So Crawford won. Elon is, as far as I know, still being investigated for ~election crimes~ in Wisconsin. Canada is still investigating Tesla's alleged fraud with rebates. Illinois just elected a bunch of Democrats for local offices. Louisiana rejected a bunch of Republican proposed changes to their state constitution. Cory Booker held the floor of the Senate for 25 hours, breaking the record of racist shitheel Strom Thurmond and in the process, listing out the sins of the Trump administration in the Senate records and delaying their vote for some other Trump asshole. And Speaker of the House Mike Johnson got embarrassed by House Republicans joining Dems in opposing him and threw a baby hissy fit and shut down the House for a week.

We didn't get Florida. But look at all that up there.

Oh and tomorrow, Tesla has to share information about how many cars it actually delivered in the first three months of the year, which unless they fudge the books, is going to be a lower number than they would like, and might make their stock dip some more. Or just drop. Forbes has provided a little graph of their sales.

Edit: and oh shit! Mike Waltz fucked up again and got caught using fucking Gmail for work discussions. Gmail. Because Google never spied on anyone. (He has a government email address.)

HEY, FELLOW HATERS OF INSANELY-BRIGHT CAR HEADLIGHTS, SOMEONE HAS STARTED A PETITION TO REGULATE THEM.

It's an official petition through the Australian Government's e-petition page, which means if it gets enough signatures, it will be tabled in government.

You do have to be an Australian citizen to sign it, BUT!!! PLEASE REBLOG THIS EVEN IF YOURE NOT, because these kind of things have a roll-on effect, and if Australia legislates LED headlights, then other countries may follow.

FYI, the petition asks only for your name and email, and once you've clicked the sign button, they'll send you an email to confirm your signature --- you need to click the confirmation link in the email to have your signature counted.

I understand more and more things about cisgender men the longer I’m on testosterone. I know why teenage boys use so much axe now. I understand the crying thing. I know why they accidentally break things. I know why they wear shorts in the snow. I know why so many of them don’t use washcloths. I see everything.

Okay. Y’all want explainations? I’ll tell you all the things.

WOW THAT IS AWESOME INFO

This sounds like spiderman finding his superpowers

God, I love that comparison.

Op have you felt the urge to slap the top of the doorframe yet?

OKAY I REALLY WANNA KNOW THAT TOO WHY DO THEY DO THAT???

That one is to test how tall they’re getting. Men are on average six inches taller than women and it’s fun when you get really tall and can reach stuff you never could before. Once they’re done growing it’s either to demonstrate how tall they are to other people or just because it’s fun. Jumping is fun and slapping the doorframe demonstrates both your height and how high you can jump, or if you’re so tall you don’t need to jump. Hitting stuff is fun too when nobody gets hurt from it. I did that even before I started T lol. I stopped growing before I started T but I still do it because it’s fun. It’s just one of life’s little joys. For a lot of people it also just becomes a habit. Like tapping on a desk when you’re thinking or giving your friend a high five whenever you pass them.

wow I appreciate knowing this so much

Most people: “Huh, looks like it’s about impossible to guess the difference between biological and socialized gender behaviors. Let’s just pick a few semi-plausible generalizations and shame everyone who–”

Trans people on hormone therapy, finally in a culture that sometimes lets them talk a little bit: “OH HEY SO IT’S STILL ALL SUBJECTIVE AND COMPLICATED, BUT WE HAVE SOME VERY PRECISE POINTS OF INFORMATION FOR YOU.”

Most people: “Oh shit that’s useful.”

actually as long as we're talking about realistic expectations of ageing, the nature of social media decontextualising people's personal posts has absolutely given some of you guys a false and potentially dangerous view of how your body is expected to change over time. I semi frequently see people sharing or repackaging commentary on experiences with disability as if it's an inevitable part of getting older. and like, yes, as you get older you are likely to develop new conditions, injuries or disabilities, but you need to understand your body's baseline well enough to identify those changes and interrogate them.

e.g. if you are seriously having such bad joint or back pain in your 30s that it hampers your day to day activities, you need to take that seriously. that is not 'just ageing', that's potentially an indicator of an underlying condition, unaddressed injury (which is quite common but will get worse if you don't notice and take care of it) or daily habits (poor posture, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle) causing cumulative damage to your body.

I know plenty of 30+ and 40+ year olds who are not especially athletic but who can still climb up and down stairs with ease, sit on the floor and get up again without discomfort, have floor or shower sex, ride a bike, wrestle a dog or a kid, climb a tree, maybe even do a handstand. there is no shame at all in developing pain or mobility issues which limit the kinds of things you can do comfortably, but it doesn't serve anyone to pretend that those changes are bound up with reaching a certain age. even in your 60s and 70s and beyond you should notice if you start feeling a new kind of pain or physical limitation. don't dismiss this shit just because someone told you "yeah that happens when you pass 30"

"normal" does NOT mean "this is fine." now apply that to a lot of things in your life.

hating your parents because of terrible shit they did?

normal, but not fine.

your partner hits you, belittles you, or constantly spends way too much so you can't save anything because you're constantly paying the electric bill?

that's normal abuse, but holy shit that is not fine.

bad hip or your lower back hurts a lot and you have more and more in common with people in the silver sneakers commercials?

increasingly normal in a society where we eat worse, work labour jobs and stand more than people have for the past 30 years, and generally have worse standard of living. it's normal. but NOT FINE.

go DO something about it. don't let doctors or friends or who the fuck ever tell you that normal = does not need to be fixed. no, it isn't fine.

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.

I think it's important to know that this woman is a devout Catholic and is performing this act of civil disobedience as a profound act of faith (which I deeply respect, as someone whose Judaism vibes on the same wavelength). She brought a rosary with her and was planning on praying the rosary in the restroom after washing her hands if she was able to do so.

I also think it's important to know that she said in her letter that she knows that if she's sent to a men's prison that it is very likely that she will be raped.

The thing about Rosa Parks is we know her name. We should also speak Marcy Rheintgen's name

"Would you rather use the app? :)" I cannot begin to describe how much I wouldn't

Dudes rock

“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.

I got inspired by this post

“And I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness, ’cause it’s just information about you that helps you to know how to take better care of yourself.

“Being bipolar, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It might be embarrassing to tell people, and it might be hard to take you certain places. But they have arm floaties. And if you just take your arm floaties, you can go wherever the hell you want.

“And I know some of you are like, ‘But Taylor, what if people judge me for taking arm floaties?’ Well, those people don’t care if you live or die, so maybe who cares? Maybe fuck those people a little. I don’t know.”

Taylor Tomlinson, Look At You (2022)

Sure, it may not be a "formal filibuster" since it's not obstructing a vote on legislation, but if Cory Booker's speech ends up exceeding Strom Thurmond's 24:18 record - like, having a black man beat a record set by Thurmond defending segregation is pretty great!

Aaaaaand he did it!

figured out a way you can search for posts that are tagged TWO things on a blog!!! feeling clever

for anyone else who didn’t know, this is the format!:

https://[blogURL].tumblr.com/search/%23[tag1]%2C%20%23[tag2]

remove the [brackets] when using it!

mods are asleep, share hacks that make the site usable against its will

Are you an American? Do you love our nation's national parks, our libraries, affordable health care, and essential checks and balances? DO YOU NOT WANT TO GO TO WAR WITH CANADA?

Fuck, are you just a European and you're highly emotionally invested in what's going on?

Well good news, help spread the news. Special elections April 1st and this is going to help break down the narrow majority Republicans hold on Congress.

Florida has two congressional seats up for election April 1st, and Wisconsin has a highly televised race for their supreme court Court that Elon Musk has invested millions into.

If you're Floridian, check to see if you're eligible to vote in either of the elections listed here.

If you're a Wisconsinite, for some ungodly reasons about half of your election information is buried in Google and hidden amongst government websites but, find your polling place now.

shout-out to the people who...

i see you. you're not "broken."

Mary Oliver, from “the fourth sign of the zodiac” published in Blue Horses

Cory Booker is reading letters from his constituents and tearing up repeatedly and it’s making me cry.

Yes -- in case anyone thought their calls and letters don't matter, Cory Booker has launched a protest marathon speech on the Senate floor and is reading letters directly from his constituents. Their voices and words gave him something to share on the Senate floor directly from the American people.

I intend to call my senators tomorrow and let them know that I've heard about this, and will be sending them letters as well so THEY can speak up for their constituents, because I expect them to speak up.

as of this morning, tues. 4/1/25, the speech is still going, with booker only stopping to take questions from democrats. here is a link to a NYT article about it, in which they quote him as saying:

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for — from our highest offices — a sense of common decency…These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.”

here is a link to the livestream of the speech on senator booker’s youtube. the live chat when i last checked it was filled with supportive comments as well.

Still going. Still coherent, somehow! His staff did an insane amount of research to prep him for this.

《山河令》 WORD OF HONOR (2021) | Episode 34/35, congratulations to the happy couple! may you share all joys and sorrows as a family