
“Rocky already knew words! Needed Eridian translation. Said this before. Had some time before building Clyde to update many words into the translator," Rocky ranted.
Grace sputtered, “And you chose the b-word? Of all things?”
“The b-word?” Simon said incredulously, a smile on his face. “You can’t be serious.”
“Eight years,” Grace groaned, slumping down in his seat. “I kept him away from English swear words for eight years!”
Adrian’s tinkling laughter, joined by Simon’s much quieter chuckles, finally loosened any lingering annoyance he felt.
This is true but I'm gonna be controversial for a second and say that I feel bad for jocks who get hit with The Injury™️too. The Injury™️ fucking sucks, man. Having something that everyone praised you for when you were young suddenly betray you and having to grapple with both a sudden loss of ability (whether it's something that can be recovered from or not) and figure out what your future looks like now that the one you had imagined for yourself (whether it was actually realistic or not) feels like it's been snatched away is brutal.
i think this captures the defining pathology of the collective social media psyche right now. we are in the thrall of people who are wantonly cruel but who also demand to be coddled at all times in every way
