@definite-human / definite-human.tumblr.com
“Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like ‘The innocent have nothing to fear’.”
–Terry Pratchett, Snuff
All those videos that are like “Why is this big area of this country uninhabited???” always have five reasons it might be.
“Why is the population of Spain almost all concentrated in these little areas?”
Well it’s probably the mountains innit
“Why does most of Russia live on the west side of the country?”
Well it’s probably the freezing cold winters and boiling hot summers innit
“Why does most of China live east of this line?”
Here there be water, my friends.
Many great societies have managed a living in some of the less habitable parts of the planet but they have generally been hardy and small in number while the rest of us have stuck to the mostly temperate river areas.
Yes there’s ways to get water in the Sahara desert and ways to get warm in the Arctic but most people generally prefer flat areas with livable temperatures and lots of water.
Like that’s why the American west was mostly sparsely populated until relatively recently. The fact that there’s so many of us there now is frankly a result of the hubristic technology that is the air conditioner.
one of the best tips for Real Life that I’ve ever picked up is to always highball your estimate whenever someone asks you “when can you get this done by” by about 25% (if you can get away with it). that way, if it ends up being harder than you thought, you’ve got extra time to figure things out and if you were right about how much time it takes then you get to look like an absolute genius instead of just a simply competent person.
what you may not have realized is that I learned this crucial piece of life advice from an episode of Star Trek where Scotty is telling Geordi that whenever he told Kirk something on the Enterprise was at full capacity, it was always only ever a notch or so below full capacity so that Scotty looked like the god of all engineers when he was able to magically hack the warp drive to run a little beyond what he’d told everyone else was “full capacity” and honestly that one throwaway gag from Star Trek has changed my life.
star trek heritage post (June 9th, 2017)
And now I remember why I grieve for Terry Pratchett, a man I have never met. He never knew of my existence, but he raised me to know what it means to care for people.
What I appreciate is that he not only showed this kind of thing working--that's good to depict, but it's also fairly common even if the details are usually less concrete. Books where people being decent even when it's hard matters are a dime a dozen.
Pratchett consistently showed that this kind of unglamorous public service, which is necessary to keeping human society running, is an absolute bitch and very very difficult and never becomes easy and has to be done anyway.
And also that you can do it while being yourself an absolute bitch, and in fact that tends to be a more applicable skill than niceness.
2. “Come now my child.”
*bluey the album starts playing*
3. “Oh I am so sorry. You’ve been mildly inconvenienced. How dare I truly”
4. “It is she! Her Majesty, Queen of the Sludge, Keeper of Goo, DJ Baby P (In the House) Dropper of Beats and Clapper of Hands”
5. He is in charge of bathtime and he lifted the ghoul tonight while singing “come with me and you’ll be in a world of baby sanitation” and I laughed so hard I snorted pasta
6. Okay this is more one that he said to me about the toddler but he was home with her while I was at work and I just got this text
7.
“Happy Independence Day Sweetie! Nationalism is a cancer!”
8. This is another one he said to me about her but still it made me laugh so hard I nearly choked
9.
*Penny babbling in the back seat, many la la las coming from her car seat*
“Are you singing us a song? Ah yes the dulcet tones of goblin”
10.
“Listen kid, I can’t let you have the cup anymore because you keep chugging the bath water, so we just have to remove the cup from the equation.”
11.
*penny is screaming, trying to climb back up a big slide at the playground*
“Someday you’ll learn about ,I don’t know physics and the myth of Sisyphus ,and you’ll start making a lot of connections I think. “
12. *Pen is still screaming and baby cussing about not being able to climb back up the slide*
“The problem is that you set goals for yourself that are unattainable by both man and baby.”
13.
“You can keep the cookie container, I don’t care. What kind of father would I be if I tried to separate a small raccoon child from her trash!?”
14.
*Penny is crying because the bucket she insisted on sitting in fell off the couch with her in it. Husband is bouncing her and rubbing her back after assessing that no physical damage occurred, just a bruised toddler ego*
“Oh my poor sweet angel. She fucked around and found out.”
15.
16. “The only three things this child cares about is Elmo, Cooking Videos, and Keith Tryguy”.
17.
“Hey. No! Cup privileges hereby rescinded, bath chugger”
18.
we miss him a lot
19.
20.
“I just don’t know how you and I, the two most indoorsy people to ever exist, managed to give birth to I don’t know , Baby Bear Grylls!?”
21.
“Not that I ever would because I love her and she’s my best friend, but I’m pretty sure if we just gave her one of those old timey kerchiefs on a stick and like sent her into the woods, she’d be fine. She’d come home in a week with berries and woodland friends ready to go to war for her.”
22.
“There’s so many mommy blogs and parenting books but not one of them have ever told me what to do when my child adopts a mad scientist laugh. How do you proceed from there?”
23.
(For context on this one, my in laws have one of these as a coffee table)
24.
Me: *hears a biiiig gulp come from upstairs* HEY IS SHE CHUGGING BATH WATER AGAIN?
Husband: SHE GOT THE PITCHER I USE TO RINSE HER HAIR AND IM AFRAID OF HER SO YES
25.
“ you know how penny can count to 5? She absolutely can not count to 6. We’re going through the numbers on her cube thing right? One, Two, Three, Four, Five and stop. She looks at me like what the hell do you mean keep going we’ve completed counting, this is all the numbers. I point at the 6, cause you know this thing goes to 10 and she is like looking at me like Dad, I got 1 through 5, that thing you’re pointing to? That’s some ancient rune from an unknown civilization and I can’t help you with that”
26.
“You really can do anything you set your mind to Penny Rose, it’s just that what your set it to doesn’t make a lick of sense”
27.
“Oh by the way I need a new pitcher because penny rose, much like a tiny Thor, took her bath pitcher and cracked in on the ground after she attempted to chug it”
28. (In response to penny being in her “I must be nude” phase)
29. Last one today. In response to Penny Rose’s unadulterated toddler rage
30.
“Her legs are so small why she so fast?”
31.
“Who taught her to call us you guys? She knows we’re mom and dad right? She just keeps calling me you guys”
32.
“When I get a sandwhich or a sub I always get chips cause you gotta get P a distraction snack, a dissnacktion if you will”
33.
Can’t get in my feelings when my husband is the court jester appointed to make me laugh
34.
(For context we play a level of Kirby every night as soon as P is out of the tub and into her Jammies)
“Penny Rose you have to brush your hair! You can’t let Kirby see you like this!”
35.
“Penny woke up with morning and said “I’m gonna lay in bed and and shout every word I know with no context at all”
36. “You’re being a real Muffin right now lady”
Oooo drag her
37.
*penny and husband in the distance, Penny is yelling PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH*
“Girl the word you’re looking for is actually pull. You want to pull the zipper on your Jammies… yes okay yeah you do it. But you’re not doing it. Its pull. Its pull. You pull. You pull. You did it! I don’t know if that deserves applause really. Okay we’re clapping”
38.
This might be niche to us but man I was cracking up
39.
“My wish for P is that someday she finds someone who looks at her the way she looks at bread”
40.
“I know we don’t have food rules but I am going to have to start enacting food laws against food crimes. First order, you can’t shove your fist in the butter. That’s not about eating that’s about human decency.”
41.
Them boys are gonna learn unfortunately
41. (For context my daughter calls herself Penny Woes, because her name is Penny Rose and Rs are hard)
“When the snacks are gone and no one will pick you, these are Penny Woes”
42.
Husband: *goes to steal another fruit snack from P*
Me: stop stealing her snacks!
Husband: it’s the dad tax!
Me: yeah well taxation without representation is illegal.
Husband: she can say whatever she wants to me! And I, much like the US government, don’t have to listen to ANY of it!
43. Alright when we get to 50 I’m starting a new thread. This is getting out of hand
44:
Wednesdays are my favorite days because my husband works from home with Penny and I get a running commentary all morning
45:
“You’ll never defeat Posiedon if all you’re worried about is your dress getting wet!”
46. Back to our regularly scheduled content
47.
“Yes they are all your books but guess what girlie? You literally can’t read.”
(I have no idea why this had be in tears)
2. “Come now my child.”
*bluey the album starts playing*
3. “Oh I am so sorry. You’ve been mildly inconvenienced. How dare I truly”
4. “It is she! Her Majesty, Queen of the Sludge, Keeper of Goo, DJ Baby P (In the House) Dropper of Beats and Clapper of Hands”
5. He is in charge of bathtime and he lifted the ghoul tonight while singing “come with me and you’ll be in a world of baby sanitation” and I laughed so hard I snorted pasta
6. Okay this is more one that he said to me about the toddler but he was home with her while I was at work and I just got this text
7.
“Happy Independence Day Sweetie! Nationalism is a cancer!”
8. This is another one he said to me about her but still it made me laugh so hard I nearly choked
9.
*Penny babbling in the back seat, many la la las coming from her car seat*
“Are you singing us a song? Ah yes the dulcet tones of goblin”
10.
“Listen kid, I can’t let you have the cup anymore because you keep chugging the bath water, so we just have to remove the cup from the equation.”
11.
*penny is screaming, trying to climb back up a big slide at the playground*
“Someday you’ll learn about ,I don’t know physics and the myth of Sisyphus ,and you’ll start making a lot of connections I think. “
12. *Pen is still screaming and baby cussing about not being able to climb back up the slide*
“The problem is that you set goals for yourself that are unattainable by both man and baby.”
13.
“You can keep the cookie container, I don’t care. What kind of father would I be if I tried to separate a small raccoon child from her trash!?”
14.
*Penny is crying because the bucket she insisted on sitting in fell off the couch with her in it. Husband is bouncing her and rubbing her back after assessing that no physical damage occurred, just a bruised toddler ego*
“Oh my poor sweet angel. She fucked around and found out.”
15.
16. “The only three things this child cares about is Elmo, Cooking Videos, and Keith Tryguy”.
17.
“Hey. No! Cup privileges hereby rescinded, bath chugger”
18.
we miss him a lot
19.
20.
“I just don’t know how you and I, the two most indoorsy people to ever exist, managed to give birth to I don’t know , Baby Bear Grylls!?”
21.
“Not that I ever would because I love her and she’s my best friend, but I’m pretty sure if we just gave her one of those old timey kerchiefs on a stick and like sent her into the woods, she’d be fine. She’d come home in a week with berries and woodland friends ready to go to war for her.”
22.
“There’s so many mommy blogs and parenting books but not one of them have ever told me what to do when my child adopts a mad scientist laugh. How do you proceed from there?”
23.
(For context on this one, my in laws have one of these as a coffee table)
24.
Me: *hears a biiiig gulp come from upstairs* HEY IS SHE CHUGGING BATH WATER AGAIN?
Husband: SHE GOT THE PITCHER I USE TO RINSE HER HAIR AND IM AFRAID OF HER SO YES
25.
“ you know how penny can count to 5? She absolutely can not count to 6. We’re going through the numbers on her cube thing right? One, Two, Three, Four, Five and stop. She looks at me like what the hell do you mean keep going we’ve completed counting, this is all the numbers. I point at the 6, cause you know this thing goes to 10 and she is like looking at me like Dad, I got 1 through 5, that thing you’re pointing to? That’s some ancient rune from an unknown civilization and I can’t help you with that”
26.
“You really can do anything you set your mind to Penny Rose, it’s just that what your set it to doesn’t make a lick of sense”
27.
“Oh by the way I need a new pitcher because penny rose, much like a tiny Thor, took her bath pitcher and cracked in on the ground after she attempted to chug it”
28. (In response to penny being in her “I must be nude” phase)
29. Last one today. In response to Penny Rose’s unadulterated toddler rage
30.
“Her legs are so small why she so fast?”
31.
“Who taught her to call us you guys? She knows we’re mom and dad right? She just keeps calling me you guys”
32.
“When I get a sandwhich or a sub I always get chips cause you gotta get P a distraction snack, a dissnacktion if you will”
33.
Can’t get in my feelings when my husband is the court jester appointed to make me laugh
34.
(For context we play a level of Kirby every night as soon as P is out of the tub and into her Jammies)
“Penny Rose you have to brush your hair! You can’t let Kirby see you like this!”
35.
“Penny woke up with morning and said “I’m gonna lay in bed and and shout every word I know with no context at all”
36. “You’re being a real Muffin right now lady”
Oooo drag her
37.
*penny and husband in the distance, Penny is yelling PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH*
“Girl the word you’re looking for is actually pull. You want to pull the zipper on your Jammies… yes okay yeah you do it. But you’re not doing it. Its pull. Its pull. You pull. You pull. You did it! I don’t know if that deserves applause really. Okay we’re clapping”
38.
This might be niche to us but man I was cracking up
39.
“My wish for P is that someday she finds someone who looks at her the way she looks at bread”
40.
“I know we don’t have food rules but I am going to have to start enacting food laws against food crimes. First order, you can’t shove your fist in the butter. That’s not about eating that’s about human decency.”
41.
Them boys are gonna learn unfortunately
41. (For context my daughter calls herself Penny Woes, because her name is Penny Rose and Rs are hard)
“When the snacks are gone and no one will pick you, these are Penny Woes”
42.
Husband: *goes to steal another fruit snack from P*
Me: stop stealing her snacks!
Husband: it’s the dad tax!
Me: yeah well taxation without representation is illegal.
Husband: she can say whatever she wants to me! And I, much like the US government, don’t have to listen to ANY of it!
43. Alright when we get to 50 I’m starting a new thread. This is getting out of hand
44:
Wednesdays are my favorite days because my husband works from home with Penny and I get a running commentary all morning
45:
“You’ll never defeat Posiedon if all you’re worried about is your dress getting wet!”
46. Back to our regularly scheduled content
i feel totally normal about this and the scope of my desire is completely average
gotta admit I talk a big game about avoiding The TikTok Algorithm and all that garbage but probably another big reason is just. with every single one. This Could Have Been A Text Post. I'm sorry, you want me to take the worst part of social interaction (listening to other people talk very slowly) and just... do that? that's a deliberate part of the experience? you people do this... for fun? instead of reading text like God intended??
It's the "this could have been an email" of social media
I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery
People can't just say "I don't like this music" anymore they gotta call you gay and autistic for listening to a band that had one song go viral
just gonna drop this here
lube gets talked about as if it’s just some thing that will make sexual acts more pleasurable (which is valid and true) but i didn’t learn until like, last week that it’s also just as important as condoms from a public health perspective.
you reduce your chances of getting/giving STDs by a lot when you use lube (even without a condom/dental dam/finger cot/etc) because it lessens the chances of developing microtears (little cuts on your genitals/mouth) during sex acts that open up ports of entry for the exchange of diseases.
I've posted a little bit in the past about end-pleistocene megafauna extinctions, the overkill hypothesis, and the impact on "humans are the virus" type interpretations of ecology. This tree is the only documented end-Pleistocene plant extinction, which seems really striking, but this paper (from 1999) is like "yeah we haven't really studied it, and pollen deposits don't really allow for distinguishing plants on the species level, and most macrofossil sites have barely been analyzed."
I tried to do some research on end-pleistocene palynology in the USA and found this paper, which if anything gives a decent glimpse into what palynology does and doesn't allow us to analyze, and it is noted that "Nyssa, however, is distinctly entomophilous (Smiley Apiaries 2014), so just about any amount of its pollen in a sample suggests that the plants grew quite close to the site of deposition, where the discarded flowers accumulated. Because Nyssa is exclusively a freshwater entomophilous genus, the presence of its pollen in any significant quantity (>1%, F.J. Rich, personal observation) marks the site of a former freshwater wetland"
In other words, "Nyssa (blackgum) is insect pollinated, so its seriously weird that its pollen shows up in this fossil pollen sample, and would have to mean that there was a big grove of them with flowers falling to the ground right where the sample was collected."
Most of the species detected in this study are wind-pollinated species that are mega abundant and produce shit tons of airborne pollen, and they are identifiable down to either genus or family level. This means we can't say much about plants pollinated by insects, plants that were a small part of the total plants in the area, or plants that differed from modern ones only on species level.
Which means that it's misleading to say "there was only one End-Pleistocene plant extinction in USA" because we couldn't know that either way!
In fact the presence of plants like Torreya, Franklinia, and other "relict" plants along the Gulf Coast with ultra tiny ranges that likely used to be more widespread suggests that tons of plants could have gone extinct during the Last Glacial Maximum, since all it would take is a plant being 5% more intolerant to the glaciated climate than any of the numerous plants that got severely bottlenecked
It seems like the plants haven't gotten as much attention in research and that keeps being interpreted as "nah, there wasn't really an effect on the plants, only animals went extinct mostly" NO!!!!
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but in a study that is 2 or 3 tiers of citation removed from the source of the original claim, it can sure look that way.
"The coral reefs of south Sulawesi are some of the most diverse, colorful and vibrant in the world. At least, they used to be, until they were decimated by dynamite fishing in the 1990s.
As part of a team of coral reef ecologists based in Indonesia and the UK, we study the reefs around Pulau Bontosua, a small Indonesian island in south Sulawesi...
In many places around the world, damage like this might be described as irreparable. But at Pulau Bontosua, the story is different. Here, efforts by the Mars coral restoration program have brought back the coral and important ecosystem functions, as outlined by our new study, published in Current Biology. We found that within just four years, restored reefs grow at the same rate as nearby healthy reefs.
Speedy recovery
The transplanted corals grow remarkably quickly. Within a year, fragments have developed into proper colonies. After two years, they interlock branches with their neighbors. After just four years, they completely overgrow the reef star structures and restoration sites are barely distinguishable from nearby healthy reefs.
The combined growth of many corals generates a complex limestone (calcium carbonate) framework. This provides a habitat for marine life and protects nearby shorelines from storm damage by absorbing up to 97% of coastal wave energy.
We measured the overall growth of the reef framework by calculating its carbonate budget. That's the balance between limestone production (by calcifying corals and coralline algae) and erosion (by grazing sea urchins and fishes, for example). A healthy reef produces up to 20kg of reef structure per square meter per year, while a degraded reef is shrinking rather than growing as erosion exceeds limestone production. Therefore, overall reef growth gives an indication of reef health.
At Pulau Bontosua, our survey data shows that in the years following restoration, coral cover, coral colony sizes, and carbonate production rates tripled. Within four years, restored reefs were growing at the same speed as healthy reefs, and thereby provided the same important ecosystem functions...
Outcomes of any reef restoration project will depend on environmental conditions, natural coral larvae supply, restoration techniques and the effort invested in maintaining the project. This Indonesian project shows that when conditions are right and efforts are well placed, success is possible. Hopefully, this inspires further global efforts to restore functioning coral reefs and to recreate a climate in which they can thrive."
-via Phys.org, March 11, 2024
hmmm
Cozy
i'm 100% gonna recite some palabras de las brujas to this...
https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/743255237060689920/the-thing-that-confuses-me-about-the-dont-vote
The “don’t vote” left’s point is basically that, if Biden gets a second term, it’ll basically signal that “They’ll vote for us as long as we’re not Republicans, why don’t we do some REAL fucked up shit, if we can get away with it?” It takes the power out of the people’s hands and places it firmly in the party’s.
I can’t completely disagree with that, my caveat is that there’s no real alternative system or party in place, because top-down change is ineffective; a third party president has to contend with a two party congress.
Except no. This whole "Biden just wants to do as much fucked up shit as possible while not being a Republican, and if you give him a second term he'll do more fucked up shit deliberately to spite you" mindset is only possible as an interpretation if you a) deliberately and comprehensively ignore everything he has done to date, and b) you approach the situation with the maximum bad faith possible. Not to mention, the ultimate outcome of this Big Important Teaching Biden A Lesson is that Trump gets back into power and makes everything orders of magnitude worse, because he does in fact want to deliberately do evil shit to everyone and says so at every opportunity. There is not some magical happy alternative that springs into existence by not voting. If you choose this as a year to Teach Biden A Lesson, you are enabling Trump. Trump will be much, much worse. If you don't care about that, I still do not care what your Great Ideology is. You are not helping anyone and you are directly and irreversibly hurting everyone.
I made a post a few days ago wherein I mentioned that I want to assess Biden fairly, taking into account both strengths and weaknesses, but the rampant bad-faith, lying, misreading, misrepresentation, and open sabotage of him (especially by the online left; the GOP sometimes only wishes they were as good at turning Biden's voter pool against him) makes it really difficult to do that. My frustration with those people makes me just want to go "BIDEN IS GREAT THE END." I know he is a flawed old man (though by literally every account of a career spent in public service, he really does care about making the world a better place and any remotely good faith reading of his accomplishments thus far can see that). It is also very likely that he goes MORE left in a second term because he won't have to face the electorate again, he has always gone more left when pushed before, and he's not actually the scheming genocidal mastermind that leftist social media paints him as. Shocking, I know.
I know there are things in the world we don't like and don't want and want to stop, and therefore we blame our own president for not making it stop. But I have zero, no, none, absolutely none whatsoever sympathy for this pseudo-populist "WE NEED TO TEACH BIDEN A LESSON BY ELECTING TRUMP AGAIN, I AM VERY MORAL MUCH ACTIVIST" mindset. There's this funny thing about America wherein it is still (for now) a democracy. If Biden wins a second term, he can't run again. I would take literally anything these people said more seriously if they focused on developing their dream progressive successor for 2028 (and also figured out how to get that person elected and in a place to make real change) rather than cynically sabotaging Biden in the most consequential election year, again, of our lifetimes. If you don't like him now, find a way to make his successor a better option. Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY. I still don't know how many times I'm going to have to say that, but yeah.
louder for the morons in the back who are still whining about both parties being the same
Not voting for the left because they're not Left Enough also does not make the party go more left. It makes them go more right. Because that's where the votes are.
Reblogging because for the love of Christ, I wish the “I’m not going to vote for Biden because he’s not pure/ far left/ whatever enough for me” crowd would remember what, EXACTLY, it would mean for there to be a second Trump presidency.
Assuming that any checks currently in place would stop someone who’s mindset is “I’m perfect and DESERVE to be president” from turning our country into the closest approximation of Russia he can get, is not only naive, it’s dangerously, determinedly ignorant.
I said this in 2016 and I said it in 2020 and I'll say it again:
If you don't like the fact that the leftmost candidate of the two major parties isn't left enough, the solution is neither to refuse to vote, nor to "send a message" by voting third party. Both result in an advantage to the rightmost candidate.
The solution is, vote for the guy that's not quite good enough, and then lean on him hard.
Biden has moved farther to the left than any president since Roosevelt. Yes. He's gotten more of our agenda done than Clinton or Obama. And there's many things he's tried to do that the right wingers in Congress or in the Supreme Court have stopped him from doing. He's also moved farther to the left than any president I know of when you look at his whole career; at one point he was Liberal Lite, "moderate", pro-corporation, etc... and it seems he learned from it. He changed. So we're dealing with a guy who is capable of moving left, has done so, and could be asked to go farther.
The other candidate literally wants to become a dictator, eliminate freedom of the press, and spend our tax dollars persecuting his "enemies."
Do I like the fact that Biden is supporting Israel militarily when they have caused such an enormous and horrible death toll in Gaza? No. But we have treaties with Israel and we can't easily break them. Meanwhile we have actually seen him call Netanyahu out. Including saying basically "You keep this up and no one will be your friend", implying that he is threatening to withdraw support. Trump, meanwhile, is cheerfully Islamophobic and would happily murder every single Palestinian. You care about Palestine, there is only one legitimate choice. I'm sorry, I know you want to believe there are multiple moral options you can take, but there is really only one. In the US's winner-take-all first-past-the-post no ranked choice system, the guy who gets 51% of the vote and the guy who gets 90% of the vote are exactly the same.
Look, we can win this. The right's abortion bans are wildly unpopular; many people will be voting to try to restore the right to control our own bodies. Republican support skews older, but in four years millennials didn't magically reach a point of comfortable status quo where they're likely to start voting Republican; instead Republicans have doubled down on the crazy. Anti-maskers and ant-vaxxers, who are likely Republicans, are much more likely to have died of COVID than the reality-based community on the left, since Biden won by 7 million votes 4 years ago.
But Trump will do everything in his power to cheat. We can't just win by 51%. We have to trounce him and as many Republicans at the ballot box as we can, because they have lost the plot. Even the best ones refuse to do anything to stop the spread of this evil-for-its-own-sake movement that wants queers, Jews, and Muslims dead, POC subservient, and women of all races securely under the thumb of men. We have to stop this movement by sending a message to politicians, "these are not winning ideologies. Embrace these ideologies because of the fanatic fringe, and you will lose." Most of them aren't true believers; they're pandering. The only way to stop the Republicans being pointlessly destructive is to make so many of them lose, the rest realize, shit, the grownups are back, we better start acting like politicians and not demagogues again.
And one of the best ways to do that is to make sure Biden wins by such a large margin even Trump can't cheat his way to victory. Because he's ready. He's promised, there will be violence if he loses. (There will also be violence if he wins, but it will be state violence against us. If he loses, there will be rioting white thugs in red states, but the federal government will still have both the power and the will to try to stop that.) He's going to pull every dirty trick in the book to win. The only way to stop him is to win overwhelmingly. Then we get four more years of relative safety, where if Clarence Thomas dies or gets arrested we get a young liberal judge in his place, and in that time, we can push the Democratic party farther to the left, because they'll know why they won. They'll know who voted for them, and why, and they'll move in that direction because they want to keep winning.
You cannot save Gaza by making sure Biden loses. That is actually the worst possible thing that could happen, in terms of anything any American could do. Netanyahu wants Trump to win because Trump will back him up no matter what he does to the Palestinians.
Voting is not about proving how moral you are and selecting the perfect candidate. Voting is about getting the best possible candidate out of what is usually a lackluster selection. But this time, the choice is, an old guy who's not as charismatic and shiny as we'd like and hasn't done as much as we want, vs, literally, a wanna be dictator with an agenda that's pure evil.
There are few things I love more than Parker's growth trajectory not changing the fact that my girl is an absolute freaking weirdo. Who enjoys stabbing people. Who is the world's greatest thief. Who is loved and protected by two diametrically opposed but perfectly complimentary men. Who learned to understand human emotion, give into it, know that it doesn't make you weak when you have people there to catch you and will absolutely fuck you up if yoimess with any of hers.
What a fucking legend.
