yami&joey illusts drawn in 2024
If this is your first round on the 'US uses blatantly false evidence as an excuse to attack a country for purely selfish reasons' track, then let me save you a lot of future embarrassment:
You don't need to try to become a public expert on Venezuela or Maduro based on reading half the Wikipedia page or scrolling the Bluesky tags. You don't need to state any opinion on the former political situation of Venezuela at all. It's okay for now to admit that you know fuck all about it, or to just not speak on it.
An opinion like 'The US shouldn't use blatantly false evidence as an excuse to attack a country for purely selfish reasons' is a full opinion that doesn't require knowing exactly what was up in the country being attacked.
Don't fall for the temptation of 'the enemy of my enemy must be a friend, so I'm gonna get on their hill and write minimally-informed stuff about how great they are'. Trust me, you're gonna feel very silly about that later.
If you're in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:
- The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.
- The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.
- The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.
- The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.
- The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.
- The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.
- The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.
- Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.
- The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.
- If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.
- You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.
- The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.
- Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.
- Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.
- Veterans' benefits suck these days.
- Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.
- The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.
- The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.
- A lot can change in four years.
All of this!
If you want an organization who WILL tell you the truth about your rights to conscientiously object, how to legally get out of the DEP (Delayed Entry Program) or about any of your other rights in the military (whether you’re enlisted, thinking about enlisting, or a family member or friend of someone enlisted (or thinking about enlisting)), who will do it confidentially & for free, you want the
GI Rights Hotline
run by NGOs & non-profits, which has been counseling folks for DECADES now:
Or by phone:
1-877-447-4487
Even if all the person you're speaking to cares about is the money, the money sucks.
Minimum wage in California just went up to $16.90. You need to be rank E4 or be E3 with at least 3 years of service before you're making more than the CA minimum wage in the military.
You will literally get better pay and benefits working at a costco. (And that's not even accounting for the fact that the military isn't a 40 hour work week, your entire life is on the clock)
I cannot emphasize this enough, if you're a desperate young queer person you will make better money, get better healthcare, and have more affordable options for school if you move to California, get a job at costco, live with roommates, and go to community college than you will have if you join the US military.
god I love Chipdrop. yes, my startup is pioneering WaaS (woodchips as a service)
Or woodchips as a disservice, as the case may be
Update: they’re sending me a postcard for two-factor authentication. The second factor… is my mailbox.
On the one hand, I was really hoping to shovel chips this week. On the other hand, this is absolutely necessary because come to think of it, sending someone a dump truck full of nonconsensual woodchips is a massive upgrade on the old “nonconsensual massive pizza order” schtick, in terms of mayhem created.
Legitimately one of the most striking things about 60s-80s science fiction is that it genuinely seems to have been taken for granted in a lot of ways that some sort of 'psi' or ESP or something would be discovered and integrated into society at large some time in the near future. Even when it's not the point of stories, it keeps recurring as a background detail.
Also that society and the economy would be governed by vast interconnected computer networks and most people would be functionally unemployed.
Psychics, ESP and "psi" did not become fully discredited even within academia, until much later than you would assume. Washington University's MacLab, the target of James Randi's Project Alpha, was receiving funding as late as 1985. To 60s-80s science fiction writers, the idea that in the future, scientists would discover psychic powers seemed like at least a plausible scenario as other genre staples like faster than light travel or time travel.
And now, like faster-than-light travel, we are in an slightly embarrassing situation where whole swathes and traditions of the genre called 'science fiction' are absolutely wedded to genre staples that aren't especially more plausible than Gandalf.
Artist By 末日预报
Chinese text, according to google translate: Please continue playing your prince games forever in this comfortable coffin, but I have to go now.
I think it’s so funny that utena has literally no idea why anyone in the black rose arc got turned into a duelist. Like imagine someone pulls up in an intricate uniform holding one of your friend’s swords and says “HAHHAHA I GET IT NOW ALL OF MY DEEP PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS STEMMING FROM MY HIGHLY SPECIFIC INSECURITIES CAN BE SOLVED IF I KILL YOUR GIRLFRIEND!!!” and it’s sarah from math class who you only vaguely know
hey have you guys seen the batshit ai-generated images that indiana state senator chris garten tweeted of himself beating the shit out of santa claus
he tweeted this on christmas morning. santa claus is apparently supposed to represent bureaucracy somehow. i think maybe he heard the other republicans talking about a war on christmas and didn't fully understand it
He's been throwing a tantrum about people calling it weird, but it's not just weird, it's stupid.
Santa is the exact opposite of a bureaucracy in both his mythology and his reality. When we look at the characteristics of a bureaucracy, we're looking at something with lots of moving parts- but not just moving parts, moving parts in a hierarchy. Bureaucracies generate paperwork and reporting and have steps in place to make sure that responsibilities are distributed so that one person doesn't have all the power.
That's not what Santa is. Mythological Santa is a single private individual who controls a workforce directly (no intervening offices) to generate items for children he deems worthy. He distributes these independently and doesn't rely on anything generated outside of his company to do so. There is no regulatory oversight of him or his workshop. There is no governing body that he answers to, nor is there a board of directors. There is a single individual who judges people based on a list of criteria that is not made public. There is no review board to appeal to, there is no red tape. Santa is allowed to surveil with impunity and is not obligated to continue offering the goods and services he chooses to offer. There is a clear chain of command, but that chain has one link: Santa himself.
And it's not like Santa is a socialized service, because his toys aren't given out to everybody. Even in the mythology, it's toys to "good" children- and again, who defines that? One individual. There's no office or secretary to appeal to. You can't apply for them, you don't get to join the Santa Assistance Program when you hit a certain income level. In fact, if you're low-income or otherwise disadvantaged, you're less likely to receive goods from Santa. If your background doesn't align with his reward standards (nominally "nice," but realistically, "has parents who can afford toys" and "has a family that celebrates a Christian holiday or is at least willing to let that holiday through the door"), you will not be receiving his aid.
Mythological Santa is at best the type of private charity the GOP thinks should be running the social services here in Indiana. But in reality, Santa is your parents, and the gifts you get are decisions made by them as private individuals. They are financed by the parents as private individuals. There is no fucking bureaucracy there- this is just a man who, like most Indiana politicians, is just unfathomably mean and too uninformed to be allowed to govern. If you are asked to define bureaucracy, and you define it as anything in the foundational Santa myth or the Santa reality, you genuinely do not have the background in political understanding or social context necessary to make decisions for other people.
professorsparklepants
