Momentarily Untitled

"I think that one should try to believe in things, even if they let you down afterwards." - Jorge Luis Borges

[smakkabagms]

By November, the tines of my deepest thoughts will be “in Velvet.” And I, the mother of nothing, mother of nothing at all, will spook, be loving still, but just the same, the same.

Lucie Brock Broido (via smakkabagms)

[wilwheaton]

(via 53nv61kjasi51.jpg (1125×1138))

[redconverse]

mic drop

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Stupid is timeless.

[kumboochies]

I’m that lady who’s just FEELING it

[beep-beepster]

tbh cables were like that and safety precautions weren’t hard set in yet

[10-thousand-words]

Oh wow this is horrifying

[moripartylove]

Holy shit

[bogleech]

first I was gonna reblog for the electroskelachnid and then I was going to reblog for the lady who’s just like “mm yeah electrocute me in ur web mommy” and now I’m reblogging for the beautiful nightmare that used to be power lines

[waterofthevalley]

Seems like a pretty accurate metaphor for telecommunications tower regs to me. 

[waterofthevalley]

And life goes on. Rolling up and down, moving left and right. Never straight ahead, nature abhors a straight line, that's not what we're made for. We're made for adventure, and adaptation, and becoming. Life goes on, with or without us, because of or in spite of us, and there is so much of it, and it is so dark and so beautiful and bright too, too bright to look at. The flowers bloom and die, the birds sing, the trees spread their branches and then fall and feed the dying earth. And we'll leave it, oh we'll leave it, and doesn't that just cut and slice? But oh the joy of having been here.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Gabriela Mistral, tr. by Langston Hughes, from Selected Poems; “Quietness,”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we have GOT to stop glorifying the ‘mystery’ of jack the ripper. he was just another violent psychopath targeting vulnerable women in a society that had already written them off. 

there are numberless men like that throughout history and I’m tired of us turning them into legends

[argentsileo]

I’ll bite, what’s the chum bucket theory?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

it’s from this Non-adventures of Wonderella comic!

[biglawbear]

So this is exactly what New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did after Christchurch. She refused to say the killer’s name and everyone else followed and now nobody remembers or knows who it was.

[brnbear550]

Feeling ao damn relevant today

[thatfrigginturtle]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

my understanding of history & politics has changed since i stopped asking “why did this happen?” and started asking “who benefitted from this happening?”

[azspot]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Understands Democracy Better Than Republicans Do

The idea that proponents of greater electoral equity have to quiet down because we live in a ‘republic’ is absurd.

“This is a Republic, not a Democracy,” Welch said in conclusion, “Let’s keep it that way!”

These origins are important. If there’s substance behind “We’re a republic, not a democracy,” it’s not as a description of American government. There’s really no difference, in the present, between a “republic” and a “democracy”: Both connote systems of representation in which sovereignty and authority derive from the public at large.

The point of the slogan isn’t to describe who we are, but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics — to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things. What lies behind that quip, in other words, is an impulse against democratic representation. It is part and parcel of the drive to make American government a closed domain for a select, privileged few.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Strange goddess, witch, and daughter of night,

Charles Baudelaire, tr. by Roy Campbell, from “Sed non Satiata,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[tarot-dreams]

King of Wands. Ace of Pentacles. Page of Pentacles.

Believe in yourself. You have the ability and clarity of mind to pursue your dreams, and make them into a reality. Align yourself with an outlook of confidence. Know that there is nothing unobtainable to the one who is determined.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Rain, books, and the dear companionship of you.

Theodosia Pickering Garrison, from Selected Poems; “A Rainy Day,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[azspot]

“The number of elder Americans is growing rapidly, and while medical advancements have greatly improved health care, they have also prolonged the dying process. End-of-life and at-­home care, meanwhile, remain largely undercovered by insurance and underpracticed by medical professionals. For those struggling with daily activities or pain from physical decline it is often impossible to find—and afford—the help necessary to maintain quality of life. For caregivers, the labor and isolation of caregiving is seldom discussed, leaving their struggles ignored and leading a vulnerable population to reach for extreme ends. As Americans age and the health-care industry fails to address their needs, will courts and communities be forced to sanction mercy killings as inevitable outcomes?”

— [Letter from Lancaster County] Going to Extremes

[waterofthevalley]

Okay so I think that last bit is unlikely, because we all know how that’s gonna play in society. But a lot of these struggles jive for me. I’ve watched a lot of people die of old age and it is totally exhausting.

[waterofthevalley]

My Life as a Public Health Crisis

As a fat woman working in food justice, I see firsthand how even those trying to help continue to spread dangerous stereotypes about obesity and poverty.

This is a really interesting article.

[moonsplls]

The wheel of the year

[ultralaser]

Since 2000, fully 40 percent of presidential elections have been won by the loser of the popular vote. Republicans control the US Senate despite winning fewer votes than Democrats, and it’s understood that House Democrats need to beat Republicans by as much as 7 or 8 points in the popular vote to hold a majority in the chamber. Next year, it’s possible that Republicans will control the presidency and both chambers of Congress despite having received fewer votes for the White House in 2016 and for the House and Senate in 2018. Kavanaugh now serves on a Supreme Court where four of the nine justices were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote in his initial run for office, and where the 5-4 conservative majority owes its existence to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s extraordinary decision to deny Merrick Garland a hearing. This Court will rule on the constitutionality of gerrymandering, voter ID laws, union dues, campaign finance, Obamacare, and more; that is to say, they will rule on cases that will shape who holds, and who can effectively wield, political power in the future. “The party that is trying to keep minority rule is also going to be the party that has less interest in true democratic representation,” says Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland. “You have to break some rules of democracy in order to keep minority rule.”

The rigging of American politics (via ultralaser)

[elaenathedefiant]

countries where prostitution is legal have higher rates of human trafficking. that’s like an actual fact. not an opinion or anything. so tbh it seems a bit ‘swerfy’ to completely ignore that

[patrexes]

speaking, uh, as a formerly-trafficked sex worker, it’s extremely difficult to come forward as a trafficking victim in countries where sex work is criminalized; you just… get criminalized under those same anti-prostitution laws. of course reported trafficking would increase when the sole fact of coming forward as a sex worker at all no longer endangers you.

[xenoqueer]

This line of argument is the same one that you see with conservatives who point to the increase in divorce rates as proof that making divorce safer is endangering marriage, while ignoring the massive drops in domestic abuse, murder, and suicide.

It’s a shot argument with them, and it’s a shot argument here.

[61below]

In WWI, when they introduced helmets, they saw a sudden spike in head injuries.

What the casual observer may miss was that they were seeing the increase because of a dramatic decrease in deaths from head wounds.

[gorgonsach]

x

[justgfy]

Unions are trash. Theyll Destroy a whole company for firing a shitty worker.

[gorgonsach]

unions are the reason you aren’t paid 2.50 an hour with steel beams about to bust ya head open shut up lol

[explorerrowan]

Unions are why you have 5 day, 40 hour full-time work weeks. Unions are why they have to pay you in actual dollars instead of “company credits” that you can only spend at the company-owned stores. Unions are why there are fucking fire exits at your place of work. Unions are why it’s not okay for your supermarket ground beef to be any percentage human.

You think your company pays you out of the goodness of their hearts? Or even out of “market pressure?” The “job market” is a myth perpetuated by the capitalists. Corporations would pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And you argue “oh, but if they paid me nothing I’d just go to another one.” Wrong. Because to maximize profits, they all want to pay you nothing. Corporations exist to maximize profits while reducing risk for investors. It’s part of their entire function to find ways to cut costs as much as possible, and that includes finding ways to pay you nothing.

Unions are your defense against that. You think all a union does is strike? If you pay union dues, a lot of that is spent on lobbyists in various governments reminding your lawmakers that you have rights as a living human being that a corporation should not be able to stomp all over. Unions hire lawyers so that if you’re fired for bullshit reasons, the union can stand up for you against your boss. They’re called unions because workers are uniting to pool resources so that they can stand up to these corporate overlords with more money than God. Unions exist because you might not have the words, resources, or time to fight workplace injustices all by yourself. That’s the whole fucking point.

And if a business shuts down because a union is striking, it’s because the business was abusing people and didn’t deserve to be in business anyway. Don’t make excuses for the corporations. They already have trillions of dollars and a couple million lawyers to do that for themselves. They don’t need your help.