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Day 20 - Mask
“Your true face… what kind of… face is it?”
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Best team ⚡️⚡️⚡️
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For the ask meme: cats!
Second best domestication experiment ever 😆 What else can I say? Hmmm, maybe just this: a lot of people, even cat owners, fundamentally misunderstand their cats because they're working under the misconception that cats are not social animals. They are. Wildcats are solitary animals, but domestic cats are not wildcats; it would be like trying to infer fox behavior from observing wolves. Domestic cats are social, both with humans and each other, and can be social with individuals of other species also! I've known cats that had bonded friendships with dogs, birds, even horses and cows.
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Ghilan'nain
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Frank Bauer (German, 1964), Stilleben (Frühstück) [Still Life (Breakfast)], 2013. Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm.
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If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.
Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:
- '10 million votes don't just disappear!' -> Joe Biden's 81 million votes were a statistical outlier, sparked by the recent experience of the Trump presidency. The democrats failed to maintain that sense of urgency, but Harris still got more votes than Hillary Clinton, more than Obama and more than any previous democratic candidate. These numbers are not weird at all.
- 'The Republicans tried to infiltrate election- and vote counting organizations!' -> yeah, they did, and yet hundreds of independent legal observers didn't see anything go wrong enough to raise any alarms. Independent exit polls are also very consistently similar to the counted votes. Tons of international organizations specialized in this stuff observed the election and didn't see a reason to raise the alarm.
- 'But I know a dozen democrats whose mail-in votes were not counted!' -> In any election a certain number of votes are registered as invalid because something was wrong with the ballot. In a country the size of the US, that translates to many thousands of votes. The internet allows these people to find each other, creating the false impression that a suspiciously large group of voted was not valid.
- 'Musk used Star Link to mess with electronic voting!' -> Electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet and dozens of independent media have already debunked this myth. It is absolutely impossible to use Star Link to fake election results.
- 'There is voter disenfranchisement!' -> This is true. This has always been true, for every election. It's an issue worth talking about but it's not a special secret conspiracy that's unique to this election.
But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.
This this this
I worked as an election judge across multiple polling locations and election types in my state from 2018-2023 (presidential primary and general elections, midterms, and special elections like for the school board etc.)
US elections are extremely secure. There are so many safeguards in place. Everything is double and triple counted.
The number of ballots electronically counted by the box are checked against the number of physical ballots at the end of the night, and also the receipt papers that individuals exchange for their ballot. All three of these counts MUST MATCH. Sometimes you're off by 1 number and it means everyone stops and triple counts these papers until you find the error (human error, it's been 16 hours and two pieces of thin receipt paper were stuck together and the second person to recount finds it and everyone cheers because thank fuck, it means no one dropped anything on the floor anywhere.)
There are eyes everywhere and there's a deliberate mix of poll workers across political parties/affiliations. It's simply not possible to alter even 1 ballot at 1 polling place, much less thousands.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump won this election. If there was interference, it was NOT at the voting booth. That's simply not possible. The "interference" (if you can even call it that) comes from right wing propaganda convincing stupid and/or hateful and/or selfish people to vote for him.
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The Daily Show | Nov. 6 2024
Source: youtube.com
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adhd paralysis sucks bcuz im just sitting there and my brain is like
YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME YOU ARE WASTING TIME
no work done no rest gained. literally no point of this at all
just wanted to share these executive dysfunction comics i am so sorry to whoever drew them these have been saved on my phone for like 6 years
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3 transphobic arguments to be aware of (so you don't go down the alt right pipeline)
Easily one of the most important videos I've seen since the election.
Video transcription:
My fellow cis ladies, here's three transphobic arguments I want you to know now so you don't fall for them later because this is the hot topic gateway into conservatism for women.
Just to be clear, it's-it's-it's the Nazi kind of conservatism as well.
Remember "divide and conquer" is the name of the game, so don't be divided!
First thing transphobes are is they're gender essentialists, so they will tell you "men are inherently bad and evil and it's in their DNA, and women by contrast are good and fragile and precious." And it's the same logic as like "oh, women are more sensitive and nurturing, which is why they should stay at home." It's bullshit because women are not inherently anything, women are human beings with free will and idolization is just dehumanization with better PR [public relations]. I, as a woman, have capacity for evil, which makes my choice to be good that much more important.
Number two thing, and you will notice if you listen to TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] long enough is that they hate being women, they have a lot of internalized misogyny, they think being a woman is about pain and suffering. The attitude that women are predestined to suffer and men are predestined to make us suffer is a very defeatist attitude, it means that you can never see a future without misogyny in it.
And the number three thing, and this is the stupidest argument: They will tell you that cis men are pretending to be trans women to go into women's bathrooms. Men just simply don't need to do all of that. This is stranger-danger rhetoric which is based around this fear of "oh, strangers are the most dangerous thing to your child or to you" when it's statistically not true. Abusers are more likely to be people that you already know, which is bleak, I'm sorry, but that is the truth. Abusive men simply don't need to go to that effort.
Trans women are our sisters, they're our allies, and a world where a trans women is free and safe to express herself and her gender presentation as she wants to is a world where all women get to do that.
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okay I still like this piece even tho the idea is unclear
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Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.
I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me
sometimes you do just have to lie to children.
If, when my toddler is, you know, toddling around saying “mama? Big ball?”
If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.
So, for now, instead “big ball went night night!”
Please understand when I say “removed the ball from the premises” I mean I popped it in a fit of exhausted confusion. I murdered the beach ball.
See I’ve lied to you all too and it was better this way.
you can’t just leave this in the tags etc.
You can’t be funnier then me on my own posts, I’m in tears from laughter
[ID: tags: "#that wasn't a lie though the big ball did go night night #it went to the great night night that awaits us all" /end ID]
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Anonymous asked:
genuine question why are charter schools to blame for decreased literacy in your opinion? Because of the remote learning aspect or smth else also?? I went to one & honestly did better with it than traditional hs but I had very high reading comprehension already, had no busses in my area & no parent that could drive me to school so it was a pretty specific situation where that environment worked out better for me
Well I’m glad it worked out for you but institutionally charter schools are so detrimental to public education. Let me explain why:
- The principle behind charter schools, that increased competition will force public schools to be better, frames education as a product rather than a public utility. If education quality is determined by the free market, the winners and losers are children, which is just a morally unacceptable outcome to me.
- Shouldn’t ignore that the school choice movement started as a way to advocate for the perpetuity of segregation. On average charters are more racially segregated than publics.
- The way in which public schools receive funding varies state to state, but most states do some amount of funding per pupil. What that means is that when students switch from public schools to charter schools they take that per people funding with them if you’re leaving an underperforming public school that’s underperforming because it’s underfunded you are making the problem worse. Not everyone can leave.
- Charter schools can legally kick students out if they want to. This means if students stop performing well, or if disabled or english-language learner students need extra support, they can just be removed. A lot of “charters have higher test scores” is just charters only admitted high-performing and low-need students, which puts even more of a strain on public schools.
- They are really unregulated. Many “charter-friendly” states have minimal accountability measures for charter schools in a way that leads to many running the gamut between negligence to committing literal fraud instead of providing free and appropriate public education. Charter networks are multibillion dollar businesses this system gets exploited by private equity all the time.
- That lack of regulation or accountability also shows up in disciplinary outcomes. The school to prison pipeline is already unforgivably bad in a public environment, but unregulated charter schools often implement draconian “zero tolerance” policies that result in black and brown students getting treated like they’re in a police state. Public schools can’t suspend or expel you or call the cops on you for how you wear your hair. They can’t escalate to dramatic consequences as quickly or do a 3 strikes demerit system. There are no legal guardrails against this in charters.
- Often exist to circumnavigate teachers’ union contracts and other labor laws. This means teachers at charters are often overworked, underpaid, micromanaged, and have EXTREMELY high turnover. The additional strain on teachers and overrepresentation of first-teachers who burn out in the system and get replaced makes for bad educational environments in a lot of places.
- All of these are even more of a problem because of the way that charter networks like KIPP were marketed as a way to fix public schools in black and brown areas, and have just kneecapped public schools while providing students with subpar educational outcomes instead.
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someone needs to make an exhaustive count of how often Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes because man is sassy as hell
what makes this better is that the actor didn't even realize he rolled his eyes that often because it was just a "reflex"
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the other day, my husband looked up from lunch and said, “X-Files reboot, except their names are Murder and Skully,” and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.