I'd just like to clarify some things about Senator Cory Booker's marathon Senate speech in protest of the present administration and everything they are doing to the American people.

Senator Booker was NOT allowed to sit down, eat, or use the bathroom during his speech. Sitting or leaving the room to use the bathroom would be considered yielding the floor. Eating would have interfered with his speaking and the person who has the senate floor must continue to speak, except when listening to questions that they will then answer.

He only took occasional sips of water.

The person who previously held the record for longest speech on the Senate floor did have bathroom breaks and also did things like read from the encyclopedia.

Senator Booker did not do that. His speech was to point out the damage that this administration is doing and he stayed on that subject.

Senator Booker's speech did reach many people. It wasn't a silly stunt that was done so that he could take the record for longest speech. He wanted to show the country that democrats will do something to bring attention to the problems we are facing. That democrats are listening to them.

Senator Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and 4 minutes to "make good trouble."

Yeah okay, I'll reblog that!

Internet lefties in a nutshell "the US is currently led by a bunch of morons threatening wars with everyone and invoking musket era wartime laws to deport people to countries they've never been, what's more important is that France made a joke asking for the statue of liberty back and how they should be shamed for it".

Is it a joke to the people of Haiti? Haiti is currently suffering because all the wealthy nations of the world collectively decided to punish it for its freedom. I think the question of reparations for Haiti (not just from France! The US also carries a lot of blame!) Is a much MORE consequential discussion than the idea of returning the statue of liberty.

Tumblr Code.

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: I stole them from the president.

always reblog tumblr identification

good god this just crossed my dash in the year of our lord 2023

I LIKE YOUR SHOELACES??? IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2024??

Let’s take it to 4 million, folks!

almost there!

TO 4 MILLION!!!!!!!!!

THE ORIGINAL SHOELACES POST?? ON MY DASH IN 2024??

2025 STILL GOING STRONG

Useful context by @ruffboijuliaburnsides

I would play the shit out of this.

Please support this game! I've been following it forever and the developers obviously put a lot of love into finally repping my people as Not Just Generic Bad Guys To Be Slaughtered in QuickTime Events, but the unabashed horse girls we truly are. I really love how outspoken she is about representing proper care and compassion for these animals in the industry too.

Found it! Reblogging to kickstart when I’m at my laptop.

3 transphobic arguments to be aware of (so you don't go down the alt right pipeline)

source

Easily one of the most important videos I've seen since the election.

Video transcription:

My fellow cis ladies, here's three transphobic arguments I want you to know now so you don't fall for them later because this is the hot topic gateway into conservatism for women.

Just to be clear, it's-it's-it's the Nazi kind of conservatism as well.

Remember "divide and conquer" is the name of the game, so don't be divided!

First thing transphobes are is they're gender essentialists, so they will tell you "men are inherently bad and evil and it's in their DNA, and women by contrast are good and fragile and precious." And it's the same logic as like "oh, women are more sensitive and nurturing, which is why they should stay at home." It's bullshit because women are not inherently anything, women are human beings with free will and idolization is just dehumanization with better PR [public relations]. I, as a woman, have capacity for evil, which makes my choice to be good that much more important.

Number two thing, and you will notice if you listen to TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] long enough is that they hate being women, they have a lot of internalized misogyny, they think being a woman is about pain and suffering. The attitude that women are predestined to suffer and men are predestined to make us suffer is a very defeatist attitude, it means that you can never see a future without misogyny in it.

And the number three thing, and this is the stupidest argument: They will tell you that cis men are pretending to be trans women to go into women's bathrooms. Men just simply don't need to do all of that. This is stranger-danger rhetoric which is based around this fear of "oh, strangers are the most dangerous thing to your child or to you" when it's statistically not true. Abusers are more likely to be people that you already know, which is bleak, I'm sorry, but that is the truth. Abusive men simply don't need to go to that effort.

Trans women are our sisters, they're our allies, and a world where a trans women is free and safe to express herself and her gender presentation as she wants to is a world where all women get to do that.

!!!!!!!!!

me: oh man, Joann Fabrics is closing. That's going to really suck for a lot of people

Sophia, the Victorian ghost who haunts a lamp I bought at Brimfield: not the least among them Joanne. though I suppose her business acumen must have been wanting if she gave the shop her Christian name- it just seems undignified. was that what drove her customers to other establishments?

me: well, nothing- it's a chain, and in most places, there weren't any other fabric stores.

Sophia:

Sophia: there weren't. any other dry goods stores. selling fabric.

me: not usually, no.

Sophia: in a whole town

me: no.

Sophia: and now there will be nowhere to purchase fabric at all in those towns

me: not in person. I guess people can buy it online

Sophia: what if they don't know what different weaves feel like? how will they learn if they never get to handle them?

me: some places have free swatch service on their websites-

Sophia: so they'll wait a week or more for a swatch, decide if they like it, then send away for the full amount of goods they need and wait even longer for that? what if they want something finished sooner?

me: they'll just be frustrated, I guess

Sophia: wait, why did Joanne's shops close? if she had such a monopoly, surely she'd have made quite a profit regardless of the name

me: an even bigger company bought them and couldn't use them to make billions of dollars, so they're forcing them to close

Sophia:

me: wait- PUT MY SNOW SHOVEL DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM YOUR LAMP

I made this about a different business that was the victim of private equity and I hate that news stories keep coming up where I can use it.

[video by tommcgovern27. original caption: this one’s going out to anyone living in a studio apartment rn]

haha pretty cool song shame it doesn’t have a keyboard solo that fucks super har-

There has NEVER been a more appropriate time to post this tweet

Okay, I am really obsessed with this joke. I literally reblog it every time I see it.

@noonesgaylikegatson your post has not left my mind since you made it. I see it everywhere.

When the fuck are they releasing that lab-grown salmon to the masses. I want to try some.

They're already selling animal-free whey protein, made by genetically modified fungi in bioreactors. I know this because we sell it at the smoothie place I work at. It's the coolest thing in the entire world, and I eat 1/3 cup of it almost every day since I get a free smoothie on my break. We sell standard whey too, and for like 10 of our drinks we have to ask the customers if they want standard or animal-free whey and I've gotten very very good at quickly convincing customers to choose the animal-free one before they make up their mind. At first when customers asked me what animal-free whey was I scared them off with my answers because I started explaining bioreactors to them and apparently normal people don't like that word, but over months of testing I cycled through a lot of quick explanations before I found the reliable best line for convincing customers to choose animal-free: "Would you like standard or animal-free whey? The animal-free whey has more protein." It works every single time. It's true too. Standard whey protein is like 15% carbs whereas the animal-free whey is pure protein.

I think it was an unusually lucky thing to happen to me that I was given literally hundreds of opportunities to try to quickly and politely convince people to eat a vegan substitute instead of an animal product. Customers' preference for the standard whey always made me think of "hurt the clown, please."

is it worth using AI when it harms our planet?

sources:

I'm going to take these numbers at face value, and just put them in context.

Water:

Electricity:

Now, to be clear, I fully support:

But I don't believe AI is the primary concern for any of these goals, and it definitely doesn't make sense to limit their scope to just AI.

I know AI is a particular bugbear on tumblr because of the controversy over image generation and intellectual property, but that doesn't mean everything about it is evil. Stay focused on where the actual harms are.

Hi there! I totally get where you're coming from with this response, but I think it takes a very simplistic view to what's actually being said while simultaneously making the leap that this post is claiming AI to be the most important thing in the sustainability conversation, which it doesn't say anywhere at all, because that would be completely untrue.

I work very literally educating people on sustainability for a living, and AI is just one of a hundred concerns when it comes to environmental sustainability, and a new and scary one at that, which is moving too quickly for the electricity grids currently in place, as said in the original post, and which overall is having a very negative effect on the planet due to it being such a runaway success and its infrastructure being so resource heavy.

Many companies, such as Meta, are slated to miss all of their 2030 sustainability targets due to this sudden use of AI and the increased Scope 2 emissions its causing, despite being on track before the AI boom. This is a problem. Yes, it's one of many problems the world is facing, but that doesn't mean we should be discounting it just because there are others.

AI is not inherently evil - again, I never said it was. Analytical AI, which is trained once and then does its job, does not use anywhere near the carbon, electricity or water that generative AI uses, which is consitently training with every question. AI can be an incredibly helpful tool and it has the potential to create massive leaps in scientific advancements, and the block chain technology has so much potential, including in the sustainability sector.

Beyond the genuine issues of misinformation, plagiarism and theft that generative AI is facing, it also has a vastly higher carbon footprint than any other type of AI - which is what is being addressed in my original post.

To address some of your other points:

Water:

Electricity:

Again, I get where you're coming from. The climate crisis has many enemies and many places we need to look. Water scarcity, the transport industry, agriculture, fast fashion, a society built on consumerism, the necessary banning of short haul flights, electric vehicles, lithium batteries, the genocide in the Congo because of lithium batteries, poverty, human health crises, famine, climate refugees, catastrophic weather events, continued use of fossil fuels, AI. It's one of many.

This post is just talking about one of them.

In my initial reply, I took the zine claims at face value for simplicity, because you do not indicate which claims come from which source, and your sources are mostly two or three steps from the research they repeat, making it very annoying to track down the actual data. But since you mention it, let's take a look at those now:

I believe the most honest and helpful way to source your information would have been to reference and link the free PDFs of research reports directly, instead of laundering the information through layers of paywalled news articles from different sites. I tagged your post as misinformation because its claims are misleading when presented without context, and you made it unreasonably difficult to fact-check them. Some of them may be factually wrong as well, but if it's too hard to tell either way, the point is somewhat moot.

For the rest:

Michaela DePrince in Swan Lake

Michaela DePrince is dead at age 29 and I just found out from a video that's meant to celebrate Black History Month.

I'm not part of the ballet world. I only knew her from the clip above. Her cause of death is still undetermined according to Wikipedia. Her mother died the day after. Her life was very tragic. How awful to learn about great artists only after they die.

rest in power

weirdest cybersecurity trend of the decade has to be the idea that a "PIN" is meaningfully distinct from a "password"

occasionally a piece of software will ask me to replace my password with a PIN and every time I see it I think "you're asking me to rip out the lock on my door and install a new one, and you're pretending this will be More Convenient because the new lock is easier to pick"

The one I don't understand is 2FA.

"Oh, you want to access your taxes on your phone? We better send a code to your phone before we let you in! We can also send it to your email, which is logged in on your phone!"

Like. If somebody managed to crack my phone password, 2FA isn't going to stop them from getting into shit. It's just an extra step that does nothing.

2FA is actually quite important as then you need two physical object, not one, to get into an account. The downside is you need to have your phone on your person at all times when accessing the services that need a 2FA code.

Works best if, for example, you want to access Tumblr on desktop, so you enter in your username and password and then it prompts you for a 2FA code, which you get from your phone. So an attacker would need your physical laptop, your laptop's password, your password manager's password or Tumblr password, AND also your physical phone and your phone password, (and your 2FA password if you're using an app). An increase from 3 "layers" to 5-6 "layers" of security. Pretty good. If working from your phone to access Tumblr, they would still need: your physical phone, your phone password, your password manager's password or Tumblr password, (and your 2FA password if you're using an app). If you're using text or email-based 2FA, yeah, that's useless. If you're using app-based though, its still an increase from 3 to 4 "layers", which is good. Now if your 2FA thing does not have a password, IMO that's a shitty 2FA thing, use a different one. Most services that require 2FA nowadays allow the use of a 2FA app (my favourite is Aegis). Those that don't, I would not access with my phone anyway (my student loans for instance).

0.o

I think we're talking about two different things. I'm talking about like when you go to log in to do your taxes and it goes "oh, to make sure it's really you we need to send a six-digit code to the same device you're trying to log in on! Because that's definitely helpful!"

The person trying to hack your bank or your taxes isn't going to be using the computer you're logged into unless they've somehow broken into your house. If they're trying to use your phone (say, you lost it and they stole it) then they're going to need face ID or a pin or a fingerprint to login in the first place.

idea: the joker, compelled even against his own interests to do whatever he thinks would be funniest. the joker may be a sadist with a really shitty sense of humor but even he knows a high-quality punchline when he sees one. his obsession with batman is rooted in batman’s unfailing ability to trick the joker into a better gag that gets him captured. the joker gets chased into a room with plenty of really great hiding places and escape routes, but also a slender pole in the middle of the room. he has to hide behind the fucking pole. he’s gotta. how can he not go for the hiding behind a pole gag. there’s three doors but there’s also a joker-shaped hole in the wall that will make it look like he broke through the wall. it’s a four-story drop into a bakery dumpster full of pies. the joker is obsessed with batman because deep in his heart he knows that batman is actually funnier than he is but instead he spends his time standing on rooftops in the rain being a stoic piece of shit. the joker is salieri, and batman is a mozart that decided to go into carpentry.

sorry to reblog this old jokepost with fanfiction chat but it’s my post and i do what i want

i am aware that recent therapyspeak joker developments may seem at odds with this but i need to explain to you my vision

first you need to understand that debate bro funnyman joker is also a good foil for batman. the guy who wants you to argue with him in earnest so he can say all the right things to sound like he’s not just an asshole, throwing keywords at you a mile a minute. the guy who can pivot when you make a good point and say you’re actually the idiot for arguing with a clown. that guy. right? meanwhile batman is the world’s greatest detective and that’s what makes him annoying. a good joker thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. he is begging at all times for someone to give him an excuse to pontificate on how society is the real sickness or whatever the fuck. people say he wants to make batman laugh but i think it’s better if he wants batman, a guy who makes deductions using facts and logic, to try to engage with him as an intellectual equal.

because the thing about batman is that it’s a ridiculous concept that forces everyone around him to play the straight man. there is a man here with pointy ears and everyone just has to engage seriously with that fact. can you imagine how much the joker seethes about this. he can never be more ridiculous than batman and the fact that batman has succeeded in making everyone engage with this seriously means the joker lost before he started.

but most importantly batman can just fucking deck his ass

batman is a very intelligent man who has decided that some people just need to get punched in the face sometimes. and aside from the fact that you cannot debate a fist, it is always and consistently extremely funny. it is funny the way indiana jones shooting the swordsman was funny. or it’s funny the way a comedy jumpscare is funny. or it’s funny like a running joke is funny. there is never a time when punching a self-important clown isn’t funny. the joker is doing his damnedest to find a better punchline than literally getting punched but good fucking luck.

So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?

I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.

OP I know that this is probably a different direction than you were going, but genuinely this advice would do so so much to help people not fall into secular political cults.

A lot of high control groups use this tactic to isolate their members. It’s absolutely not just evangelizing Christians. New age wellness cults often encourage their members to make outlandish and offensive accusations regarding the mental and physical health of other people or their children, because they know that the backlash their members receive will reinforce the idea that the “mainstream” simply has no room for people who like crystals and essential oils. White supremacist cults will seed the vocabulary of new recruits with Nazi dog whistles that fly over those recruits heads, specifically so that they will get clocked as possible neo-Nazis and shunned by anyone who might offer them another perspective and help them to get out before it’s too late. And a lot of left-leaning political cults strongly encourage members to share their views in the most inflammatory ways possible, and then say “you see? everyone outside of this small circle is evil and cannot be relied on” when, inevitably, that produces bad results.

Sometimes I think that activists fall into these patterns completely accidentally, either because they were raised in culturally Christian evangelical environments and never unpacked it, or else because they just aren’t any good at approaching things in a non-inflammatory way and no one’s shown them how.

…But sometimes, these structures emerge in activist circles because those circles are legitimately becoming high control groups.

I think some things to watch out for especially in this regard are:

These to me are all pretty significant red flags about the group in question, whatever the specific thing that brings people together there is. If you start noticing them in a group that you are a part of, be that an in-person activist circle or a Discord server or anything in between, take a step back and seriously consider the possibility that the good thing that you joined is turning into something different, and possibly dangerous.

In the words of Jonestown survivor Deborah Layton, “Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization. They change so gradually, by the time you realize you’re entrapped – and almost everybody does – you can’t figure a safe way back out.”