Racing Turtles

“It’s so crazy JKR is misgendering a real cis WOMAN who was raised as a GIRL her whole LIFE what a dummy” is such a dogshit argument lol stop ceding ground to the idea that cis women have a more legitimate claim to womanhood because they were “born and raised” a woman and that’s why it makes this misgendering “more” ridiculous somehow. transphobes being constantly wrong about who is “actually transgender” is not their trans clocking radar ‘misfiring,’ they are proudly, openly, and successfully terrorising the public into accepting a very narrow & particular white suprematist notion of gendered divisions in society. JKR is not ‘mistaken’ she’s a fucking white supremacist who hangs out with other white supremacists & advances white supremacy through the language of transphobia. why is anyone still acting like she’s “making mistakes” where have you people been

Not calling this person out specifically but I’ve seen this take a bunch of times and I think it’s very misguided. JKR is not being a hypocrite by attacking Black and brown women, she is being racist. She is not being a hypocrite by attacking intersex women, she is being intersexist. She is a racist whose idea of womanhood is bound in exclusively white terms, an idea that comes from a very long, very rich tradition in western (and particularly UK) feminism. There is no hypocrisy going on here, it’s not a rhetorical or analytical error on her part, she isn’t contradicting herself, she is a racist who does not consider Black women or women of colour to be “real” women & especially does not consider them worthy of protection. This is only hypocritical if you ignore the central role white supremacy plays within terf thought

Overheard in a thread about restaurants offering free meals.

"If people that don’t need it take it, it says something about them. If you don’t give because of the chance someone might take it that doesn’t need it, that says something about you."

This is the most successful way I have ever found to explain my take on panhandling. People are going to take advantage of you. That is unavoidable, it is just going to happen. But that's a them problem. Your act of kindness is not altered by someone else's deceit.

I read a book a few years back that permanently altered the way I think about this. A teenage boy gives freely to a stranger, and is asked why he would do that.

They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera

Thank you for the recommendation!

also, frankly, if someone is asking for help who “doesn’t really need it”……idk. i don’t buy that. if someone is asking for help, i think they need it. maybe they don’t need my ten dollars specifically, maybe they actually need therapy or counseling or a babysitter or a break or a friend or a mentor or a safe place to sleep, or WHATEVER.

millionaires and people who are completely secure aren’t out there panhandling, is what i’m saying.

I'm someone who seems like she doesn't need any charity. I have a good office job, I have a car that runs, I live in an apartment I pay for. But also, there's free food in the lobby of the apartment or at the office a lot of days, and I take as much as I can get away with, because I know that ultimately, I'm *barely* making it all work. I can see how close I am to not having any of it.

Basically, if I lose one of those three things above, I'm kind of hosed. I mean, I have a good support system, but it would stress the hell out of that support system if I lost my job or got evicted or lost my car. And I don't want to do that. I'm doing fine.

A lot of us are "doing fine". My mom is "doing fine"... as long as I pay her electric bill and give her money for food every month.

So yeah, that bagel with cream cheese? That's a bagel I don't have to buy now. That donut? Free, baby! So yeah, I'm taking that free food and I'm eating it, and I'm thanking the person who brought it in while maybe sneaking some more up to my apartment to put in the fridge for later. Because I'm doing fine, but I'm not a fool.

If someone's willing to pretend to be homeless in a society that despises the homeless they probably need the help more than they're personally willing to admit honestly

the hair splitting and pontificating while Palestinian families are being starved and murdered on instagram live is…………………………………….i’m glad u consider this some kind of intellectual exercise but uh now is not the time to do genocide justifications to win the imaginary quiz bowl trophy in ur head. weirdo behavior.

FUCK IT FREE BLOCK!!!

You see this is what I'm saying by everything you say when it comes to Palestine activism has a direct impact on palestinians. Do you think that these people are saying something... new? There are SO many Palestinian international lawyers involved in world courts because they realize that int law can be a tool to be wielded against their oppression but we also understand that same international law does nothing to help on on the ground.

Like this rhetoric is EXACTLY what israeli politicians and iof commanders are using to kill people. We are in the midst of a genocide, we don't have time to be like "Well actually, according to international law" or whatever. But sure, the people who are complaining about the way the Atlantic published a genocide apologia piece during a current massacre campaign are definitely not Palestinian nor do they understand anything about Palestinian activism (/sarcasm).

Does it occur to you people that the ones most mad about these genocide apologia pieces are Palestinians themselves or do we just not exist to you??

part of media literacy is recognizing that

ah i was so incensed by the attempt to accuse palestinians of being unable to parse through a clear vile article that i forgot to highlight the most reprehensible part of the quoted comment, which is saying "the law says a child can be killed if he is pointing a gun at you" when in fact the example given in the article is far worse:

"if one is being attacked by an enemy who hides behind the child"

OP of the tags (and the freaks in the notes) are desperate to soften the phrasing of this article by implying killing children is ok if they're evil little children pointing guns at you, but the article is not even interested in whether the child is harming you. the article is interesting in killing a child to prevent an attack to yourself, clearly intended as companion to the long-debunked hasbara "hamas human shields" line, which does not actually apply under IHL for gaza and is just that: hasbara. the article is arguing that killing a child could be possible in completely different circumstances, attempting to convince you that perhaps these circumstances apply here. it's not merely that this is poorly disguised genocide apologism, it's also absurd that the freaks who have the audacity to talk down to palestinians in the notes are trying to say this article is somehow a defense of international law and therefore the criticism of it is a criticism of the law when israel does not abide by international law anyway. these children are not legally killed, and although israel and the author of the article certainly wish (and are trying to convince you) its possible to find a situation where you can legally kill tens of thousands of palestinian children and the only problem would be how disturbing it would be to onlookers, that situation does not exist.

that said, i don't think this is a matter of insufficient literacy on their part, but rather a matter of insufficient humanity.

she’s everything, he’s just ten✨

i have rule i semi-adhere to for media criticism which is to ideologically meet shit where it's at (or where it's presented to me). i like to call it the "i didn't make you market it that way" rule--like, if lancer's union was just presented as a sci-fi setting, that would be fine. i don't expect all sci-fi settings to be communist utopias! but when the creators of lancer use the word utopia like 20 times & bandy around words like 'mutual aid' and 'post-scarcity' and 'anticapitalist' when describing it, then to me that becomes absolutely fair game. similarly if someone says 'stardew valley is fun i like farming :)' then i'm not gonna reply with a long post about how it's ideologically petty-bourgeois--but if they say 'stardew valley is anticapitalist', then they've opened up that can of worms and it's fair for me to point out that the worms exist.

it's the same phenomenon where a fantasy novel that says 'for the duration of this fantasy novel you need to just believe in the divine right of kings for the emotional stakes to make sense' is infinitely less objectionable than a fantasy novel that's also about restoring a king but takes painstaking time to point out how this king is A Good King who is Progressive and Nice and is going to do Nice Monarchy. when you try to sanitize something you end up turning any otherwise neutral or at least palatable depiction or framework you've included into a normative statement!

So at my workplace, we fund a Food Is Free shelf. It's the basics: take what you need, give what you can - our town has a high level of poverty, there's a cost of living crisis, be the good you want to see in the world etc etc.

Today we had a guy knock on the door and ask if we had a plastic bag he could use to carry a few things - I said sure, got him a plastic bag, and he started packing up his 2 rolls of toilet paper, his 3 or 4 foodstuff items. He said he'd been to a funeral out of town (1500 kms away) and spent his paycheck on fuel - he was only broke till Friday, he said.

And I said, well I'm glad we could help, it's why we have the shelf. We want the community to use it.

And he said:

But people ABUSE it! I've seen people take heaps of stuff from it - and they don't even have kids or anything. And it's fair enough, some people are struggling until the next paycheck, but other people just ABUSE it. You need a sign that says TAKE ONE ITEM ONLY or something. I've taken something from here maybe twice, but I've seen people coming round every week! I've even put stuff on the shelf! Yeah, you need CAMERAS or something. People abuse it.

So here is a man who is actively utilising a public resource that we created to support our local community...And yet he is so brainwashed by capitalism into thinking that people don't deserve basic needs - if they're not working hard, or maybe they're struggling but they don't have it As Bad as others, or they're using a FREE RESOURCE more often than HE thinks is acceptable. He thinks that we should use security cameras to crack down on people "STEALING" from the Food is FREE shelf. Like he's more worthy, like he's a better person, because he doesn't need as much help as others might.

Sometimes, when something is free, people might abuse it. But isn't it better to offer the support to people who need it? To offer an opportunity for people to get back on their feet (even if they're only broke till Friday)? To provide help, no questions asked and no conditions needed?

So what if people abuse it - isn't it worth it if helps someone?

It's also not abusing the system.

If a resource defined as "FREE: For anyone, for anytime, for any reason" is being used by people frequently, then the system is not abused - the system is USED.

More demand for the system means more support to meet the demand.

My anger would be:

WHY do these people rely so heavily on this resource?

WHERE are we failing them?

HOW can we help?

glass onion was amazing and I wouldn’t change anything about it. BUT I do think it would have been hilarious if there was a post credit scene with all of them getting covid, because of course miles’ gun vax thing doesn’t work.

Like, make all the monsterfucking jokes you want, but Guillermo del Toro knows his shit when it comes to early 20th Century cosmic horror literature, and The Shape of Water is a direct critical response to H P Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth – and if you understand the subtext of The Shadow over Innsmouth, then you’ve gotta understand that it’s absolutely essential to The Shape of Water’s criticism that the heroine fucks that sexy fish-man. This is monsterfucking as praxis.

i think if you asked miles o’brien if he liked men he would say “well I loike em foine. there’r many a foine man i look up to” and then you clarify and ask if he’s gay or bi he would say  “every man feels a bit of an attraction to other men from toime to toime dooesnt he. It’s completely nahrmal to have a desoire to kiss another man every wonce in a whoile. but that dooesnt make me gey or boisexual er anythen.”

listen. i love the cliche trope of susie having a varsity jacket and giving it to noelle as much as the next guy. groundbreaking revolutionary spectacular magnificent. however, NOELLE is the one on the school sports team. so it’s actually far more likely that noelle would get a varsity jacket like three sizes too big solely so she can give it to susie, and then utterly fail to explain herself even somewhat coherently. in this essay i w

most ever

Ulysses Grant on a train

reminder that Grant was the only American president to be arrested while in office, and it was for speeding.

This seems like a weird comment to make (that speeds as high as 18 mph somehow “seemed like annihilating space” to him), given, afaik, your average horse could go much faster than that, which I’m sure Grant had experience with.

if you make a horse run 18 mph for an hour you won’t have travelled 18 miles, though. you’ll have killed your horse.

a well-trained horse can manage 2-2.5 miles at a gallop, which takes about 3 minutes at 20mph. varying between a trot and a walk, a horse can manage 20-30 miles in a day. 50 isn’t out of the question, but is certainly a very long and tiring trip for both horse and rider, and there’s a nontrivial chance one of you just fucking dies from it. top performance for the very best trained horse and rider pairs maxes out at something like 100 miles in a day, and that’s also really fucking gruelling.

so to go 50 miles sitting on a cushioned seat, eating snacks and watching the country go by through a window, and have it only take about four hours, would have been extremely fucking cool to anyone who knew precisely how much the horseback version of the same trip would have sucked shit.

when programs fucking autocorrect <3 to ❤️ and :) to 😃,,,, do you have any idea what you’ve just done?? what you just fucking destroyed ?

One of the subtler subplots going on in the background of Harrow the Ninth is why exactly Merymorn and Augustine agree to help Harrow, a child they expect to be dead in a matter of months no matter what they do, to kill Gideon, a man they have been friends with for a myriad. The lyctors are all deeply alienated from human connection and very willing to kill each other if necessary but it didn’t seem to serve their interests here. It wasn’t until I ran into this passage on a reread that it clicked for me

Mercymorn and Augustine don’t trust John and they expect that they will eventually get evidence he betrayed them at which point they will try to kill him. And when that happens they think that Gideon will take his side anyway. That means that it’s to their advantage to find a way to eliminate him before their final confrontation with John so they won’t have to deal with him then. Harrow herself and her conflict with Gideon are completely irrelevant to the decision making process that leads to Dios Apate, Minor. She’s just a convenient patsy they can use to off Gideon in a way that isn’t directly attributable to them.

^ NOTHING BUT TRUTH HERE

I think about this all the time when I contemplate how terrible and self-centered nerd culture can be yet how much of their media furthers messages of self-sacrifice, cooperation and inclusion

So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.

For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.