Take Me There to Disneyland

The tormentor is back in the White House.

Take a side.

Reminder that just because Trump sucked tonight that you still have to go out and vote. People watched the debates in 2016, thought trump did awful and Hillary killed it, didn’t vote, and you know the rest of the story.

Start planning to vote now! Trump is counting on you not doing so.

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response, but this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

Due diligence note for my followers: I don’t have the brain energy to find and link sources for all the vid-maker’s info, but his own cites should be good enough for you to follow up if you want, which I encourage. Most of this was stuff I did know, often from 2020 when it first came onto the stage, as it were, but I actually do encourage LOOKING INTO IT. Information literacy!!!

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

(Stephen Gould, "The Panda's Thumb")

This man, Mac Smiff, has put it out there crystal clear:

“We came out here dressed in t-shirts and twirling hula hoops and stuff, and they started gassing us. So we came back with respirators, and they started shooting us. We came back with vests, they started aiming for the head. So we started wearing helmets. And now they call us terrorists. Who is escalating this? It’s not us.”

You know what doesn’t sit right and will NEVER sit right...

How George Floyd, a good innocent black man went to the store to buy things who then was murdered by a police officer for suspected forgery.

Then the next day Peter Manfredonia, a white armed serial killer who was on the run across 4 states, was caught and arrested peacefully.

And how black and black ally protesters in Minneapolis protesting for the arrest of the officers who killed George Floyd, were attacked by the police. They were peaceful.

But a few months ago, white people stormed governments buildings in Michigan protesting the quarantine because they wanted a haircut and the police did nothing to them. They were armed.

The problem is clear as water. WHITE PRIVILEGE AND RACISM. It exists and is real. Deny it? You’re the problem. Don’t say or do anything about it? You’re the problem. Abuse your white privilege? You’re the problem. Don’t see a problem with all this? YOURE THE PROBLEM.

CRY WITH THE BLACK COMMUNITY. MOURN WITH THEM. STAND ALONG SIDE WITH THEM. FIGHT FOR THEM. BECAUSE BLACK LIVES ARE IMPORTANT AND THEY ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MATTER.

My cousin is a conservative. Lifelong, and it’s never going to change. The moment the “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape came out and he saw the way those in charge were willing to let it slide, he left the Republican party. Walked away with zero regret. 

Every member of the Republican Party had a choice, and they chose to say “I’m okay with what’s happening.” And they’ve made the choice over and over and over.

Exactly. Your cousin was faced with a choice and he said “fuck this, that’s not right” and you know what, props to him for that.

Every person who is still a republican at this point has chosen over and over to eat at the table with nazis, both literally and metaphorically. And I’m not giving them a pass on that shit.

Saw this on Twitter and wanted to share.

“If you don’t like X aspect of this thing you should just quit the whole thing”

[Image Description: screenshot of tweet saying, “you are allowed to be a fan of something and not love absolutely all of it. With increasing frequency, it seems the only two levels of acceptable fandom are complete, utter adoration and confused betrayal. Fandoms are not religions. They can’t, and shouldn’t, function as such.” End Image Description]

bringing this one back

When I went to see Tangled with my family, I was terrified of having to talk about the movie afterwards because I related so much to Rapunzel, and I was sure my mom would hate the movie because it was so obvious that she was exactly like mother gothel. So when mom asked me afterwards if I liked it I gave a tepid non-answer. But then my mom started talking about how she loved the movie! And it slowly dawned on me that she also saw mother gothel as evil and abusive, but somehow didn’t make the connection that she and her were the same. My mom even made a comment to the effect of how, like rapunzel’s real mom, her love for me would always triumph or whatever. And she didn’t get it!

She didn’t see the similarities of how she locked me away in the house, or how she kept me under the tightest supervision under the guise of keeping me safe. I spent the entire mother knows best song stealing glances at her next to me in the theater just waiting for her to drag us out of the movie because she couldn’t stand to have her “love” portrayed as evil. And she didn’t see how the fact that she created her identity completely around being a mother and nothing else was like mother gothel’s dependency on rapunzel’s magic hair.

It was only after seeing her positive reaction to the movie, that I really understood the meaning of the phrase “everyone is the hero of their own story”. No one actually thinks they’re the villain, even if confronted with a painfully obvious rendering of their own actions done by someone they agree is rightly portrayed as evil.

“everyone is the hero of their own story”. No one actually thinks they’re the villain, even if confronted with a painfully obvious rendering of their own actions done by someone they agree is rightly portrayed as evil.

I think some adults need to realize that teens don’t dislike adults because teens are rebellious and punk, a lot of kids and teens dislike adults because every interaction they’ve had with them is dismissing and condescending 

I’m not even a teenager anymore and I still feel like this.

Notice the fact that when teenagers have favorite teachers it’s the teachers who treat them as equals and don’t talk down to them but with them

Honestly, this applies to younger kids too. I always respected adults more when they actually listened to me and treated my feelings and opinions with respect, even if we weren’t equals maturity-level-wise.

How can I reblog this a million times?  The 1% are master manipulators.

The existence of another poor person is not why you’re poor.

not to be harry potter on main but i honestly think the fantastic beasts series would have been so much more interesting if it was just about the beasts. i don’t give a fuck about grindelwald, just give me a movie about an eccentric wizard travelling the world looking for magical animals and teaching us the power of friendship

newt’s character should have been like the crocodile hunter but in a wizard hat send tweet

i dont care about any of this 1920s magic drama i just want newt scamander to cheerfully inform us how bad it hurts to get stung by various wizard animals

if it ends up being biden v trump we gotta start burnin shit down

No. We don’t. 

What we have to do is fucking GROW UP. 

There’s not one single thing in the world (outside of the choice of what’s for dinner) that gives “us” 100% of what we want 100% of the time. This is especially true for politics. 

Do you know what Biden is? 

An acceptable (note: not perfect. not necessarily desirable.) compromise candidate who can pull the largest number of people behind him. 

Do you know what Biden is? A candidate who can carry the Midwest and Rust Belt states, the flyover states that went to Trump and guaranteed his victory. 

He’s a candidate with experience. He’s a candidate who has been in the trenches for decades, has seen social challenges and changes, who has been wrong in the past (but right for the time he was in, wrong when viewed with today’s lens) and has apologized for the “mistakes” he has made. 

He’s lost his son and grieved deeply. 

Would I like to see other candidates? sure. I particularly like Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But when the time comes to enter the voting booth? Vote for the party (that’d be Democrat) if you can’t vote for the candidates, because it’s better to have Biden than Trump. 

If it’s Joe Biden, I will vote for him. Do I want him to be the candidate? No! Is he better than Trump? Yes!

If it’s Pete Buttigieg, I will vote for him. Do I want him to be the candidate? No! Is he better than Trump? Yes!

If it’s Beto Freaking O’Rourke, I will vote for him. Do I want him to be the candidate? No! Is he better than Trump? Yes!

I’m gonna level with you, I have qualms about EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT IN THE RACE. I’m leaning toward Elizabeth Warren. But no matter who ends up getting the nomination, they are going to be better than Trump. Trump is abusing the hell out of executive privilege. He’s gotten to appoint a fuckton of judges. He’s taking unilateral action to restrict civil rights, particularly the rights of trans people. There are legitimate concerns that Trump will try to resist stepping aside if he loses the 2020 election! At this point, the name of the game is containing the fucking damage.

Children/teens aren’t allowed to be sad or in a bad mood because they can get yelled at for it and ridiculed and told to ‘change your attitude or I will for you’, while adults who are sad or in a bad mood, are allowed to yell at and take their frustration out on the kids. Adult privilege huh?

And when the adult is in a bad mood, it’s the kids job to step on eggshells in order to keep them from not exploding, and when they do, it’s on them.

And when the child is in the bad mood, it’s their job to try to hide it, and when they break apart trying to, it’s on them.

What extra sucks about this is that adults literally have more experience, context, perspective, and brain development to help them manage emotions. Adults who do this are shit. We are the adults, we should not be expecting kids who are still developing and learning about the world and trying to figure out their place in it to be the ones who are emotionally mature. 

People who treat adulthood like a power trip are honestly shit and should not have authority over kids. 

My parents.

You know the main problem with the “live action” Lion King? Why it looks so lifeless?

The hyper realistic style is actually limiting the animators, rather than freeing them. The style makes it much harder to have memorable character designs and good expressions. Real lions don’t need to do things like emote in a way that humans can understand – but characters in a film do. The original movie was more cartoony not due to animation limitations of the time, but because that style genuinely serves the story better.

To show you what I mean, compare these two shots of Simba, from right after Scar says “run away and never return.”

Here is a clear reaction, with a strong beat for us to connect with before the character makes a decision. Even without any dialogue, even without any context, you can understand the emotion there just by the expression and the mannerisms. Is it realistic? No! He’s bright yellow and has eyebrows. But do we empathize with him? Yes!

Meanwhile, here is… a lion. Turning and running. No expression, no beats, no character moments, nothing. He actually can’t express himself because the animators are locked into the realistic style. If they tried to animate a strong expression as warranted for the scene, it would look terrible. Is it realistic? Hell yeah! Look at those textures! Look at that fur! But do we empathize with him? …nah. Not really.

To conclude: when you’re retelling Hamlet with a bunch of animated lions, cartoonish-ness is your friend, not your enemy.