#almost poverty

[ladyinrainbowglasses]

Poverty with Training Wheels

Or: How I Learned to Stop Trying and Just Accept Financial Abuse The relevant facts before I start ranting: - My father was born into and grew up on the poverty line. His father was a property manager in a tenement - they got free rent for labor and my dad began working when he was 5. He is very intelligent (don’t want to deny the good that did him) and also pretty dang lucky (he survived his childhood for one, but he also got lucky in the stock market and actually had a decent lucky streak as a gambler). He currently owns 4 houses and about 60 various acres of land. His own house is a five bedroom, three bath neo-Colonial in Northern Virginia that just underwent extensive remodeling (it’s hideous, which I will rant about at some other point). - I am disabled and have been to some extent my whole life. It got much, much worse in my teens and twenties, and when I graduated with my Bachelors in 2010, I was only really semi-functional. My list of diagnosed or waiting-on-official diagnosis disabilities are: paroxysmal dyskinesia, PCOS, adenomyosis, migraines, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, multiple anaphylactic allergies, c-PTSD and original flavor, gallstones (removed), propensity to kidney stones, severe tonsillitis (removed after 8 months, causing permanent ear damage), ADHD, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis of the hands, bronchial scarring from whooping cough, IBS, sleep apnea, anxiety, depression, and obesity.  When can you start calling it financial abuse? I grew up with wealthy parents who are also both stingy and poverty-informed. My mother passed when I was 5 and, from what I have gathered, she was as frugal as you’d expect an English teacher climbing towards a doctorate married to a bright young airman climbing the ranks to be. I have never been given an indication that she was “weird” about money, but I logically have no way of knowing. My father’s backstory has been given. My stepmother grew up incredibly rich (the daughter of an ambassador) and then lost everything. She survived poverty and abuse as a young adult and became deeply weird about money.  I grew up in a big house on 2 acres of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains, about an hour from Washington, D.C. My dad worked for Air Force Communications and Intelligence. My sister and I attended private school, complete with uniforms. Dad always insisted we buy our uniforms second-hand, because of how expensive they were. At the same time, we had live-in nannies for most of my childhood. These were not professional caretakers of children - they were young women who applied for the position because it included room and board, so I imagine that was done on the cheap. My sister took horseback riding lessons, but I never got to, because Dad decided it was too expensive and too big a hassle a bit before he remarried. My family has never owned fewer than four cars at a time.  As a kid, I did not realize we were wealthy, because my dad has gone between frugal, stingy, and spendthrift my entire life. In his frugal stages, we would do things like go dumpster-diving behind Costco, going to the dump and asking for stuff that looked useful, and stocking up on frozen goods, so that the primary meal I remember from ages 6-10 is TV dinners. In stingier cycles, Dad would tell us off for anything that “wasted” money. Like getting a hole in your uniform skirt (Don’t you know how expensive these are!? You can wear that until you outgrow it and if you don’t want it to have holes, don’t put holes in it.) My sister’s horse riding lessons. I got to play violin and flute, but during stingy cycles, Dad would call me out for not practicing enough, when he was “paying so much” to rent these instruments for me. My dad is also a hoarder, so his spendthrift cycles usually involve buying absolutely whacking amounts of movies in whatever format is popular, books, and power tools that he has no use for. My father’s DVD and Blu-Ray collection is somewhere in the range of 5,000+ and his book collection is at least 12,000 volumes. The foundations of the house were literally starting to crumble because of the weight of the books he was storing throughout the house. He threw away around 2,000 books from our basement that had become water-damaged. My dad, who is 82, has emphysema and a heart murmur post-heart attack, owns a top-of-the-line truck, two tractors that never work, a riding mower, and dozens of expensive power tools. During renovations, roughly $10,000 worth of those power tools were destroyed because of improper storage, so Dad bought replacements for a bunch of them. The renovations included the construction of a three-car garage, the installation of a backup generator, the complete remodeling of the previous garage into a library with built-in bookshelves and the installation of a new half bath with shower, the painting of every one of the 15 rooms and two hallways (all the same shade of mental hospital grey), the installation of track lighting in every room in the house, the conversion of the old, rotting screen porch to a sun room (complete with working sink and three permanent islands), the tearing down of the wooden deck and its replacement with concrete stairs and a concrete patio, the cutting of two skylights, the sealing of the old attic, and the creation of a mudroom in place of our former front porch. I currently work in windows and he said he is very, very interested in the 47% employee discount for replacing the 19 windows originally installed at the building in the 70′s.  Part of the roof blew off at the townhouse that he owns that I live in. Our home insurance gave him $17k towards fixing it. I saw the original quotes, which were between $8-$9k (the original emails also included him straight up saying he was an elderly disabled veteran and asking if they had any discounts for any of that). He said with the material the HOA is demanding we use the price has gone up to $13k. As I work in windows and the windows at my house are garbage that drastically raise my energy bills, I told him I wanted to use whatever was left over in replacing windows. He instantly snapped, “I’m not MADE of money! I’ve got my own expenses, kiddo.” As if he hadn’t told me he had been making plans for replacing all of his own windows with his own money three days before. He also started insisting that I try to finagle a raise at work and told me not to tell my stepmother about my planned heritage trip to Norway, because she will then insist that I give all of the money I am saving for it to them. He already agreed to a scheme that I proposed somewhat tongue-in-cheek that now that I have a steady job, he garnish 30% of every paycheck I receive to pay back rent and loaned money back. For Christmas, he and my stepmother gave me $150. My boyfriend’s grandma, who I have only met twice, gave me $75, in contrast.  Ever since I was 15, I have been living in poverty with training wheels. My parents are wealthy. They are not going to let me starve to death (though they will and do encourage me to go on SNAP whenever I am struggling, on the basis that they already paid for it through taxes). They let me live, mostly rent-free, in a decent townhouse in a nice city, though I must have at least one paying roommate. I pay all utilities. I have a Costco credit card and my dad pays for my cell phone, my car insurance, and the HOA fees. I hear a lot about it. Not every time I go home, but the majority of the time I go home, my dad or my stepmother lectures me about money. They insist that I work harder and keep my nose to the grindstone. One of them bemoans how hard they had it in their youth. They both tell me they are struggling financially. My stepmother, who was the head counter worker of Elizabeth Arden at a Macy’s near D.C., and who is now head counter worker at Lancome at the same Macy’s. My father, retired Colonel, with investment portfolios, a pension, Social Security, and three rental properties. Me, who has never made more than $20 per hour and was hired for my first full-time job ever at age 35. The most I have ever made in a year was $19k, and that was having a 15 hour a week early AM gig, a 35 hour a week online teaching aid job, proofreading, and pet-sitting. I currently make $16.50 per hour, despite having a master’s degree and having worked since I was 15.  Starting when I got my first part-time job at age 15, the “This is your responsibility to pay for” has expanded, starting with, “You can buy your own clothes now”, in addition to the house chores I already did (including taking over the cooking almost entirely at age 16, because my stepmother started making food I couldn’t eat deliberately or started making too little food for me to eat). I have a fair amount of clothes from high school still, because I wasn’t going to mess up what I had worked hard to get.  It really started ramping up when I went to college. I got a scholarship and applied for grants, but most of the money was supposed to come out of a college fund my parents had set up, and that Dad apparently put an inheritance from our grandma into our college funds. Dad complained throughout college that me living in an apartment instead of the dorm was so expensive and that he needed me to forgo pretty much every extraneous activity that would cost money. I was expected to keep working. This wouldn’t be too unreasonable, except I had begun having mystery seizures (later diagnosed as paroxysmal dyskinesia, apparently comorbid with tardive dyskinesia caused by my anti-depressants). I would go to work, have a dystonic episode, then go to class and have a dystonic episode. I also caught whooping cough. I ran up about $12,000 in medical debt. I successfully was able to appeal for financial aid to get rid of most of it, but I still had plenty left over. I also ate out on credit way more than I should have immediately after graduation, but I was struggling with bulimia made worse by a traumatic breakup with an abusive partner.  My parents tried to insist that I move back in with them after college, so that I could cook for them, watch their dog and cats whenever needed, and do whatever else they wanted while I tried to find a job. I pointed out that my stepmother and I would do each other grievous harm. Dad agreed to let me live in the townhouse he had bought for my stepbrother and sister-in-law, since they had moved. The expectation remained that I would come up at least once a month and every holiday to cook and clean, come up whenever I was needed to animal sit (to the point that when the whole family went to Galaxy’s Edge, I, the biggest Star Wars nerd in the family, was left home to dog-sit because I couldn’t possibly afford the tickets and they didn’t want to pay someone else to come do it. Dad slipped me a hundred and told me to keep it quiet), and to do all of the holiday present shopping for every person in the family, as well as wrapping those presents, setting up the tree and doing the decorating myself. About 1/2 of the time, I am expected to do the shopping for holiday meals as well. My stepmother still requires me to pick presents for Dad’s birthday and Christmas, because she has no idea what he would like. This has been the state of affairs for the last 11 years. I have a house, which I must share. When I came to Dad in my mid-20′s, crying about how rotten my roommates were, he basically told me to suck it up as long as they paid rent. At one point, there were five adults living in a three-bedroom townhouse with a very small kitchen. One was an addict who was not ready to start working on recovery and another was a legit dealer who had started dating the roommate I had actually approved, so she moved him in and he immediately started fooling around with the addict, who was my adopted cousin’s fiance. I approved two people moving in, both brought plus-ones.  When I finally got them out, my chosen brother moved in. He is a lovely man in many ways, but he is also disgusting. His depression and executive dysfunction make living with him a nightmare, because he rarely cleans and often does not clean himself. But he paid the rent, so he stayed, turning my house into garbage. Another roommate also contributed to this - neither young man contributed a fair share to the chores. I was a substitute teacher at the time, but I only made $65-$70 a day for doing that, and I was still having dystonic attacks all over the place. Dad would listen to me crying about how miserable it was living with these men who were basically fine living like animals and forcing me to clean up after them (on coming back from dog-sitting, I was greeted with mold in the sink and the catboxes). He never even suggested I look for new roommates, because these guys were paying. In 2015, I was assaulted in a hate crime. I am allergic to lavender and I was doing my student teaching in a high school. One student decided to spray me with lavender perfume on three separate occasions. I went into a prolonged hyperimmune response and had to stop working outside the house, because I kept going into anaphylactic shock in public. I started wearing filter masks in early 2016, so that I could go grocery shopping without risking anaphylaxis. I was never offered help with my mounting medical bills. I was told to go on SNAP and pressured to apply for SSDI. I was rejected from SSDI four times. Around when I was 30, my dad finally released my college fund/inheritance from Grandma to me. This was after my second third-hand car had finally died of old age, and after he withdrew $24k from this fund to buy myself a fairly new car. I was only partially consulted on this. After this stock portfolio was released to me, Dad immediately started telling me I couldn’t take money out of it, because I should defer to him in financial planning. Until I was 35, I humbly asked permission before I took any of my own money out of the fund that was set up for me. After all, Dad said it was for me in my old age. I successfully argued to him that I needed to make it to old age first, but he insisted that I only take out drips and drabbles, lest I make my taxes more complicated. He insists on doing my taxes - I know there are a bunch of documents labeled as being “portfolio” or “inheritance”, but I am not supposed to look at any of them. I suspect that he doesn’t have me involved in my taxes in part to hide how much wealth I technically own that he doesn’t think I deserve to have yet.  The last time I mentioned my stock portfolio being an inheritance from Mom and that I didn’t think she would mind if I took a bit out to finance a life-changing trip and to have fun. He shot back, “Your mom and *I* put that money aside for you”, with a palpable hint that I should give him the money I am planning to spend.  I am already discouraged from talking about my trip with my stepmother, because she will insist that I not go and instead give all the money to them, to pay them back for the rent and groceries that kept me above-ground until now.  I don’t deny that I do owe them money. I don’t think it’s financially abusive to expect money loaned to be paid back. But I do think it is financially abusive to know for certain that your adult child is living in poverty through no fault of their own and to keep throwing just enough of a lifeline to keep them off the streets. All of the complaining about every nickel and dime is financially abusive. Garnishing your own child’s wages is financially abusive. Denying me the money that insurance paid out to fix the house that I will own when my father passes is financially abusive. Doing that a mere five days after talking excitedly about how great it will be to utilize my excellent employee discount to replace his own windows out of pocket is financially abusive and weird.  The title sums up what this feels like. Every time the actual poverty I am in ever-present threat of experiencing happens, my parents give me a boost. They then lord it over me, bemoan their own impoverished state, and insist that I just work smarter in my broken body and I will have enough money to give them. In fairness to them, I probably owe them about $75k in unpaid rent, gas for my car, and groceries. In fairness to me, they are rich. I am supposed to inherit a lot. Dad seems to have become obsessed with how much money he will leave behind. Instead of trying to acclimate me to the wealth that we all know is coming, my parents have chosen to let me live the knife-edge of poverty experience, all while telling me about how close they are to cutting me off entirely. My father has access to my bank account and my investment portfolio and can look at them any time he pleases, while I certainly can’t get a look at his finances, let alone his will.  I know this is long and rambly, but it needed to be got out.

#financial abuse #parental abuse #Boomer money weirdness #living on the edge #almost poverty #poverty with training wheels

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

If you don’t mind sharing, since you don’t work for a zoo what is your job situation like? Making a living while working at a definitely zoo seems tricky. Is your main income zoology/animal related or is that more of a side thing?

Sincerely,

- a curious zoology student

I have a (mostly) unrelated jobjob - I’ve never actually been affiliated with a single facility, unless you count college internships before I started this blog. I freelance, working as a science media fact-checker and taking paid research contracts occasionally. I do work on a lot of animal / biology related fact-check content, but it’s not my entire scope of work. I also have the privilege of having family assistance, as I have chronic health issues that interfere with the normative 9-5 grind.

Everything I do in terms of blog writing/research, zoo industry research and publication, and photography is unpaid and pretty much a hobby at this point.

Prior to the pandemic I was trying to find funding for the intra-industry research and public-facing outreach I was doing, but there was never any money for it. (The industry is very used to expecting labor from young women for free. There was and is a lot of interest in the work I do, but the number of people/orgs that have ever provided compensation or financial support is in the single digits). The pandemic actually gave me the chance to pivot to focusing on professional fact-checking.

The only funding I get for any of this work is through a somewhat defunct Patreon I set up years ago when I was trying to make this blog / scicomm a full time gig. I’m terrible at updating it, and I’m conflicted enough about that to have been considering deleting it entirely. (For those of you who have stuck it out despite the radio silence, you’re incredible. You’ve facilitated the donation of my time to write a really cool paper with a zoo disaster response org, which will hopefully get through peer review soon).

To make something like this blog and everything else I do in the field actually financially sustainable, I’d need to fundraise and market more. The thing about a fact-checking career, though, is that it’s reinforced the need to make sure everything I write/say publicly is completely and 100% correct - because that level of rigor is what supports my professional reputation! Which means I’m slow to produce research and reticent to talk about it before it’s finished. My work comes out all the better for it, but it doesn’t fit into a content model that produces revenue.

So yeah, all of this is a side thing that I fit in around my paid work and my health. Because sometimes I just need to go see a tiger and smell an elephant, y’know?

#personal information #zoo job almost always require multiple incomes or family support #or generational wealth #otherwise you live in poverty #I am on a very non traditional industry path and it definitely does not pay either #but it’s a passion project

[snekdood]

notice how when you hear about all these rich white men in high positions of power doing heinous shit, none of them end up being trans men or mascs 🤔 but surely we're just as privileged as any other cis guy right?

#antimasculism #transandrophobia #surely its fair to say we experience the same level of privilege yes? #notice how theres no trans men in positions of power #notice how we're none of the top richest people in the world and its all cis ppl mostly men #notice how we're still more likely to live in poverty than average cis men also #notice how we've never been able to actually exercise this supposed power we have by default of being men #its almost like theres more it to that and its the fact that we're trans which might come as a surprise to some but its kinda a huge #fuckin handicap in life!

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

This election day, I'm thinking of my Nana.

I'm thinking of how as a young woman, she fled political violence in her native Colombia to build a new home in a more stable country. I'm thinking about how she lived a long life, but not long enough to see her home country elect its first ever progressive president (just a few months ago!).

Coincidentally, I was living in Colombia at that time (in the very city she grew up in), and I was able to witness what felt like a miracle. A very conservative country, suffering from the violent inheritance of colonization and catholic invasion and the war on drugs, against a backdrop of the dangerous global rise of the far right--this unlikely country managed to elect one of the most progressive heads of state in the world, in 2022. That's a pretty big deal.

And I'm thinking about this, this election day, because that election was won by a very thin margin. I'm thinking about how it almost didn't happen. I'm thinking about how it was only possible thanks to the highest voter turnout in 20 year. And I am thinking about the countless number of voters who chose to vote for the first time. I am thinking of the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens who showed up at the polls. I am thinking of the indigenous women who rode 12 hours on public buses to vote at the 'nearest' polling stations. I am thinking of all the money and corruption that went into preventing minority citizens from voting, and I'm thinking about how they showed up in the millions and voted anyway.

I am thinking that I would like to see a miracle like that in my own home country.

So if you're on the fence about waiting in line today to cast your vote, I hope that you will think--about the country you want to live in, the future you hope will unfold, and about all of the people it takes to make a miracle.

Because history may deem us nameless and faceless, but when we show up en masse, we are the ones who make history happen.

And yes, maybe also spare a thought for my Nana. Who was in fact a very angry and judgemental woman who supported the republican party for 50+ years, and who would be turning in her grave right now (if the family hadn't had her cremated). Think about the mean angry ghost of my Colombian grandmother, who very much wants you to not show up at the polls to support abortion and other sinful progressive values. Think about her. Do it for her. Do it for Nana.

#Do it! for her #not a shitpost #serious post #politics #ask to tag #I love you Nana but i disagree SO vehemently with almost all of your personal political and religious values #also you should have treated my mom SO MUCH BETTER when she was a kid. all of your kids really #i see you very much as a victim of religious trauma & childhood poverty #followed by the cultural isolation of being a first generation immigrant with no local hispanic community to provide support #plus the failure of late 20th century mental health care almost certainly compounded by medical sexism #recognize sympathize and am indignant on your behalf for all of those reasons and more #but that truth can also coexist alongside the truth that #hot DAMN Nana you and Papa very much failed to provide your children with an emotionally safe and stable environment in which to grow #and me and my sibs are still dealing with the generational trauma #and who knows how many of my cousins. I HAVE TWENTY-ONE COUSINS AND I DON'T TALK TO ANY OF THEM #that is too many cousins to not be in contact with any of them #(and fyi that's on *one* side of the family. on the other side are a dozen half-aunts-and-cousins I've never met #because Other Grandpa was a Certified Piece of Shit) #Anyway. ANYWAY... #apparently i really needed to overshare today. know what? no judgement. judgement free zone #i have no judgement thoughts or opinions i am finally FREE #........gosh that sounds so relaxing #ANYway #yeah. break the cycle of abuse or your descendants will grow up and critique your parenting choices on third-tier social media platforms #when people say 'they will always be remembered' at a funeral--that is a THREAT #what they actually mean is 'OH HONEYBUN YOU DONE FUCKED UP' #.........i want that in my eulogy actually

[rosepompadour]

One day I shall be the princess, and spend my whole life dancing in fairyland.

Anna Pavlova, I Dreamed I Was A Ballerina (1922)

#anna pavlova #ballet #i love reading about people from history who make these ridiculously prescient claims of greatness #and everyone around them at the time is just like 'sure! whatever!' #but then they actually DO IT #😱 #i live for that shit #there's a letter from fitzgerald where he says 'i shall write a novel better than any novel ever written in america'...and he DID THAT #don't you just love it! #i feel like some of our greatest artists (pavlova and fitzgerald being prime examples) almost HAD to be these crazy dreamers #because there was literally no one else who was going to do it for them #look at anna! her mom takes her to see sleeping beauty and anna's like 'mom i'm going to be the best ballerina who ever lived!' #and her mom is like 'we are literally living below the poverty line and you've never so much as twirled but OKAY!' #she probably thought anna would forget about it in a week #arrested development narrator: 'anna did not forget about it in a week.' #🩰💗

[shattered-earth]

I am OBSSESSED with GIRL MATH

I just realized this is what me and my friends have been doing when we need help making a purchase that we deserve but have too much of a money lizard to do. I love that we can chant GIRL MATH GIRL MATH GIRL MATH before doing it now. (it's basically FREE!)

Sources: x x x

#GIRL MATH #girlmath #it's basically free! #you're practically being PAID to buy it really #tiktok #almost all of us has poverty trauma in some form #in varying levels of severity #video #shit post #not art #sometimes we need to be reminded it's okay to buy nice things #we're adults now we have money #we deserve a treat #or we deserve not to suffer every day

[thecruellestmonth]

Do you guys really believe that killing is the singular bad thing that cops do?

Or even that killing is the most frequent bad thing that cops do?

Are you saying that if cops didn't kill, then they'd be the same as Batman? Because then you're suggesting that effectively Batman already is a cop, with the exception that he hasn't killed (just like the majority of U.S. cops, who have never once shot or killed anybody).

I'm a bit worried to see opinions suggesting that only killing is wrong—and that violence, stalking, and humiliation are okay. In real-life, police commit countless acts of those "little" abuses, terrorizing entire communities, before they murder anybody.

Invading people's privacy is wrong. Hurting people to the point of hospitalization is wrong. Forcibly drugging people is wrong. Putting people in cages is wrong. Torture and "enhanced interrogation" are wrong. Ambushing people in their homes and safe places is wrong. Keeping inexhaustible wealth is wrong.

Superhero comics are power fantasies. Not all fantasies need to reflect our ideology in reality. But once you apply your real-life values to fiction, once you decide that fiction showcases exemplary real-life ideology—then your praise for Batman's ideology does become a worrying reflection of your real-life understanding of social issues.

#copaganda #Bruce Wayne critical #GCPD #fandom discourse #Batman copaganda #police brutality cw #Almost sorry to drag serious discussion of copaganda into ridiculous superhero comics but I swear the other guys started it first... #To be clear I'm completely disinterested in condemning or interrogating Bruce over his personal choice not to kill. #But I am so fascinated in how he justifies his own use of violence and privilege!!! So very very fascinated!! #Once again: LESLIE THOMPKINS IS RIGHT. #Actually I'm not gonna tag this post as @nti Bruce W@yne--because really I enjoy canon Bruce a hell of a lot more than his stans do lol. #Sorry but Batman isn't a darling anti-cop revolutionary. If he were then he'd get in line behind Green Arrow and like the Invisibles. #I mean maybe The Audio Adventures version is anti cop but still in a free-market libertarian power fantasy kind of way if you can dig that. #violence mention cw #murder mention cw #fandom drama #This is why Cheer doesn't work because Red Hood realizes 'Oh I don't want kids to lose their parents like I lost mine-- #--therefore I won't murder anymore. It's time to put my faith in the system. 👼👼👼' #Jason sweetie... you lost your father firstly to criminalization and incarceration for property crime. #You lost your mother to poverty and addiction. You are actually not like Batdaddy and your trauma is not a mere echo of his trauma. #Batman discourse

[singingcicadas]

The way it's depicted, Cybertron's pre-war societal issues had a lot less to do with Functionism and more to do with unchecked government corruption, massive wealth disparity, high layoff/unemployment rates, and disenfranchisement.

People were starving, they needed work, they weren’t getting any. Those that were fortunate enough to have work didn’t get paid living wages, much less have anything to spare for health contingencies. Even then stability’s still the luxury of the top few tiers; they live one cut away from layoff. The government cared only enough to exacerbate these issues by coming up with new ways for exploitation. Any attempts to protest or lobby were shut down through political persecution. As a result the masses turned increasingly to crime, drug abuse, thuggery, and violence. Extreme acts of terrorism gets lauded as long as the collateral damage's suffered by someone else. Morality and caution are eroded in the face of desperation.

Meanwhile the many alleged restrictions of Functionism are just lip service complaints made by the characters which doesn’t match up to most of the stuff we’re shown. Like if Rung could become a psychologist, a specialized job that requires higher education, despite having zero background on top of such a weird alt that he had to be classified as an ornament, then wow the functionists must be open-minded. If Dominus Ambus could be a scientist/doctor/explorer/author/successful social rights advocator during the height of functionist control with a minesweeper military-use alt (assuming that his secondary alt's the same as Minimus'), then wow the functionists must be accommodating. If Tyrest could become chief engineer under Nova and later go into law, a complete change of profession, while being a jet, then wow functionism's flexible. If Ratbat and Momus could become senators in a society that discriminates heavily against beastformers and labor frames, then wow that’s progressive. If every Prime from Nova to Zeta (with the exception of Sentinel, his alt’s a tank, he only has wings in Megatron Origin as part of his Apex armour upgrade), every single named pre-war senator other than Proteus and Momus, and four out of five of Nova Prime’s buddy club (only Galvatron's a grounder) were wingframes in a society that supposedly discriminates against wingframes, then wow that’s… inconsistent worldbuilding.

Megatron didn’t get into bloodsports or start a war because he didn’t get to pursue his dream job. He got driven into the pits and down the slippery slope of moral degeneration because his only source of income was cut off by the mine closure incident. People wanted livelihoods above anything else, it's the failure to provide that that made the miners go off the deep end and resulted in the death of a guard. If Functionism actually ensured that everyone could be guaranteed a job or at least minimized the unemployment rates, then stratified castes or not, there would have been no war. People, or societies, are generally capable of tolerating an incredible amount of injustice as long as the majority still have a chance at scraping by at the end of the day. But the government, and later Megatron, kept yanking the rug out from under everyone over and over until they no longer even had a chance at that; there's no other choice left but fight or die.

#I get that all prejudices are full of contradictions and inconsistencies meant to cater to the needs of the ruling class #for the sole purpose of upholding the social stratification #and tokenism is a common thing #but when you can pull out two or more examples as shown to the contrary for every one of a character's complaints #about how they suffered from functionism discrimination #then it's just a really bad case of inconsistent writing with all tell no show #like you cannot expect me to take the 'flightframes are low caste' thing seriously #because the entire pre-war upper class is almost exclusively comprised of flight frames. it's the ground vehicles that are the minority #honestly it just feels like something made up on the spot for Starscream's sake #and Thundercracker Skywarp Jetfire got benefitted by association #when was functionism introduced as a concept in the comic anyway #was it in that Megatron/Optimus conversation in Chaos Theory? #b/c I'm getting heavy retcon vibes there #I got no impression that functionism was even a thing that existed when reading Megatron Origin #Autocracy's written later but still no functionism #The main social issue is widespread poverty like I'm sure a lot of those ppl would be pretty happy if someone could assign them jobs? #the miners in Megatron Origin weren't mad because they had to work in the mines #They were mad because of the layoff and automation and knowing soon there's going to be no mines for them to work. and then they'd starve #idw transformers #transformers #maccadam

[t4tnalu]

This post is weird as fuck, I thought it was known that "poor people shouldn't have children" was a bad take.

#like fuck off seriously #and no im not reading into this. there is no way to pursue this kind of thinking under capitalism without eugenics #it is almost impossible to escape poverty #so what are the options for people who do not have financial stability but want children? #what about the people who dont want children but are forced to have them anyway? #it is not a moral failing to have a child when u dont have money #its a societal problem that people are put into that position in the first place #GOD #💋

[shu-of-the-wind]

i know a thousand other people who grew up poor have noted this but growing up poor really fucks with your head in a way that almost forces a lot of us to become hoarders: we can't bear to throw anything away because we've had to repurpose so many broken and worn-thru things our entire lives, so our homes just become this endless den of clutter because oh we COULD throw that ripped shirt away but we could reuse it!! make it an oil rag!! turn it into a t-shirt blanket!! use it to stuff a homemade toy with!! so it just becomes impossible to get rid of anything unless you are, like my roommate, made with a stomach of iron and exist out of three packing boxes and a single backpack

#poverty #the lasting trauma caused by poverty #shut up alix no one cares #anyway i've been below the US poverty line almost my entire life until the last three years and even now i'm barely making ends meet #so i'm really bad about hoarding shit

[sophiaphile]

HBO's doc on the Love Has Won cult is such a clear testament that many people are attracted to cults because social systems in place have failed them.

When there's growing social despair and little justice, people look for ways to try to make sense of their experience.

#almost everyone joined the cult because they were disillusioned with society and their place in it #love has won #love has won: the cult of mother god #cults #socioeconomic despair #grifters #abuse #same is true of #nxivm #twin flame universe #qanon #qultists #anarchapulco #personal #poverty #conspiracy theory

[actiwitch]

i cant think of anything less leftist than choosing to pay for the slaughter of innocent, child-like beings, sexually exploit them, and while doing so unavoidably paying for one of the leading cause of the climate crisis

everyone's "radical leftist" and "remember, you are not immune to propoganda" until you bring up the animal and environmental suffering we've been raised to ignore

#eating animal products is a choice that you can always change! #almost every vegan(including myself) was non-vegan once #(also this obviously excludes those w health issues / in poverty etc as thats not a choice #see my post on that) #vegan #veganism #activism #activist #activist witch #leftist #leftism #left wing #feminism #dairy is scary #dairy is anti-feminist

[lilylived]

Someone mircoagressed me last week by saying that islam doesn't let women get educated "based on what he's seen." unlike judaism and modern chirstianity, where education is led by women.

Maybe if you stop doing silly little things like decimating every single university in a muslim state that had high rates of female literacy and education ❤️

This guy is an athiest traumatized by church, but somehow it all translated to a hatred of islam over anything.

These people really don't see what huge white supremacists they are. The new norm for white people is to let go of all religion. You aren't unique or special for choosing that. It's your current norm.

And they get so mad when you refuse to drop your personal beliefs and bend to their current mainstream ideology as well. What does that sound liKKKe?

#but you won't catch me dead debating religion with such freaks #these are the same people who are politically active about everything but silent as a mouse about genocide #there's a bengali on tiktok who went to bangladesh to help girls get out of child marriages and into schools instead #she said that almost all of the families were really receptive and wanted the help #like thanks for colonizing us.. taking all our money... pushing famines... funding genocide... trying to push anti islamic extremism onto u #but apparently our beliefs are the reason that 12 yo girls living in poverty can't bootstrap their way to an engineering degree #they won't see the obvious connection between completely destabilizing a country and how that affects women #they just want us to submit fully so they can do even more damage #submitting to white supremacy is not actually going to make our situation better... obviously #if you read about native ameeicans (cherokees)... that's exactly what a lot of them tried to do and it led to their demise

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Venting. Sorry…

I swear, I am going to just shatter. I though it was a bad day starting out (my knee, rotten period gushing blood, spilling my breakfast on the floor, accidentally endangering a bird’s nest full of baby birds, the farmer spraying the fields when I had to be out, my phone not working right and Mom being exceptionally weak when I called her, etc) but then I get the mail.

OMG! The bill for the car and truck insurance hadn’t been paid and it’s due TOMORROW! Because the vehicles are owned by Mom, my brother (or sister-in-law rather) pays the insurance from Mom account. I pay all the taxes, repairs, gas, etc myself (which is NOT easy carve out $1000 a month believe me!) but they have taken care of the insurance.

Until now.

You can’t drive a vehicle without insurance and where I live you can’t go anywhere without a car! I’m ten miles from a grocery store and no mass transit, obviously!

So, in a panic I try to get in touch with my sister-in-law. Then I try to see if I can pay it myself, ‘cause I may be broke but I HAVE to have a car!

$515

I don’t have that much in my bank account!!!

“Good” news though. I discover I can pay it partially. With extra fees for it being an installment, of course. There are ALWAYS extra fees is you are poor.

And so I scramble, transferring money so I can pay before I’m doomed.

I’d been so proud of myself. I’d saved money last month! Ok, part of it was someone donated to my ko-fi and I got my first tip ever on Tumblr, but mostly it was by only buying groceries once in a whole month. I had actually saved money!

Whoosh! There is goes! All of it.

And now I have to hope the animal feed and meds lasts another week, because my monthly money won’t come until then. As for me..

Oh god, not bean soup for two weeks again!!!!! And in the heat now, with me saving money on electricity by not running the air conditioner. Cold bean soup…

**sigh**

Well, at least after a spike in fear and panic over the thought of not being able to drive, I can relax a little…

But there will be a next installment. And a next.

Okay. Despair it is then!

#my day #poverty #car insurance #I just wish I knew if this is a goof them deciding to stop paying the bill for it #after all with the taxes they didn’t tell me until I was almost late with the vehicles #Getting any bill unexpectedly is hard #but any bill over $100 wrecks me #and a couple weeks a month I rarely even have that much left!

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

one of my favourite things about examining the archetypal role of Gon is that he seems like the textbook Hero + Explorer, but as time goes on he winds up fitting the role of the Innocent + Creator far better. I’ll elaborate later but it makes his interactions with the world make a lot more sense when looking at them through this lens

#even better is the way you think Killua’s going to end up being the rival or rebel to gon’s hero but no. Lover archetype. Insane. #still unsure on Kurapika and Leorio. I almost think Leorio is more the orphan archetype… his pride comes from having to make something #of himself from a background of poverty after all #eh I’ll think on it some more #storyrambles #hxh #gon freecss

[stankhead]

it really cant be understated just how fucking horrible education about pre-columbian North America is in US public schools

#obviously 'US public schools' is something thats almost impossible to make generalizations about considering #the wide range of state by state and district by district discrepancies - but THIS you can generalize about yeah #because I promise you your average American high schooler does NOT know what poverty point is. what the Mississippian and Hopewellian #cultures were. if they have a good history program they'll know about the Aztecs and the Maya and maybe the Inca but it probably ends there #like most education on pre-columbian indigenous North American peoples starts and stops with 'they existed. ok moving on to Jamestown-'