Weird things that happened at some point during the Nats’ three broadcasted intrasquad games last Wednesday-Friday

Don’t mail shit? Still want to help the USPS?

Okay so everyone’s like BUY STAMPS but if you’re like me, you send maybe 5 letters a year, if that. You’re sitting there going “Okay, I could buy like… a page of stamps, but my last one is still only half-used… I’m more likely to lose it before I use them all up.”

That’s cool, same.

Here’s an alternative option:

Go to the USPS website, as if you’re going to buy some stamps, right? Browse through the fancy new ones until you find one you like… say this one:

Pretty neat, right?

Instead of buying the stamps that will literally take you years to go through, scroll alllllll the way to the bottom.

What’s that? A tote bag with the same design?! Yup! A set of 5 tote bags even, for your friends too. Wouldn’t that be cool to use for trick-or-treating?

You can also type the name of the stamp design you want into the search bar:

A mug! A rubber stamp set!

Different designs have different gifts! There are even gifts for designs they don’t have in individual sheets any more…

Look at the dragons!

There are so many cool things on the USPS’s website. And yeah, some of them also come with stamps (like the kid’s book) but hey, you’re mostly getting the book!

You can also start a collection with the first day of issue cancellations (usually about $2 each) and other fun things even if you don’t mail letters regularly.

BRUH. DUDE. THERE IS A TINY LITTLE USPS TRUCK, IM GONNA DIE

:0

Ranking Nasty Trek Figural Mugs

a few of those extremely creepy Applause figural mugs are making rounds again. I looked it up, there are twenty. I decided to rank them. Images sourced from random eBay listings. (apparently, some people collected full sets?)

1. Gorn. a perfectly charming acceptable mug. I’d be proud to drink out of this boy. definitely aided by how plasticky the Gorn’s head already looks. confused by the width of the yellow stripes. disappointed they didn’t attempt to go for the magical disco eyes.

2. Worf. already a little dead-behind-the-eyes but far better than the later examples (oh, we’ll get there). again, helped by the fact that Worf’s face is made distinctive via hair and prosthetics.

3. ‘Borg’. they kept it non-specific so I can’t needle them about a bad likeness (I just used Hugh because… Hugh) but I will say that this looks far more spy-gadget than borg. also, uh, you might want some help with the eyeshadow fallout there, buddy,

4. ‘Cardassian’. again, helped out by not specifying, but he looks depressed (’s why I went with Damar). I really hate the deep grey wrinkles/ridges. nasty. points for a decent spoon, though.

5. Geordi. we can’t see the eyes so they didn’t have the opportunity to make them creepy- definitely a good thing. there’s something weird about his mouth.

6. Sisko. uh… I don’t like it. 0% of Avery’s charm transferred. a bit malevolent.

7. Beverly. resembles Gates in no way but not actively offending to my sensibilities? what is that hair

8. Deanna. ew. blank personality-less doll. this list is starting to get creepy.

9. ‘Kazon’. first of all, I’m truly bewildered as to why they chose to go for a Kazon as one of their twenty Trek designs? they obviously felt bad about how few Voyager characters they’d picked but- who even remembers the Kazon that well? second of all, bad.

10. Q. this is garbage, they’ve ripped away his sex appeal! can you imagine this soulless ken doll flirting with Sir Patrick Stewart? NO. where’s his chin. where’s his lipstick. SHAME this mug.

OK, we’re getting down to the real unacceptables here.

11. Odo. on the one hand, I enjoy the existential emptiness of this one (same, bro) but on the other hand it is WRONG. this should’ve been the easiest one! Odo doesn’t really have any facial features! his eyes are so blue, his hair is so brown, I’m so confused…

12. Bones. look, I don’t even really know what to say about this one. De Kelley’s charming smirk has been turned into… that. I feel like that mug stole my lunch money.

13. Spock. HOW DARE THEY. his ears are so thick, not the curling delightful vulcan ears he’s due! Leonard’s face is graceful, elegant. this is just sad. green eyeshadow? green??? so weird.

14. Jim. I’m sorry, who is this exactly? I have not met this man. atrocious.

15. Quark. deeply cursed. the eyeliner really makes it what it is.

16. Janeway. the sheer fuckin’ audacity someone must’ve had to look at this fucking thing and declare it an acceptable bastardisation of Kathryn’s beautiful face!! the lips? the brows??? the everything? Kate is fine-boned and delicate. 

17. Riker. ok, to be fair, this mug made me sob with laughter.

18. Jadzia. BAD! VERY BAD! LOOK AT TERRY! LOOK BACK AT THE MUG! BAD!

Bonus: they made her beautiful Trill spots look like sperm! AAHH!

19. Neelix. there are not words in the English language to describe how viscerally ugly I find this mug.

20. Data. why is this the worst offender, you ask? (actually, you probably don’t.) Data is supposed to be full of love! and this is a hollow demonic being! how could anyone do this to our boy. HOW COULD THEY. -1000000/10, this mug is a monstrosity.

And that’s all 20! I’m sorry.

The Riker and Dax ones look like they’ve been touched somewhere very sensitive by some very cold.

And that Neelix mug will haunt my dreams forever.

I feel like these mugs are Extremely Haunted

That Riker mug has experienced some kind of trauma

What have his ceramic eyes seen

what has he witnessed

what horrible secrets does he know

I fear the answers to these questions O.O

There are some genuinely bizarre choices in who got mugs here

And these are cursed

Part of me is sad that more deserving characters were ignored while a random Kazon was included…like…were they even that iconic? I can understand including a random Borg and The Gorn since they are probably some of the most recognisable species from the show that even non-Trek fans would recognise…but were the Kazon even that popular WITHIN the fandom?

But another part of me is like…maybe it’s for the best that none of my other faves were turned into Haunted Mugs…

(Old Timey New England Stephen King character voice) Sometimes no mug is better…yessir…sometimes no mug is better…

3. Higher educated folks tend to have a better understanding of their self worth, reducing how much the rich can exploit them.

4. Higher education also fosters innovation and entrepreneurship, leading to more small companies, more competition, and an even smaller exploitable work force.

5. The class gate to higher education will be opened. And their kids will finally be truly judged based on their academic merit rather than the fact they could afford to attend in the first place.

6.) Higher education teaches critical thinking skills, and tends to make people more fairness-minded, and a lot more liberal. That's all bad news for our Corporate Overlords.

Good

As someone who ran into the glue at 23rd st while trying to commute home during the protest I can tell you that:

1) there was a sign encouraging you not to swipe or get glue on your card and that

2) the emergency exit door was open so you could either walk onto the platform or hop the turnstile to still access the train

The protesters left you with a choice: become a fare evader (supporting the protest) or leave. But they didn’t stop access to the subway as a utility.

I see a lot of outrage in the comments about inconveniencing people on their commute home but consider whose commute under “normal” circumstances – under police surveillance – are inconvenienced by police.

Are you upset because you’re not someone who usually has to think about if you’ll be singled out for doing the same thing as everyone else?

Did the protests make you experience the thing that, oh, they were protesting against?

Hey, then they worked.

And if you don’t like it, well, the next subway stop is 5 blocks away. How convenient for you that this impediment was a one day, one stop friction in your life and not a constant threat.

And before anyone complains about how the protest impacted disability accessibility, 23rd st doesn’t have an elevator or other accessibility options. Let’s start with critiquing the institutional access first, shall we?

Can someone please explain this to me? because all I got out of this was, Protesters vandalized things, causing less money going to fund transit, causing transit prices to rise or causing transit to stop existing, potentially making transit unavailable long-term to people who depend on it, without inconveniencing anyone with a car of their own, meaning this disproportionately fucks over the poor.

Basically what happened is that the Manhattan Transit Authority raised the price of a train ticket by 2.75$. Which doesn’t sound like much, but now a large percentage of poor New Yorkers can’t afford to get to their jobs, and started jumping the turnstiles.

Now you’re right, subways cost money to run, and the fares are there for a reason. But what people are really protesting here is what the MTA did in response to the fare jumpers.

They hired cops to literally just…stand around and watch the stiles, costing the city MORE money than if they just reversed the fare hike. New Yorkers are furious because there’s clearly money to pay for these extra cops, but apparently not for maintaining the trains.

Tl;Dr The MTA basically said “we don’t have enough money to run the trains so we are increasing the price” meaning thousands of people were faced with either hopping the fare or losing their job, but when people started jumping the stiles they apparently the MTA had enough money to hire a small army of cops.

And some of the context here is that the real reason the subway fares have been rising is because NYC, like many cities, has been slowly shifting more and more of the burden of operating expenses from everyone (including the wealthy) onto the backs of the poor alone. So for example, the developers and businesses involved with Madison Square Garden haven’t paid property taxes in almost 40 years, although the tax abatement was only supposed to be for 10 years. That’s $555 million which should have helped to pay for infrastructure – but some of the people involved are big donors to the governor, so they get to keep freeloading. And so that he looks like he’s “doing something,” Cuomo has now hired 500 more cops, at a price tag of $249 million, to catch fare evaders… who cost the city only $200 million. He’s happily collecting his chunk of cheese, but the poor are paying more and getting criminalized for struggling, and meanwhile the subways are literally on fire.

So this isn’t really about how much it costs to pay for public transportation. It’s about who pays, and whether that fare is fair.

People seriously whinging about the poor walls and glued up card swipes and the poor cop-sie wop-sies lol. Theres also the issue of the city paying MILLIONS to station cops and brand new suveillance systems into subway stations with the idea of stopping fare evaders, but predictably all that happened were cops beating up poor poc at subway stations. They could have spent millions on improving the subway systems and its near nonexistent accessibility for the disabled, or poured it into stalling fare hikes and reinforcing transportation as a public need and right and not as a luxury :) :) :) but yeah, some meanies spray painted the city’s precious walls.

Also? Speaking as someone who can afford the fare hike? The cops carry ENORMOUS guns and it’s fucking terrifying seeing a bunch a giant white dudes with automatic weapons hovering around the subway entry and it pisses me off that public money is funding me living in want feels more and more like a police state.

Something else to remember is that when we say the subway is under maintained, we don’t mean normal states of disrepair. We mean the central dispatch office was using a switchboard installed in the 1930s up until 2017.

But they got money for cops

the cows up at the fence like

@dairyisntscary @agro-carnist

Cows make for the best audience

These videos are my fave

156 Americans tried to draw 10 famous logos from memory.

THIS IS THE BEST IDEA I WANT THIS SO MUCH WHY CANT WE HAVE THIS

The best takes on this are all the other Americans going “um planes exist” and “um trains can’t go that fast wtf”

Babes they have this in like every other developed country we are literally the only ones with our fingers up our ass like this.

Lobbyists.

Big Auto and Big Oil are why we can’t have this.

I was irritated at the resolution so I looked for a better quality, idk if tumblr was just deteriorating it tho, so here

Link to full size map | Guardian article | Slate article | Business Insider article

This map was created by Alfred Twu in 2013. Here’s his twitter.

These articles mention some information about the implementation of a high speed rail system in the United States. To sum it up:

This is the pre-existing Amtrak route map (and the pdf):

Amtrak travels at an average of 71 mph with maximum speeds of 150 mph. A trip from New York to Los Angeles could range anywhere from $350 - $1300 and it would take roughly 3 days.

The one proposed by Twu would travel at 220 mph and take 18 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles. Bullet trains average at 320 kph, which converts to about 200 mph. Test runs have gone up to a 375 mph.

This isn’t the first proposition for a new national high speed rail either. In 2009, the Obama administration proposed one but it was shot down by Republicans. Here’s the map:

And here’s an explanation by Vox as to why this wasn’t the best plan.

And here are some more route examples:

And yes, Big Auto and Big Oil are exactly why we can’t have this. Here’s a 24 minute breakdown by Hasan Minhaj on Patriot Act.

Amtrak would be MUCH better if they got the amount of support that industrial rail companies receive. Unfortunately, they can’t afford the lobbyists.

He had it coming.

what a time to be alive

i think the nats’ twitter wins valentine’s day

Fangirl Challenge → [1/5] Sidekicks→ Milhouse Van Houten  

Reblog if you’re  a joyless communist

Buy Tony’s Chocolonely Slave-free Chocolate. Fuck Nestle.

There’s a whole movement of ethical, slave-free chocolate companies, and the advocates who work to track the legal battle to make ALL chocolate slave-free, worldwide, at http://www.slavefreechocolate.org

You can see the current (2020) list of slave-free chocolate companies on their website at http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies, or below if you don’t click links:

Nestle’s net worth as of today is 10.46 BILLION dollars.

The largest, most prosperous of these slave-free chocolate companies (Vosges, which is also a female-owned corp if that matters to you!) is worth… $100 million.

That means that Nestle has $10,360,000,000 more dollars with which to pay its employees, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY the cacao farmers who are the backbone of their entire industry.

If all of these companies worth LITERAL BILLIONS OF DOLLARS less than Nestle can afford to be slave-free, so can fucking Nestle.

Good

As someone who ran into the glue at 23rd st while trying to commute home during the protest I can tell you that:

1) there was a sign encouraging you not to swipe or get glue on your card and that

2) the emergency exit door was open so you could either walk onto the platform or hop the turnstile to still access the train

The protesters left you with a choice: become a fare evader (supporting the protest) or leave. But they didn't stop access to the subway as a utility.

I see a lot of outrage in the comments about inconveniencing people on their commute home but consider whose commute under "normal" circumstances -- under police surveillance -- are inconvenienced by police.

Are you upset because you're not someone who usually has to think about if you'll be singled out for doing the same thing as everyone else?

Did the protests make you experience the thing that, oh, they were protesting against?

Hey, then they worked.

And if you don't like it, well, the next subway stop is 5 blocks away. How convenient for you that this impediment was a one day, one stop friction in your life and not a constant threat.

And before anyone complains about how the protest impacted disability accessibility, 23rd st doesn't have an elevator or other accessibility options. Let's start with critiquing the institutional access first, shall we?

I laughed way too hard at this

in case anyone is looking through the notes trying to find the original artist it’s will mcphail !! feel free to check out his site but also here are some other things he made too !!

OOOHHH CLICK ON THAT LINK THIS GUY IS FUCKING GREAT

HOLY SHIT

this guy GETS IT