"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"

[anxietyproblem]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I think I'm burned out on having so many opinions. Going to have opinions on less things for a while. Sorry if that disappoints anyone.

[delgrosso]

Counterpoint: even more opinions, but on just one super specific thing.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

That is what creates the most memorable scifi.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#yeah you would know all about that wouldn't you derin

Gimme another decade or two of practice and I'll write something so fucked up that it scars classrooms full of high school English students

[ouroborosorder]

oh so when the final boss‘s phase transitions, gamers love it, but when I, a trans woman,

[meeblo]

I support every trans woman's right to have their health bar dramatically refill accompanied by flashy VFX and the name above the hp bar changing.

[velvetcloak]

[vaspider]

I think it's really important to point out one of the major flaws in that highway analogy:

Eminent domain requires payment.

The government cannot come in and merely seize your land under eminent domain and pay you nothing. There is a process & they have to pay you market value for your land and the buildings on it. A couple of my former clients went through this about 15 years ago when the 202 Bypass went through in Montgomery & Bucks County in Pennsylvania. Their houses and land were taken via eminent domain so that the highway could be built, but, I need to say this again: they were paid.

They were paid and there was a process in which they were informed ahead of time. They didn't just drive home one day and find out their home had been snatched, too bad, so sad, no money for you, you should have put your house in a bank vault.

Just taking someone's shit like that without compensation has a name, and it's not eminent domain or anything like it:

It's fucking theft.

(I'm not interested in hearing the same tired shit about how copyright is inherently bad and only protects corporations, because as someone who deals with protecting my livelihood from scammers and scrapers via copyright every goddamned day, this isn't a fun mental exercise/philosophical debate for me, and you're absolutely wrong. Fucking save it for someone ignorant enough and with time to waste on that.)

[vmures]

The highway argument is also disingenuous in that ignores the very real harms caused by the systems that decide which neighborhoods to target and who precisely is going to be displaced. From numerous historically black neighborhoods being demolished to farmers being displaced and left with no livelihood. There has been a great deal of harm done in the name of public good. https://historyfortomorrow.org/story/eminent-domain-and-the-displacement-of-black-communities/ https://thenarrativematters.com/eminent-domains-devastating-impact-on-communities-of-color/

https://www.condemnation-law.com/blog/general-eminent-domain/farm-land-and-eminent-domain/ https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2019-10-29/interstates-burning-farms-eminent-domain-remembering-romaine-tenney

There have long been worries about the abuse of eminent domain, and the AI scraping model is far closer to the abusive aspects of eminent domain than any supposed public good aspect. https://ij.org/issues/private-property/eminent-domain/eminent-domain-history/ https://www.purdybailey.com/blog/2020/january/5-famous-cases-of-eminent-domain-abuse/

Anytime someone brings up an argument that states something is for the greater good, always ask yourself "for whose greater good?" Who benefits most, who gets harmed the most, what are the actual harms when you think through the logistics and future implications of the harms and not just the immediate harm, is there remuneration for the harm being caused, is it sufficient?

These are all things that must be asked before proceeding with any so called public works plan. Anyone who tells you otherwise is scamming you.

[vaspider]

Oh, completely agreed. I only didn't go that far bc, like, you don't even need to before the argument entirely falls apart. But yeah, if people don't know about how eminent domain has been used to destroy Black neighborhoods in particular, they should read up and ask the questions.

[aya--bb]

genuinely I'm so sick of people wanting all fiction to be ethical. can we all just get a little gross with it. the point of fiction is that it's not real. we can be unethical in fiction; same goes with being perverted with fiction, being unrealistic with fiction, and being grotesque with fiction. not all fiction has to be ethical, not every character has to be ethical, and that's okay. can we stop with the puritanism. be gross. be unrealistic. be whatever. if I don't like it it's not my business as long as we're all clear that its fictional.

[notemily]

via ered.bsky.social, the only kinds of unethical fiction:

people in the replies are going "what about books glorifying unethical things" and "what if it's propaganda" and you, my friends, are who this comic was made for

[jem55]

Them: Who’s your favourite Star Wars character?

Me: (Pulls out 10 X-Wing Star Wars legends books) So his name is Wedge & he’s just a lad who wants to run his squadron in peace & no one he hangs out with is sane

[craftingcreatures]

It's vitally important to recognize that Wedge isn't sane, either. Like, he is hampered by the responsibility of being a public figure in a position of some authority within the New Republic government, but remember that this absolute madlad refused promotion to general multiple times just so he could keep playing chicken with Imperial turbolasers. The people he surrounds himself with are more obviously off their rockers, sure, but Wedge chose to surround himself with them. Remember, hijacking an imperial cruiser by hiding a Gamorrean in a smuggling compartment with nothing but a sawed-off turbolaser and sheer chutzpah may have been his squad's plan, but Wedge approved it. Just because the burden of responsibility forces him to pretend like he's normal and well-adjusted doesn't mean he's not a crazy little space gremlin born with a tragic lack of self-preservation instincts, it just means he hides it better than most.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[homunculus-argument]

[Freeze frame in the middle of an amazingly wild chase scene of some poor soggy bastard getting chased by an enraged crowd]

"Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering what's going on, and how I got into this situation in the first place."

[The stop unfreezes for a few seconds as this terrified target takes a few more desperate running steps, pausing again just as someone is about to grab his ankle]

"Well, the truth is, I still actually don't know what this was about. But I do know how I got here: I can never resist an angry mob. Now watch me get this fucker."

[the seizing hand grabs the runner by the ankle, he falls down and proceeds to get unceremoniously beaten to death. The protagonist brushes the dust off their clothes and the rest of the movie continues normally. The killing at the beginning scene is never mentioned again.]

[saywhat-politics]

[onethirdofimpossible]

Okay, I was just going to reblog this without commentary, but I can't keep this to myself. I'm a PhD student in environmental science and this is my fucking highway.

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

Just in case anyone thought that climate change was a "recent fad" in research.

[nat-20s]

I'm far from the first to say this but "scientists don't want you to know ..." is perhaps the single least reputable phrase in the English language. number one category of people that want you to know so so bad. number one category of people actively begging for you to Know. if there was a fuckin berry or supplement or whatever that had decently high rates of preventing mega explosion death they would never shut the fuck up about it. everyday they clock into the "trying to know stuff" factory and they don't want you to know? my fuckin ass

[byjove]

My grandma’s on and off again boyfriend that she cheated on grandpa with died today.

[byjove]

RIP to Nana’s side piece. Though they never married, Grandpa died in September and she brought his long term competition to Thanksgiving that year.

[byjove]

Grandma and Grandpa had a shotgun wedding when Grandma was 19. Grandpa went off to Vietnam which left her, a severely mentally young mother, alone. Never heard a complaint about her side piece Jeff. He seemed to make her happy and for that I salute him.

[byjove]

I’m an only child so I have to discuss sensitive family drama with my 38,000 followers instead.

[femmmie]

My grandmother broke up w my grandfather through a letter and he just pretended to have never read it. They got married and had three kids.

[lucisthings6]

My grandmother confessed on her death bed that:

Her and Grandpa were in a relationship with their best friends

The four of them have been in a relationship since they were teenagers

They flipped a bottle cap to see which girl the boys would marry

Their children could have either man as their biological father but their biological mother is the mum that raised them

The past two weeks has been chaos since her confession 😂

[polyamorousmood]

[secretgarden]

[charlesoberonn]

[ovur]

You don't remember my old url....? O-oh.. no its fine. I said its fine! Don't... don't touch me.

[ovur]

*trips while I'm running away and you get a panty shot*

[flunkett]

Huh

[frikinnerd]

Can you believe they tried to monetize this shit

[ovur]

Ok I'll go fuck myself

[wizardarchetypes]

i know it's been said on here and said again but people do so desperately need to genuinely do intentional work to build distress tolerance and start figuring out how to recognize the differences between danger, discomfort, and when a situation that is merely uncomfortable is triggering an emotional flashback in your bodies because it resembles a past situation that actually was dangerous which makes it difficult to realize/believe that this moment is merely uncomfortable.

[wizardarchetypes]

i spoke to an allistic person who said their autistic classmate had a meltdown in class, during which the autistic classmate collapsed to the floor in the middle of the room, screaming and crying. they said it was "terrifying" and they were arguing for the autistic student to be removed permanently from the program.

when i asked whether their autistic classmate's meltdown was dangerous or merely uncomfortable, they said, "i felt like i was in danger!"

i understand that. but that's not what i asked.

[wizardarchetypes]

"i shouldn't have to experience that."

yes you should, actually. that's life. upsetting things happen. no one should have to experience any discomfort. but we do. we get stung by bees and sunburns and headaches. we live in bodies in the world.

autistic people are human beings who have the right to exist in society, including during meltdowns. having one class of your entire semester interrupted by a singular meltdown is not anymore of an infringement upon your entitlement to education than having your class interrupted by a fire alarm or cancelled for a snow storm.

one of my peers once experienced a cardiac event 10 minutes into class. it was terrifying. it was desperately upsetting. i was contacted by the school and offered counseling because i happened to be the one who managed the situation until paramedics arrived. everyone was worried about my classmate first and foremost, and then about me. no one blamed anyone, and certainly when my classmate happily recovered and returned to school, no one thought they should be removed from the program.

the difference being that people believe a disabled personal, especially with cognitive disabilities, in crisis are not experiencing something outside of our control, but instead that we are in fact making a choice to make a scene, out of malice.

[romanceyourdemons]

rip to the guy who posted his very expensive yixing teapot to r/tea, only for the comments to be not compliments on his taste as he expected, but instead GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY and I SHOULD CALL HER. he then crossposted it to r/gongfutea, which is ordinarily more dignified and self-serious, but was it? was it?? of course not, because this is reddit, and this was the teapot

[werewolf-transgenderism]

breaking news! new beautiful photo of the best species of frog in the world just dropped

cochranella euknemos, 📸 nuqui_herping on instagram

[werewolf-transgenderism]

for everyone in the notes lamenting that this guy is poisonous: they are not! they're just pretty :) since they're a glass frog, their major defense mechanism is being translucent and hiding their blood while they sleep so they look extra translucent and blend in with leaves <3

[werewolf-transgenderism]

they put ~90% of their red blood cells in their livers while they sleep :) so they look extra translucent and leafish