I'm sorry I'm going fucking insane over trans people in sports issues the anti trans crowd has lost the fucking plot and then has the audacity to act like its the trannies who are ridiculous

I used to be of the "well the sports issue isn't really important to me its w/e I just don't want it to be a gateway into other transphobia" but oh my fucking god we are so far gone. The fencing shit is sending me over the edge. What the fuck.

I can't even articulate my words so I'm just going to tell a story in screenshots

I am so fucking tired of being gaslit about this

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

Yeah, there's a surprising amount of people who just...don't interact with the union they are in at all. At all. And then complain when shit gets voted in they didn't want.

Maybe get involved. Show up to shit. Just a thought.

This is also true of the Democratic Party btw. People are always complaining about what "The Democrats" should do, or aren't doing etc etc.

but like literally in my early 20s I started going to my local party's meetings regularly and with-in a few months they were like "hey you want to be on the committee to re-write our by-laws?" yes, yes I do thank you. "hey you want to get elected to be one of our representatives to the meetings of the state party?" why yes thank you so I got to go and debate the budget of a swing state Democratic Party.

I had to move for work not that much after that but like people I know from that have been delegates to the DNC, have elected officials come to their homes for events. Literally there's a middle aged lady I know who when Hillary Clinton decided to run for President, Hillary started with a small tour on a van, she called it her Scooby Van, and her first stop in New Hampshire, with its "first in the nation" primary was to a bakery in my home town and the person she sat with at what was her first or second official campaign stop of her run for President is a lady I know who isn't some super secret Democratic overlord or anything but a local lady who volunteers a lot.

Just the other day I got invited to meet my Senator (again) tomorrow I'm going to meet my state's governor (again) because I volunteer, if I wanted I could likely get to be a delegate to the DNC

so many organizations are open doors that people just refuse to push and then are big mad it didn't read their minds and do what you think.

I live in a town of 960 people, and four years ago I ran for an open seat on the Library Board; within three months I was chairing the board because the lady who was the chair had been doing it for 14 years and she wanted a break. Someone also threw my name in the ring to be on the school board; another candidate won the seat that time.

In my first three years on the library board, we

So when I ran for library board for my second term, I got voted in with 100% of the votes cast... and I also won an open seat on the school board as a write-in candidate with 19 votes; and I lost an election to the Select Board (our 'mayoral' system is a 3-person board) by just 38 votes out of 450 cast.

So now I'm solving library problems on the one hand, and solving school board problems on the other hand. It's an education in educational policy and finance — federal and state aid programs, local policy on athletics and sports and core education vs arts funding, union negotiations, and more. If I ever decide to run for select board again, I'm going to be much better informed and prepared to understand the issues. Meanwhile...

Just yesterday, I drove through a town of 65,000 people. There was a group of people on a street corner holding up "pro labor" signs and "free Palestine" signs and "anti-war" signs, and "Jill Stein for President" (mind you, this is March 2025 -- there isn't a presidential election until 2028!) and "The Green Party wants your vote!" signs. There were maybe ten of these folks?

So when I got home, I went to their city's "Boards and Commissions" website. They have 19 vacant seats on various committees and boards and commissions, including two (the Wetlands Commission [wouldn't that be a Green Party issue??], and the Diversity Commission) that don't have enough members right now to hold meetings under state quorum rules. And there are 85 people on other commissions and boards that are up for re-election this year, and more than half of them don't want to keep running for these seats; they'd welcome a challenger.

In other words, the local community is STARVING for people to fill local government responsibilities.

Why are these people out here holding up signs for a woman to run for president in three years, when there are 104 seats in their own community government that are up election this year? Demonstrate to someone, somebody, anybody that you want to help solve community-level problems, and that you know what you're doing... and there's no holding you back.

Not the Chosen One, Ch. 1: Unexpected Arrival

Stefanie 'Stef' Warren is completely prepared for strays to show up at her home: wild animals, newly turned vampires, werewolves in their first full moon, she's seen them all.

So when a dark haired teen shows up to dig in her trash, she hardly thinks anything of it.

Welcome to a world where supernatural beings are a fact of life, cats aren't always cats, and running a rescue doesn't just mean wildlife.

Thanks to @baelpenrose and @writing-with-olive for your beta reading and sensitivity reading work on this!

The fluff queen has returned!! I’m so excited for everyone to read this. I’ve loved beta reading it as well.

Stef is an awesome mom, you guys will love her

it is quite literally just a blatant LIE that ‘theyfab’ was coined to punch up at transmisogynistic nonbinary people. ‘theyfab’ was invented by transphobic cis men to make fun of afab trans people you are all literally lying about its origins i was THERE when the term became popular and it became popular because it was an easy and cruel way to make fun of trans people who were afab

the term is literally supposed to mean "haha idiot females who think they're 'uwu nonbinary'" i have no idea how ANYONE defends the usage of it....

It has always been a way to dismiss some nonbinary trans people as "just pretending to be trans to be quirky".

Unpopular opinion but if you don't enjoy the process you should find a different thing to do.

And I think this is true in general but now I'm talking about it in the context of AI.

If you don't enjoy making art and only care about the end piece and how it'll look and how much traction it"lol get online then making art is not something for you, find something you enjoy from start to finish.

Same goes for writing: if you do not enjoy writing and rewriting and then some more and instead want AI to write for you, being a writer is not something you should pursue.

Sure, not every part of creative process is going to be equally enjoyable but you should get satisfaction from solving the problems along the way and you should get a sense of accomplishment on your way of "making the piece yours" and you should have a sense of ownership once you are done.

None of these things will come from typing in a prompt into chatGPT. And I am sad to see so many people are missing on the opportunity to experience the joy of making something with their own hands and brains.

Just give it a try and if you don't like it don't do it again.

But also don't let the expectations of it coming out perfect ruin the fun you are having while making the thing. Because what if I told you this: having fun while creating is the actual purpose of the creative process, not whatever comes out of it.

this is ideology eating itself it's so amusing to me.

Like what kind of manufacturing base do you think America has right now? we're going to bring Factory Jobs back to Detroit, girlies. It's going to work, because we're Fighting Woke. Woke will Die and its death will usher in a new age of American Prosperity. By way of. Uh. Oh. Oh no. Is it supposed to do that?

"We're going to get companies to build factories in the US!! We're going to bring manufacturing back here!!" Are you?

Trump heard that Biden set money on fire with the CHIPS act and said. We can do that but with everything.

Most intelligent graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

#this will be huge for all of the american steel mills that are functional and ready to go.#hold on im getting a phone call. huh. uh oh.

LMFAOOOOOOO YEAH

Great tags by prev

Spock's whole identity problem would have been solved decades ago if they gave him just one mixed-race friend. Or an immigrant stuck between two cultures.

Spock: Despite all my efforts, I will never be Vulcan enough for my people.

Spock's friend: Yeah, I get it. They tell you to speak Spanish and then they complain it doesn't sound right and you're being assimilated. And I'm like, abuela, you're the one who immigrated here??

Spock: Indeed. And when I find myself surrounded by humans, they only see the Vulcan part of me.

Spock's friend: I know right?!? They're always "where you from, no where you really from" and I'm like dude?? I was born here??

Spock: This is most illuminating.

(aka "oh wow I'm not the only person in the universe to suffer this?!?!")

Give Spock a mixed-race or immigrant friend.

So genuine question, the people that voted for Trump who are on this site- do any of you care about any of that or?? Like what precisely is the limit for you all?

This machine kills AI

This is the most satisfying story I've read in a long time

“Appeal to a wider audience” is corporate lingo for “strip more themes from a piece of media so it’s safer and more sanitized for investors”

I struck a nerve in the billionaire fandom with this one

”make sure we don’t offend any of the nazis in our target demographic!”

people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

my dearly beloved mutual you cant just leave this in the tags

While exploring a vast and inscrutable city which seems to predate life on earth I am gently picked up by something incomprehensible with the higher-dimensional equivalent of a cup and piece of paper, then lovingly set outside in my natural habitat. Unfortunately the being exists outside of time and can't really tell human cities apart from one another so I appear without warning in ancient sumer.

ten thousand Mongol warriors from the 13th century suddenly get swooped up into nothingness and redeposited among some otherworldly energy crop like spiders in an extra-dimensional cranberry bog

I tap the mic. “Most people don’t want to crawl down your chimney and steal your dog.”

the crowd murmurs uncertainly.

“If someone wants to steal your dog,” I continue, “there are easier ways to do that. They don’t have to crawl into a chimney.”

Murmuring intensifies. People stand in their seats and begin to boo.

“People disguising themselves as chimney sweepers and stealing dogs is not a rational fear,” I shout. “Literally anyone could steal your dog. Why make sweeping chimneys illegal?”

“I have a list of chimney sweeps who stole dogs from parks!” Someone yells, throwing a shoe.

“You seriously think no chimney sweepers could possibly ever steal from a home?” Another cries.

“Only a dog thief would even want to crawl into a chimney to begin with!” Says a third.

A single tear rolls down my cheek. They are all so fucking stupid

This is a metaphor

s/o to this skeleton babe from 1936

This is a really poignant illustration of the seductive nature of glorifying war but that is a LOOK and she is SERVING it

I've seen Death depicted as a card dealer or other sort of gambler, a guy in a suit, a farmer, a robed apparition, and any other number of things, but this? This has to be the best Death I've seen yet. An old seductress saying "hey kid, don't you wanna die in a trench for a government that doesn't give a fuck about you, just like your dear old dad?" This goes hard as fuck.

"I used to know your daddy." kicks like a mule.

shit ton of people are repeating the thing about hayao miyazaki saying AI art is an "insult to life itself" and just as a reminder he was talking about the zombies that team made that were intended to be scary in how much they shook, but instead reminded him of his disabled friend. the insult to life itself was referring to the team trying to make scary real symptoms that people live with.

it was a quote about ableism. if he has said other things about AI type stuff, that is a different thing. but that specific quote was about ableism.

this is the full quote.

This is an accurate and helpful contextual addition, but it also misses that the original exchange is absolutely demoing an effort to generate animation using AI models. The programmers are explicitly pitching it as a way to replace human artists and Miyazaki is responding to the pitch as a whole. The whole clip shows this:

Miyazaki is reacting to both the use of unsettling body movement that seems to mimic a disabled person's lived experience and that it's being done without human artistry. The exchange at the end is probably what should be getting shared as a more direct example of his response to AI:

Miyazaki is capable of hating both ableism and generative artwork as an existential threat to the arts and humanity. It's absolutely correct to add more context on what he's saying, but we should be comprehensive and not obscure the also-correct original message in the process.