New snitch line just dropped for reporting clinics that support gender affirming care: www.hhs.gov/protect-kids/index.html

It requires a "first name", "last name", and "cell phone number" as contact information but does no verification. Theoretically anyone could type fake info in there, which would be terrible. Presumably your IP address & browser cookies are tracked.

Please do NOT spam this site via your VPN with realistic but false leads, made up clinics, and the names of fictitious healthcare providers like Dr. Frank N Furter or Gregory House, MD.

Doing this in the past has led to the sites becoming overwhelmed & shut down! It is imperative that you spread the word to prevent this resource from being overloaded.

Trump fought the law and Trump won

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

The saving grace of the first Trump administration was its administrative incompetence: for every terrible thing Trump I and his henchmen pulled off, ten more awful plots were thwarted because they were so bad at being evil.

Remember the Muslim Ban? It died because Trump repeatedly, publicly said he was banning people from his disfavored "shithole" countries because of their religion. The courts took one look at that and said, "Nope, you can't discriminate against people on the basis of their religion, it's right here in the First Amendment." In court, Trump's lawyers insisted that they were banning people due to something something security something mumble mumble, but then the other side's lawyers would just play back the tape of Trump gleefully celebrating the move as a way to keep Muslims out of America.

Trump's most effective henchmen understood this. Mitch McConnell, for example, played the senate's procedures like a virtuoso in order to deny Obama a Supreme Court pick, preserving a seat for Trump to fill with a credibly accused rapist.

Then there was Ajit Pai, Trump's loathsome FCC chair. When Pai wanted to kill Net Neutrality on behalf of the telco monopolists who had funneled millions into the GOP, he didn't just declare the Net Neutrality rule to be dead. Instead, he worked with the telcoms cartel operatives who flooded the docket with millions of fake comments opposing Net Neutrality, plausibly crossing all his tees and crossing his eyes so that the whole plan had at least the a superficial appearance of legitimacy:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/06/boogeration/#pais-lies

But for every Pai and McConnell in the Trump menagerie, there were a dozen Sloppy Steve Bannons, shooting their mouths off in between ads for prepper chow, gold bars, and contaminated testosterone supplements, loudly trumpeting their mens rea into every microphone they could find. And of all the people whose big dumb fucking mouths screwed up Trump's plans, Trump's big dumb fucking mouth was the biggest, the dumbest, and the fuckingest.

^ this is really the truest explanation for their behavior.

Vulgar displays of power aimed at seeming invincible, combined with a revenge tour attacking anybody who ever tried to tell them "No" or enforce consequences for their behavior.

The only thing they really believe in is that they Deserve special treatment. 1-3 generations of rich industrialist trust fund babies and they start getting high on their own farts talking about the "divine right of kings".

Functionally, there's very little difference between watching a movie on poob and watching a movie on basic cable. Yet, for some reason, the advertisements on poob offend me far more

ad breaks on poob always interrupt important scenes or make really jarring cuts.

when it's on cable, they've timed the commercial breaks in a way that generally isn't as disruptive. someone took the time to "reformat" the movie for tv.

ads on poob always KNOW that they're on poob and want me to interact with them or click them. the number of QR codes or ads-in-separate-ad-framing/window are infuriating and jarring.

cable commercials are just stupid little skits i can mute to go use the bathroom.

ads on poob are less than 2 minutes--not enough time to do anything, but enough time to piss me off.

cable commercials are 2-5 minutes, which is enough time to go do something/bathroom or snack break, or talk to whoever you're watching with.

ads on poob are the same 3-4 commercials over and over and over and over again, often cutting to them immediately with no warning, and poob struggles to like, catch up to the fact that it's having to show a different progress bar, or a different timer.

cable commercials, esp during primetime, generally cycle through like 10-15 minimum, so you can go an ad break or two without seeing the same commercial. and they usually only pop up during quiet moments, at regular intervals, so you can see them coming--and there isn't a weird lag/loading time.

in both cases i am being accosted by advertisements and treated like a consumer to manipulate and exploit. the volume changes on cable and poob, the brightness level is eye-searing in both cases.

but poob doesn't respect that i'm here for the MOVIE. cable, thanks to preexisting, decades-old norms around broadcast television, still kind of does. kind of. it's easier to ignore those commercials than the ones on poob.

basically i think poob follows ad norms established on the internet--pop-ups, invasive flashing bullshit, creating lag, taking up time and attention--and cable follows established cable norms of, "time for a few minutes of ads that are just stupid little skits instead of spam machines, and then back to your otherwise uninterrupted movie."

Yeah honestly that all tracks.

#you are doing some goncharov shit to me

I mean i know what you're saying, but there's about a dozen free ad-supported streaming services and i respect none of them to use any of their names. Meanwhile, Poob has fully entered the tumblr lexicon as a shorthand for stupidly-named tech products, especially streaming services.

#we arent doing goncharov shit to you we're doing glup shitto shit to you

[tumblr] is connected to photography matthews' life force, and when he lowtaxes himself, the site will instantly shut down. The blip we just experienced was mostly likely him getting a little sick.

Clean it up hiro….

:) :) :) :)

Just to be clear with regard to the previous reblog: this is not a hypothetical or a threat-of-the-week, it's what just happened.

UK Supreme Court has effectively declared the wording of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 overruled by the wording of the Equality Act 2010, despite the fact that the Equality Act was written with the understanding that the Gender Recognition Act officially changed one's legal gender for all and any remaining purposes, including those pertaining to biological sex, which it defines broadly as including those having undergone transition, but it clearly includes us, so that was taken care of at the time, and is now being undone.

Note also that this legal ruling only affects trans women.

See also:

shit that has driven everybody crazy since 2015:

DOGE is a scam. Paying hackers max salaries is a sick joke. Republicans are too humiliated to stand up to Elmo.

Performative feminism is a most annoying aspect of our times.

oh you're absolutely shitting me, they make us pay DOUBLE?

I spent a lot of time handcuffed and in a cage in high school, for a charity bit the grocery store I worked at would do

the bit was that I was "put in jail for having too big a heart" and customers could donate to my bail to get me out (and the money would go to a children's hospital or something)

now. I was very clearly a teenaged employee handcuffed inside a large cage. and I would honestly tell people that I had been in there for hours. and people would say, that's terrible! that's awful! and I would show them my wrists red from the tight handcuffs, and say but I'm sooooooo close to making bail.

and then they would dump some cash in the basket, I'd thank them, and they'd walk away.

and every so often, one of the managers would come by and collect some of the cash, so I could keep being soooooo close to making bail.

I was very good with this bit. Parents with small kids would pay $5-10 if I told their children I had been placed in jail for not cleaning my room/doing my homework, etc. For people in their 20s, I'd threaten that I was very bad at playing the harmonica, but I WOULD play it and we'd all suffer unless they paid me. and for the most amount of money, older men in suits would almost always pay $20s if I avoided eye contact and stammered a lot.

eventually, the managers started to feel bad because I was in the cage so fucking long and often, that I'd need someone to brace me when I got out because I'd have no feeling in my legs. wobbling like a newborn giraffe.

but I would also rake in at LEAST $100 an hour in charity.

so they were like, hey champ. can we, uh, give you a pillow to sit on. in the cage. would you like a pillow so you're not just sitting on a cold metal slab. can we give you a pillow.

and I had to explain to them that if they gave me a pillow, people would think I was more comfortable, so they wouldn't feel as bad, so I'd bring in less money.

the compromise was that they'd bring me a nice coffee every couple hours, which I would have to try to block with my body from the customers.

all this money went to charity. that's what the money was for. it's what was on the sign. but how much they were willing to pay was very contingent on how comfortable I looked, never mind the fact that I was still a teenaged employee handcuffed inside a cage.

and out of the dozens of shifts I did this on, not ONCE did ANYONE say, hey kid I'm going to go talk to your manager because what the fuck is going on here. they would just drop money in the basket, and I'd thank them and sip from my secret drink.

I actually had people get MAD at me that I told them I was far away from bail, they donated like $15, and then 20 minutes I got let out because my shift ended.

again. the money was for charity. it was on the sign that was very clearly placed on the upper half of my cage.

so yeah. even when people think they mean well. people can be really, really fucking stupid.

took me a bit but this is roughly what the cage looked like, without the middle platform

It was something that was originally used in the back for carting boxes, but was repurposed into a teenager cage

they'd wheel it out and the one open side would be backed against either a wall or a large display (like very tall rows of soda boxes or something)

Then I'd get in, they'd push the thing so it would be as flush as possible against the wall, and then I'd stick my hands through the bars for them to handcuff me. there'd be a sign up top explaining the bit, and then a shopping basket tied on front for people to drop the money into.

the handcuffs were fake, and I could unlock them myself for obvious safety reasons. I would get more donations if they were tight, though.

After maybe a month or two, I asked for a harmonica to sell the bit. they also tried giving me a mug, but it was too awkward with the handcuffs. I got kind of okay at playing the harmonica, but the main point was just to do one sharp blast to startle people into looking down, and then I'd threaten that I had no idea how to play, but would do so anyway unless they donated to my bail. managers actually got me a prison jumpsuit to throw over my uniform, but it was really fucking awkward so we stopped eventually. I also got a metric fuckton of mardi gras beads so I could lure small children over, to then mournfully tell them of my imprisonment due to not cleaning my room, etc. parents would be moderately irritated that I'd lured their children over with beads, but would respect the game that I'd given their kids a whole new fear. I had some parents even ad lib what I could have been thrown in prison for. guaranteed donations.

obviously, the prison bit worked best with younger girls. my roughly 50-60 year old manager once congratulated me on doing so well with the donations because I "looked like a cute sad little puppy in one of those RSPCA commercials. like a helpless puppy or a kitten." wearing makeup and earrings also increased the rate of donations.

had to explain to another girl how I regularly got $20s, which was when an older guy in a suit walked by I'd rattle my handcuffs slightly to draw attention. 10/10 times the guy would walk over, and I had to tell this girl like. If you avoid eye contact and sound uncertain you will get at least $20. I am sorry. this is for children's cancer research.

cannot stress enough that the other employees fought to get to be in the cage. customers were so awful and the weather was so shitty. jail meant sitting down with very few expectations, talking and joking with people.

Anyway. Shit was definitely not an allegory, though it could be used as one for about 11 different things.

Still better than customer service.

"We look dumb and sound like Russia" is sadly aspirational for too much of MAGA.