melanccholia

[melanccholia]

#these things literally always make me wheeze

[melanccholia]

i'm listening to gathering moss, by robin wall kimmerer, and she is talking about a very odd job she was consigned to do, where an eccentric millionaire recuited her to consult on a "habitat restoration". when she arrives, the job they actually want her to do is to tell them how to plant mosses on the rocks in his garden. he wants it to look like a specific, beautiful wild cliff in the woods nearby, with centuries-old beds of moss growing thick and strong. she tells him it is impossible. such a thing would take decades to accomplish.

later, she is called back to look at the progress of the moss garden and is amazed by the thick, well-established mosses. how did they do it? she asks.

then they take her out to the woods and show her that they have been blasting huge chunks of rock out of the cliff, packaging them in burlap, and moving them to the owner's garden.

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there was backlash from homeschooling "parents rights" advocates in my area before because of a daycare teaching kids about consent...all they learned is that you don't have to accept unwanted physical intimacy. one scenario that happened is a parent told her toddler boy to kiss a toddler girl in class. toddler boy comes back and says that toddler girl didn't want a kiss. it turns out the kids were taught that you don't touch someone if they say "no". parents thought this was ridiculous. I felt crazy hearing them talk about it, why in the world would you be upset by kids respecting each others boundaries, and why are you asking your toddlers to kiss each other in the first place as if they're toys and not human beings?

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In what world is taylor swift considered a tortured poet? Tortured is burroughs on heroin, is sylvia's head in the oven, is hunter s thompsons sheer lunacy, is lynch saying he'll shoot himself if he forgets a good idea, is bukowski being a deadbeat misogynist fuck up, is a beat poet in psychosis, is 27 club, is junkie scholar, is manic depressive diagnoses, is active drug dependency, is suicidal ideations. For a beloved world famous white girl popstar to take on the title of the tortured poet is the ultimate bastardization of the tortured poet...

[melanccholia]

You people have got to start being fucking nicer to lgbt people (especially trans women) who want biological kids like I'm so over the stupid fucking edgy "ugh why would anyone want to be pregnant" and "why would you ever want kids that's so icky and gross" attitude so many of you on here have it's fucking pathetic and annoying grow up

#I'm very interested in fostering and I have I'd say a pretty realistic view on it #which is to say fostering and adoption esp older kids ABSOLUTELY present challenges you won't have with bio kids. #just dealing with the legalities alone is a huge and often ongoing hurdle that just isn't realistic for most people #it makes absolute sense to me that someone wouldn't want to go that route to be a parent

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i wish trans ppl could have conversations about bottom surgery without it quickly devolving into really cruel, callous commentary. i also am not thrilled with the current options for bottom surgery available to me, because they are not a good fit for me + what i would want from that particular procedure. other people are going to have different needs + desires than my own.

outside of carefully curated facebook groups, every time someone brings bottom surgery up on social media, the comments are filled with "x surgery results look DISGUSTING" "why would i want genitals that don't even work" "what's the fucking point? it's a waste" "it'll never look like/be a real x, anyway" alongside absurdly false or outdated information about risks or outcomes (do not let people convince you that the sexual gratification or aesthetics you desire are 'impossible' without doing your own research- the options are much more advanced + plentiful than you might think)

there are members of our community who have had those surgeries. those are their post-surgical bodies you are calling disgusting or accusing of being fake/useless/wasteful. these are surgeries that people pursue for their entire lives, run through their savings for, lose their relationships or jobs for-- would it kill you to talk about their bodies respectfully? transitioning bodies are so vilified in day-to-day life, could we at least commit to not feeding that?

[melanccholia]

joining the war on “pretentiousness” on the side of the pretentious

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In 2022, Massachusetts residents voted in favor of a Fair Tax ballot measure to extra-super-duper-tax those earning more than one million dollars a year and to spend the revenue from that on education and transportation initiatives.

Naturally, there were the naysayers. Those who warned that all of the state’s rich people would move away to their very own Galt’s Gulch or whatever, if they were forced to pay a four percent tax on anything they make over a million dollars. The implication there, of course, is that raising this tax would, ironically, lead to the state collecting less revenue overall.

That didn’t happen! In fact, the state has already raised $1.8 billion in revenue so far for this fiscal year — which is $800 million more than they expected, and they still have a few months to go. The vast majority of the surplus will go to a fund that legislators can use for one-time investments in various projects.

The revenue has already been invested in universal school lunches, in more scholarships to public colleges, in improvements to the MBTA, and to repair roads and bridges. These are all things that will improve the quality of life for everyone, including the “ultra-rich” who happen to live there. The fact is, it’s just nice to live in a society that is more civil, that takes care of its people and its children and that fixes things when they are broken.

[ ]

Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and others have introduced bills in the House and Senate for a nationwide millionaire’s tax of two percent — two cents on the dollar for all wealth exceeding $50 million and six percent on all wealth over a billion dollars. This would bring in an estimated $3.75 trillion over 10 years, which we could use to improve the lives of all US citizens. We could have so many nice things!

It’s time to stop living in fear of what millionaires and billionaires — who have made their fortunes off of roads we’ve paid for and employees we’ve paid to educate — will do or where they will move if forced to pay their fair share. That’s no way to live. If they have some place better to go that won’t force them to contribute to improving their community? Let them. Other people will come along and be more than happy to pick up where they left off. But more than likely, they won’t do jack shit because they’re rich, and if they wanted to live someplace else, they’d be there by now.

[melanccholia]

wait do you guys actually carry purses/bags everywhere you go i really need to know

#yes especially in the summer #I use everything in it pretty regularly actually

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MAGIMATE

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One of the things that always drives me insane is seeing people try to work out coherent chronology and continuity of the Mad Max series, and the thing that makes me crazier is when people push back on this by being like "it's a dumb movie about crazy driving and explosions! it doesn't NEED to make sense!" because in reality the lack of a defined chronology or continuity is a feature, not a bug, and the reason for it is not that the movies are too dumb to be held to that standard, it's that the movies are much smarter than anyone trying to Figure Them Out give them credit for

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He survived glaze firing, the wick and oil reserve work perfectly as intended, and now he remains in chains, offering light.

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wizard city

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Demons and monsters that torture people because they feed on human suffering are so dumb. People are suffering everywhere my guy go literally any place and take a deep whiff.

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The entire idea of the egg as "someone who is trans but ~doesn't realize it yet~" instead of "someone who would clearly be happier if they chose to be trans" has broken a lot of people's brains

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Anti-voting rhetoric will be the death of the left. Literally.

Not a single fucking Republican voted to protect roe. It was fucking overturned in the first place bc trump got three Supreme Court appointments.

Every fucking thing wrong in this country is almost certainly the result of Republicans being in power. In 2020, Texas cut half of the polling places in black neighborhoods, and doubled them in white ones, regardless of population. It was Republicans bitching about mail in voting, and constantly, constantly fearmonger about voter fraud. Literally, their platform is about making civil rights harder to practice.

Would you like to know why? It’s because Republican politicians know better than anyone that higher voter participation means higher republican loss.

But what do I see from the online left, champions of the oppressed?

“Voting doesn’t do anything, the parties are the same, the system is rigged, etc, etc”

Don’t sit here and tell me you give a fuck about marginalized people if you aren’t ready to march your ass to the voting booth and vote out the party actively stripping their rights away.

Protest, donate, community build, unionize, and vote, vote, vote.

By the time direct action is the only option, it will be too fucking late.