Chastity kink guy who is also a prison abolitionist: the only cages people belong in are—

trust me, he wasn’t in danger of finishing any time soon

"What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 millions people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn't carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn't paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."

-- "How Far Would He Go", TIME Magazine's interviews with Donald Trump, April 30, 2024.

I know we're saturated in coverage of Trump and it's easy (and probably better for our mental health) to usually ignore most of the articles when we see them, especially since he's so full of shit and infuriating. But it's also important to recognize that he is going to be the Republican nominee for President and he could absolutely be elected in November, and if you thought his first term was scary and dangerous, you need to understand that in a second term he's going to have people around him that are better prepared and VERY willing to do the crazy shit that he wants to do to this country. They aren't even hiding the fact that they are seeking vengeance against political opponents whom they feel have wronged them, and are ready to fundamentally dismantle the democratic foundations that are barely holding this country together after nearly 250 years.

Just look at what Trump says about the people who he incited to attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and halt the peaceful transfer of power that has happened every four years since 1789:

Oh, and please note that Trump -- a former President of the United States and possible future President of the United States -- said on the record in these interviews with TIME: "There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country and that can't be allowed either." We are at a point where political leaders are outright saying that in this country again, and it's because of Donald Trump.

So, take the time to recognize that Trump is straight-up telling us the country we're going to be living in if he wins again in November. And understand that your vote matters -- and WHO you vote for matters -- because, as I've been saying for years now, ELECTIONS HAVE FUCKING CONSEQUENCES.

fun funeral facts

For those of you interested, the youtube channel Ask A Mortician does a lot of videos on taboo death subjects, answers questions and is a huge advocate for natural burials and being present during the actual funeral process so you don’t get taken advantage of by the funeral industry. She’s one of my favourite youtubers and I highly recommend her videos.

I’m not OP, but as a fellow Ask a Mortician fan (I’m even on the Patreon, Caitlyn is out here doing G-d’s work), HERE IS AN UPDATE:

—cremation and burial are not your only options. Some states now offer aquamation (basically your body is put in a special brine that breaks it down into nothing in a few hours) and terramation (aka human composting; your body is put into a dedicated pod with plant matter that accelerates the decay process and turns you into nutrient-rich soil in about six weeks). You also have the option to donate your body to a body farm or medical school. Check your state’s or country’s laws, and if you don’t see the option you want, contact the Order of the Good Death to find out who’s advocating in your area. If the answer is nobody, YOU can always be the person who starts the ball rolling.

—“bury your cremains in this fancy urn and you’ll become a tree!” is a scam. Cremains contain no organic matter. If you want to be a tree, go for terramation or natural burial.

—“turn your loved one’s cremains into a diamond!” is a scam. While you can technically turn cremains into a zircon (artificial diamond), the result is likely to be EXTREMELY ugly due to the amount of inclusions. If you want to wear a loved one’s cremains as a memento mori, you’re far better off speaking to an artisan jeweler about getting a modern version of one of the glass rings or pendants that were popular in the Victorian era. There are likeminded people out there who will absolutely do this for you in a beautiful and compassionate way, but the “it’s diamonds!” techbro startup thing is not the way to go.

—what is and is not respectful to the dead will vary based on culture, but the one constant should be consent of the deceased. What do THEY want to happen to their body? Have this conversation with your loved ones while they’re alive, and make sure the answers are written down. I know my sister wants a traditional Jewish burial—“just put me in the dirt and forget about it,” in her words—and she knows I want to be terramated. I know my dad wants to be buried next to my mom, although I need to check in with him if he wants his body buried or if he wants to be cremated first. Destigmatize this talk. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable—making sure your loved ones know exactly what you want takes a burden off them in the future, and making sure YOU know what THEY want will both help you when the time comes and provide the comfort of knowing you’ve fulfilled their wishes.

And finally:

The reason I’m such a staunch Caitlyn evangelist is because there is a nonzero chance one of her videos saved my life. My mom died sometime in the night between the first and second of January, 2021. Because travel for large amounts of people was off the table, my dad opted for two small funerals—one here with a funeral home that refused to handle her body without a showing (unfortunately this was part of Covid price gouging—there was literally nowhere else capable of taking her), and one with our proper family funeral home in our hometown. Because of Covid, this meant it took A FUCKING MONTH for my mother to be buried, and that shit is absolutely scarring. I’d recently watched Caitlyn’s “what does a full embalming look like” video, and her partner for that video said she likes to bring the family in to assist in helping with the deceased person’s hair, makeup, clothing, any part of the process they’re willing to do, because she feels it helps with the grieving process. I was ready to grasp at anything that would let me feel like my mother wasn’t stuck in an episode of American Horror Story, especially after the shitshow that was the funeral home here in Arizona. With this in mind I called the family funeral home and asked to do my mom’s makeup; while I personally shudder at the thought of a traditional American burial, it’s what she wanted. Nancy—our family’s mortician for the last 40 years—readily agreed.

And so I went in, put on some of my mom’s favorite old country singers, and did her makeup exactly the way she taught me when I was sixteen, with her own cosmetics instead of what the funeral home had on hand. Her hair was thin and fragile from her last illness and I couldn’t curl it, but I fixed it up as well as I could, and painted her nails.

And let me tell you something.

The other mortician lady was right.

It was a massive comfort to me when Nancy took one look at my mom and said “oh, when you said she did her makeup differently you were right. I never would have guessed to do this.” (I don’t know where my mom learned to put on blusher, but she did basically the exact opposite of every makeup tutorial I’ve ever seen, and her method of doing eyeshadow was extremely 1940s.) Every single person at the service kept saying she looked exactly like they remembered from so-and-so’s wedding, such-and-such’s graduation, this-and-that’s honorary party. It wasn’t a vague “oh she looks so good”—she looked LIKE HER to those who remembered her. People who knew I’d done her makeup said they could tell it had to be someone who’d known her well. I remembered her horror at seeing unfamiliar makeup on her own mother’s face, and it was a massive comfort to me to know she was turned out exactly as she would have liked. And my dad? My dad hadn’t even cried yet. But he cried when he saw her in the same makeup style she’d worn at their wedding. He was finally able to cry and connect to my mom, his wife and beloved, and begin to find closure, seeing the woman he knew instead of a tired, worn body that bore little resemblance to her. It mattered. To him, to me, to my mom’s friends. It mattered a lot.

I don’t know that I would have ended up suicidal if not for that hour alone with my mom and Charley Pride and a stack of Bare Minerals compacts. But her death hit me hard and the month that followed was a special circle of hell, and I think I might have. Every time I think of her death and her burial, I think of that video and I’m insanely grateful it exists. (Incidentally, Nancy agreed. She said she thought she might make it an option for other families, after seeing both my response and the response of others in our family circle.)

Caitlyn knows her stuff. Watch, learn your rights, teach others to be death-positive. Life is the only occupation with a 100% mortality rate, so we might as well do it the way we want.

Say what you want about the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park production of Hamlet, but the choices made in that play WORKED. Having Hamlet wear a black hoodie and camo pants and him dramatically putting his hood up when he was pissed off was inspired. Having Horatio video tape Claudius on an iPhone camera from the side of the stage during the play within the play was hilarious. Having the play within the play be a hip hop dance number that represented the murder!?! Fantastic. Having Ophelia be a singer before she went mad and having a beautiful voice that everyone loved to listen to and then seeing her singing get worse and worse as she got nearer to death?!?! Hamlet pulling out his iphone after killing Polonius to show his mom a picture of his dad compared to a picture of Claudius and angrily swiping back and forth between the two as he said “What judgement would step from this… to this?” The crowd fucking lost it every time. Horatio singing to Hamlet as he died made me fully sob every time. The way they did the ghost on stage was so chilling and I can’t even accurately describe it, you just had to be there. Hamlet being deeply exasperated the entire time was just perfect. Hamlet and Horatio had a secret handshake. Laertes inexplicably carried an acoustic guitar case for much of the play which was very funny but also hit you with the heartbreaking implication that he had used to play while Ophelia sang and he stopped carrying it after she died. It was peak teenage-angst-hamlet and it was so dear to me. PLEASE if anyone has a recording, send it to me.

OMG EVERYBODY LISTEN UP!!!

THEY'RE GOING TO BROADCAST THIS PRODUCTION ON PBC FOR FREE!! YOU CAN WATCH IT!! PLEASE DO!!!

Going to try to tag everybody who said they wanted to watch it in the notes:

Broadcast date: May 10th, 2024!!

The full thing is playing for me at my PBS website right now:

people who are like "how dare they retcon Spock having a sister" are so weak. have you seen the show? Spock said "one of my ancestors married a human female" and it wasn't until a year later his best friends found out he was talking about his fucking parents, and even then he only reluctantly let it slip because they were in the room

Secretary (2002)

Directed by Steven Shainberg

Inktober day 4: “Curse”

Realistically, a household the size of Wayne Manor needs more than just a butler, and while Bruce might imagine he can keep his proclivities secret from his own domestic staff, Alfred certainly harbours no such illusions. I've gotta wonder what the orientation lecture he's worked out looks like. Like, of course they're going to be extensively vetted before they ever set foot on the premises, but at some point during the onboarding process the subject of the Batcave has gotta come up – I just wanna know how Alfred broaches that.

serious answer: it’s the sex dungeon, and everyone knows it’s the sex dungeon, and alfred is extremely good at getting across the point, in his Very Proper Butler Accent, that domestic staff don’t get to go anywhere near the sex dungeon EVEN WITH an airtight nda contract because someone at some point tried to leak pics to the gossip mags and alfred had to murder them and it was annoying. alfred takes care of the sex dungeon himself. if you find a secret passage on accident you stop and immediately go tell alfred, so he can close the security hole, because if you follow the secret passage yourself and end up in the sex dungeon, he murders you. also if you ever so much as say the words ‘sex dungeon’ he murders you.

funny answer: everyone knows the batcave is underneath the sex dungeon because everyone knows bruce wayne is batman’s sugar daddy.

Oh my god, though, because if 'it's a sex dungeon' is the implied cover story there is a 100 percent certainty that Bruce 'contingency-awareness' Wayne has built a sex dungeon down there

Like, the clock leads to a tunnel that leads to the sex dungeon and in the back of the sex dungeon behind the leather pommel horse and the rack of whips is a secret door leading to the batcave. Please take a moment to imagine with me the first time Bruce takes Clark down to the cave through the house.

"It's the sex dungeon."

THEN WHY DOES HE KEEP TAKING HIS KIDS DOWN THERE, ALFIE?

Why do they always come out covered in cuts and bruises and the occasional broken bone, Alfie?

he's not taking the teenage boys INTO the sex dungeon he's desperately trying to keep them OUT of the sex dungeon because they're TEENAGE BOYS and they keep treating the place like a jungle gym you can jerk off on which is, technically, what it is, but it's not for rowdy greasy disrespectful teenagers who keep sneaking their friends in to play with the swings and whatnot.

every now and then bruce is overheard complaining on the phone to selina or clark that dick tied EVERYTHING into a bow or jason thought it would be funny to mix up the lubes or that tim somehow managed to bolt the flogging bench to the ceiling, yeah, the twelve foot high ceiling, yeah, the 18th century walnut bench, the kid weighs as much as three apples and comes up to bruce's elbow, how did he do this.

and he's not even doing a bit. these things actually happened. alfred bakes you your favorite cookies if you can wreck the sex room without bruce catching you in the act. it gives him a mystery to solve indoors for a change.

Dragons brain rot is real

the realization that you don't need to choose between "rich inner life" and "dumbass" is so freeing.

Victoria Chang, Obit

something that really stands out to me about dungeon meshi is that its not like its got these really complex and profound themes coyly tucked away behind a bunch of goofy food/cooking motifs. the goofy food/cooking motifs ARE the complex and profound themes, and the real "oh" moment that notoriously hits everyone like a freight train when theyre reading/watching it isnt the realization that theres story here, but the realization that there was story all along. like. dungeon meshi is about food but its also about hunger. its about ecosystems but its also about community. its about the natural cycle of life/death but its also about legacy. its also about izutsumi

Ok these are fun so here

We are velvet