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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • And where am I ruling that out? I never said that this resistance would always be peaceful. But the sooner you start coordinating with the people around you, the better prepared for that violence we will be, and the better our chances are to prevent a lot of deaths. You can claim otherwise, but sitting alone while my neighbors and friends die is unconscionable to me.

    But what am I deluding myself about? I have literally admitted that what we do may not be able to fix things entirely, but we doom ourselves more if we don’t take action. You obviously know that already, given your statement about your footprint, so why are you arguing against another person calling for direct action?


  • Even if that is true, why take out your frustration like this, by raging against those of us who are willing to do all the good we can?

    I am not promising that we will be able to fix everything. Heck, I don’t even know if we can fully fix anything. But until every last living being is dead, there is something here that deserves every chance we can give or get.

    You don’t have to participate, but to argue against this kind of work is like denying pain medication to someone who is dying and justifying it by saying ‘meds will not save you’. If we can’t save the life, we can at least save them from as much suffering as we can manage.


  • It is going to get worse, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the full worst-case scenario.

    Right now, a lot of people are hurt and scared, and the fascists know that. That is why they are making big waves right now, to try to capitalize on that feeling of dread and despair.

    But they had to put in a LOT of work to suppress the will of the people. This is not the result of a single election season, this is the result of a coordinated effort spanning decades. The actions they are taking now are designed to make you think that it is hopeless, that nobody cares, and that the battle is lost.

    In reality, the battle is never over. This is the moment that needs to push us to actually working together against them, instead of talking about what the right thing to do is. Talk won’t help, but local action will.

    Join a mutual aid group and help safeguard your friends and neighbors from the economic hardship they are promising. Start talking your friends and family into attending boycotts, marches, and, above all, your local government and board meetings. Connect to the people around you, put up flyers, coordinate phone campaigns, and get people into these meetings to demand protections and change at the local level where it is most important.

    Resistance doesn’t come from nowhere. It has to be grown, it has to be planted as a small seed and then watered and weeded and trellised and brought inside from the cold. You may even have to watch it die and then pick yourself up and start from a seed again.

    But if we each dedicate ourselves, full time, to a single plant, then we will do far more good than running around frantically worrying about the forest dying. Because yes, the forest is dying, and it is up to us to determine what grows in its place.

    We may not be able to save what we have now. But only we can set the stage, as best we can, for those who will come after us. And the more work we do now, the better they will be able to build off of that work, and the better things will be.






  • Full article is as follows:

    Toronto police sergeant gets eight-month demotion for her role in violent ‘mistaken identity’ arrest of U of T student

    Officers were looking for a different Black man — wanted in a domestic incident — when Sgt. Rachel Saliba spotted Hasani O’Gilvie on his way to class. The “mistaken identity” arrest ended with O’Gilvie being Tasered and the subject of a knee-to-neck restraint.

    Sgt. Rachel Saliba, one of two Toronto police officers who pleaded guilty to misconduct charges in the “mistaken identity” arrest and Tasering of Hasani O’Gilvie, a Black university student, was penalized with an eight-month demotion on Monday.

    Saliba pleaded guilty earlier this year to an unlawful exercise of authority in making an unnecessary arrest that she initiated — even though O’Gilvie had identified himself — triggering a violent take down of an innocent man.



  • One of my favorite songs from Jim Croce, Rapid Roy the Stock Car Boy, has a whole verse on this!

    Rapid Roy, that stock car boy, He’s the best driver in the land He says that he learned to race a stock car By runnin’ shine outta Alabam’ Oh the demolition derby and the figure 8 Is easy money in the bank Compared to runnin’ from the man In Oklahoma City With a 500 gallon tank


  • We would need to expand the cropland growing food for humans, yes. But there is a lot of cropland currently growing types of corn and hay that we as humans can’t eat, just so we can feed animals and get a less than 20% return on calories from the ‘food’ we get when we eat animal muscle and organs.

    Which is why our total crop land use would go down if we didn’t eat animals: we need less space to grow calories and nutrients for us that we do to feed the animals we eat. So much gets wasted with the current process that it is unsustainable, and we need to start shifting this now to avoid running into severe land and water deficiencies with the changing climate.






  • As a short dude (5’ 0"), you give short dudes a bad name.

    You assume you know everything about everyone, you treat people like walking stereotypes instead of treating them like actual individuals, and you refuse to even consider that people are avoiding you for your personality instead of your height. All the while, you are blaming women for a problem that, even if it did exist as much as you insist, would largely be perpetuated by the men who run the clubs, not the women who can get in for free and usually just want to be left alone so they can dance with their friends.

    Are there a lot of areas where we face actual discrimination because we fall outside standard height considerations? Sure, I can think of several. None of them have to do with whether I get into a club. And you don’t make your case by using discriminatory language and being a misogynistic ass.

    I can guarantee you that your attitude is hindering your social life far more than your height. There are plenty of women who love short men, but so many of them end up needing to constantly worry about their man’s ego that they don’t think it is worth it.

    In other words: men like you, no matter the height, are the reason women choose the bear. Grow up, solve your own insecurities, and stop assuming that you know what is going through people’s minds every minute of the day.


  • While you are correct that it will likely be expensive, it is important to note that Descovy is an existing PreP pill that Gilead makes. So the cost of the new shot is yet to be determined, but the company has been criticized for the cost of their current PreP medication option.

    It is also important to note that anyone with insurance in the United States will pay nothing, as the Affordable Care Act requires insurance to cover all PreP medications at no cost to patients. The pricing will only affect those who have no insurance at all, which makes this criticism all the more important to help this new medication reach those who would be the worst affected if they were to contract HIV.



  • I do have the family plan actually, I forgot about that!

    And I do occasionally. Certain live albums and more niche stuff can be hard to find, and one hit wonders can be tricky depending on the genre and time the song is from. The song I’m Blue by Eiffel 65 is only available in a longer club mix and not the radio edit, for example.

    I will say that, in my experience, it has a slightly larger selection than Spotify for classic stuff and different versions of the same song (covers, remakes, remixes, etc). For example, my husband was very excited that they had the whole readout of How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Boris Karloff (in two parts, but still) because they used to play it on certain radio stations every year around Christmas. On Spotify I was only ever able to find the same version of the song from several different albums of Christmas mixes.