likelightinglass

[likelightinglass]

the full month between these two tweets

[likelightinglass]

do you guys think Karl Marx would've liked Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis because it promotes waste reduction and the subversion of both capitalism generally and brand commodification¹ specifically through second hand buying or do you think he would not like it because it still promotes consumption as an activity especially of items one does not actually need.² or do you think he'd like it cause it's a banger³

References

¹ Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. (2012). Thrift shop. s.n. [2:38]: ""They be like, "Oh, that Gucci? That's hella tight", I'm like, "Yo, that's fifty dollars for a T-shirt", Limited edition, let's do some simple addition, Fifty dollars for a T-shirt, that's just some ignorant bitch shit, I call that getting-swindled-and-pimped shit, I call that getting tricked by business, That shirt's hella dope, And having the same one as six other people in this club is a hella don't"

² Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. (2012). Thrift shop. s.n. [1:29]: "They had a broken keyboard, I bought a broken keyboard, I bought a skeet blanket, then I bought a knee board"

³ trust

[likelightinglass]

if house md were running in 2024 there would be an episode with a patient who identifies as an ‘online content creator’ (cagily) where house agrees to take the case primarily because when he offhandedly refers to her as an onlyfans model both cameron and cuddy get really offended and say it’s a sexist assumption so he doubles down and becomes committed to finding the patient’s onlyfans and proving it. at some point it would be revealed that chase actually is an onlyfans model and started doing it as a stopgap after his dad died and he suddenly got disinherited but he makes so much money off it that now medicine is basically just a hobby. cameron and foreman both disagree with the concept online sex work but it turns out they disagree for different reasons (cameron thinks it’s exploitative and not-feminist, foreman finds it distasteful and thinks people should get ‘real jobs’) and spend most of their scenes together arguing about this while chase gets continually more shifty. they break into the patient’s house and there’s a full ringlight and camera setup which seems to confirm house’s suspicions. while trying to find the patient’s onlyfans house accidentally finds chase’s onlyfans instead and considers publicly embarrassing him about it like he did with wilson’s sex tape but soon realises that most of the staff at the hospital are already subscribed to chase’s onlyfans so makes fun of him for that instead. it then transpires that the reason why the patient is so cagey about being a content creator is that she’s an ASMR artist and all the soap she’s been shaving on camera has irritated her lungs. cuddy is about to make house give her 20 extra hours of clinic duty as recompense but at last minute it’s revealed that the website the patient uses for some of her bonus commissions is, drumroll…onlyfans, because she’s been banned from patreon. how does house know this? wilson is subscribed to her because the soap videos sometimes soothe him to sleep. something by cigarettes after sex plays. roll end credits.

[likelightinglass]

Orgasm denial but in the same way people talk about the moon landing being faked

[likelightinglass]

[likelightinglass]

when i was in middle school Rude by bruno mars came on the radio in the car with my mom and at the chorus it goes “why you gotta be so rude, don’t you know i’m human too, i’m gonna marry ya anyway” and my mom now had her Disapproving Aura on and sighed and said. see this is why [my divorced uncle] married [his mean ex-wife]. what a sad way of loving. and 13yo me was like Oh Damn That Deep. and mentally filed away the lesson Popular Music Promotes Toxic Behavior Therefore Don’t Marry Someone Who’s Mean To You. and ever since then rude by bruno mars has made me just a little bit sad. cut to 5+ years later the song is no longer popular. i happen to hear it over the tinny speakers in a random fast food place. all at once i realize the lyrics are not, in fact, about marrying a girl despite her hating you (gonna marry ya anyway), but marrying a girl despite her parents hating you (gonna marry her anyway). 13yo me and my mom misheard the same lyric and never paid attention to the rest of the song. i am flabbergasted. one of the pillars of my childhood development has just crumbled in a Subway. i am frantically realigning my entire internal ethics system. the cashier still wants to know if i’m getting a cookie. nothing is real

[likelightinglass]

one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.

and none of these people wanted to walk away from a guaranteed job, so very few of them ever quit. they just kept doing the same show eight nights a week... for twenty or thirty years... and by the time it finally closed last year most of these musicians (who had been working together for DECADES) hated each other and really really fucking loathed phantom. I can't stop thinking about it. it's indescribably hellish to imagine but also the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

[likelightinglass]

On Friendship.

[likelightinglass]

I'm going to just copy the whole damn thing below so people know that these efforts are happening:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing president’s legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

“Let’s make every day count,” President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation last week after Vice President Kamala Harris conceded defeat to Trump in the presidential race.

Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s landmark climate and health care law and stop clean-energy development projects.

“There’s only one administration at a time,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters at a news conference Thursday. “That’s true now, and it will also be true after January 20th. Our responsibility is to make good use of the funds that Congress has authorized for us and that we’re responsible for assigning and disbursing throughout the last three years.”

But Trump will control more than the purse strings come January. His administration also can propose new regulations to undo some of what the Biden administration did through the rule-making process.

Here are some of the moves the Biden administration is taking now:

Getting infrastructure spending out the door

Biden administration officials hope that projects funded under the $1 trillion infrastructure law and $375 billion climate law will endure beyond Biden’s term and are working to ensure that money from the landmark measures continues to flow.

On Friday, Buttigieg announced over $3.4 billion in grants for projects designed to improve passenger rail service, help U.S. ports, reduce highway deaths and support domestic manufacturing of sustainable transportation materials.

”We are investing in better transportation systems that touch every corner of the country and in the workers who will manufacture materials and build projects,″ he said. “Communities are going to see safer commutes, cleaner air and stronger supply chains that we all count on.″

Speeding up environmental goals

Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have sped up in recent months in what White House officials describe as “sprinting to the finish” of Biden’s four-year term.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently set a nationwide deadline for removal of lead pipes and announced nearly $3 billion to help local water systems comply. The agency also announced that oil and gas companies for the first time will have to pay a federal fee if they emit dangerous methane above certain levels.

The Energy Department, meanwhile, announced a $544 million loan to a Michigan company to expand manufacturing of high-quality silicon carbide wafers for electric vehicles. The loan is one of 28 deals totaling $37 billion granted under a clean-energy loan program that was revived and expanded under Biden.

“There is a new urgency to get it all done. We’re seeing explosions of money going out the door,” said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club. Biden and his allies ”really want to finish the job they started.”

Ukraine aid

Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters this week that Biden wants to “spend down the authority that Congress has allocated and authorized before he leaves office. So we’re going to work very hard to make sure that happens.”

The Biden administration would have to rush $7.1 billion in weapons — $4.3 billion from the 2024 supplemental and $2.8 billion that is still on the books in savings due to the Pentagon recalculating the value of systems sent — from the Pentagon’s stockpiles in order to spend all of those funds obligated before Trump is sworn in.

There’s also another $2.2 billion available to put weapons systems on long-term contracts. However, recent aid packages have been much smaller in size, around $200 million to $300 million each.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the funds are already obligated, which should make them harder to take back because the incoming administration would have to reverse that.

Pressure to quickly confirm judicial picks

Another priority for the White House is getting Senate confirmation of as many federal judges as possible before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

The Senate this week voted 51-44 to confirm former prosecutor April Perry as a U.S. District Court judge in northern Illinois. More than a dozen pending judicial nominees have advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee; eight judicial nominations are awaiting committee votes and six are waiting for committee hearings.

Trump has urged Republicans to oppose efforts to confirm judicial nominees. “No Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership,” he wrote on social media site X on Nov. 10, before congressional Republicans chose their new leaders.

Student loan forgiveness

The Education Department has been hurrying to finalize a new federal rule that would cancel student loans for people who face financial hardship. The proposal — one of Biden’s only student loan plans that hasn’t been halted by federal courts — is in a public comment period scheduled to end Dec. 2.

After that, the department would have a narrow window to finalize the rule and begin carrying it out, a process that usually takes months. Like Biden’s other efforts, it would almost certainly face a legal challenge.

Additionally, the Biden administration has room to speed up student loan cancellation for people who were already promised relief because they were cheated by their colleges, said Aaron Ament, an Education Department official for the Obama administration and president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona could decide that case and others rather than hand them off to the Trump administration, which is expected to be far friendlier to for-profit colleges. “It’s a no-brainer,” Ament said. “There’s a good number of cases that have been sitting on Cardona’s desk. It’s hard to imagine that those would just be left untouched.”

Trump has not yet said what he would do on student loan forgiveness. However, he and Republicans have criticized Biden’s efforts.

[likelightinglass]

Ok I want to say something controversial

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but I’ve been around since the days of “don’t like, don’t read” and that’s a good philosophy. If it squicks you, scroll past. If it causes you anxiety or upset, block! Plenty of people are responsive if you ask them to tag an upsetting trigger. And if they’re dicks about it, block em.

[likelightinglass]

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

[likelightinglass]

[likelightinglass]

open a new window somewhere in the world. 

[likelightinglass]

Yes. Have YOU considered that sometimes working on hard things is both necessary and worthwhile?

[likelightinglass]

We got one very hilarious win

[likelightinglass]

yesterday/today