wish my life was like a 90's movie where all my friends work in record stores and bookshops and coffee shops and we see really cool bands in small little clubs and get breakfast together and like hang out on roofs and shit

Not to be that guy on this post but whenever I see it it stresses me out. I know it's supposed to be a fun aesthetic but there's a reason things are not like that anymore. There are no record stores left in my town. There are no bookstores left in my town. There is one terrible gentrified cafe in my town. There is no where for the cool little bands to perform in my town. There are no more cool little clubs in my town. Hell we don't even have a bowling alley anymore. All of these things got bought up and knocked down and replaced with a Dunkin' donuts or some garbage and now we all just stay indoors instead of hanging out on rooftops. Capitalism took these things from us. We're not just romanticizing the '90s, we're romanticizing life before social media and COVID and the current stage of hyper capitalism we find ourselves in.

Y'all are fuckin idiots man. That shit is not normal. No other vaccine causes this bullshit.

i don’t think you’ve ever actually gotten a vaccine before if you think that

This is so fucking funny, a localized inflammatory reaction (aka sore arm) at the injection site is literally the most common 'side effect' of getting vaccinated... IN GENERAL. Like, not even just the COVID-19 vaccine.

God do I hope this is a troll.

people on twitter discovered that quite an alarming number of other people did not actually know when they “got their shots” as kids, that those are vaccines. so it’s even possible that people don’t connect the dots that a flu shot is also a vaccination, and yes, makes your arm sore. it...sure is something.

...I'm gonna cry. How have our education systems failed so hard.

I think it's mostly conservative meddling. Almost all of conservative brainwashing relies on lack of knowledge. It's much easier to pull the wool over someone's eyes and lie to them if they don't know how the world works.

My mom got me to be "against" Medicare for all because "if we do that, then people will have to wait for surgeries! They'll die in those lines!"

I had never been to a hospital except when I was four years old to get stitches (so the ER). I had no idea that... sometimes,they make you wait for shit. I had to wait a month to get an appointment with the surgeon to get a needle that was embedded in my thigh removed in 2016 (I had it in my thigh when I stood in line to vote).

And I actually gasped out loud and shouted "WAIT THERE ARE ALREADY WAITING LISTS FOR SURGERIES M4A WOULD CHANGE NOTHING"

It's *why* states with the lowest education tend to be conservative-- because they got into power in the first place and then TANKED the education system to keep people ignorant and afraid to take advantage of em.

lmao at the 'people will have to wait' thing.

I waited SIX MONTHS to get in with a neurosurgeon for my headaches.

My mom waited like 7 hours in the ER only to be told "Oh... you have blood clots in your lungs. That's not good."

Which, considering she was a couple weeks out from brain surgery that had complications and required her to stay on bed rest to resolve a CSF leak and her symptoms she arrived at the hospital for were shortness of breath and anxiety? Should have been a giant red flag!

I once waited like over an hour in a gyno exam room wearing just a paper sheet for the gyno to actually get to me.

Waiting is for medical care is... not a foreign concept in the U.S.

Health Expert Compares Pfizer-BioNTech And Moderna Covid-19 Vaccines, Goes Viral

So someone pointed out to me recently that in a few years, maybe a few decades, the history of the us during covid is probably going to get twisted. The fact that we all had to make and wear cloth masks is going to be hailed as a symbol of how we “"came together as a nation”“” or whatever the fuck propaganda spin they try to put on it.

So I just want to say, for the record, the time of the corona virus pandemic was not a time when america came together.

This was a time when people hoarded toilet paper and sanitizing supplies either for themselves or to sell at absurd prices to the desperate people who didn’t get to the store soon enough during the shortages

This was a time when scared parents were sending their kids to finish school in the spring in plastic trash bags because they couldn’t think of any other way to possibly keep their families safe

This was a time when grocery store and retail and service workers were forced to keep working whether they wanted to risk their health or not because they couldn’t make rent otherwise and the people with enough privilege to have remote jobs tried to repay them with applause instead of fair wages

This was a time when nurses had the hold the hands of multiple dying people every day as their families watched their loved ones die over a video call because the hospital couldn’t risk having visitors

This was a time when city governments had to handle so many eviction hearings that they rented out convention centers and called in the national guard instead of doing a rent freeze to stop predatory landlords

This was a time when racism and police brutality were so unbearably horrible that people protested in the streets for months even though there was a god damn pandemic that our federal government wasn’t doing shit to stop and the cops were so mad that they were being asked to stop beating up black people that they were beating up everyone

This was a time when schools being forced to reopen in the fall or lose their federal funding had to draft templates for letters if a teacher or a staff person or a fucking child died from exposure to corona at school

This was a time when the president of the United states demanded that the cdc stop releasing data about all the people who were dying because of the warnings he ignored for months were making him look bad

This was a time when some state governments didn’t mandate masks and forced businesses to reopen because they didn’t want to pay unemployment to people trying to stay safe at home anymore

This was a time when Jeff Bezos was on track to be a fucking trillionare because everyone was ordering things on amazon instead of going to the store and the people he worked to death to get it didn’t see a single cent of it

This was a time when instead of providing homeless people with housing, we painted boxes on the ground to show homeless people how far away the had to be on the street to maintain social distancing

We did not come together to make cloth masks. Cloth masks represent nothing less than the absolute and utter failure of a nation’s government to inform and protect its citizens

This was not a time when we came together. This was a time when we survived, and not all of us made it.

This was a time when people casually talked about how many human lives the economy was worth without considering the evil that had just come out of their mouths.

This was a time when thousands of us died for profit and the ego of a cheating narcissists con man who scammed his way into the white house

This was a time that we survived. Most of us tried to do the right thing, stay home, limit trips to the store and socializing, wear a mask. And still, so many of us were lost. Thousands every day.

But that wasn’t a good enough reason for some people, for those among us who were too selfish to recognize the responsibilities we have toward one another as human beings.

This was not a time that we came together

This was a time that we survived

Not all of us made it

And those of us who did survive will never forget the evil we saw daily in our politicians and those around us

Sources: 1  2  3  4  5

Jesus fucking Christ, look at these young, otherwise healthy people who had severe heart complications from COVID. But people still don’t give a shit, people are still going to parties and holidays because they think nothing bad will happen to them because they’re young.

God, please stay inside if you can until the vaccine is available to you.

Americans don’t care. They want to stunt, party, be seen, and act like this shit hits only poor people or old people. Everyone can catch hands with this thing….but. again, Americans don’t care.

I’m sorry if this comes off as combative, but: if your government gave you next to no financial relief, did not mandate masks, allowed bars and retail businesses to stay open, re-opened university campuses, and then told you “you MUST go to work and school and interact with hundreds of strangers, but you’re a terrible person if you go visit grandma or get together for drinks with friends after your shift or have Christmas dinner”, what exactly would YOU do?

You can say “if people really cared about each other, they would stay home no matter what the government does” all you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that this simply isn’t how behaviour modification at a population-wide scale works. Guilt and punishment does not change behaviour, providing resources and boundaries that encourage and reward the correct behaviour does.

Why should people take the pandemic seriously when every single signal being sent from the places of power that guide their lives says that this just isn’t worth giving a shit about? When you aren’t given the chance to make better choices, because you can’t financially afford to?

Blaming individual people for being “stupid” and “careless” lets the American federal and state governments (as well as other powerful institutions) off the hook for their egregious, cruel, careless policy approaches to this situation, which have left people to fend for themselves and try to make decisions under the most duress they’ve ever experienced in their lives.

The first girl caught COVID while living in a multi-roommate apartment at university (her roommates later also tested positive, which is unsurprising if you’re ever seen student housing) — then she self-quarantined, tried to recover, and ONLY travelled home to visit her family after she had started testing negative again (her family did not get sick). What could she have done better? Magically been able to afford a single apartment?

The young man who died, Jaquan Anderson, his mother was a healthcare worker, but he was living with other relatives to make sure he wouldn’t be in contact with her while attending school, and then he still he got sick. What could he have done better, exactly? Does it sound like he didn’t care?

Most of the articles on the other student athletes mention that members of their teams also tested positive — does that sound like it’s on them individually, or like it could be a sign of a serious problem in the prevention protocols being used for university sports? What would have been the “responsible” choice for them? To refuse to play the sport that they probably rely on to cover their tuition via scholarships? What better choices could they have made, within the situations these institutions set up for them?

These people ARE trying. Most Americans ARE trying. They ARE doing the best they can in their situations, with limited power and a lot of stress.

We need to stop asking why people won’t just “smarten up” and be responsible, and start asking why the government is abdicating its responsibility for public health in this crisis onto the shoulders of random young people.

Come after AOC at your own risk 

Jesus.

Look at this, and remember it next time someone says that the gay community survived the AIDS epidemic.

We didn’t survive, we started over. We lost all but an entire generation.

This is what “we survived Reagan, you’ll survive Trump” looks like. No, we didn’t.

This is a big reason why the movement to take away the word ‘Queer’ and exclude parts of our communities is gaining so much traction.  We lost our elders and with them, our history.  So TERFs and other bad actors have gained a lot of power because this generation largely isn’t here anymore to dispute them.  They’re building their vision of the queer community on the dead bodies of those we lost.

Imagine 63 MILLION Americans filing for unemployment and the current White House and GOP Senate see no need for a second stimulus.

Anyway, as we enter cold & flu season in the YEAR of corona, this will come in very handy.

This was created by Vox and if you look at small print, you'll find the sources used to create the table.

Obviously there are exceptions and we're getting conflicting and new information about covid-19 all the time but by mid-august, I believe we certainly had observed enough cases for experts to put this together at least.

And now one of the people who guards the football has tested positive. Great.

Just remembered not everyone knows what the football is. It’s the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes in it.

The football is passed between five people, one from each of the five branches of the armed forces. At least one of them is within run and tackle distance of the president at all times from what I understand. The guy who tested positive is the one from the coast guard.

roman i cannot tell if you are being serious because we live in a hell-country where this is entirely plausible

Everyone who sees this, I want you to google “nuclear football” right now.

Jesus fucking Christ

im sorry did i just read on google that the usa president is authorized to launch a fucking nuclear bomb at any moment for any reason

Yes? Before today I thought everyone knew at least this part lol. Since like the 1950s the leaders of the then USSR now Russia and the USA have had the ability to launch a nuclear strike at any time. The leader of China and the other nuclear states probably do too. I don’t think other countries have an equivalent to the football? Or if they do then I haven’t heard of it.

This is a also huge part of the reason people want to get Drumpf out of office so badly. Yes there’s the literally everything else but he’s also the one in charge of the big red button right now. Commander-in-chief of the armed forces I’ll remind you. That’s another reason why perceived temperament is really important for a lot of people when choosing the president. We don’t just have to think about this person’s policies. We have to think about whether or not we trust them with the football. The proverbial big red button. The key to ending life as we know it.

Remember that when picking presidents for the rest of your lives, everyone.

What the actual shit. I thought the big red button was just a wacky plot device in tv.

Did people actually think this was fake? MAD is still a guiding philosophy of international relations. We got dangerously close to nuclear war with North Korea in 2017 by the way I dunno if you remember that. A former Trump official said that for days he thought it was going to happen for sure and he spent a bunch of time every day for over a week praying in the national cathedral. This stuff is real.

[Picture ID Start: a screenshot of a google page. The search bar says “nuclear football” and the first result is from Wikipedia that reads, “The nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room. It functions as a mobile hub in the strategic defense of the United States.” End ID]

What the fuck is this hellscape we live in?

It is funny that Hitlers last moments of life were pure misery and terror before he blew his own brains out, it is funny that Luis Carrero Blanco was blown up by a bomb so powerful it sent his car flying over a 3 story building, it is funny that Ronald Reagan got shot and that his wound led to health complications that plagued him for the rest of his vile life, it is funny that Margaret Thatcher lived in constant fear of assassination by the IRA, it is funny that Mussolini ended life looking like a prized ham in the deli section, and it is funny that Trump might die from covid.

From the Washington Post.

Yikes.