Reblogging Things

This morning there was a nation-wide text spam campaign targeting Black Americans (largely students) telling them that they’ve been selected to pick cotton and will be picked up to be sent to a plantation after Trump’s inauguration.

People online are making jokes about it, but it’s genuinely a disturbing sign. Someone was emboldened enough to intentionally run a background on thousands of young Black people and send them racist messages the day after a very exhausting and stressful election.

Please boost this if you can!!! This story is still developing and a lot of the people who have been getting the messages say they’re scared to leave home now.

What the fuck

To be clear, if Trump has won this election it is because of misinformation, electoral interference, corruption and mostly bigotry.

However, if you knew what was at stake and decided that you were willing to accept the possibility of a Trump victory rather than vote for Harris, you do not get to walk back an inch of that choice. You accepted responsibility at the ballot box, and now you get to own it.

It's really fucked up when you treat characters like people and people like characters.

No seriously it's REALLY fucked up when you treat characters as if they were real live people while you treat people like they're just characters.

I'm gonna go ahead and repeat: it is super, duper, extra scooper fucked up when you treat a character as if it were a living person while treating other human beings who are interacting with you like they are merely characters who can be written out of your personal story if you just find a remark mean enough.

You. You get it.

ETA wait why does this have 18k notes

Mostly I also find a lot of discussions about US action in WWII trite because much like class discourse, it treats "The United States" as one unified decision maker, like if political cartoons were real. Instead of ,as makes more sense, several hundred million people ruled by a government of hundreds of thousands headed by a few dozen specific people you can name and point to for things like "the bombing of Hiroshima" or "the specific Jim Crow policies that were used by the Nazis as justification for the Holocaust"

Moreover, instead of being used to understand the myriad ways in which racism and oppression are intersecting and self-reinforcing, it just switches the mythology from "The Nazis were an unique kind of evil" to "The Americans were a unique kind of evil, and the source of Racism". No! This shit was everywhere in the early 20th century, eugenics was a commonplace belief, especially among the scientific community. It was fucking horrible and you do a disservice to history if you ignore that to score points on owning the libs.

Also while there are people I know who do the above who I still respect, if you're gonna frame it as "Actually, it was the Soviets who won WWII, and unlike the US they cleaned up Germany. Look up operation paperclip!"

Well, buddy, you might wanna look up the word "Osoaviakhim", and also you might wanna just stop treating geopolitics like it's stanning a kpop band.

You will never believe what reblog I got after making this addition.

They know exactly what they're doing.

Theyre literally doing the thing fascist redditors do when they send you suicide watch "help" reports

the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent

the number of people who are pregnant and don't know about what induced labour entails and what post partum bleeding is horrifies me

Here is a story about the depths to which pregnant people are seen as a vessel for a baby, and the importance of finding prenatal care that assumes you are a human and not a baby holder:

When I was pregnant I was in a million forums for pregnant people because (cough adhd hyperfixation) and I had something called SPD (Symphysis pubis dysfunction) (not Sensory Processing Disorder though I also have that) which is where your pubic bones separate early (more or less) because they get all loosey goosey as your body gets ready to crank that baby out.

Except my pubic bone got confused and got misaligned at like 3 months pregnant. I could barely walk. I couldn't roll over in bed. Doing something that required me to shift my weight from one foot to another like opening a door knob was like an excruciatingly painful knife being stabbed into my pubic bone, I can't express how intense and blinding it was.

So I am in one million baby forums like "am I dying what is happening why is there a knife in my pubic bone" and all these people are like "I have that too! my doctor says it's normal and not to worry because it doesn't hurt the baby. I just deal with it by laying in bed for months in excruciating pain and think about how lucky I am to be having a little miracle growing in my body."

So lol nope. I went to my midwife and they are like, "Oh squeeze a can between your knees look up a physical therapy youtube on SPD" and I did that can-squeeze thing and it CURED THE PROBLEM in ONE DAY. I had been SUFFERING, y'all, it felt miraculous.

And I was so full of rage (flames, flames on the side of my face) that people are being told "Oh, it's NORMAL just deal with it" "It doesn't hurt the baby." Like, look, yes it's NORMAL but it's 100% treatable!!! SPD (again, not Sensory processing disorder) affects 1 in 5 pregnant people.

I was lucky to have amazing midwives (need a gender neutral term for that profession, but they see pregnant men and women)(side note highly recommend midwives if you are gender nonconfirming/a man/etc) and I have DOZENS of examples of shit like this.

(Another example is post partum friends being like "oh I am peeing my pants 900x day after giving birth" and my doctor says it's NORMAL so I just dealt with it for decades. My midwives were like "Oh that's normal and also physical therapy cures that in like 2 sessions")

When my sister was looking to get pregnant she was given the best advice. She was told that being pregnant is an experience akin to being in a moderate sized car crash, in terms of risk and lasting injury.

Some people in moderate car crashes are very lucky, and walk away with zero injury. Some are very unlucky, and die. But most people fall into the third category, where they'll be injured at the time, then heal, and then for the rest of their life they have some minor and liveable complication from the injury. Like a knee that lets you know when the rain is coming, or a back that doesn't like seats without lumbar support, or a shoulder that never quite gets its full range of motion back.

The vast majority of people survive and thrive, like. But their body is never the same again. And people should know that when they make the choice of whether to put their body through that or not

my mom had a complication postpartum that caused pain and swelling in her left leg. at the time she was told it was "milk leg" and that it was normal and she'd be fine, but it never went away or got better. she finally found a doctor recently who was willing to do some tests and found out it's a condition called "May-Thurner syndrome" and had surgery to fix it

she's been suffering with this since she gave birth to me. I'm 38 years old. she had that surgery last week.

there needs to be more dialogue about the things your body goes through during pregnancy. "that's normal" or "everyone goes through that" need to stop being used to shut down conversations about the horrific, permanent damage that can be done to bodies during pregnancy and childbirth. just because it's "normal" doesn't mean it needs to be endured

Childbirth is widely recognized to be one of the most excruciatingly painful things a human can experience and often causes permanent damage or disability, on top of risk of psychological trauma and extreme depression or psychosis from rapid changes in hormones.

Anti abortion, pro-natalist, "traditional" types just pretend none of this exists and make up a version of reality where people giving birth will magically not be distressed or traumatized by, for example, needing their genitals ripped open and stitched back together, because childbirth is Natural and Supposed To Happen, so the pain, injury, and risk of disability or trauma don't "count" as those things in the same way they would if there was a violent accident.

Having listened to a lot of pro-lifers speak

I think some of these folks think women are automatically not going to be traumatized or feel horrified or really suffer in a fully human way, from pregnancy and childbirth, because that's what women are For.

And to accept that women can feel and perceive pregnancy and childbirth to be just as distressing and traumatizing as any equally excruciating, physically violating, potentially lethal or disabling event, would explode their entire worldview, because that's the Point of women, that's what a woman Is, a thing that is Supposed To do that.

So even if they are women themselves, they convince themselves that God/nature has miraculously made pregnancy and childbirth an Exception to typical human reactions to things.

So when somebody says "That sounds awful and I would do anything to stop that from happening to me." they think that this feeling will be erased by a magic cloud if the person actually got pregnant.

Acting like people aren't capable of feeling the full range of emotions about something because of their biology is really dehumanizing! Just because somebody has the capability to give birth, doesn't mean their minds cannot experience it as a nightmare, a torture, or a trauma.

It is the same horrid dehumanization of insisting that every woman will have a magic switch flip in her head that will throw every previous opinion in the garbage and make her want to have baby baby baby baby.

When I was still quite young (like literally a child, not like mid-20s or some shit, some people just couldn't talk to anyone female without talking about their breeding potential) I had someone tell me I'd change my mind when (not if, I note) I found "the right man" and got pregnant. I'd become fed up with pointing out that if he wanted kids then he was not the right man for me and who says I'm getting married anyway and so on, but I knew she was arachnophobic, so I asked her how she'd feel if she knew there was a big bag of spiders inside her.

I'd never actually seen someone turn grey while trying not to throw up. So I cheerily added "but it'd be fine if they were magic mind control spiders that would make you want them there, wouldn't it?"

She never spoke to me again and must have told her kid not to as well, because she stopped taking every opportunity to be a bitch, so double win.

That's an awesome response, sounds like you were a pretty cool kid hahaha

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email

Related note. We should pull apart Elon Musk with horses.

Conservative corporate media has allowed much of Biden's popular achievements to go unmentioned.

FOX has created an alternate universe where popular achievements like bridge repair are radical and leftist and extreme.

the term "phasmid," meaning "stick insect," comes from a latin word meaning "apparition" or "phantom," due to the creatures' ability to hide in plain sight, and then move around and scare people.

the largest phasmids likely remain undiscovered; the longest insect known to science was a phasmid from a species that remains formally unnamed and undescribed, even since being captured for the first time in china in 2014.

a female specimen of the quasi-mythical australian species of gargantuan stick insect was sought by a curator of museum victoria for three years before he encountered one, also in 2014. upon realizing what it was, he says, “I started screaming."

this speaking as a cis person. Nothing brings me more joy seeing people find gender euphoria in becoming a mediocre representation of humanity. And I mean that so genuinely. Local boy finds joy and fulfillment wearing a cargo shorts and t-shirt combo. Local girl has transitioned to look like someone's disheveled aunt, has never been happier. Local person experiences gender euphoria rocking the world's worst bowl-cut. Without a scap of irony, this shit makes me see the wonder and whimsy in just, being a human. An average, person going through their day-to-day, is a wondrous thing? That's amazing. And heteronormativity has stripped these experiences of their joy. Like you're right, wearing a basic girlypop skirt should make my heart sing. Why not? Why are these expressions lesser because they're normal? All this to say. Shoutout to all the basic bitches out there. Yes that polo shirt does make you look like a divorced golfer dad. Yes, that too is kind of a slay, now that I think of it.

I can think of a really easy solution to this problem.

If the cat is preferring to be at someone else's house when you let them outside.... I'd say that cat is definitely choosing them over you.

Someone at my work recently found a roughly 7 month old intact male cat who is extremely friendly and has been hanging around her house more and more and more. They live near an extremely busy road. They're going to contact the local shelter and see what they need to do legally, but when there was no microchip I looked this person in the eye and said "Please welcome your new cat." Provided they don't find owners, and I'm hoping to everything they *don't*, he is going to live out the rest of his life as an indoor-only cat.

i'm gonna just say if you find an outdoor cat, unless they escaped from an indoor home, just keep them if you feel so inclined. once you allow free roaming, you are not the "owner" of a cat; you're just letting a stray into your home sometimes.

if you continuously let your dog run around unrestrained and someone eventually took them in, not a damn person would think you deserve that dog back. it's called animal neglect, and if you continue to do it after ppl tell you why it's bad, you should lose your cat privileges.

Just gonna comment that regardless of the morals of the question, following the immediate above advice IS technically considered legal theft in some jurisdictions, so at least be aware of what risks you might be exposing yourself to, including cops coming to find out if you did in fact "steal" someone's cat.

Cops are way more likely to say it's a civil matter and do jack shit than show up at your house over a cat tbh. And if they do, just say it's your cat, or better yet don't talk to them at all.

Everyone say thank you american indigenous people for cultivating corn, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cacao, pumpkin, squash, and anything i missed. Makes life more meaningful globally

My friends and I used to do this thing where we'd dress up on a theme and go do something totally normal.

We dressed up as pirates and went bowling.

We dressed as vikings and went to the grocery store. The security guard told us we had to move our longship because it was illegally parked.

We dressed as Romans and went to Blockbuster. The staff chanted, "toga! Toga! Toga!" at us.

We dressed up all steampunk and went to the museum. Tourists kept taking our picture.

I used to do historical reenactment when I was at University. I would go to class before session as a Norman knight, and when the session was over me and some of my buddies I did it with would get the bus home in the same kit. Stop at the Tesco's in full armour for beer and supper and ice cream, then get together at Irish's place for a LAN party.

It's enrichment for all involved. I remember being told I was 900 years late for the battle, and asking the bus driver where the horses were.

I genuinely think the world would be a much better place if more people felt comfortable dressing a bit silly out in public.

In case any of you here also use X/Twitter.

Hey so seems like right now would be a really good time for any and all artists and writers still on this site to get the hell out.

It sucks to migrate sites if you’ve been in one place for years - I know; I’ve done it a couple times now when places went down over the years. But this is really scummy.