are you longing?

∆

"pathetic" is almost the hottest thing a man can be, second only to "in pain"

alright i'm finally done with my day. time to like all your posts. form a single file line

djo ph. by cj harvey

Practical Magic (1998) dir. Griffin Dunne

News hadlines from this past week 3/30/2025

2 decades ago going, “Yee Haw!” excitedly was enough to kill Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and like this was reasonable to people.

Today, we have a President suggesting for months that he may go to war to conquer Greenland and who is once again reiterating that he is considering running for a third term in office. On top of having felony convictions and a civil judgment for sexual violence.

I remember, as soon as Obama was elected, people declaring the end of racism because how could we be racist after electing a Black man as President. And yet, over the span of his presidency, our country went from a place where the Republican presidential nominee told off someone at a campaign stop when they suggested Obama wasn’t a real American or was a Muslim, saying it’s unAmerican to act that way, to being a place where a man could start his presidential campaign by saying “The illegals are all Mexican rapists you need to be terrified of!” and who explicitly led the charge for the claim Obama was born in Africa, being elected President (if only by the EC). And within 8 more years, a place where that man would win a plurality (though not majority) of the popular vote, against a Black woman, despite him fomenting an insurrection to stop the peaceful transfer of power when he lost the 2020 election.

Things have become much worse, and they did it very quickly. I do not see how anyone can avoid noticing that such a significant transition arose at the exact time a Black perdón was President. And I think that’s an indicator that voting actually does matter. Because voting did put Obama in office, and his power in that office terrified the forces of White supremacy and hegemony. So much, in fact, that Donald Trump has taken power on two separate occasions.

Also can't help but observe that all the political opponents who have lost an election to him are women.

Yes. Obama, for all the racism, was elected and then re-elected (and didn't that drive a whole bunch of white Americans crazy?), and Biden beat Trump handily after his first term.

At the same time, Clinton and Harris, both competent and capable politicians, who were obviously better suited for the job than TFG, lost.

I really 100% do believe it was about sexism, ultimately. That there are way too many Americans who don't want to vote for a woman, or will vote for any man over any woman for President.

former President Obama is with you about this - after Hillary Clinton lost to the clearly racist trump, he famously tweeted that we really still are more sexist than racist

(and considering how overtly racist the culture has become, I fear for women and all trans people)

Mediocre white men would rather burn down our democracy and throw us to fascism over the thought of a POC or female president than, idk, fucking go to therapy and work on their shit.

There, I said it.

i so deeply understand the reasoning of every comment

Legally Blonde (2001) dir. Robert Luketic

+

John A.: I’ve been watching “The Last Dance” documentary on Michael Jordan. The last episode was about him playing baseball. Which Penguin would have the most success in another sport?

Mike: It’s got to be Sidney Crosby, right? Not only is he a freak athlete, but he’s a perfectionist who would put in as much work as possible. There’s even video on YouTube of him hitting a home run at PNC Park. He’d make a nice addition the the Pirates ... at least until he was traded for “financial flexibility” or something.

-Penguins mailbag with Mike DeFabo, 15 May 2020

never forget:

While this is true, I feel like bad news should be paired with good whenever possible, so: some companies are not just defending, but expanding, their DEI initiatives.

One surprising company on this whitelist is Deutsche Bank. This is surprising because for many years they were Trump's bankers.That they're openly saying "nope, we're keeping those policies, thankyaverymuch" in open defiance of him says quite a lot. Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Dollar Tree, Macys, and Tiffany and Co have all hired (or are in the process of seeking to hire) a DEI consultant since the beginning of 2025. The NFL has put out a statement saying they're continuing their DEI program "because it makes the NFL better" (direct quote from Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner). Ulta has opened a DEI program for the first time, and I know we all hate Adobe (I get it, I do, I also hate Adobe), they've actually donated to DEI initiatives this month. And Costco's shareholders voted by a 98%-to-2% margin to retain their DEI programs and practices. The last thing I would say is this, and I'm addressing this to Gen Z and Gen Alpha: before you were adults (or in Alpha's case, before you were born), we had this thing called "affirmative action." What was affirmative action? It was literally just another name for DEI. It's the exact same thing. Conservatives used the phrase as a scare tactic for decades....and the sky didn't fall. And eventually people started going "psh. Yeah, yeah, affirmative action, what-the-fuck-ever, what's for dinner?" They couldn't scare people with it anymore. Companies also couldn't pretend it was still an up-and-coming thing, so they relabeled it. All by itself, that's not a bad thing (I, too, prefer that companies hire on the basis of skill rather than demographic!). It's just that it gave conservatives a new label to latch onto. We already won this battle once. Yes, it's pretty bleak. But I promise, this isn't the end. I know because I saw the dying gasps of "oh no, affirmative action! [scary music]" in the early 2000s. In order to dismantle workplace equality initiatives, so much shit would have to be repealed, and much of it doesn't use the DEI buzzword, which means our current crop of fascist idiots will forget to look for it. This is a bump in the road, not the end of the trail. Keep fighting. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

@prismatic-bell I really value your approach of "Okay yes that's shit but here's the good" and as I was doom scrolling through the original post I was even thinking "okay but what's the other side look like" and then I got to your addition - I think it's really important to not give in to the defeatism of "oh the bullies are winning" - because the only thing the bullies are is loud. Not to minimize that there are bad things moving, but there are very good people actively resisting. It's not over, not by a longshot.

Also - this line from costco actually gave me more hope than there rest of the post, and that's significant because the post was very positive overall:

Because that's not... just the CEO being "woke" or leftist or just understanding that DEI benefits EVERYONE, that's the SHAREHOLDERS saying that. That's the people with the money and the power in the company, the ones who want to see the profits who are agreeing with a near-unanimous vote that yes this is important.

"The Shareholders" was not a group of people I expected to be voting that way, much less that hard.

Thank you. I think it's important to acknowledge, for precisely doomscrolling reasons. I've actually thought about starting a side blog for exactly this.