objectively good idea

I am once again reminding everyone that the purpose of these bills is to pave the way for requiring government approval ID verification to use the internet

When you ask government to do the jobs parents should be doing, not only will they objectively do a terrible job, they will use the opportunity to take away more of your privacy and infringe further upon your rights.

Mass censorship and surveillance under the guise of “protecting the children” is a tale as old as time, yet people keep falling for it

[image id:

Headline from Fox 4 KDFW reading: Texas bill would ban social media for children under 18

Underneath the headline is a blurred photo of a white hand holding a phone with a folder of social media apps

/end id]

I know there's lots of things on the internet that aren't for kids but I probably wouldn't know what trans is or that it's an option if I didn't have the internet as a preteen and I bet people making this law are aware of that

i DID see people on tiktok saying that we shouldn’t care about palestine because they’re conservative and anti lgbt and a whole bunch of shit and. for real? for real? THAT is touch grass. THAT is go outside and touch grass. zero compassion zero consideration for real people ZERO brain function in fact. like you know there ARE gay people in palestine? like if texas was getting air raided would you say fuck texans, theyre all republican? actually dont answer that lmfao we already saw it happen with the power outages. people will generalize and people will condemn without nuance or scrutiny. no sense of value for human life. who gives a shit about other people lol

this may already be on tumblr but i laughed until i cried this morning so i thought i’d bless you all (source)

[ID: a Twitter thread by Jean-Michel Connard @torriangray "so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol). they were burying food and ammo stashes out in the desert, running drills, crazy stuff

this included getting a cb license so he could be their lifeline to other groups of white idiots when the cell towers all went offline. wouldn't want to violate federal law while communicating with your resistance groups after the fall of the federal government i guess.

anyways, you would assume given that they've been prepping for the end of the world for at least a year they're well situated to ride out the rolling blackouts right? wellll

their plan for cooking and heating during an extended power outage was natural gas, but like a lot of homes their gas service is out. the food in their freezer and fridge is already toast due to the power outrages, so they're down to canned stuff, but there's a catch.

they can get into the pull top cans just fine, but the ones that require an opener? their only can opener is electric. so a good 3/4 of his canned food store is inaccessible to him unless he goes after it with a knife, which i sincerely hope he does.

so captain survival was eating unheated ravioli out of a can yesterday because i guess he doesn't know how to start a fire? they have a fire pit but it too is gas fired. he told my mom they're probably going to break into the survival buckets soon. i'm sure that's great food.

he told my mom that the blackout is due to texas switching everything to "wind power" but that he didn't discount that the government was doing this on purpose. if you can figure out why they'd arbitrarily freeze out a giant state hey points to you.

the saving grace in all this is he's having to ration his phone usage so he can't sit on the phone with my mom for hours crying about it. he's forced to sit there and talk to his wife, who is almost as dumb as he is.

presumably he's sitting there shivering, ranting about libs while he sucks down cold beefaroni. what a life.

he's tried contacting his best friend in his little larping group, but he's gone to ground. i sincerely hope that means he thinks this is the start of the great purge or whatever and he's disappeared to the mountains to evade fema and child support bailiffs

i'm trying to get more details from my mom but i have to play it cool. if i laugh she'll stop telling me about it, so i have to pretend this is very serious and i'm concerned for his safety while i'm imagining him hitting a can of baked beans with a screwdriver repeatedly

on the plus side they've got plenty of guns and ammo, so they can shoot the shit out of the snow.

locking two people with marital strife in a house with no supplies, no access to power, but plenty of access to guns and ammo seems like a great idea. i think this should work out great."

/End ID.]

You folks know that like Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw and others who could actually do something about the power infrastructure in the south, they’re just on Twitter. You can literally go call Ted Cruz a shit-eating fuck on every one of his tweets instead of blaming or mocking the poor who are largely living in the areas suffering from the blackouts while rich neighborhoods enjoy all the electricity they want.

Not all southerners voted for Trump but 100% of Senator Ted Cruzes did. Get him.

For real. Directing 100% of your anti-Texas sentiment to Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn or any other of the clowns in state leadership always encouraged.

Reptiles and Power Outages

1.  Do not feed your reptile.  If your area is expected to lose power, you’ve got some advance notice.  Reptiles NEED heat to digest their food; without that heat, that food is just going to rot.

2. Continue to offer water.

3. Know your reptile’s requirements.  What’s life-threatening for one critter might only be a mild nuisance to another. 

4.  If you still have hot water, you can fill up some jugs with hot water and put these in your reptile tanks.  Cover your reptile tanks with tin foil to conserve heat.

5. You can make small space heaters with a tea light, a pot, and something to elevate the pot by a few centimeters.  Light the tea light and put the pot over it, making sure there’s a gap at the bottom so oxygen can still reach the candle.  This produces more heat than you’d expect.

6. You can pack up your reptiles in reptile shipping boxes.  These are insulated cardboard boxes.  You can also use styrofoam containers.  Line the bottom of the box with crumpled newspaper.  You take your reptile, put them in a small container—-like a deli cup with holes poked into it or a critter keeper or something similar—-and put them on top of the newspaper, and kinda nestle some extra paper around it loosely.  Insert a handwarmer between the box and paper layer, so it’s NEAR the deli cup but not in direct contact with it.  Finally, cover them with more loosely crumpled paper to help conserve the heat.

It’s VERY important that your reptile does NOT come into direct contact with the handwarmer.  These get VERY hot.  They also consume oxygen, so airflow is essential. 

You can also use reptile shipping packs.  These tend to last longer (40 hour packs are the most common, but they can last as long as 72 hours).

7.  Wood stoves are super helpful!  Bring all your reptiles into one room and close the door.  The goal is to keep one room cozy at this point.

You probably won’t be able to maintain the ideal temperatures for your animals, but don’t worry too much about that.  These animals are hardier than that.  Keep warm and keep safe!

If your r.ats and m.ice thaw out in the freezer, throw them out.  They’re no longer safe for your reptile.

here’s an article explaining how the tea candle space heater thing is supposed to go (i wasn’t sure how the pot was supposed to be oriented), along with info about how it does and doesn’t work

i’m a leftist of course but it has been fucking something to go to beto o’rourke’s twitter and see him actively organizing food drives, informing people of warm shelters, and contacting texas senior citizens to make sure they’re okay

while ted cruz fucking went to cancun

like, republicans are a fucking death cult. they really truly are.

I’m in Texas. Fucking hell. Just got this message from one of my co-workers: “Just sent the kid to fill buckets with snow for toilet flushing after it melts.” Another co-worker hasn’t been online in days; I suspect he’s in one of the areas that hasn’t had power since early Monday morning, but I don’t know. Still others have been hit by rotating power outages, or have lost water pressure, or gas.

And I’m feeling both relieved and kind of guilty that we’ve been one of the people with power–we’re on one of the critical circuits that can’t be turned off, there’s a fire station and other infrastructure they need to protect–and that yeah, my upstairs pipes froze, but they thawed yesterday and no signs of breaks. I’m lucky. And even lucky, I’m still not doing great; we have to keep the temperature low enough (to protect the grid) that my hands are stiffened up, even in fingerless gloves, and my whole body aches, and my already limited spoons are whittled down even further.

The authorities are saying, “Use less power, stop trickling water, insurance should cover it if your pipes freeze, and if not, you may get reimbursement from FEMA…” *Should*. *May*.

Meanwhile, the guys who manage the state electrical grid (and oh, that’s a story in and of itself) live in California and Michigan. Ted fucking Cruz is in fucking Cancun.

The stores are empty, because no trucks have gotten through to restock.

And the worst of all? This is the logical end point of Republican policies. This is what happens when utilities become commoditized. This is what happens when you pursue the ‘free market uber alles’. The Texas electrical grid is independent because Texas didn’t want no fed'rl reg-u-lation, no sir! Which means we have minimal connections to the other two US grids, because selling power interstate would open us up to regulation. Which means we can’t *get* power from the rest of the US, if it had it to spare. On top of that, ERCOT knew ten years ago that the Texas grid was vulnerable to cold weather. But, hey, winterizing infrastructure costs money, cuts profits, doesn’t have an immediate payback.

And if you think it’s a policy set and continued by Republican state leaders, you would be correct. Half of Texas is lacking multiple basic services because rich people playing “You’re not the boss of me” want to get richer. It’s infuriating. And it’s costing lives. (But not rich people’s lives, so they apparently don’t matter.)

People are dying because of this. The number of carbon monoxide poisonings alone… because people are desperate. Disabled people can’t get power to charge their medical devices. Older people get trapped in buildings with no power, surrounded by ice.

Yes. The modern Republican party is a profiteering death cult whose rallying cry is “Got mine, fuck you, die slave!” The Republican state leadership is a shitshow, everyone’s pointing fingers, no one takes responsiblitity for the policies that they’ve been supporting for *decades*.

And I feel so goddamned helpless, and so angry, because this is the 21st century in a modern country, and *this should not be happening*. So thanks, Beto, for stepping up and doing what you can. Because the powers that are sure as hell aren’t.

what's happening in texas right now

over a million people in houston alone don't have power and its largely the same across the state. most people across houston reported losing power at 2 AM Feb 15 and never regained it (my neighborhood included) despite energy companies swearing its rolling blackouts and not mass outage.

this is a map of the power outages in texas before they stopped updating the maps/stopped letting people report:

this is absolutely insane. just completely freaking unprecedented. I haven't seen any national news about this but I swear if I see anyone bringing up texas being a red state and deserving this I'm going fucking batshit.

it's also affected covid vaccine supplies, since at least one facility with 8k doses lost power

the worst part is pictures of downtown houston right now, this picture from a local reporter

all while energy companies are telling individual people not to use electricity and to set their thermostats to 68° (which is impossible bc the only people who have electricity have generators &/or solar panels)

There’s a reason that this is happening in Texas, and as usual, it has to do with our shitty state leadership and history. The people here suffer under their tyranny in so many ways and this one has reared its ugly head, majorly:

So far, I’ve been super super lucky and my neighborhood in Austin has had power. I only had 1 water pipe freeze that I got moving again w/ a hair dryer and hoping no damage 🤞

Price gouging was happening at local hotels. I have friends who haven’t had power since 2am on Monday and it’s been -5 to 20 degrees since then.......in homes without insulation meant for this type of weather. And the roads are too bad for them to get much of anywhere and there are no plows or salt trucks here.

We’re expecting a second wave of snow between now and Thursday when the temps are expected to rebound to somewhat normal over the weekend (above freezing at least.) The outages will continue for a while and ERCOT is warning that even more crushing failures of the grid may be coming.

It’s just scary out there, statewide, in a giant state 😞 If you’re also in Texas and have power, please do:

Also - it would be really easy to just dunk on Texas GOP politicians right now for lulz, but please let’s remember that people are suffering and dying. Not everything has to be fodder for the zinger machine.

You can still hold people responsible while respecting the fundamental humanity of those suffering, and their plight.

I keep seeing articles about the (publicly funded??) electrical company planning on increasing electricity prices through the roof due to “peak demand,” but I feel like I must be misunderstanding because it sounds YA-novel levels of pure evil. Can anyone explain to me what this is about? 

In Houston, Center Point owns the power lines right up to a building. Center Point magically appeared, having become a private company after Texas deregulated power. They charge power companies, often by load.

Power companies provide access to power. Some charge premium during high load to recoup what they have to pay in a surge.

Usually this means AC in the summer and people expect to pay more during the high load months with big discounts in the winter.

These plans also often have attractive low kw/h base rate which of course is highly advertised (with lots of footnotes no one reads).

There are fixed rate plans, plans that adjust to annual averages, more I can't remember.

But the overwhelming number of people have variable rate plans with discounts after 7pm or 9pm.

Which means they get a surprise bill, if they have power.

Welcome to power deregulation.

[ID: a tweet by Terry Tucker in Congress in TX03 @terryjtucker "I'm Terry Tucker. I'm a nurse. I put my life on the line and my colleagues have too. Yet Republicans refuse to take the pandemic seriously. Enough. I'm a Democrat running for Congress in Texas. I'm asking you to RT & follow my account to send a nurse to Congress & turn Texas Blue" End ID.]

[ID: a tweet by Alan! @o2bnobx "You guys realize that Rick Perry, the guy who presided over the deregulation of the Texas power grid in 2002 ran our entire Department of Energy under Trump, right?" End ID.]

#don't remind me #he didn't realize that the DoE ran nuclear safety #he just thought it was an easy way to deregulate more #asshole idiot

Tags via @iwilltrytobereasonable

I hesitate to say this because I’m afraid it will sound like I’m belittling everyone’s rightful fury over the cruel, callous “jokes” being made by smug holier-than-thou leftists up north. But I came down on the side of offering a counterweight, because, christ, SOMEONE has to say something kind.

I just want you all to know: For the past 72 hours my dash has been nothing but Northerners expressing intense concern and helplessness, as well as trading off and collating as many cold-weather survival tips as they can think of. Anyone who’s used to the cold is absolutely terrified at the thought of these kinds of temperatures striking areas without the infrastructure to handle them, has nothing but compassion and appreciation for the resources they have access to, and they’re wracking their collective brains for any tiny little details that might make this easier.

I’ve seen multiple posts where someone explicitly mentions how grateful they were for Texans coming together to do this same thing in reverse, when Northern states were hit by deadly heatwaves. How scared they were and how much that kindness meant to them. They haven’t forgotten.

You’re not alone down there. The assholes are loud but few and far between; for everyone making a stupid joke there’s seven people leaping to shut them the fuck down.

The rest of the country does not think you deserve this. We don’t think you brought it on yourselves. We’re pulling for you. We’re furious with every corrupt asshole who’s responsible for this entirely preventable bullshit. We desperately wish we could do something more.

And all of us want you to be okay.

Eva Longoria is everything

Yet she can’t even speak Spanish 😂😅😂😅😂

That’s pride alright lmfao

She don’t have to, but don’t talk all that shit if you don’t even learn your own culture #lame

you were saying @dabeatnik???

ummm

and also???

idk how many people i’ve known growing up in texas whose parents speak fluent spanish but they don’t speak a lick solely because their parents were afraid or told not to teach their children. it’s unspeakably common and doesn’t in any way shape or form diminish someone’s claim to or pride in their heritage. 

fuck that guy. you go eva. 

lack of intergenerational language exchange is one of the leading causes of language death for endangered and indigenous languages because of this culture of shame attached to “lesser” coded languages so frankly if yr mocking people for not speaking their mother tongue without taking the colonial reasons for this into account, you’re an ignorant prick and you can go fuck yourself like

LANGUAGE ERASURE IS A LINCHPIN OF GENOCIDE. I will NEVER stop saying this. ever ever ever. 

[ID: a woman being interviewed by another woman in front of a live audience with captions

Part 1: - Yeah, I'm Texican.

- So, explain that.

- I'm from the country of Texas, uh... and we were Mexico. We never-- We didn't-- My family has owned land since the 1600's in Texas, when it was Mexico, so we never crossed the border. The border crossed us. You know, when people go, 'Go home,' I'm like, 'Motherfucker, I was home. You're in my home.' (audience cheering) 'You go home. You go home.'

Part 2: - Good for you.

- Yeah, but I learned Spanish. Yeah. Yeah, and I learned it maybe in the last four years, but I'm fluent and I love it.

End ID.]

Off-Brand World Landmarks

Great Pyramids, but they’re the Bass Pro Shop in Tennessee

Eiffel Tower, but it’s the cowboy version in Paris Texas

London’s Tower Bridge, but it’s the replica in Suzhou China (it has twice as many towers lol)

The Statue of Liberty, but its in the Netherlands and she’s holding a can of beans (I’m serious) 

The Statue of Liberty again, but she’s in Spain and holding TWO torches, damn

The Taj Mahal but it’s in Bangladesh and it’s pink and like, I’m sorry, but like, really cute

The Great Sphinx, but it’s in China and also Iron Man is there

The American camel is a deeply underappreciated cryptid

i’m sorry the W H A T

In the mid-1800s the Army got the absolutely galaxy-brain idea to use camels as draft animals in the southwestern territories we stole from Mexico. They gave it a try but it didn’t work out for various reasons, mostly because horses and mules are scared of camels and won’t live or work with them.

When the US Army Camel Corps was scrapped, they tried to sell the camels but couldn’t find many buyers, so most of them “”“escaped”“” [were abandoned] into the west Texas plains.

People in west Texas and environs would occasionally spot the camels or their tracks from the Civil War times all the way up to the World War 1 times, sparking rumors that the area had become the home of a breeding population of feral camels.

I don’t know why everybody thinks it’s so weird that Texas has all these commercial products shaped like Texas. I mean, I live in Saskatchewan, and stuff that’s shaped like Saskatchewan is practically everywhere!

I hope you aren’t joking because this is such a huge relief

I want a story about an Italian vampire.

No romance, no action.

Just 200 pages of “What do you mean, I can’t have garlic? Do you know where I’m from?”

TBH I think the main issue would be the mirror thing

have you ever met an Italian man

the amount of time they spend looking in the mirror jfc

#the more you think about it the more all vampire rules are just anti-italian rules#can’t go out in sunlight?? IN ITALY???#Can’t go near crucifixes? IN ITALY???

a bunch of pissed off vampires stuck in Venice because they can’t go over moving water

Not to victim blame, but you’d have to be a pretty bad Italian to even get turned into a vampire in the first place.

the only two places practically immune to vampires are texas and italy

Let me tell you of A Thing.

Lithuania has no vampires, I guarantee it.

Lithuania has one vampire, and let me tell you, she’s gonna be FURY UNLEASHED once someone gets her out of the centre of that crossterfuck of a burial point.

#never seen texas and italy in the same sentence before

(via @tchallabread)

Poder Quince/Quince Power

#PODERQUINCE

Poster outside in Texas

@jimrehs who paid for the ingredients and made the cookies?

This is what the ignorant leftist thinks, money just magically appears on the tables lol.

The worker and the asylum seeker helped creating the cookie through their labor. And yet, they get only 1 cookie between the two of them.

The banker didn’t do shit. In fact, most of the banker’s earnings comes from exploiting the other two’s labor.

[ID: a poster with a picture of a cookie at the bottom, the text on the poster reads "A banker, a worker and an asylum seeker are sitting at a table with 20 cookies. The banker takes 19 cookies and warns the worker: 'Watch out, the asylum seeker is going to take your cookie away!'" End ID.]