Words Have Power

Tax billionaires. Regulate campaign financing.

One of the funniest failures of US school system is the fact they are legally obligated to teach us all the states but they never actually show how big Alaska is like I have actually had teachers tell me that Texas is the biggest state. We have all just convinced ourselves that Alaska is that small shrunken down thing on most US maps and the people that know it's the largest state can almost never accurately describe how large it is.

For context here is a picture

what

It has a national park that’s bigger than maine. Or Switzerland. A park. 

I lived in Alaska for two years and I will never get over the sheer overwhelming bigness of it. 

Nights where the sky is clear you can see clusters of stars or the Northern Lights dancing. When the lights are rippling especially strong and fast you can hear a static crackle in the air. When the moon is out after it’s snowed, you don’t need flashlights to see. Everything glows and glimmers like polished quartz.  

But when the sky is clouded over so you can’t see the stars, you can kind of almost sense the mountains towering over you and helping to block out the light, these giant monoliths acting like this void darker than your soul. I’ve never experience night like Alaska night. 

Everything is big, the mountains, the sky, the valleys. 

And the dark. 

what the fuck

All you "I won't vote for Kamala because of Gaza" people: HEADS UP!

You've got a wannabe dictator speaking to another wannabe dictator every fucking day to PREVENT A CEASEFIRE versus a candidate calling for a ceasefire.

Vote accordingly or I swear to gods you'll wake up one day and look back wishing you could change that one little decision.

It's been reported multiple times that Trump is out there encouraging Netanyahu to keep up the bombing while Harris and Biden are working to end it and yet some people dare to say they aren't going to try to get Harris elected and act like that won't directly result in more deaths and violence in this conflict. Shame on you.

Palestinians are literally out there right now saying Trump winning - which is what will happen if everyone doesn't get out there and vote for Harris - would be a worst case scenario for them (x). Don't you dare appropriate their struggle to try to justify your failure to do everything in your power to stop the Fascist GOP from getting into office.

Vote Blue all the way down the ballot. Lives are on the line. And if the GOP gets in you may not get a chance to vote again.

Trump is garbage. He cares only about himself. The same is true about Netanyahu. It's going to be rough going for Harris, but we have a better shot with her at the helm than Trump, who has been actively working to prevent a ceasefire because he doesn't want Biden to have a win.

Hm, y'know I've just realised something.

After watching Enterprise for however many seasons with the human crew treating their resident Vulcan, T'Pol, with annoyance to outright hostility until she begins to assimilate/when several members of the crew realise she's hot...

It's just... nice that in Lower Decks that while there are obstructive Vulcans in the show like there were in Enterprise, Mariner, Tendi and the rest feel no need to try and get their eventual resident Vulcan, T'Lyn, to modify her behaviour to suit them better and CELEBRATE what an awesome person they think she is.

<3 This is because Lower Decks is actually a wholesome show while Enterprise is a horrifically sexist and weirdly jingoistic show <3

This is wildly disingenuous. Project 2025 is absolutely a plan for seizing permanent conservative control of the United States and rolling back the rights of everyone who's not a cishet white man. And the Democrats are absolutely trying to stop it, if nothing else because it would bar them from power (although personally I think most of them are pretty opposed to seeing the country become Gilead).

Here's all the ways the Biden-Harris administration has acted to protect LGBTQ+ people.

Trump is promising to be a dictator and engage in mass deportations and political violence against his opponents. Many people underestimated his ability for malice the first time around. He absolutely will try this if he's elected. Kamala Harris won't. That alone makes her election imperative.

“they were flirting with you” and how was i supposed to know such a thing when everyone speaks in codes and puzzles

you are doing some sort of riddler shit to me.

a lot of fic rec lists focus heavily on long fics but here’s a shoutout to short fics they give so much snack-size joy i hate how writing short form is sometimes looked down upon it has its own challenges and deserves so much more respect and love because a well executed short fic can ruin your life in 20 minutes

New Show is released. New Show is loved by many viewers. New Show is not yet renewed. social media campaigns for renewal of New Show. PSAs to play episodes of New Show on loop in the background to get viewership up for New Show. urgency to binge New Show so they see good views for New Show. pleading and begging and tagging special media accounts to get another season of New Show. New Show is cancelled. social media outcry and petitions to save New Show trend for a week. New Show is not picked up. New Show says cancelled. they start making a New New Show and it all starts the fuck over again. I gotta be honest I'm really fucking tired of this shit

ohhh having a job is actually ruining my life.  ok

You tell em bubbles!

"What are the true, righteous, set-in-stone rules that I can always follow regardless of context?"

There is no such thing as that. hope this helps.

"Ok but what context absolves me of responsibility for how my choices effect the world around me?"

I'm so sorry, but that also doesn't exist.

I think the internet as a whole needs to ask themselves one simple question when they see a video.

Why was the camera filming.

There are so many videos that seem real, but when you realize the camera was already filming with a great angle, you can see that it's all staged.

Yes, there are dash cams, security footage, people accidentally filming real things happening. But so many are just staged!! And no one in the notes takes the camera preparation into consideration!

This is 2024, you need to know how to spot bots lying to you, but also humans lying to you.

When you understand that kids and teenagers being salty about literary symbolic analysis comes from a very real place of annoyance and frustration at some teachers for being over-bearing and pretentious in their projecting of symbolism onto every facet of a story but you also understand that literary analysis and critical thinking in regards to symbolism is extremely important and deserves to be not only taught in schools, but actively used by writers when examining their own work to see if they might have used symbolism unintentionally and to make sure that they are using symbolism effectively:

When you understand that a lot of the reaction against literary symbolism is because we don’t educate about  symbolism as a communication form (people have historically used x symbol to mean y) and instead is taught as a fact (x symbol means y) so it strips analysis of any relevance to the world or other texts AND we don’t teach tropes/archetypes/genres from a young age so students are being exposed to literary analysis for the first time as 13-16 year olds and rightfully feel like it’s been made up

Delicious. Finally a good fucking addition.

The younger generations are primed to understand symbolism. The level of nuance that exists in modern memes is unparalleled. Information moves fast and so do they. The failure isn’t in the students, it’s in the institutions’ inability to adapt…much like how some literary writers fail to adapt 17th century symbolism to their desired (modern) audience and then have the audacity to get mad that nobody “gets it”

I am not even remotely kidding: One of the best illustrations for middle school teachers to use to demonstrate works that are in conversation with one another is this post and other posts of its kind:

Introduce that first, THEN talk about how Lord of the Flies(1954) is deliberately ragging on Coral Island(1857).

I think some of y’all are missing the point reading some of these tags

They’re not saying “wow that’s such a small amount to win.” Cause yeah to every normal person $434M is a life time of money to have.

What they’re pointing out is looking at how much the gov taxed of that $2 billion, makes it glaringly obvious how little actually billionaires are paying in taxes comparatively.

The fact that thinness came in vogue (as seen in popular culture, magazines, fashion models, etc.) in the 1920s when women got the right to vote is telling. We got real, tangible power and then were told to be thin to achieve beauty, and sickly thin too. The kind of thin with no muscles, no power. It is not surprising to me that our beauty standards keep women physically weaker, physically starving, and mentally exhausted. The beauty standard is nothing more than a tool to keep women weak, docile, poor, and too tired to act.

Okay, I probably shouldn't dignify this with a response, but this is just... blatantly ahistorical.

Bluntly: you're wrong, you're wrong in more ways than you know you're wrong, if you were talking about the 1990s you might not be wrong, but if you're talking about the 1920s you are wrong wrong wrongity wrong.

The fashionable silhouette that you're talking about came in vogue in the 1920s. There's a lot of words for it: 'sportif', 'garçonne', 'flapper' . And from the getgo, for most of the people talking about it? It was a women's lib thing.

Quoting the Smithsonian for a second:

And Vogue:

The entire point of the flapper silhouette was to make them look sporty and tomboyish and able to move freely and energetically, as opposed to their mothers, who were constrained by corsets and matronly clothing and social conventions. The entire point was to look fit and lithe and sporty in a way that'd shock your mom and your aunties.

In the words of my friend @terrarkul -- "Patriarchy is a phenomenon, not a conspiracy." No one decided, 'hehe, now that women have the right to vote, we need to get rid of all their strength so they can't threaten us!' Social pressure to be thin is incredibly damaging, and the ways that our society's relationship with thinness and fatness have developed are just fucked the hell up-- but at the time, garconne chic was a rejection of the previous social pressures on women.

Over time, because of various social and economic forces, it turned into something incredibly toxic. As far as I'm aware, the cycle went something like: "female designers embraced boyishness and/or sluttiness as a celebration of Not Being Stuck In The Ladies' Sphere anymore" > "various business owners (mostly men) realized there was big savings to be had in clothing that required less fabric, and that weight loss treatments were more profitable than weight gain treatments" > "clothing got scantier, and slimness became more and more desirable" > "pushback means you get a decade or so of women wearing more 'conservative', 'modest', traditionally feminine clothing" > repeat until we get to today.

But it was explicitly genderfucky and liberating for the women who started the trend. The fact that that fashion trend changed into what it is now has nothing to do with women having the right to vote, and it certainly was not a conscious choice by evil men trying to weaken women.

It's as if being a qualified, competent woman is not the issue.

#MovingGoalPosts