Don't let Republicans distract you with gimmicky culture war bills. Republican policies are making Americans' lives shorter and worse in every conceivable way.

Look at this tool. What a pathetic edgelord.

They are called earned benefits. Cutting $500 billion from your money when you need it is asinine.

Would you accept cuts to your bank account? It's the same logic: it's your money.

At this stage, Musk could destroy all social security payments and end Medicare, and these mindless, unserious Republicans would let Musk steal all their money.

Christian Conservatives see a rapist felon taking a billion in food away from children as divine.

This is for Tuba Christmas!! Tuba Christmas is the only reason I've EVER willingly ventured into Rock Center during December.

The website where I first read about it is no longer operational but gather round and I'll try to convey the true meaning of Tuba Christmas (with apologies to Charlie Suissman, who told this story better than I ever could)

The concert was conceived in 1974 by Harvey Phillips as a tribute to his teacher and mentor William J. Bell, born on Christmas Day, 1902.

Harvey called up the programming people at Rock Center to propose a concert in December. They said "what did you have in mind?" He said "100 tubas playing Christmas carols." And there was silence on the other end of the line.

So Harvey talked to some pals like Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein. And a while later he gets a call from Rock Center, and this time the guy on the phone says "we've talked to your friends, you can have anything you want."

So then he puts out a call for tuba & euphonium players. And it turns out EVERYONE wants to honor their teacher Bell, and he gets THREE HUNDRED rsvps. And then the next hurdle is that somehow no one has ever arranged Christmas carols for an orchestra entirely made of tubas, so he gets someone on that.

Day of the concert they basically have a few minutes in the hall all lined up to test out the arrangements and magically THEY WORK. So everyone parades out onto the ice and it's magical.

So now they do it every December, and there are smaller Tuba Christmases all over the country. I highly recommend checking it out next year if you find one near you

This is an important lesson in how propaganda works. By saying they were fired for "sexually explicit" conversations, it's establishing that things related to being trans or queer- like discussing hormones or pronouns, both of which are things that are actually in the chat- are pornographic and explicit. It's treating any sort of queer identity discussion as sexual content.

Now, follow the math on this. When they convince people that talking about anything related to being trans is pornographic (see page 5 of Project 2025) and that exposing children to it should be registered as a sex offender (same paragraph of Project 2025), and then later says that the death penalty should be applied to people convicted of "particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children" (page 554 of Project 2025), do you understand how this is the first step towards criminalizing any sort of discussion of being transgender and where they're laying the groundwork for killing people over it?

Musk is the biggest government welfare recipient

I think it’s time for gay sex talk 101 again because some people seem to have the wrong idea

Top≠dom

Sub≠bottom

A top is just someone who does penetrating during gay sex. A bottom is someone who is penetrated during gay sex. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

Have a great day ✨

These roles can be fluid.

These roles have no consistent physical attributes (tough, weak, strong, slender, large, etc), and no moral implications.

Feminine and masculine, in so much as such traits can be ascribed, also have no bearing on these roles.

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”

I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”

“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”

“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.

(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:

Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.

And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.

I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.

So throw the damn pie

Resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival.

worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard

everyone in the notes we are all holding hands. everyone who hasnt worked on a wip in weeks or months or years, its okay. we are going slow but we are going

*RARE* John Denver & Johnny Cash - Take Me Home Country Roads

Found this while going through my granddad’s VHS tapes and couldn’t find it anywhere online, so here it is.

sometimes I see pictures from when I was younger and it makes me wonder why I spent so much time hating myself. sweet little baby me. I was still growing. I was still learning. I was still getting used to my own skin. I didn’t deserve that

apply this logic to yourself right now!! you are always growing and getting used to your own skin!! you never deserve to hate yourself!!! love yourself now!! or else!!

My new method to avoid eye contact is a low cut top and a push-up bra.

That's right, this whole time I've been on HRT for the distracting and alluring cleavage which serves to alleviate so much otherwise awkward social interactions.

No more complex social small talk to navigate, just people trailing off while their eyeballs do the walking. This whole master plan was a stroke of genius.

this girl playing 4-d chess with the allistics

Actually it's just 38C but thanks.

Hold on, I might be stupid.

Please look at these babies!