fuck every democrat who says the issue of trans rights is a “distraction.” fuck every single liberal who say that the threat of stripping every trans person of legal recognition is a red herring or a losing issue and if we focus on it too long we’ll throw the election. we’re talking about human rights, access to medical care, sex education, discrimination, citizenship, and a whole lot else, for millions of people.

trans people aren’t a “distraction.” we’re human beings. the fact that so many liberals turn their backs on trans people is fucking despicable.

Okay…but this, right here? This is exactly what the Republican party wants. Young voters turning against the Democratic party and either not voting at all, or voting in favor of some third party candidate that has literally zero chance of pulling in enough votes to win. They want division among the ranks. They want to split our vote. 

In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important. The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves. They deliberately drop issues that they know are hot-button topics because these are the topics that have the potential to be the most divisive. 

They’re awful but they’re not dumb. They know trans rights is an issue that could potentially split the democratic vote. It’s an issue that’s very heavily weighted toward the younger side of the party, which again, was a deliberate move on their part. If they can convinced you that the “big bad Democrats don’t care about you little trans and nonbinary kids so why bother,” then they’ve effectively won the election in a walk because the democrats went in divided–again.

Look, the democratic party isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it’s literally the only party that has a snowball’s chance in hell at overtaking the republican majority right now. If we as trans and nonbinary individuals ever want our identities respected and protected, it’s the only party that’s going to be able to get us there, because it’s the party going in the direction we need to go. If you want to vote in favor of our rights, then vote Democrat. No number of videos with pennies is going to change the fact that right now, in this political climate, third party candidates are not going to have enough power to effect the changes we want. 

Warning against something being a distraction doesn’t mean “don’t look at it or worry about it,” it means, “hey, I know this is majorly upsetting, and absolutely something needs to be done, but don’t let it divide us.” It’s literally because the issue is so important that democrats are warning against it as a distraction tactic–if we want to prevent that kind of change from happening under republican rule, we have to keep our heads and not let them keep us from voting as a unified party. 

Please don’t let the political rhetoric make you think that the democratic party isn’t going to be fighting for us and our rights. That’s kind of exactly what the Republican party wants you to think. It’s a division tactic. Don’t fall for it.

The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

I’ve been voting since 1998. This is what they do every single election.

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When cats stretch and spread their little toebeans out, reblog if you agree

I can’t believe I forgot the best one

This is the best post I’ve ever seen!!

BEANS

s t o p

Linguistics takes on the “What’s something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?” quote-tweet meme. 

i love this so much i dont know where to start - the comedy itself - the commentary on ‘what is art’ - further on what is art: the viewers are interpreting this as art, but the intention of the “artist” was not actually art, so is it art or not? who gets to decide, the viewers or the creator? - the act of placing the glasses and watching the response (and the response itself being that the viewers treated the glasses as art) as performance art like is this a critique of postmodernism? does the critique betray itself since (one could argue) the viewers interpreting the glasses as art makes them art? or is that so ridiculous that it doesn’t matter? i could go on

The intention of the “artist” was not actually art, but… their intention was to create a specific image for public display in order to evoke a reaction from an audience, and then to create an image of that in order to evoke a different reaction from a second audience.

I think they accidentally arted.  Twice.

its horus he’s here

Guys no, it gets so much better. 

A small fat bird, like the above, is the hieroglyph used in Ancient Egyptian to mean “wicked” or evil”.

The phrase above him (the inscription should be read from the top down) is “Nb s3″ or “Lord of the son of”. Genitive is usually implied in this sort of phrase without a connecting word, meaning:

This birb has literally created the sentence and declared himself “ Lord of the Son of Evil”

God dammit, I realised I made a mistake doing this from memory- the first sign is “k” for “your”, not “nb” for “lord”. So this birb has declared himself “your evil son”, not “the lord of the son of evil”. Which is not quite as dramatic, but still very menacing. You go bird.

LET 👏 RETAIL 👏 EMPLOYEES 👏 SIT 👏

The only major chain retail store that I know of that allows their cashiers to sit is the Aldi grocery store, a German chain. Their starting pay is also $12 an hour chain-wide.

The interior of the store looks like this so they save money on the annoying shelf restocking. Products remain in their boxes until being removed by customers.  No unboxing and putting stuff on shelves, and constantly having to rearrange it. Also, the boxes make inventory a breeze as a sealed box has a defined number of items in it. 

Typical American grocery stores have shelves like this

Every item has to be unboxed and neatly stacked on the shelves. If they get messed up by the customers, everything has to be rearranged back to specific rigid order. When you have to verify the inventory, every item has to be removed from the shelves to be counted and put back. Aldi’s also do not have plastic bags. You can buy reusable bags or simply use the empty cardboard boxes that are available.

Last is the carts. Most grocery stores have their carts strewn across the parking lots, rolling around and hitting cars until a store employee is sent out to collect them, after being yelled at by the manager when they were told to do other tasks in the meantime. Aldi’s chains those carts together and you have to put a Quarter in to release it. When you are done, you plug the chain back in and get your Quarter back. If others are lazy, you can collect and return the loose carts and collect the Quarters. 

It stops this…

Then the employees have to do this

reblogging this because I love Alidis

With the exception of the shelf stacking, all of this is totally normal in every single supermarket chain in the UK… what the heck America

Same for Germany… why would you make it any more complicated than that. Just. Why not let them sit??

They’re not normal for no reason. The right to sit during work seems normal for most retail workers in these countries because they are it is part of the labor rights that have been won by unions. Sometimes the right to sit was won in an agreement with the store and sometimes it was put down in national laws.

For example, in the UK your employer legally has to provide you with a comfortable seat if you do work that can be done while seating. In the Netherlands you have to be provided a seat if you work at a cash register for more than 4 hours a day or for more than 1 hour uninterrupted.

Unionize.

Oh yes, let’s ignore charging poor people a quarter to use a fucking cart, and focus on the fact they let their cashiers sit. Gods, capitalism is a shit storm, and everyone who reblogged this without pointing out how fucked up it is that they charge poor people money to use a grocery cart has lost any respect I might’ve had for them. Also, in the US that charging a quarter thing would never work. People would be even less inclined to put the carts bak properly, and those carts would get stolen at an even greater rate. You can’t just point at something done differently in another country and say that we should do that thing because it works there. Just because it works there doesn’t mean it would work here.

You’re wrong. There’s an Aldis in Massachusetts and it works great. And Aldi’s is very affordable and like, really quite poor friendly imo. Not many people who are grocery shopping to begin with can’t scrape up a quarter (though I could be wrong). You get the quarter back when you’re finished.

I feel like youre trying really hard to be offended? You should focus that energy on shit that actually means something rather than some grocery carts at a grocery store that is barely around in the U.S. If people really cant get a quarter together there are plenty of other grocery chains that does not have that policy.

@ all the assholes who say “I’ll just call you X” to people of color.

Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation.  He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.  

The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society.  He loved the correct functioning of the social contract.  He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it.   He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay.  He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture.  He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.

As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent.  The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series?  Ludicrous.  He was just full of treasure.  What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.

In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person.  He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.”  He just did the work.  I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.

This post seems to be making the rounds again so here it is on the word blog

GNU Terry Pratchett

Trump “Golfing”

I just read an interesting story about the way Trump likes to golf. At first, I thought it was an inconsequential puff piece, but it turned out quite revealing. Trump loves golf. He plays it constantly. Even when he probably shouldn’t. Many of his golf buddies have been interviewed about his skills on the course and they all had basically the same thing to say.

He cheats. 

Not a little bit. 

He cheats A LOT. 

It starts with the initial drive. He will often take several mulligans until scoring his first stroke. Meaning he keeps hitting the ball until he is satisfied with where it lands. However, if he does hit it into the woods, the ball will somehow magically appear back on the fairway by the time he reaches it. Due to his caddie rooting around in the tall grass and tossing the ball back to civilization. 

Then Trump gets into his cart and since the rules don’t apply to him, he drives it straight onto the carefully manicured green. No one is supposed to drive on this delicate grass. There is video of Trump doing this. And he drives with gusto too. I was surprised he didn’t do a few donuts. 

And to finish the hole off, Trump never actually takes his final putt. He calls this a “gimmie.” If the ball is close to the hole, that’s good enough for him. I guess he just assumes he would have hit the ball in. 

Some of the people who have golfed with Trump say he often brags about winning championships and setting course records. After seeing him play, all of these people say that is most likely bullshit. 

Pretty much everything about Trump’s golfing experience is a lie. Not only that, he doesn’t even try to be sneaky about it. He cheats in plain sight for everyone to see. It’s like a card hustler pointing to the cards hidden in his sleeves before a hand. I’m not even sure why he plays. I mean, technically he doesn’t really play. He just goes through the motions to make it seem like he is playing. The whole point of sport is to challenge yourself. That’s what makes it fun. I don’t understand what Trump gets out of the experience.  

I remember back when the original Doom came out for the PC. I loved that game and played it nonstop for weeks. One day I found cheat codes on the internet and at first it was very exciting. I had unlimited ammo and turned on God Mode. Nothing could touch me. Initially, it was kind of awesome. I was plowing through demons like they were paper people. I was getting to levels I couldn’t reach before. But that excitement quickly faded as I played. I discovered that I was getting very, very bored. Overcoming the odds, fear of dying, progressing through the game using my skills, reflexes, and wits… that’s what made the game fun. These cheat codes had turned this once exciting game into a total yawnfest. After years and years of playing in God Mode, how is Trump not totally bored with golf?

I guess this article struck a chord with me because it showed that Trump doesn’t even take the things he claims to love seriously. Even in a game where the outcome means basically nothing, he cannot stand to do poorly. He must lie to himself and others while playing. Nothing is more important than maintaining his ego. It seems like there is nothing too small that he will not lie about. There is nothing so inconsequential that he will not try to cheat. In every aspect of his life, that’s who he is. A liar and a cheater. Nothing is sacred. 

And it just makes me think, if he is willing to lie about pointless golf outings… if he is willing to perform these lies blatantly in front of others with absolutely no shame… what items of actual importance is he willing to lie and cheat about?

I don’t think I have ever witnessed anyone as hollow, needy, and pathetic as Trump. Someone so empty of anything save a clawing, desperate need not merely for validation, but veneration… and even the thinnest, most ethereal kind will do.

Relevant sources:

https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2018/1/30/16949990/donald-trump-cheats-at-golf-suzann-pettersen-lgpa

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ftw/2018/01/30/6-people-who-have-accused-donald-trump-of-cheating-at-golf/109934954/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-donald-trump-cheat-at-golf-a-washington-post-investigation/2015/09/02/f8a940b2-50c4-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html

You gotta have a plan…

@eric-g-perez i hope school goes good bud.

The nekonomicon

they seriously flew in this giant puppet using a helicopter just so luke could drink the tiddy milk

You forgot the best part: all the over the top theories about an epic battle between Rey and some kind of sea monster personification of the Dark Side that were based on blurry photos of that puppet