Liberals are coping well huh

“Loyalty to the lesser evil” is heinous.

HOWEVER

When you have two bad options and know that one will be in force, harm reduction is that last line that you must hold without fail. Go and be an activist. Work to change the world for the better. Ground-up, middle-out, every tactic large and small. But when push comes to shove and the ideal isn’t on the menu? You absolutely take the bad option over the lethal one, and you NEVER sit out the choice. The people who want you dead won’t.

A world where harm happens is not one we want, but a world where less happens than the only alternative is a no-brainer. That this is even a debate is mystifying to me. Once harm has been reduced, the cycle begins anew from the better starting point. Year by year, you drag society towards where you want it to be.

Dude, the enemy is not "the group of people who can afford a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and have enough saved for retirement."

The enemy is the group of people who make it IMPOSSIBLE for EVERYONE to have a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and save enough for retirement.

In the US, "poor people" USED to be the people who had not-so-nice houses and cars, or who had to rent instead of own. And it's not the dentist down the street who changed that; among others, it's the ultra-rich CEOs and shareholders who refuse to pay a living wage so they can live off your labor, and the exploitative corporations that buy up as much housing as they possibly can and charge exorbitant rent so you'll never be able to own your own home. It's the bosses who decide that "excess" food must be destroyed if it cannot be sold at a price that enriches shareholders. And it's the politicians who encourage and enable all of that.

Your average upper middle class family has enough money to have nice things, put their kids through school, and not have to think critically about every purchase they make.

Your average billionaire has enough money to convert it to gold and build an island in the ocean out of nothing but gold. And probably to also build a mansion on it and buy a helicopter to commute with.

Those... Aren't the same thing.

I need to emphasize that Smaug, sitting on his stolen mountain of gold, would be barely in the top 20 richest Americans were he real. THAT is where the problem is.

i love ruining my works toilet on the clock

boss makes a dollar i make a cent that's why i clog toilets without company consent

the numbers i be makin? 7. 😎

"Oh Max! You'll do soooo many numbers on this post, promise!" i am immune to your curses on me. my teeth grip at your throat and the sound of your voice never reaches past your tongue. do not fuck with me.

@annabelle--cane @theshitpostcalligrapher I do so enjoy having both of you on speed dial (speed tag?)

i f with this

ink: diamine: arabian nights

I would dearly love for more people to be capable of differentiating between public risk and personal risk.

Examples: drinking is a personal risk. Drinking and driving is a public risk. Going scuba diving is a personal risk. Running a scuba shop with faulty equipment is a public risk. Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a personal risk. Not maintaining public transport safety standards is a public risk. Foraging for mushrooms is a personal risk. Advertising a mushroom identification app that uses shoddy AI is a public risk. Elective surgery is a personal risk. Not wearing a mask in a doctor's waiting room when you are sick with a contagious illness is a public risk.

I could go on just about forever here. But it's a really important distinction and it drives me nuts when they get conflated, and it's so common.

"Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins"

at this point "they're both the same" is just as detached from reality as "he's making america great again"

The trans flag should have a werewolf on it. Like how Wales has a dragon

Put a creature on that thing

@calamitys-child

THIS RULES

@creatures-in-posts

Put a creature on your flag. It’s easy and free

@vexwerewolf

Thought of you FOR SOME REASON

Remember when the Soviets said they were fighting antisemitism because they were fighting the Czar and later the Nazis, and then they ended killing and persecuting millions of Jews themselves before, during, and for decades after the Holocaust? Or remember when the Romans were invited into Judea because they promised prosperity and peace for the Jews, and then they ended up destroying our Temple, colonizing our land, and murdering, enslaving, and exiling our people? Thinking about that.

Honestly I should talk about the ace experience more. I don’t see enough. Like–obviously it’s dehumanizing to be repeatedly compared to robots or aliens but uh…sometimes it feels like that?? 

My husband will get all horny while I’m, I don’t know, changing out of sweaty gardening clothes. And I’ll be like, “But we have to make lunch?? I stink? Now is not a good time?? Logic?” And clearly it’s not about logic to him. He is experiencing the entire scenario very differently. And I’m here like, 

Or the times where you realize that like, having an actual physiological reaction to attractive people is not some enculturated metaphor, and people are actually doing that all around you all the time, and you’re like, Ah, clearly my studies of human culture have been incomplete. I have missed a critical psychosocial component. Many things now appear in a different light. *takes notes on holopad*

The notes on this post are just a shitload of aces going…I don’t get it. Or sometimes for a bit under very special circumstances I get it, or almost get it, and then I’m like “Wow this is a huge energy drain; you guys live like this?” Or just, “Totally baffling truly an alien species why would you lick someone?” And I am feeling the kinship in this here post.

a friend of mine once said “Wow! You must get so much done!”

to which i replied “No, no, I still have depression.”

I made this post two years ago and this is maybe the funniest addition in all that time.

It's one little goat, Michael. What could it cost, two zuzim?

The adventuring party is now fully convinced that a cast-iron frying pan with a fire enchantment is the most versatile piece of equipment they can use.

I’m not saying it is, but I’m absolutely saying that the first time I ran something in Eberron one of those ended up doing more cumulative damage than the Artificer’s actual weapon before you count any cooking, warming, and rope-burning it accomplished.

Yep! That’s about it.

This is super important to understand how this happened because there is so much power in the people. Please remember that many generations before us have fought for their rights and we need to decide what it too much for us to take. Once we find that spot, we need to figure out where we want to be, and don't stop fighting until we've made it.

Please y'all, remember that you are powerful.

Also, workers rights related: Black Lung healthcare is gone for coal miners while Trump wants to bring back a country run on coal. So that's goddamn great.

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

I work at a bookstore and hearing one of my male coworkers call smutty romantasy "the downfall of society" because it's "literally just porn" radicalized me

Men have an entire industry. Entire industries dedicated to their sexualities. Let women have fantasy sex. there's not even a camera crew involved.

Left this in the notes

i love hearing about elon musks continuous gaming blunders bc nobody is even forcing him to talk about video games ever he’s just obsessed with the self own

Multi-billionaire brought down by a guy in chat spamming “U HAVE NO FRIENDS AND WILL DIE ALONE”

… and the tutorial boss of PoE2

it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.

I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.

Adding: Gluten is a RIDICULOUSLY aggressive contaminant, one of the most penetrating and pervasive known to man. The same qualities that give it the ability to give texture to pizza dough give it the ability to cling to the damndest places and sneak ANYWHERE that isn’t either sealed off or separated by the length of a building. A bag of wheat flour, unopened, kept in a closet next to the processing floor? That will produce detectable contamination of gluten in the product.

I’m lucky, gluten doesn’t hit me like that. My wife isn’t, she lived with chronic pain for 20 years such that childbirth was a barely-noticeable spike. Going gluten free cured it, and one slice of normal bread will make her suffer torturous pain for a month.

“Why does JK Rowling hate me so much when I look like Harry Potter that got stuck in the cupboard for 40 years?”

This is sending me.

Oh, fuck. He really does.

I’m sorry, whatever your thoughts ,this was a great joke.

This is why he gets all the Emmys.

John Oliver is the only thing standing between me and actual meltdown. The world around me makes me feel so insane but then he validates what I'm seeing and he does it with a sense of humor that is both brutal and filthy.

Also, he highlights what, if anything, can be done. It makes it hard to feel hopeless when he continually does more to actually help people and the country than the US government has done since before Reagan was in office.

Also, he commits to a bit like no one else and I respect that. Not a lot of people are going to buy mouse furry porn for the bit and repeatedly show it on television to prove they did it.