I found this article about what your body goes through when you decide to do something like Cory Booker's 25-hour protest speech really interesting. I saw more than one person tagging posts about him with stuff like when do you pee, and this has some great answers for you

Payroll removed archived version of this link.

Cory Booker has been talking in the senate for over 20 hours now

He’s not filibustering. He’s protesting the current administration.

For those of you from outside the US or those of you who didn’t pay attention in government class, in the US senate there’s really no limit to the amount of time a senator can speak. So sometimes if they don’t want a bill to pass they just. Don’t stop talking. To hopefully get past the deadline to vote on a bill. This is called filibustering.

Senator Cory Booker isn’t doing that. He’s disrupting “the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able”. Just in protest. This doesn’t usually happen.

He’s less than 20 minutes away from breaking the record of the longest speech given on the senate floor

Cory Booker has officially broken Strom Thurmond’s record for longest speech on the senate floor and he’s still going

For those of you wondering what he’s been talking about this whole time, his staff wrote down a bunch of stuff for him to read like stories from people across the political spectrum opposed to what the administration is doing. He’s also been telling personal anecdotes about meeting important civil rights leaders and other democratic senators have been pausing him for “questions” but the questions have been as long as a small speech and have both served the purpose of giving him a second to sit down and updating him on the news that he’s been missing while he’s been talking.

More Info: Cory Booker breaks a 68-year-old Senate record with a 25-hour speech (NPR - April 1, 2025)

Democrats should be doing this every day. They should have been doing this from the beginning, but I hope this is the start of them doing it every day.

For those of you that may have just finished watching Cory Booker’s record-breaking senate speech and are inspired to “get in good trouble”, you have a great opportunity for it this Saturday!

On April 5th, numerous advocacy groups are banding together into one nation-wide rally that will be held in major cities all over the country - you can easily find a participating location here!

www.handsoff2025.com

I’ll be volunteering as a safety captain at my own local rally, and I encourage all of you to go out there too and get in some good trouble as well!

for the record when I say a lot of major cities I mean a LOT of major cities :P

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: what we want is for these things to be run like a HOUSEHOLD… a home. A household still has a budget and an income and resources to manage; all the moving parts are the same but the focus is different.

a business will let every person in it die a terrible death if it makes the business profit. A household will spend it’s last dollar to keep the people in it safe and healthy.

A household will use money as a resource to add value to the lives of the people in the household. A business will use people as a resource to add monetary value to the business

We don’t want a government run like a business, we want a country run like a household. Because we live here.

Fucking wild to be teaching about Rosa Parks at the same time as a trans woman in Florida does an act of civil disobedience to use a women's restroom in the state capitol

As far as I know, she is the first woman arrested bc of this law. The law requires that the trans person be warned to leave the bathroom by a state official, and then if they stay they are guilty of trespassing after a warning.

So like, me, my gf, others just piss and nobody asks or tells, but this young woman sent a statement about the law to over 100 FL lawmakers so they would know she was coming, the cops were ready for her, she brought a reporter and went in anyway and spent the night in a men's jail. She is out on bail, and is hoping this will inspire change of the law. But if found guilty, and the law is upheld as constitutional, then she could spend up to 60 days in a mens county jail.

You know that post that was going around like a year ago. That said something like 'hey you don't need to wear any makeup' and people kept commenting shit like 'yeah just a little eyeliner is enough'. This is how this post feels to me

The ultimate dream of any CEO is for people to become dependent on their product to the point where they can't picture living without it.

Amazon and its competitors rose to prominence via creating products that were so cheap and convenient that people gave in, they gave us a store where everything could be gotten in one place and with free two day shipping that was surely worth the then low subscription cost.

Now we're seeing brick and mortar stores as well as smaller online distributors shutter. We're also seeing Amazon hike up the prices of items and subscriptions because they know they're the only option for a lot of people now-- they've cut out the competition. This is how a lot of the big tech CEOs post dot com boom ensured their power.

Sam Altman and his peers are the next generation of that, and in the tradition of American innovation, their goal has always been to take what came before them and build it to new extremes.

So if Amazon's goal is to create a service that is cheap and easy to the point you stop going to the store (and then monetizing off your dependence once said store is gone), and Chatgpt is selling you intelligence...

I'm not saying this to be mean, but one of the major things Amazon did was put all the items you could want in one place, which also had the side effects of making it so a lot more people were further disconnected from the realities of the supply chain and just flat out didn't know where in real life they could get many of the specialty items they were looking for at their fair market prices.

Chatgpt similar disconnects you from the sources information is gathered from and robs you of the chance to approach their answers with a critical eye-- the consequences of which will extend past these AI engines because when you don't go to the websites you get answers from, you lose crucial opportunities to take in the information surrounding what you're looking for and begin to consider what you think a reputable source looks like and what your definition of normal looks like.

It essentially sets you up to fail, and hinders your skills in whatever areas you use it for because Sam Altman and his associates want you to become reliant on these ais and choose them over the alternatives so that you will be willing to pay more for them and see them as essential.

It's in their best interest for you to think less and seek instant gratification more for their ultimate bottom line, and as this post exemplifies, it's working.

The questions we ask AI are growing larger and larger to the point where essential life skills have been ceded to this soulless grasp for our wallets.

When Amazon first began to receive criticism for their practices and was accused of undercutting the competition, Jeff Bezos tried to say that they weren't focused on the competition but the customers and focused on what Amazon was doing that the competition wasn't capable of doing-- this is because Amazon wasn't focused on outdoing competitors but rather whole industries and changing consumer behavior. As a result, a sizeable portion of Americans will now learn that shopping online for things like fabric and books should be the new normal and, you know, there's only one place to go for that now if you're a casual consumer who doesn't live and breathe those communities.

Similarly, ais aren't so much competing against each other right now. That's not their competition. eBay was never a true threat to Amazon, the ease of going to a store and leaving with an item in your hands in an hour or less was.

Ai's largest competitor is your mind and what it's capable of doing.

The fact that tech is inserting it everywhere and constantly expanding the capabilities to target even the tiny, inconsequential decisions you make should make you terrified.

Well, fuck me sideways. Connections have been made.

My girlfriend has this specific gesture she does sometimes, a very particular way of turning her wrist around and locking her fingers in one specific grip. Fast or slow, the angle of her wrist and the rhythm of the movement are always exactly the same, and at this point I've learned to recognize the motion well enough that she could do it with her back towards me and I know she's doing it.

The first time I saw her do it I thought she was putting something into her pocket, but once I noticed her making it more often I started making connections. I saw her doing it unconsciously when some situation in the house is getting tense - not during the casual sparring arguments with my other housemates, but the serious fights where shit is about to actually get fucking real - and I figured that it's a nervous thing, she doesn't like where this is going and it's scaring her. So that became my cue that it's time to back down.

I don't know when she noticed that I noticed her doing it. We've never talked about it, but at some point she started doing it on purpose, as her way of telling me that I should stop causing problems. Rotating her hand slowly means she's seeing a problem brewing and it's better that I watch myself before I start escalating it, and a quick flick and snap means whatever I was just about to say or do, I should cut that shit out right this fucking second. It works for some reason, so I've respected that.

My girlfriend does some volunteering favors for the neighbors here sometimes. Today she asked if I wanted to come along to walk this one old couple's dog, and I was feeling up for it so I went along. My father was terrified of dogs so I'm not familiar with them, but her family has always had them.

So we were walking, talking about something else, enjoying the nice weather for once, when my girlfriend saw another dog walker approaching. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, but the other dog walker started pulling the dog back with this roller leash thing whatever the fuck they're called. And then the old couples' dog started growling.

With the familiarity of someone who's been handling dogs all her life my girlfriend grabbed the little fucker's leash, wrapping it around the width of her palm and gripping it to pull the dog closer a second before it could bolt to attack. A move she's probably done countless times in her life, that she could do in her sleep, by instinct, without ever even thinking about it. A gesture I've learned to fucking spot from across the room from the corner of my eye. That exact same fucking twirl and grip. I have no idea if she noticed me noticing it or making the connection.

She's fucking learned to pull my fucking leash back when I'm about to start shit.

fat character who becomes a vampire and loses a ton of weight and blood can not sate their hunger but they can't eat anything they used to like anymore. everyone views it as a positive healthy positive development but they're starving and dying slowly but never truly dying, a living corpse. this is a metaphor for something

People finally think they’re attractive and cool and funny but they’re dead. People finally treat them well but they’re dead. Do you see the vision

Transforms into a shell of my former self and finally gains the respectability society never bestowed upon me before

This machine kills AI

I needed to hear this. A big part of my art block and absence from social media is due to AI. It should be a toy or a tool, not a job.

ID: An image with the words “This machine kills AI,” and a hand pointing down at a pencil. Below it is a post that says:

“Posting this on behalf of a member who would like to remain anonymous:

I'm an art director and supervisor for a large studio. The studio heads had the bright idea before I started to hire prompters. Several bros were brought onto the film project. I absolutely hated myself for not quitting on the spot but stuck with it because it's mercenary out there. Have a family to feed etc. I decided to use this time wisely. Treat them as I would any artist I had hired. First round of pictures of a sweeping Ariel forest landscape comes through and it's not bad. They submit a ton of work and one or two of the 40 are ok. Nearly on brief. So first round feedback goes through and I tell them about the perspective mistakes, colour changes I want, layers that any matte painting would be split into. Within a day I get 5 variants. Not changes to the ones I wanted but variations.

Again. Benefit of the doubt I give them another round of feedback making it clear. Next day it's worse. I sit there and patiently paint over, even explaining the steps I would take as a painter. They don't do it, anomalies start appearing when I say I want to keep the exact image but with changes. They can't. They simply don't have the eye to see the basic mistakes so the Ai starts to over compensate. We get people starting to appear in the images. These are obviously holiday snaps.

‘Remove the people.’

‘What would you like them changed to?’

‘[dot dot] grass. I just don't want them there.”

They can't do it. The one that can actually use photoshop hasn't developed the eye to see his mistakes, ends up getting angry at me for not understanding he can't make specific changes. The girl whose background was a little photography has given me 40 progressively worse images with wilder mistakes every time. This is 4 days into the project.

I'm both pissed about the waste, but elated seeing ai fall at the first hurdle. It's not even that the images are unusable, the people making them have no eye for what's wrong, no thicker skin for constructive criticism and feedback, no basic artistic training in perspective and functionality in what they're making.

Yes the hype is going to pump more money into this. They won't go anywhere for a while.

But this has been such a glowing perfect moment of watching the fundamental part fail in the face of the most simple tasks. All were fired and the company no longer accepts Ai prompters as applicants. Your training as an artist will always be the most important part of this process and it is invaluable. I hope this post gives you a boost in a dark time.” End ID.

“Magneto’s backstory should be changed, it’s unrealistic that he’d still be alive after all this time!” Have you forgotten what franchise he’s from?

You can suspend your disbelief for the man transformed into sentient rocks by space radiation, the interdimensional bird, and the flaming biker skeletons, but one guy being a little old is where you draw the line?

It's the ~antisemitism~

#its also worth noting that marvel *DID* change magneto's backstory#he was originally presented as someone who had survived the shoah as an adult#and marvel retconned it to him surviving it as a child#iirc his original debut backstory involved him losing a wife and two kids??

Well, no, not really. When Magneto was made to be a Holocaust survivor, he was a survivor from childhood, though by the end of the Holocaust he was in his teens. His daughter Anya was killed by an antisemitic mob after the Holocaust, at some point in the 1950s.

It's also an attempt to pretend that the Shoah is ancient history, when it's really not.

"It's unrealistic for a Holocaust survivor to still be alive."

Assholes, there are Holocaust survivors still alive in the real world.

They're really telling on themselves because Wolverine is like 170 years old.

wolverine being a hundred and fucking seventy: normal

magneto being the same age as currently alive holocaust survivors: impossible

While there are definitely living Holocaust survivors today, most of them aren't up to doing half the shit Magneto does, and it seems to be affecting the impact his stories have on audiences. I remember reading Magneto stories as a kid in the 90s, knowing he was a little younger than my grandparents, and getting hit with a truckload of sympathy for the dude. He just wanted to have a normal life like Grandma and Granddad, and then the war happened and oh FUCK. Younger readers now are much less likely to have that personal connection; that's just how human lifespans work. And it's only going to get worse. Magneto does need some future-proofing.

That's not to say I think Magneto's origin should be changed, or that he should be permanently killed off. Far from it. This is comics; all kinds of timeline bullshit happens all the time. As someone pointed out above, Wolverine is most of the way into his second century of life.

What I'd do--and what I'm shocked Marvel writers don't seem to have done yet--is wave the mutant bullshit wand and make Magneto functionally immortal. Secondary mutation, maybe. Something something magnetic fields. The mechanics don't matter any more than "Wolverine is functionally immortal because healing factor" does. What matters is this:

At some point, Magneto will be the last living Holocaust survivor. And he will not let the world forget.

There was a story I read as a kid where Magneto took a handful of soil from the camp where his family died and spread it on the surface of the moon, where he was building a mutant haven of some kind. The image of him on his knees with soil running through his fingers and an agonized look on his face has haunted me ever since. To some part of him, it's always 1945. Never again is quite literally now.

I want to see Magneto as the furious conscience of the Marvel universe. I want him to rip a hole in the UN General Assembly building and stride in with his full regalia on--except for one sleeve, stripped to the forearm to show his tattooed number--and read the UN the riot act in all his nigh-unkillable glory. I want him to storm into summits between warring planets, atomize the ferrous metal in everyone's weapons, and lay down the galactic law that is There Will Be No More Genocides On My Watch, And My Watch Is Eternal. And I want future writers to use his story, and his enduring popularity as a character, to make sure that audiences don't forget either.

Magneto being a Holocaust survivor is only a flaw in the storytelling if you're a goddamn coward.

they should hold 4 versions of every olympic event in this order to witness the full breadth of human capabilities:

#5th version olympians who do a completely different sport#i wanna see the weightlifters do table tennis. chuck a bunch of archers in the pool & see what happens. give the gymnasts gun

i'm so tired of the yaoi-ification of mlm ships where people feel the need to make one of them (usually the fandom-assigned bottom) into a teeny tiny waifish twink and the other into a huge musclebound super aggro guy (usually the fandom-assigned top) i know this is like a thing many people have been saying for years but i just feel like it has never actually gotten better in fandom spaces. the fatphobia of it, the gender essentialism, the homophobia, it's all so fucking annoying it makes me want to scream

tangled gave us so much, but mostly it gave us the beautiful and intense love of a horse and the man he is chasing in order to imprison

i personally believe that maximus was the former captain of the guard who was cursed into horse form pretty recently, and everyone’s having trouble adjusting to it.

like, he’s entitled to sick leave, he really ought to take a couple months to break the curse and come to terms with whatever the fuck just happened to him, but instead of embarking on a journey of self-discovery and healing he just keeps showing up to work. no one can get captain maximus to go on his fucking voyage of self actualization and fix the curse because he’s obsessed with catching flinn ryder. everyone really fucking hopes that when he finally catches this guy the curse might be broken anyway, but it isn’t.

he just keeps showing up to work. he glares at the stablehands until they saddle him up. everyone’s gone over the regulations a dozen times but there’s nothing there saying you’re not allowed to saddle and ride the captain of the guard if he makes you do it. his former second in command rides him around like ‘sir i really don’t know about this’ and he’s just like ‘are we going to catch some criminals or what.’

you can see in the movie that everyone in the royal guard defers to this horse. it’s absolutely because that’s their boss. and secondarily because now he’s two thousand pounds of percheron.

there is no evidence against this theory and you cannot prove me wrong.

when I was a little kid at some point I got upset with my parents because I didn't have a crucifix in my bedroom and they did- I was like why do YOU get to be safe from vampires??? you're okay with me getting my blood sucked???? so we took a little trip to the catholic store but the one closest to us was run by a group of nuns that had been moved here from romania. I got a little baby pink cross and this sweet old nun was like 'aww, is this a baptism gift?' and I was like no. I need to be protected from vampires. and she immediately got SO serious and was like 'this is the best one we've got, you'll definitely be safe' and since she was literally from vampire land I was convinced she was like, van helsing. like the whole time my parents had been laughing about how cute my fear was but she literally Knew dracula and was taking my concerns seriously I held this over my parents for so long lmfao

my great-grandfather had to leave italy in the 20′s because he hit a fascist with a tuba, so if you think I am going to take this sitting down you are going to have to catch these hands and also this tuba

Fun story my Great Great Grandma left Germany in the 1920s because she had family in the US and could get citizenship pretty easily and once she was over in the US she then smuggled over 15 jewish families out by forging family documents so now my aunts are currently in the process of trying to tell the real ones from the fake ones because my great gran just died and there are legally over 100 surviving descendants but we know that math is a lil screwy.

Sometimes a family is you, your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, and the 15 Jewish families you helped smuggle out of Nazi Germany.

And your tuba