malteselizzie

[malteselizzie]

There's a phenomenon in left-wing circles where initially reasonable statements and concepts get repeated ad nauseum until they not only lose their meaning but transform into deeply bigoted ideas.

The idea "there is no single white culture," is true because white is a concept created to describe the powerful position in Western societies. There are many different cultures, who's members are often white. But this idea became "white people have no culture" which is just not true, deeply dehumanizing, and harmful, especially to people who look white but experience marginalization because of their culture.

Another example might be cultural appropriation, which perhaps should be understood as a misrepresentation or exploitation of the cultural practices of another, especially where the person exploiting does so for personal gain, without acknowledgment. But now, people have basically transformed this into "when somebody does something from a culture they weren't raised in" or "when a particular race or ethnicity behaves in a way that's different from how they normally do" which promotes racial and cultural stereotypes and attempts to control the behaviors of people based on their race, ethnicity, and culture.

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truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

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Trans and intersex people in the UK need you to be loud and angry about the new "deception as to sex" guidance released which makes trans and intersex people legally guilty of rape if we don't disclose our gender identity and/or the sex we were assigned at birth to sexual partners.

This is particularly going to harm trans and intersex sex workers, who often have a higher number of sexual partners who we might keep our trans or intersex identity from for our safety.

"To summarize this guidance in the simplest terms, it treats a trans or intersex person not disclosing their gender identity and/or the sex they were assigned at birth as a form of deception which negates consent."

"This interpretation of part of the existing Sexual Offences Act (2003) places an unreasonable burden on trans and intersex people to inform our sexual partners of our medical history, while no such burden is placed on cis perisex people who are allowed to rely on assumption."

[malteselizzie]

Sometimes I think a lot about my mom's cat

My mom's cat is a common domestic shorthair we found on the side of the road as a kitten

Regular cat, not a maine coon or one of those massive breeds. His mom was smaller than a loaf of bread

But in a sort of a Clifford The Big Red Dog situation, he grew super fast, and really really big, and took a super long time to stop growing

Worried that she was overfeeding him, she eased back his portions, but he stayed a massive round baby

When he started having kidney problems, she took him to the vet.

The vet took a look at him and said, "holy fuck, what are you feeding him", checked the nutritional listings on his chow, and told her "Yeah, maybe he's reacting badly to the amount of grain in this, try a meatier diet"

So my mom wound up special-ordering this specific high-protein prescription cat food made of like. Kangaroo meat or some shit that cost like sixty bucks a bag

And, as typical act two in an episode of House, he somehow got worse on the fancy specialized stuff that was supposed to be Primo Athlete Olympic Feline Blend

Like. WAY worse. His guts were inflamed and his kidneys were shutting down and he was all sore and HE WAS STILL HUGE, just miserable and sad

So shetook him back to the vet, where they had to help him pee (he was apparently close to bursting and had some kind of blockage too) and went "Yeah no this is NOT normal and we don't know what's going on, we're gonna do some tests but in the meantime you should go back to what he was eating before, at least that wasn't actively killing him" so she did

And he still wasn't great, but he also improved

And so they take his blood and do an ultrasound and a couple g's later she gets a call back like "this is gonna sound crazy, but we want you to put him on a low-meat diet. Just the least amount of protein and iron and shit. We need you to find the grainiest, filler-iest dollar tree kibble available and give him some of that bad bad shit"

And my mother is a woman of science. So she did

And he GOT BETTER

His energy picked back up, inflammation went down, he started drinking normally again, got back to pissing like a fuckin champion

And so it turns out that out of all the random ass freeway bonus cats we possibly could have scooped out of a ditch, WE got the one-in-a-million freak of nature with a SPECIFIC genetic defect that means a paleo protein free range diet is essentially poison and he THRIVES on cheap ass garbage

Like. He medically NEEDS junk food

I dont really understand how that works, but i cant argue with results.

If we had four of him, they'd outweigh my mom. And he's FINE

Also blind, but that's unrelated

Im not using him as a symbol or a metaphor or anything. I just keep catching myself thinking about my mom's Big Fucking Cat

[malteselizzie]

[malteselizzie]

Some other handy quotes

[malteselizzie]

Please support this campaign for Gaza's children and elderly! It's spearheaded by a father in Gaza who works hard on distributing aid within his camp. Getting a supply of diapers is especially critical because they're costing $65-$75 per pack and so parents are resorting to makeshift cloth diapers that are giving their babies rashes.

(Ignore the end of the video where I tell people to comment, that's for algorithmic platforms, here you can just reblog)

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This meme is so niche but goddamnit it is *my* niche

[malteselizzie]

So Aer Lingus broke my friend's wheelchair

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDz1Rboysdz/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could interact with her reel about it ans boost the engagement. So far the airline is giving her a case number and telling her to come back in a week.

As y'all are aware, "just don't move for a week" isn't a great answer, and "maybe it'll actually take more than a month!" is more unacceptable.

So it's time for United Breaks Guitars strategy. If anyone has an Instagram account, can you please go boost engagement on it? It only costs a little bit of time to leave a like or a comment or share it to your story (or all three) and it might really help get someone to take her seriously.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDz1Rboysdz/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Thank you all so much!

[malteselizzie]

[malteselizzie]

there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”

[malteselizzie]

Here's a legal PSA:

If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.

[malteselizzie]

[malteselizzie]

I’m thinking about something.

So, I’ve been reading some of Chuck Tingle’s non-erotic choose your own adventure books, and he really hammers home the “love is real” message. Whatever that means. Anyways, I’ve been thinking that one of the most important messages stories can have is “pain is real”. I believe you. Your pain matters. I see you.

And I think that’s actually the core message of Animorphs. Your pain matters.

Why is war such a central theme in the books, even though the target audience 1. live in a country that hasn’t had an at-home war in some time and 2. won’t go away to war for several years at least? How is war relevant to their lives? It’s relevant because war is a relatively easy way to understand trauma. The real theme isn’t war at all. Because kids (who live in a country that hasn’t had a war on its soil any time recently) don’t need to read fifty odd books conducting an in depth exploration of the theme of war. But lots and lots of kids have experienced trauma and need a way to make sense of it.

And it doesn’t matter what the trauma is, whether it’s related to family strife or not having a family or verbal abuse or physical abuse or sexual abuse or painful and invasive medical procedures or cops in your neighborhood who are very much not there to keep people like you safe or seeing someone die or something else entirely. Pain is pain. Pain is real.