#FUCK THIS GOVERNMENT

[webcomikandies]

"Luigi is a murderer!!" yeah, and hes the murderer of the guy who killed my dad. My dad died of cancer, and one of the only completely curable ones at that. Even with the whole family helping, we still had trouble with medical bills. At home, I ate instant ramen (or nothing) for dinner because we couldn't afford fast food and mom was to tired from her job as a teacher to make dinner. My dad could have lived. But American healthcare took that from him. I don't know what happens when we die, but I know that CEO is not going to the good place and my dad is. I love you dad.

Deny. Defend. Depose.

[spinnysocks]

different party, same old shit...

[iamtheaudacity]

I’m going to scream. The grass is still green, I’m still seeing birds and the temperature is bearable. In the middle of November. In fucking Minnesota.

yet they still try to claim that climate change is a hoax and that everything’s fine, yeah “our best interest” my ass they fight for themselves not their people. I’m just a teenager but I can’t even try to worry about drama and celebrity shit because the adults in control of my country, my home are going to kill the world before I have a chance to grow up in it. How am I supposed to care about anything that doesn’t directly affect me when I’m wondering if I should by all of the classic books before the end up getting banned andd if the ones I’m going to write will fall to the same fate, because I’m not letting so many voices, MY VOICE go forgotten even if I have burn in place of the very words I and so many others write. so many people tell teenagers to just focus on grades which is practically impossible when I have to think about whether or not I’ll have to use the fact that three women in my mother’s family have had breast cancer including my mother herself to convince the doctors and government to let me have top surgery. How am I supposed to care about grades when I might not be able to get into college because it would be made harder or less acceptable for me to go just because I had the misfortune of being born female and that means I have something these men want. That is if I make it through high school without being shot of course. the politicians say they’re doing all of this for the children (obviously that’s why they want to ban drag you know/sar) but won’t listen to us when we cry for change as they instead walk in the other direction, they say this is for us but then they make a world where green grass and birds make me want to scream

they won’t listen to our screams now it’s about time to start biting and scratching

[gay-impressionist]

macron just. bypassed the french parliament YET AGAIN to pass the law adding two years to the minimum age for retirement.

it's a thing that happened.

[ahi-kakariki]

Just found out our racist government wants to increase parliament's term to four years. Which is bad enough, but it gets worse!

The bill (pdf here) would allow parliament to extend to four years, but only if the makeup of Select Committees "...is proportionate to the non-Executive parliamentary party membership" instead of being proportional to the whole of parliament.

This means giving the opposition more power in Select Committees. Which smells like the kind of right-wing fuckery we've seen from the USA.

The role of the Select Committees is to take a bill after its first reading, go over it, collect expert and public input, and then report back to parliament with recommendations and amendments. If an amendment has been unanimously agreed on by the Select Committee, it's added to the bill in its second reading.

There's a couple of types of bills that don't go through Select Committee, most importantly bills under urgency.

(I've taken this information from the Effective Select Comittee Membership Guidebook)

What I see happening is a right-wing opposition being in a position to throw as many spanners in the way of the government as possible, through using up the maximum time, calling on unreliable "experts" and adding in stupid amendments to try get the bill thrown out.

And when they're in power, they can just avoid the process altogether and pass as much as possible under urgency.

Not only that, but the bill will be put to a binding referendum. That means that instead of needing the support of 75% of Parliament to pass (people well-informed about the power and roll of Select Committees), it will only require 50% of the public (people ill-informed about Select Committees). It will be sold as a "common sense" thing that "most everyone" supports.

Basically, this government is relying on being able to misinform the public into giving them more backroom power. If this passes at the next election, it wouldn't matter if they get a second term or not, they'll have secured a win for their power-hungry voids.

[wingstobetorn]

Why the fuck does an American bill have to impact the entire world as well

[mchiti]

New York Times wrote a piece on Ghali 😭😭❤️ Mashallah khoya ❤️

Ghali recently turned 30 and has, he says, been using 2023 to recalibrate. In “Pare,” he sings, “Sometimes you have to be reborn, to leave behind things that I then destroy because they don’t destroy me.” He is deepening his knowledge about Islam and during Ramadan traveled to Saudi Arabia for the first time, making Umrah with his mother; he included Mediterranea in his prayers.

He is quick to note, though, that he has always believed in God. What is different is that after feeling for years he had to “suffocate my origins, traditions, beliefs to integrate into a society that does not accept you for who you are,” he is sharing them much more publicly. He wishes there had been even a single famous Italian doing the same when he was a child: “Some days would have been much better.”

In July, he traveled to Tunisia for the first time since the start of the pandemic. In the early-morning hours before he left, still awake after performing at another rapper’s concert in Milan, he scrolled through his long-ignored direct messages on Instagram. He was stunned at all the messages he had received over the previous several months from Tunisians begging for his help to fund the crossing. In a surreal twist, among the DMs was one from the young man who played the protagonist in the video for “Mamma.”

Speaking from a cafe in Tunisia perched above the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean, Ghali said, “Despite all the bad news that comes, despite how dangerous it is, people are crossing more and more and are asking me to help them.”

Ghali said the argument he hears all the time — that, because they are not fleeing war, North Africans have no legitimate reason to leave — misses the point entirely.

“In Tunisia, you learn at a very young age that you can’t dream,” he said. “They disabuse you of dreaming right away. What does a person do, a person who is resigned to have no more dreams here, who maybe even stops dreaming? If in Italy, you can dream, then for a young Tunisian who wants to do something in life, they leave to at least dream, to have the right to dream.”

[atomic-apricot]

[hellfire--cult]

I WAS ABOUT TO BUY FUNKOPOPS FROM A WEBSITE THAT BRINGS STUFF FROM THE US AT A VERY AMAZING PRICE WITH BALANCE I HAVE ON PAYPAL, AND THE REST ON MY CREDIT CARD BECAUSE ITS LITERALLY JUST FUCKING A FEW USD

AND

ARGENTINIAN CREDIT CARDS

HAVE A FUCKING POLICY

TO NOT OPERATE THROUGH PAYPAL

SO I CANT FUCKING PAY THE REST OF THE MONEY THROUGH THERE.

WHAT

THE ACTUAL

FUCK

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

[nando161mando]

They aren't wrong

[stimmingandstruggling]

ok i need people who are happy about the tiktok ban to understand your opinion should actually have nothing to do with the fact that it’s tiktok. like you can hate tiktok. but supporting the ban is supporting censorship, full stop.

like, i fucking hate twitter. it’s a hellhole. would i celebrate if it went bankrupt and shutdown? probably! would i celebrate if the GOVERNMENT BANNED IT? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. because the government SHOULD NOT be making decisions about how and what people are allowed to talk about on the internet. ever.

“i don’t like the precedent but im happy if it’s just tiktok” stfu and think for a second if they only ban tiktok and nothing else ever that’s still censorship

[mothstiel]

it’s gonna be an official policy to only have two genders. an official fucking policy preventing basic recognition of thousands of queer people living here. this is fucking insane.

but most importantly, we persevere. we show trump that we’re never going away or being suppressed. don’t let him push us around.

[icarusinfreefall]

reminder that adhd medication isn't a luxury or preference, but a lifesaving medication. a 10 year long study in the usa showed that, when properly medicated, the rate of car crashes people with adhd get into goes down significantly--men's rate drops by 38%, and women's by 42%. the med shortage, denial of meds by doctors, rising prices, and the "war on drugs" has killed--with such a car dependent society, not driving frequently isn't an option, which means we need better healthcare and need it now.

https://shorturl.at/8VD8B

edit because i forgot to explain: short link is to an article by the washington post, it should be free to read

[robinlovexo]

i’m going mad 😃

[mermaidsxo]

That one Mississippi bill about banning any type of ejaculation that doesn’t result in conception is a way to ban gay sex without saying you’re banning gay sex.