#for my grandparents living on social security

[whimsicallywiddershins]

Fuck

[cup-o-stars]

Relativity Falls!

Design Concepts (and my unnecessary thoughts):

Excuse the the colors, ig my apps are fighting.

I see Mabel finding success no matter what happens to her, but I really like the thought of her running an insane arts and crafts business in GF. Alternatively, if she fell in the portal, she'd come out acting confident as always, but she probably wouldn't realize how much the constant change and lack of family/stability wore her out until she settled back in. In either case, she's a bit cracked.

Dipper is investigative, but cracks easiest under stress and is not as inherently adventurous as Mabel or Ford- so the portal wouldn't treat him well. If he's not the one in the portal, he'd be into stargazing and real magic to share with people, while also warding tourists away from the dangerous stuff. In general, he'd be an unhappy adult if left to his own devices, lol.

Between Dipper and Mabel, I like Dipper being in the portal more. He's a great protagonist, but as a supporting cast member, he needs to be more insane to match the draw that is 'Mabel taking care of children,' ha. I also love the idea of there being no portal / some other looming threat for these two to struggle with (at least because Hirsche has made it clear that Dipper and Mabel are equally smart, and to me it seems like the portal would reopen way quicker with them), but I didn't plan on posting these and I don't know how my followers feel about me posting lore.

Stanford and Stanley:

Pretty much how they are in canon, but now they're in a setting where they can get over themselves, ha. They aren't quite as mature as Dipper and Mabel were at their age, but after coming to GF, they finally found other people to look out for them. Dipper could be a more emotionally available and level-headed role model (I think having people to take care of is calming for him in turn), and they'd both look up to Mabel as the peak of somebody who knows how to socialize.

Fiddleford:

He's a sweet, southern, farm-raised mechanical engineer just like in canon.

Idk why Fiddleford is in GF (visiting an unnamed grandparent?), but I really like his relationship with Ford in the journal. Following that thought, in this AU, he starts out more of Ford's friend than Stan's, and it's kind of a big deal. Unlike Dipper's arc on learning to be a kid, Stan and Ford clearly struggled a lot with interpersonal relationships / finding security outside of eachother, and that's what I think this AU could be about (it's great they realized they need each other in canon, but the part where they had no one else to turn to is also kinda crazy if you ask me).

Ford gets to meet another smart kid in a weird town, which helps him feel more normal. He has a better idea of what friendship is because of it, but also, since I can't imagine Dipper wanting an apprentice so young/vulnerable/impressionable or Mabel asking only one of the twins to stay- he'd have to come to terms with the fact that he can't live in his dream world forever. (Or maybe the apprenticeship comes from somewhere else, just because the conflict around going back to Glass Shard Beach at all, or sending Stan alone could be pretty good.)

On the flipside, I think Stan's initial jealousy of Ford and Fiddleford's friendship would force him to try finding his own friends / hobbies. I like the idea that he fails at first- and a lot- but Mabel notices his mounting frustration (which he is very keen on hiding), and her consistent and unorthodox support makes him realize he wasn't alone to begin with. He can be more open around her, which makes it easier to open up to others, and then he can make friends without having to pull any tricks. He probably starts with some animals, and then at least gets closer to Fiddleford anyways (I feel like they're both more practical than Ford and value human company more, so they'd bond easier once Stan gets over his personal hurdle).

Anyways- because that was way too much- Mabel's exes are a constant source of antagonists and Dipper is stressed about setting a good example.

(I was more of a Monster Falls fan back in the day, but I can't draw animals, lol)

[sparxyv]

Milena Student ID 💜🦅

[EDIT: Milena does NOT look like this anymore! See my newer posts for her revamped design 😙]

I decided to finally issue a proper introduction to Milena Chase for you guys so she doesn't remain a face without a story any longer 😤

Thank you for the template @kiwiplaetzchen !! 🫶

Brace yourself for a big infodump - here is Milena's backstory etc etc 🫠

Family

Milena Jacqueline Chase was born in 1874 to a French muggle, Henri Marie Chase, and a Japanese witch, Miyuki Hoshino.

Milena is the oldest of seven siblings.

The Chase Family™ is extremely rich, like, buttloads of money rich. Coming from a long line of vintners, they founded one of the leading brands of the best quality wines in Europe, as well as owned a luxury hotel in central Paris.

Milena's grandparents on her mother's side lived in Feldcroft, and still do. They often watched over the Sallow twins after their parents death when Solomon was busy. (Milena does not know her grandparents. 👍)

Miyuki - Milena's mother - was a Slytherin in Hogwarts, and was friends with Solomon Sallow.

Life Before Hogwarts

Growing up, Milena and her siblings resided in their family's hotel in Paris, France. Since their parents were too busy with business and galas, they were raised by the housekeepers and servants that worked at the hotel.

Milena was homeschooled, undergoing typical muggle education with many tutors over the years. She gained a passion for learning early on, intensively studying practically anything that piqued her interest! (my little Matilda LOL)

Milena did NOT go to Beauxbatons, yet showed signs of magic very early on. The only reason she was aware of magic and wizardkind because of her mother's house elf, Teeley. (we love Teeley 🫶)

She had so much free time on her hands that she'd mastered and studied so many different things, making her a true jack of all trades! Some of these things include - Chess, fencing, horseback riding, painting, embroidery, baking, PLUS she's fluent in German and Russian (in addition to English and French).

Relationships

I'm planning on going more in depth with Milena's relationships in a series of separate posts so I'm just going to list her closest friends 💜

Sebastian Sallow

Anne Sallow

Ominis Gaunt

Imelda Reyes

Athol 'Mousey' McGregor

Samantha Dale

Amit Thakkar

Natsai Onai

Garreth Weasley

Poppy Sweeting

Sacharissa Tugwood

Richard Jackdaw

Personality

MBTI - ENTJ-A

Alignment - Neutral Good

I really think of Milena's personality as close to the in-game MC as possible, but I do tend to wander from that sometimes.. 😗😗

Milena always strives to help out people when faced with trouble, but never actively seeks out problems to solve - they just always seem to find her. Nevertheless, she always takes on difficult situations and rises to the challenge.

It helps a lot that she's very self-assured, something that came out of spending most of her childhood alone and taking care of herself AND others. That being noted, she's a natural born leader. Milena is assertive and logical and can easily adjust and adapt to many different situations - which makes her the perfect person to deal with a certain Slytherin boy who's emotions control him and not the other way around.. 👀👀

Milena is an ambivert. While she enjoys socializing, she's also comfortable being alone. She doesn't exactly prefer one over the other though. Socializing comes easy to her, and she has a secure attachment style when it comes to her relationships, never really feeling insecure about them or getting jealous easily. Milena tends to be more mature, and she never internalizes things when people are rude - but because she's so calm and mellow, people are usually either drawn to her or intimidated by her.

As a Ravenclaw, Milena is naturally curious! She's constantly on the hunt to learn new things, which is why she enjoys exploring outside of Hogwarts so much, taking in everything she can about the hamlets and just the Highlands in general. Her curiousity helps her find wonder in even the smallest of things. She's very open-minded, yet nearly always at least slightly skeptical when it comes to new things. She can be very opinionated, but is always open to other perspectives.

Milena is not one to be overly expressive with her emotions (but to be clear - she doesn't hide them either 😗), yet she does have a side of her that naturally comes out only when she feels comfortable. With friends like Sebastian especially, she feels like she can let loose and be more playful as well as a bit snarky/sarcastic.

Additional Fun Facts!

I've already mentioned this before - but Milena's absolute favorite things in the world are BIRDS. Birds of all kinds. She knows everything about every species, and I mean everything. And somehow, birds naturally flock to her like she's some type of woodland princess.

Milena's hair is NOT naturally curly/wavy, nor is it naturally auburn! Prior to Hogwarts, she used a charm to change her hair color, but it seemed to have some extra effects on her hair texture too..

Milena doesn't often speak French after arriving at Hogwarts, but since it's her native language, she finds it much easier to express herself in French even though she speaks near-perfect English. She also enjoys sneaking in French phrases to occasionally mess with Sebastian since he has no idea what she's saying 🥰🥰

Her love language is gift-giving, but when it comes to receiving it would be acts of service and quality time.

Is VERY passionate about potion-making.

Becomes an animagus in the summer before sixth-year, her animagus form being a giant golden eagle!

Already mentioned but she's quite fearless, except for when it comes to mooncalves. (She's more creeped out by them than scared of them, though.)

More of a dog person - Raphael is the exception 💜

Seeker for Ravenclaw in her sixth-year!

[ukrfeminism]

Every day since arriving in Britain, Yvonne, a nurse in the NHS, has FaceTimed her two daughters back home in Zimbabwe. Often the calls end in tears. Other days, the younger girl, aged four, asks difficult questions like, “When can you send the aeroplane to come and get us, Mummy?” “It’s heartbreaking,” Yvonne says. “I don’t know what to do.”

Yvonne is one of dozens of migrant women who have been refused permission for their children to join them in Britain. Despite current rules permitting healthcare workers to bring family members, single mothers, many of them recruited to work in the NHS and care sector, are routinely having their applications denied.

The applications are being refused under a decades-old Home Office rule that a child may only be given a visa if both parents are living in the UK, unless the parent living here has sole responsibility. Many of the approximately 150 women who have come forward so far have supplied extensive evidence showing they are the children’s primary caregivers. But the applications have still been refused.

Yvonne says she moved to Britain to improve her family’s future. “We’re searching for greener pastures, to give our kids a better life,” the 34-year-old says. Before departing, she says, her employer reassured her that it should be simple enough for her daughters to join her.

So in March 2023 she left the girls in the temporary care of a nanny and boarded a flight. Two months later, after securing accommodation and starting her new job, she applied to the Home Office for the children’s visas.

Documents shared with the Observer show she explained that she had always cared for the girls, they had always lived with her, and supplied references from their schools, doctors and grandmother, along with consent letters from the other parent.

The application was rejected on the grounds that the girls could live with other relatives, and that Yvonne had not provided “compelling reasons” for them to come.

Ten months after she arrived, she is still battling the Home Office to reverse its decision. The girls are in the care of their grandparents, but Yvonne says this is not a long-term fix. “My parents are both in a bad position physically. They can’t carry the burden of looking after a four-year-old,” she says. “I have looked after my children all their lives. And now to be told I don’t have reason to live with them … that is the most painful thing.”

Another mother, Juliet Mupeni, said her 13-year-old son had been traumatised by the decision not to let him come. Mupeni, 37, a former university lecturer in cybersecurity, who moved from Zimbabwe in May to work as a live-in carer, supplied detailed evidence showing she is the boy’s sole caregiver, including a letter from the Zimbabwean authorities stating she has, and always has had, sole parental responsibility.

She also supplied letters from his school, doctor and church pastor, and a consent letter from the boy’s father, who she says she separated from a decade ago. But the Home Office rejected the application, questioning why the boy, who is staying with a family friend, couldn’t live with his dad.

Mupeni submitted a fresh application with further proof, but this, too, was refused. In a cruel twist, the rejection letter said the fact the child had been without his mother since she moved to Britain was proof he did not need to come. “My son feels I have abandoned him. After the second refusal he was very very emotional. He was crying for several days,” she says. “I moved here specifically for his future. If I thought he couldn’t join me I wouldn’t have come.”

In another case, a mother who was refused permission for her son to join her was told that as the boy’s father had contact with the child “occasionally and sporadically”, this was proof he could stay with him. The Home Office also said a letter saying the child’s grandmother had “chronic conditions” and could not care for the child long-term was not detailed enough, concluding there were no “compassionate and compelling circumstances” to grant the visa.

In other cases, women were asked to provide further evidence to support their applications so applied for court documents in their home countries. They had not needed them before as their separations or custody arrangements were informal. But the Home Office said that as the documents were dated recently, they had only been obtained for the purposes of securing a visa and refused the applications.

Carol, 39, a care worker also from Zimbabwe, who has been denied a visa for her 17-year-old daughter, said: “I don’t know why they are doing this. It is like we are not human beings. It’s like our families don’t mean as much as the families we are coming to look after.”

Lawyers and charities are calling for the cases to be reviewed, and the Home Office approach to be modernised, so that caseworkers give more weight to what is in the children’s best interests.

Current Home Office guidance does allow for exceptions, telling caseworkers that even if the sole responsibility test is not met, they can still allow visas if there are compassionate grounds to do so.

It explicitly says that a consent letter from the other parent would count in favour of their case. Yet many of the women providing such evidence are still having their children’s visas declined. Applicants can apply for a review but these can be costly, take several months and look only at whether administrative errors were made.

Sacha Wooldridge, head of immigration at law firm Birketts, said the sole responsibility test was intended to protect the other parent’s rights, but that it did not recognise “today’s modern society” and could be a “very blunt instrument”.

The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association says the “sole responsibility” test is “completely out of step with current best practice”. Last year, the cross-party peers on the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs committee said the policy was tearing apart families and should be revised.

Another mother, Amara, who moved from South Africa to Cheshire to work as a live-in carer, urged the Home Office to review the decisions and “show compassion”.

She has been fighting since July for her daughters, 12 and 14, to join her. “When I heard about the UK needing healthcare workers I thought, ‘OK, I would love to go and help out there.’ But it feels like the UK doesn’t care about us,” she said. “I would love the Home Office to be considerate and empathetic. I would ask them to put themselves in my shoes.”

[i-cant-sing]

No cause I'm starting to see how much of my rich uncle is like... my platonic yandere dad's? Like one time I got really sick that I had to stay in a hospital, and the doctors couldn't find put what tf was wrong with me, and then after a couple of more nights of me throwing up my body weight, my mom called my uncle crying and then the next day, a specialist from another hospital came all the way here to check me. She took one look at me, asked a couple fo questions and then changed my meds, and I started getting better the next day.

Or or how he has contacts everywhere. OR how he knows EVERYONE despite looking like he doesn't enjoy socialising. Like my brother's in laws, my mom was just mentioning someone from their family who had... been a little rude to his wife when we first met them, and like my uncle- he already knew who we were talking about, AND he seemed fo already be well aware of this rude guy's misogynistic/higher than thyself attitude.

Like like- how does he know???🤨🤨🤨

I mean I guess being a lawyer means u get to make a lot of contacts and know people from every industry, but still... my brother's inlaws who he even hadn't met before????

Very sus. But the good thing is that I won't have to worry about my future s/o because my uncle probably already knows who he is and his social security number💀💀

It still makes me sad to see him and my aunt age😭😭😭 they, parents and my grandparents deserve to live forever wtf😫

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

It's truly amazing to me how much easier my weeks are and how much more relaxed/less stressed I am when our lives aren't boxed into the 500sq ft of an inner city apartment with no access to outdoor space.

My week has flown by, I have been able to attend to intensive client needs all week without burning out, I've even eaten food during the day other than just dinner more than once this week! I took regular showers, I slept well and restfully, the dogs have been getting routine command-response reminders (although not yet training sessions - we'll have to work on that as we have more time once we settle in), and the cats are calmer and more social than I've seen them in literal years.

We're all doing so well here and I can't help but think that we're finally making a home that works for us. The wifey and I have tried a lot of different home lives over the years, and many have been difficult, many have been semi-functional, but nothing has ever felt like this - truly home.

I called my grandparents yesterday to wish them happy birthdays (their birthdays are two days apart and they are celebrating together because my grandma is in her 90s now, and my grandpa never really got to have birthdays when he was younger, so they both like to spoil each other over birthdays, isn't that so cute?) and my grandma even said that my voice has changed and I sound different, calmer and more confident. I think she's right. Being here makes me feel so secure and safe, and I haven't had a single nightmare since we arrived. Nor flashbacks either. I'm sure they may come with time and settling, no change can eradicate my PTSD, but the fact that a change in my environment could have such an impact on my sense of safety that it immediately reduced my symptoms is so incredible to me. Even as someone in mental health who understands the role environment plays, I didn't expect it to matter this much this quickly.

I'm so ready to make a life here. It feels like it's coming together so much more smoothly and quickly than I ever believed possible.

[nutzgunray-lvt]

Best Jeanist Headcanon (Part 1)

In response to my post about Quirk marriages and how underutilized the idea was in the story, @doodlegirl1998 brought up a personal headcanon of theirs that Best Jeanist is the product of such a union. I wound up loving it so much that I decided to conduct my own elaboration on this theory.

Given from what we've seen so far (the ONLY time we've seen this 🙄), Quirk marriages seemed to be prevalent in wealthy families that had possession of powerful Quirks. Quirk marriages came into being during the 2nd-3rd generation of Quirks, back when the world was still reeling from societal collapse/AFO's reign of terror. Maybe they came into place to have their child be the one to rebuild Japan, bring Japan under their control, or just to make sure their Quirk lived on through the collapse. My point is, I don't think it's a coincidence that Quirk marriages came into place not long after the Dawn of Quirks.

Now, back to Best Jeanist, I'd even go as far as saying that Best Jeanist is a second-generation Quirk marriage child (admittedly because it's a cool idea). One of his grandparents saw the potential in either their Fiber Master Quirk or their Quirk that would one day form the Fiber Master Quirk (a fabric related Quirk), and arranged their own marriage to someone with a similar Quirk. This grandparent had managed to secure their wealth in Okayama during and after the collapse, or they were middle-upper class social climbers.

Either way, this would result in the conception of Best Jeanist's father (to respect @doodlegirl1998's theory).

Given how there's no official timeline set in stone, we're not told when exactly heroics schools were founded and became held to the high standard that they are today. But given how Quirk marriages appear to be exclusive to heroes (again, we're never told otherwise 🙃), I'd say that Best Jeanist's paternal grandparent was perhaps a vigilante who saw potential in their Quirk, and upon seeing how their son inherited the fabric controlling Quirk, they had him train to be a future hero - whether this made him among the first students at UA or Shiketsu, or he had him undergo brutal training at their hands.

Given how I brought up the family's possible wealth, I'd also headcanon Best Jeanist having at least one or two siblings - one being Quirkless and the other having a lessar form of Fiber Master. With this being back when Quirklessness was much more common of a thing, I'd make Best Jeanist's grandparent force their Quirkless child to succeed them in managing the family wealth (essentially a public face for the family) and also force their other Quirked child to become a hero. As the two grew up, Best Jeanist's future father accepted the role pushed onto him while their sibling didn't, leading to estrangement between the two.

With his father being an adult, he was arranged to marry a wealthy woman with a telekinetic mastery over carbon fibers. This would result in the conception of Best Jeanist, who happened to have the Fiber Master Quirk.

Given both his family's weath and the type of family he was born into, Jeanist's life was not up to him to decide. As soon as his Quirk awakened, he was immediately put under the tutelage of both his father and grandparent to hone his Quirk. They'd also only let him socialize with those deemed "acceptable" enough in order to both widen and secure their network of high ranked society people. In reality, he'd wanted to potentially use his Quirk to operate his own fashion line. It wouldn't be the first time someone did that, but it was still uncommon enough for it to potentially get his name out in the open. Also, it was just a cool idea that was perfect, given the Quirk he had. While they would be blatantly unrelenting that he one day become a hero, his mother would be a different kind of manipulator. She would guilt trip him into conforming to this training with the classic, "other children aren't lucky to have such an involved family as you!" and "how could we not nurture such amazing potential? You'd be a third generation hero that's keeping up the family tradition!"

I'm assuming that at this point and time, UA was becoming an incredibly reputable school, so I'd also think that they'd have him undergo numerous tutoring sessions to one day take and pass the written exam. They'd hire Quirk counselors to iron out the kinks of Fiber Master, give him mock interviews (of course he was getting in as a recommendation student!), and make him undergo mock run after mock run of the practical exam.

Eventually, it all paid off in the eyes of his family. Best Jeanist not only secured an invitation to take the recommendation students' exam, but he scored second overall, guaranteeing his spot at UA.

[titoist]

earlier this week while i was visiting my maternal grandparents' graves at the cemetery i saw a few awesome things. the preceding sentence isn't actually an accurate verbalization of what i want to describe at all but it's the way i wanted to start because the thought of someone saying they saw 'awesome things' at the cemetery is making me smile a lot

zadušnice is a holiday that i have never particularly thought about in proportion to the kind of structural change i imagine it introducing to a child who's never encountered death before. at the very least, not encountered it socially, the way it metastasizes into ritual & remembrance. really, it's just going to a grave and soaking in the fact that somebody has died. it's about gestures like symbolically bringing them a plate of food & a cup of coffee poured from a thermostat, placing it on their tombstone & leaving, knowing the stray dogs will eat it all anyway. i do not have many thoughts to give as far as it as a tradition itself is concerned. orthodox christianity is not an instrument of kindness & i am nervous at the suggestion of taking part in it, but it has essentially become a secular exercise. any possible constructive effect it might have on me is completely unrelated to the Heaven that exists after death, elsewhere, but rather to the one that exists in my mind, on Earth.

i hadn't been to the graveyard in years &, especially, the section of the graveyard in which my maternal grandparents are buried. but i spent sufficient time there as a kid for it to burn itself into the retinas of my mind, unknowable but immediately identifiable. the birch trees, the iron benches. the little clearing, surrounded by trees, with a small water fountain. the smell of wax candles…

as i was nearing the tombstones, i could feel myself gradually 'entering' the area. i had no clue where i was going; i had never developed a real mental map of the area. but through sheer force of muscle-memory i could intuit my way around, felt bridges of memory & recognition being reconstituted from detritus in real time after a decade of abandonment. i recognized the faces of dead people on the tombstones, exactly. i remembered them. i felt strongly like i was being welcomed back somewhere.

i am tired and words cannot depict this no matter the shape i torture them into but the faces keep coming back to me, the fact i remembered them, what it felt like to realize i remembered them from spending time around and staring into them as a child. a person that lived an entire life from 1937 to 2005 died and their family uncomfortably went through the process of planning their funeral, securing a location, buying the location, burying them, mourning them and slowly forgetting them. 20 years later a child that they do not know now has their contextless photograph as a permanent landmark in their mental geography.

[rhysnolastname]

My grandparents live in a mobile home in Tampa, close to the Tampa Bay Area. We’re making preparations because it’s very likely they will not have a place to live after this. They’re retired, living on social security, and they paid for this little house in cash, this is all they have. We asked them to come stay with us for the hurricane but they stayed up there. So we’re just waiting and hoping.

[plaguery]

indepth discussion of my qualms with/reaction to a youtube video about incest porn below. read at your own discretion (mentions of other paraphilias, csa, cnc & rape)

"What's with all the incest porn?"

The video in question first defends the existence of incest porn by attempting to defend consensual incest itself. (read what I had to say about the creator's definition of incest here, warning for mentions of csa) To the creator, consensual incest is another social construct that we hold too much reserve for and constrain ourselves in our inherent reactions of disgust, rather than engaging with the truth of it's impact. Historically, incest has occurred across cultures and economic lines, often with little fanfare involved. They examine how inbreeding only fosters negative genetic effects after several generations and how it can be easily "rectified" in just a couple generations with the reintroduction of genetic diversity. Our inherent disgust towards incest is claimed to be unfounded against the evidence of how severe and reoccuring inbreeding must be to create tangible effects. Outside of those genetic effects, what else can excuse this nearly "universal" feeling of disgust? Well, that is a question quickly ignored and driven into the ground in this video.

It is often mentioned in the video that incest, even consensual, is a taboo across the many cultures of the world. But I must ask, why is it a taboo? What causes the instinctual feeling of disgust? And my favorite question, why is this taboo in particular popular to fantacize about?

Taboos are often culturally unique, many taboos found in one culture are readily engaged in with little question in another. Yet, there are some "universal" taboos (said with a grain of salt as there really can't be anything Universal about cultures but. we'll say almost here). These typically concern death and the dead. It's easy to connect these to basic fear and sanitary reasons: death will come for all of us, it ends us, we live to defy death until we can no longer, we must properly dispose of/treat the dead to avoid catching it and avoid inflaming the spiritual dead for own peaceful afterlife. But in our modern world, incest has grown close to being one of these near "universal" taboos, especially the closer the relation. It can be quite hard for most to say exactly why. We feel the revulsion, the writhing barriers of transgression around it. It feels obvious, yet just outside full comprehension.

The video explains the common evolutionary explanation that we evolved to feel disgust towards a practice that puts our genetic legacy at a disadvantage. It addresses how this doesn't quite explain why single instances of consensual incest feel just as disgusting as mass occurrences of it over time. Just once is enough to cross the line. Additionally, they claim that it isn't too clear whether scientific evidence supports this or not. And they move on.

But I come back around to the why of it, what is at the heart of this social phenomenon? Even the creator themself laughed at the evolutionary concept, calling evolutionary psychology "astrology for men". So, if that isn't a sufficient answer, what is?

Humans move past basic survival once they can accomplish a feeling of safety and security. I reckon that this can't be achieved alone, at least a small grouping of people is necessary to watch your back when you're at rest or occupied. Shelter becomes property once other people are involved. We start to say that "this is mine" and "this is yours" and "this is ours". And we create the rules amongst each other to respect this. We build trust and camaraderie until our closest network of people becomes our family. Typically, we find this with our blood relations, with parents who are biologically attached to us, with siblings we are raised alongside, with grandparents and aunts/uncles who watch and help us grow up. Your grandparents had the biological hardwiring to care for your parents and their siblings and now by association they build similar care for you, even if its no longer a biological process. And as centuries upon centuries have passed, family has come to mean many things, blood involved or not, but we attach this meaning of utmost security, trust and reliability unto it. Human survival, as a social species, is reliant on the building and operation of a "family", no matter how dysfunctional, no matter the size, no matter who is necessarily involved (meaning blood relation isn't necessary, although extremely typical).

Sociologically, we've created particular ideas of the family, but they do typically involve certain socially ordained sub-groupings where sexual relations are allowed. In many cultures today, this means that of a monogamous committed couple, but different groupings of different sizes can and do exist. Yet, an individual member finds their matches for their sexual sub-groupings by moving out of the family sphere and into the community, where they are allowed to move past mere safety and survival into building the self through integration with the world outside the family. Here, you build larger community with friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. And it is also where you find sexual partners, potentially building a socially ordained sexual sub-grouping that can either absorb into or create a family.

Within the sect of the family, sexual interaction is not meant to exit those socially ordained sub-groupings. My thought is that this is to ensure our safety. I believe that the incestual taboo and our revulsion to it stems from the fact that we have built the family to be this place of ultimate security and fortitude, yet still so fragile and precarious. The sect of the family asks you to play out very specific roles and play them well, yet human fallibility shows we often fail at this. Dysfunction amongst families is common, if not nearly ubiquitous, as members fail to play their roles and force others to play the wrong ones. Outside of the socially ordained sexual sub-groupings, sexual contact is not part of these roles. Socially, we have moved sexual need from the realm of survival and into the realm of self-realization. We survive in the family and realize ourselves outside it. Something could be said for how we need to socially reorganize ourselves into accepting sexuality as a survival need and how that might change our ideas of family. But at this point, it is very socially ingrained in us to separate sexuality from family, outside of the socially ordained sexual subsects.

I figure that we are more prone to digust towards incest rather than, let's say, parentification (as another kind of family role transgression), due to both the visceral nature of it and the fears we have towards general sexuality. Again, something could be said for how our cultural views of sexuality need to be dismantled and reenvisioned and how this might change our feelings towards all kinds of sexual transgression. Even amongst consenting adults, the fear of incest is one of survival threatening role reversal, general sexual taboo, and a violation of what we consider to be nature (this is where the negative effects of inbreeding would come into play, mixed with typically religious ideas about procreation) all wrapped in one.

I did mention points where even I would agree that our cultural ideas of sexuality need to be reexamined and how they may impact our ideas of family and what sexuality can or cannot be limited to. And we are in an era where many cultural ideas, particularly around sexuality, are being questioned and revolted against. We often will hear that cultural constructs are just that, cultural inventions that served a certain purpose at a certain point in time that are not inherent to the human race. But this doesn't necessarily demean their worth. Should the social sect of the family be abolished or should it be reimagined? Should socially ordained sexual sub-groupings exist or should we find new avenues for engaging with sexuality? What will these things say about our future views of incest? I don't aim to answer these, but I leave it to you to find your own answers.

So, now I concern myself with my favorite question. Why is it this taboo in particular that has found popularity?

The video brought up how the rise in popularity of consensual incest/"fauxcest" (step-) porn happened around the time that Game of Thrones found large cultural purchase. But let me ask you this. If next month, a new show filled with necrophilia blew up "Game of Thrones style", do you think that necrophilia fantasies and porn would follow suit? I must say that I really don't think so. There is merit in that the mass exposure of the American masses to incestuous sex scenes probably helped make them aware of this as a possible fetish, but the exposure alone doesn't explain the whole of it.

I figure taboos exist on this kind of linear continuum of least taboo to extreme taboo. Different cultures will place certain things in different positions from other cultures. For Americans, consensual incest would be more on the extreme side, yet not so extreme as my earlier example of necrophilia. What I posit is that there is a "point of titillation" that is unique to the individual, rather than their culture.

Taboos create a sensational atmosphere around them and many people find themselves intrigued with some taboo or another, while rebuking others. By drawing an uncrossable line, they dare us to cross them and reap the possible rewards and/or consequences. There is a socially constructed danger that thrills and kills all the same. I think as a species, we are enamoured with the idea of transgression (to an extent), and we seek to push ourselves physically, emotionally, and psychologically, some more than others.

What I see as the "point of titillation" is a point in the linear continuum of taboo severity where the individual finds satisfaction in the idea of transgression itself, of engaging with the taboo, regardless of the content of said taboo. The proximity to the taboo, to a perceived extremity of physical/emotional/mental experience, is the core principal. This point does not engage with anything outside the near limits of it, meaning that just because someone finds satisfaction in transgression around this idea of taboo, it does not mean that they will also find satisfaction in any and every taboo that precedes it in severity. The point is only concerned with itself.

I would argue that, for those engaged with incest fantasy and pornography, their "point of titillation" is likely matched up quite well with the cultural marking of incest on the taboo severity continuum, whereas something like necrophilia is too far and thus, merely disgusting.

I believe that most people engaged with incest fantasies are not aroused by the actual idea of incest itself, but rather the transgression around it. Most of them would not be aroused by the idea of actually finding a sexual partner within their family sect and prefer to find sexual engagement in the outer community, as is socially acceptable. In this way, the "point of titillation" is not so much a demarcation of where exactly they're willing to "cross the line" but where they find intrigue in the mere idea of it.

And we come to my other point: it's quite easy.

People are intrigued by the danger of transgression, yet are either unknowledgable or negligent of how to mitigate these dangers while actually practicing the act of transgression. The kink scene is full of players who love dangerous practices and have built the proper protocols and conversational templates to create safe spaces for these transgressions to take place. They've put work and dedication into building their communities and dungeons and scenes. It takes consistent effort. But the average sexually engaged person, with partners or alone, is not particularly interested in all the non-sexy bits of safe transgressive sex. Hell, it's hard enough to get people on board with plain safe sex. They look for the easy routes to get their fix.

If you want to roleplay an incestuous encounter with a partner, it's as easy as calling them by certain titles. If you want to produce a pornographic video, it's as easy as scripting your actors to call each other certain titles. If you're looking for pornography a little more transgressive than usual but not too "out there", it's as easy as watching all the easily made incest fantasy pornographic videos flooding the sites.

A lot of fetishes and kinks take a lot of work and communication to happen safely, especially the more transgressive you go, but this is a rarer case of pretty high transgression, little danger (in the fantasy/fictional realm). For example, consensual non-consent (CNC) can be very endangering to its participants without the proper protocols and communication. Just roleplaying the fantasy of rape alone has a whole host of dangers, whereas roleplaying the fantasy of consensual incest (in cases where no engaging party has a history of the literal thing) is felt to be just another new way to spice things up.

Incest, in the American imagination, has become something to joke and gawk at. While it is still deeply taboo to many, including those who fantacize of it, it has been turned into an oddity, something those "poor Southerners" do and something that "silly" old royals used to protect the "bloodline" with. It is only real in the very fringes of society, if we ignore the CSA. It's a "funny" thing that occasionally shows up in books and movies. It's fanservice, it's fiction, it's simply "not real", if we don't want it to be. We like it because it's taboo and we don't want to talk about it more than that because it's precisely so. Afraid of our own shadow. Ask us about it past the freakshow and we'll laugh, not yet ready to discuss our real fear.

[whimsicallywiddershins]

My grandma got cancer, and had to go through months and months of chemo. The insurance only paid for some of it. My grandparents spent their entire life savings to pay for my grandma's cancer treatment. Now, my grandparents are on social security and Medicare, and just trying to scrape by and save as much money as they can.

We found out a few months ago that my grandpa likely has dementia. And they have no money for care because they spent it all on my grandma's cancer treatment.

People's life savings should not be spent on medical bills! We do not work most of our lives, pay insurance most of our lives, only to have to spend all of our savings on medical bills that insurance should pay for.

Health Insurance companies comit theft. We pay them money out of every paycheck, just in case of a life-threatening injury or disease. And then when the unthinkable happens, we are told that our claim is denied. And then after everything, we keep paying for insurance! We paid the insurance company, and now they keep our money and tell us they won't do the thing we paid them for. THIS IS THEFT.

If I pay a house cleaner to pay my house, and they see the house and decide they can't clean it after all, they would give my money back! If they kept my money and didn't clean my house, that would be theft! How can health insurance companies get away with theft on such a large scale?

[kosher-martian]

My parents are moving and it's the most disastrous series of unforced errors ever.

For context, my grandparents retired in the late 80s / early 90s with a very healthy nest egg, having made their careers and retired at the peak of American Capitalism. Between Social Security, military pension, and pensions from their careers, they were made for life.

They lived in the middle of nowhere playing pretend farmer/rancher/cowboy, far away from any medical resources or modern conveniences. There was a small grocery store and hardware store nearby, but anything else was 30-40 minutes away from their stupid little farmhouse. Hospital? Doctors? 45 minutes away minimum, usually an hour or more once traffic was factored in.

As they got older, it was increasingly difficult for them to live independently because of how far removed from everything they were. Independence came with ever-increasing costs: Home healthcare visits, house cleaning services, and grounds keeping services (among others) all paid for out of their copious pensions. Eventually it became a combination of all of those things plus my mother and aunt visiting them multiple times a week (over an hour drive just to get there) to make sure all of their needs were being met.

Even I eventually got roped into helping them maintain their faux independence. I tried to convince them to move back to civilization, but it was more important to them to maintain their fake farmer/rancher/cowboy lifestyle. In the end, they had to be forced into a nursing home pretty much against their will. It was not a fun period and I'm not keen to revisit it.

My parents retired recently. They will be trying to make ends meet on Social Security plus whatever remains in their 401Ks. Their 401Ks are a disaster because they made no attempt to manage them until right before they retired, at which point it was too late to make any changes that might affect the outcome. But that didn't matter because they wanted to retire anyways.

They have a home in the city, 15-25 minutes away from their doctors and surrounded by hospitals, standalone ERs, and urgent care clinics. There are grocery stores, hardware stores, and every conceivable kind of specialty shop within a stone's throw. To my knowledge, until very recently their plan was to live in their current home until they died. They hadn't really settled on what they would do with my grandparents' home. My siblings and I encouraged them to sell it and put the money towards their retirement. My parents were not committed to the idea. Then the pandemic came. Almost overnight, it seems, they changed into radically different people.

While my dad is fairly outgoing, my mother has always been borderline agoraphobic. As far as I know she has no friends. The closest thing she has to a friend besides my dad (with whom she has nothing in common) and my aunt (who at best loathes her) is me. Did I mention my mother is a hoarder?

My mother LOVED quarantine. She was content to sit at home, watch television or read books, work from home, and then text me nonstop all day long (to the point that it was impacting my productivity at work and making me lose sleep). She still texts me nonstop.

She retired in the middle of the pandemic and now had even more free time; time she spent reading regurgitated reddit threads from those low-effort BuzzFeed knockoffs, writing fanfiction, and watching hours-upon-hours of television.

My dad did not like quarantine nearly as much, but he loved that he was incentivized to watch endless hours of television, play video games, and play on his iPad; activities he already enjoys.

I cannot overstate just how much television my parents watch. We're talking easily 14-16 hours each day, usually binge watching a single show or alternating between two different shows, and at most breaking for an hour to go buy lunch (which they eat in front of the TV) or maybe go to a doctor's appointment.

For the last 5 years, their daily TV consumption consists of Yellowstone, those HGTV home renovation shows (in particular Home Town), the storage unit auction show, and those travel channel shows that are just extended commercials for cruise lines.

All of a sudden their retirement plans changed. Now they want to move into my grandparents' old house in the countryside and play pretend farmer/rancher/cowboy AND also pretend home renovator AND go on a series of cruises they can't afford. It's like watching them toss their meager life savings into a burning dumpster.

I reminded them of how difficult it was for our grandparents to remain independent as they got older. "We're still young," they said.

I reminded them that our grandparents' independence came with high costs that they themselves will be unable to afford. "Don't worry about that now," they said.

I reminded them of how much time and energy they spent checking in on our grandparents and how me and my siblings don't have (and can't really foresee) the same standard of living that even my parents enjoyed. "You'll love visiting us in the country. We have so many plans for the house!" they said.

They've spent the better part of 18 months burning through their savings so they can live out the shows they see on TV. They've paid for a complete home makeover for my grandparents' stupid house, which included:

A costly asbestos abatement

All new appliances

Rewiring the house

Reupholstering much of the furniture in my grandparent's home plus more than a few pieces from their house in the city

Buying new furniture to replace the pieces they didn't want from either home

$20k for a top-of-the-line natural-gas powered generator (one strong enough to power a small restaurant) so they never have to worry about power outages

Art restoration for almost every painting in their current home plus a number of paintings my grandparents had

And they even renovated my grandparents' two barns!

By the way, they largely didn't clean out my grandparents' house, they just paid the contractor to dump everything in the barns after they were renovated.

They decided on March 1st that they want to move out completely by the end of March, which has forced my siblings and I to spend all of our available time helping them shovel out 30 years worth of my mother's compulsive hoarding. It never quite reached the point of the Collyer Brothers, but it did get to a point that our bedrooms were only nominally ours. We lost all functionality of the combination dining room / rec room around 2005. After 2018, neither of my siblings' bedrooms were even accessible. They want to move by April Fools Day.

I'm still cleaning out "my" room (only the upper layers of the piles of hoard were ever mine). I learned recently that my bedroom actually has a closet. I lived in that room for over 20 years thinking I never had a closet. I decided last night that I won't take anything. This will upset my mother. She envisioned "cleaning my room" as "taking everything somewhere else so she doesn't have to see me throw away anything". She has fought me on every item I have thrown away. I don't care about her feelings on the subject anymore.

She won't stop texting me about how much fun we're all going to have visiting them in the country, or how I need to hurry up and finish cleaning out "my" bedroom, or that I should be a good son and make time to help them go through everything they shoved into the barns. Maybe I should even take some of it (all of it preferably) because they won't have room for all of it once their stuff is moved in. Can't I help? Pretty please?

They've become completely unmoored from reality. My dad will just randomly force strangers at the grocery store to swipe through before and after pictures of their reupholstered furniture. My mother is talking in various fake accents (from her best approximation of "British" to Antebellum Southern drawl to 1940s Mid-Atlantic to that generic fake accent all modern country musicians use). They call me at all times of day. They don't care that I'm working or trying to sleep because I have work the next day. My needs don't matter anymore, only their wants matter.

EDIT: While I was typing this my dad sent me a before/after picture of a bookshelf they had restored.

When it became evident that I should probably wear a respirator and gloves to handle anything in the lower levels of my mother's hoard, she became upset. "It's not that bad! You're overreacting!" she said. Their home is a biohazard. They will never find a buyer for their home. the exterior is okay, but inside is wrecked beyond your wildest imagination. They are still ticked at my siblings and I because none of us could afford to buy their home nor did we express any interest in buying it at a significant discount. Whomever they convince to buy the home will need to gut it.

I'm honestly done with them. I don't think this personality shift is temporary. I just think it's who they are now. They've become selfish, shortsighted, incredibly inconsiderate, and unfathomably weird. Nothing I say has made a difference. I did everything I could to convince them they were making a mistake. I live with the existential dread that they are banking on me and my siblings helping them solve their problems when it inevitably hits the fan. Screw that! Luckily I live in a state without filial responsibility laws.

I will not be rescuing them and neither will my siblings. I will not be visiting them or sacrificing my time and energy when they could have just sold that stupid farmhouse and put the proceeds towards saving for their advanced age. For reasons I will never understand, it is more important that they get to play the characters they see on TV than it is to plan for a future when they are old and infirm. I get it, one is fun and one is not. Surely they can see that we're at the same age they were when they became parents. They had a house, two new-ish cars, & young kids. Meanwhile we live in miserable shoebox apartments, with cars that have 200,000+ miles on the odometer, and no path to home ownership in the foreseeable future.

But go on ahead. Go play Yellowstone. Go play Home Town. I hope whatever fleeting happiness they squeeze from their experience can fill the miserable void in their lives. I don't have the gas money to drive 100 miles round-trip to visit them every week vs the 40 miles round-trip I make now. They are making it harder and harder for me to see them. Once they are out of sight, they will be out of mind. They just don't realize it yet.

[avatar216]

Rant: Labour By Paris Paloma

This might get me hate, but I’m not sure. So, I was listening to Labour by Paris Paloma and it just honestly rubbed me the wrong way. I think it’s because the video that shows a woman who is clearly upper-middle class in a historical setting where she would of most likely have had a few servants and even some slaves to take care of everything shown in the video is complaining. It feels disingenuous to me because all I can think is that the servants below stairs should be saying this to both of them. Like I said I doubt she or he gets the water or fixes the gables. Even if she wasn’t married she would still have to do menial  labor. Life ain’t free. Also, why not leave and if possible get a divorce? I get that’s what she's planning on doing, but why not sooner. Also, if they possibly already have a son, is she going to leave him behind with the husband who appears to be a drunkard as well as an abusive bastard? 

 I also think there is important context missing for the man because there is a huge difference between say working as a farmer/farm-hand or a gentleman farmer vs working in a trade like mining or millinery. I can definitely understand a guy coming home from something like that bone-deep tired and not wanting to do anything. Made worse if he came back from war and has trauma. A lot of men in England could not vote historically as well as women because they didn’t own enough or any land. Voting rights were dependent on land holdings. A day laborer could no more vote than his wife.  

Most women were more focused on surviving and living to care about how they were treated. We honestly have to understand that they would really not have known any different. Homemaking was the norm and to deviate meant you were a spinster and thus a burden on your relatives. A single woman would have to rely on the charity of family and friends, if they did not marry and have their own household. Marriage provided women with freedom and security they wouldn’t have otherwise. They could of course work as a maid, farm-hand, or tutor/governess, but those would not have necessarily paid well. I don’t even want to know why this needs to be said, but it does none the less. Women did not work alone to do all these things regardless of having servants. Women would work together to complete tasks like cooking and looming, which could and would bring in income as well. Child rearing was a community thing. Grandparents, Aunties, Uncles, and older siblings would help look after the younger ones. Just look at William the conquerer and his wife Matilda, who had nine children.    

The video would make more sense if set in the post-war years of the late ‘40s/early ‘50s where the white picket fence dream was more of a thing and where your stereotypical housewife would be found since this type of wife is in fact a recent phenomenon because most couples would both bring in an income either through a dowry or funds made in the above mentioned ways. However, war rationing was still happening during these years in Britain. It lasted fourteen years in total. Also, the dream is an American one, so it’s kinda weird a Brit would want it. Marriage was not about love historically. It was more of a contract between families for economic and social status reasons. Often neither party got a say in it. It makes me wonder why the woman/women are not blaming their parents instead. In fact, England made it hard for people under 21 to just elope, so they would run away to Gretna Green. If this woman did run away with this man because she thought he would save her and so she could seemingly just kickup her feet and do nothing but instead he treats her like Cinderella, well that’s somewhat her fault. It kind of reminds me of my sister who has a man-child for a boyfriend who doesn’t do shit but yet begs her for money and makes her do everything, but it’s still her fault she’s in that relationship, but not that she gets treated like that.  

Why does it seem that people forget effective contraceptives are very recent things? So yes, a woman having sex historically would most likely get pregnant. A man pulling out is only about 80% effective. Condoms did exist but they didn’t really work well.  

I honestly don’t get why people are using this song for famous women who were badasses or cruel like Katherine of Aragon or Queen Bloody Mary Tudor. No one cares about lesser known badass women like Yolande of Aragon, who acted as regent of Provence during the minority of her son. She played a crucial role in the struggles between France and England as well. She helped fund Jeanne D’Arc {Joan of Arc}. Some of these women over shadowed their husbands like Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II of France. I’m sorry this was so fucking long, but I had to get this out. Cross posting on Minds.com.                                   

[regalbois]

This just an update, like a lil journal entry. I'm not constantly insane no worries, so what i have actually been doing recently outside of that is writing Penguin/Riddler and Catwoman/Penguin stuff. They're my own versions of them. I really like to consider Selina and Edward in a sort of duality, where Selina is more interested in sex and money as opposed to love, but she still does genuinely like Oswald and she's not desperate, she's just in a mood for some fun u kno, and that's valid of her. I think Oswald loves her a little, but in the way that he's fucking her and spending time with her, so he has to love her at all to feel capable of doing that. Edward on the other hand really does love Oswald quite a lot. Not to say "he doesn't care about the money" because he definitely does adore Oswald's penchant for fashion and general extravagance, it's very very charming to him. But he's far more warm and romantic to Oswald than Selina generally is, and he's definitely looking for a relationship. He'd really like to settle down with the old bird, be all warm and cozy and comfortable. Having lived his early life in poverty, the security of Oswald's riches is appealing to him, as is Oswald's ability to protect him physically.

I also have a few more Simpsons Burnsmithers fics I'd like to follow through with. Main one I thought of a few nights ago is Burns performing a wellness check on Smithers. I also want to follow up on the "wild west au", which was going to be an entire story but I might just do a one-shot or a handful of chapters. But before doing so, I have a handful of Westerns I'd like to watch, and also return to RDR2. My grandparents watched a lot of Western movies and shows as I was growing up and they're still watching the painful as fuck "Tales of Wells Fargo" and "Laramie", so I have been getting injected recently and I'd like to experience some "good" westerns so I don't feel completely ill writing the Bsmits thing. I'd only like to keep it historically accurate and check the vibes, which is why it won't be a full-fledged story because writing historical fiction fanfiction is honestly painful and not super worth the effort?? Only in that it just takes up a lot of my time and there are other things I'd rather write u kno

Ofc I've still been reading a lot too, I discovered author Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote "The Remains of the Day", and I look forward to reading more of his works because they're very emotionally compelling and astoundingly well-written. Likewise with Vladimir Nabokov, as I did get around to reading "Lolita", which has played into some of my recent fics. And I'm also re-reading asoiaf, which is one of my favorite series of all time that I never talk about because the fans are fucking vile. Fic idea is blossoming from that series so I guess, given time and thought, I'll start working on that too.

Very very gradually I've also been working on one of my original stories. Set in my own fantasy universe, it is about an older knight being abused by his king; the knight falls in love with a fellow kingsguard and they escape together. There's a lot going on here and I hate world-building so I don't really talk about it because it's a character-driven story and as far as I can really tell people only want to hear about the lore that I don't like discussing. I'm rather proud of the world, really, but I just don't find conversation about it to be all that stimulating, and I don't find it useful when people take it upon themselves to pick apart something they don't truly understand. Anyway, this is like the 1 billionth draft of said story, so I'm just taking it sentence by sentence, and hopefully since the holiday madness is lightening up I'll have more energy to feel like writing more.

As for life stuff, it be what it do. I got my license and my car is fixed so I'm more alone now than before. I'd like to get a different job, but being sort of anti-social and incapable of forming bonds, it's not looking promising because I'm in a position I've worked very hard to achieve, one where people listen to me. Hopefully this coming year I can go back to college and select a painfully boring profession that will make me a lot of money 🫡 ciao

To end on a lighter note tho, i am getting some more Catwoman figures soon. Plus I have a Chun-Li and Beastars Louis on pre-order that I'm really excited for. I might also try to learn the trumpet. The real light of my life is my boyfriend, who I've been spending time with playing Final Fantasy 14 and watching some real good movies. He is also the cutie pie who got me into Batman, and I love him with all my little heart 💜🥺🤧 the end

[akwarts]

Things are pretty turbulent right now. The working class is being abused. Productivity is higher than it's ever been, but wages haven't risen to match or even kept up with inflation. Despite profits being at record highs, our wages are lower than they were two generations ago if you account for purchasing power. My grandparents made about $800 a month and their mortgage was $50. Most people where I live make $2,500 - yet the mortgage for a 2-bedroom home is $2,600. If you want to *RENT* that exact same home, you'll be paying $3,000 because the owner has you paying the mortgage, plus a profit.

(Yeah most people need roommates into their late 30s here, or one partner's entire pay goes toward housing.)

I'm also pretty sure all this anti-LGBTQA and pro-choice nonsense isn't about morality at all; it's about making sure the USA doesn't fall into a population crisis like the rest of the world.

Thing is, there's no such thing as a population crisis, except with endangered species and in capitalism. The world has finite resources; wouldn't fewer people be better? Fewer people means more resources to go around. I realized recently that they use our Social Security to scare us on this point. They claim that if we don't have babies, there won't be enough people paying taxes when we're old to support our SSI - but that's not how SSI works. We're paying into it NOW, actively, and if they'd keep their grubby fingers off of it, it would be fine from generation to generation. Thing is, they keep dipping into it like it's a petty cash box. But regardless, the idea that it will be paid by our children is nonsensical and a blatant scare tactic to get us to breed, because THEY need it, not because we need it.

The only way fewer people (when there are already 8,000,000,000 people on the planet) is a bad thing is because it means less worker bees.

Especially since the worker bees are more easily exploited if they're desperate, and what makes them desperate? Feeling replaceable - which requires lots of other worker bees waiting to replace them. That can't happen when there are fewer people and more than enough jobs to go around. Just the other day, a real estate giant was televised at The Australian Financial Review Property Summit saying that workers are "arrogant," and think employers are lucky to have them when they need to think they're lucky to have jobs. He had the audacity to say that "we" (as in him and the owning class) need to "create a recession" and "we need unemployment to go up, ideally 40-50%."

SCREW. HIM.

Your time is a commodity that YOU own. Time is more valuable than money. All acquisition of money is for the purpose of being able to get back your time and be able to enjoy it.

YOU. OWN. YOUR. TIME.

And they don't like it. They don't want you to know that.

Because it's the most valuable thing on Earth. Without it, they have no one to make their products or perform their services. Without YOUR TIME, they would be broke.

So they want really badly to be able to own it. To make you feel like it doesn't actually belong to you. For you to feel "lucky" to give it away to them for pennies on the dollar of what you will make for them.

As Andrew Stanton, Donald McEnry, and Bob Shaw said (writers of A Bug's Life) "Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1, and if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life."

Well, guess what.

In the US, people like us outnumber billionaires by 412,500 : 1.

Globally, we outnumber them 2,504,696:1

Let's help each other figure it out.

Let's take back our lives.

ACT. In any way you can. Don't be passive; it enables them.

EDUCATE. They are terrified of a well-educated working class, so learn something every day. If you don't understand something as well as you'd like, read/watch/listen to as many sources as you can until you do. Never repeat something you see or hear unless you verify it by doing your own research. I like to do this by reading at least three separate articles from different sources, and then looking into the backstory of an issue. If you can afford to, go back to school, even if it's just online community college classes after work. Most importantly, share what you know. Teach others, if you can, with loving intention and their consent. Try to really connect and think of teaching as an opportunity to lift people up, not show off how smart you are. I mean, smart is sexy, but smart and humble? F'whoosh!

INCITE. You know that expression, "if you're paying attention, you should be angry"? Yeah, that's relevant here. Things are bad. If you look around and really take it in, the only people who shouldn't be angry are the super-wealthy, because they're on top and they're benefiting from the problems. Channel your anger into passion and drive, not rage or violence. Use that energy to make a positive difference, and inspire others to do the same.

ORGANIZ.: We really do outnumber them by 400,000 to 1 domestically and 2.5 million to 1 globally. They can push individuals around, and they can dominate a submissive, non-confrontational mass population. They can't take us all on. They control everything because they have so much more money than the average person, and can use it to buy power by putting it in the pockets of officials and politicians to influence our governing bodies. But when we group together and push back, we're stronger. That's why unions work, and why they HAAATE them. If we normalize unity, it won't be just unions, though. If we normalize unity, if we organize in everything, not just at work, we can really fight back. We can pool our resources to get our own lawyers and bill-writers and lobbyists to send to DC. We're not going to bribe officials like they do, but together we can make those "perks" and "gifts" and "donations" legally defined as the bribes they are and take the money out of politics. We can demand ethics and equal representation return to the norm for our elected representatives.

UPLIFT. We are all in this together. We are all housemates here on our home planet, and it's the only one we've got. They want us fighting. They want us to blame each other. They want us mad at teachers and burger flippers for wanting as much money as "skilled labor" instead of mad at our own employers for not paying us fairly, either. They want us mad at the migrant worker for "stealing our jobs" instead of mad at the person who exploits foreign workers, or the media for pushing that narrative when in reality, nobody else even wants those jobs. Because they're hard, dirty, exhausting, and have no growth potential. Even the Red vs. Blue thing is manufactured. They're playing us against each other so that we're too busy in-fighting to face the real threat with any effectiveness. Don't let them. Learn to recognize your peers, have compassion for your fellow humans, and uplift others. If the status quo is to think of the other person, we all do better. It is possible to thrive.

Just remember that you can't take care of others if your own basic needs are not met. That's what the Y is for - YOU. In a world where we all look out for one another, everyone's needs get met - but we're still fighting for that world. So, for now, please, don't forget to breathe, rest, sleep, take a break, drink some water, connect with people, and do something that makes you happy when you can.

In other words, please, take care of yourself. For me. For all of us. Okay? Credit to the podcasts and video documentary makers I follow regularly. I learned a lot of this from them, and I'm sure much of what I've said here echos their own statements. They are: https://www.youtube.com/c/SecondThought https://www.youtube.com/@ThenNow https://www.youtube.com/@JamesJani https://www.youtube.com/@FDSignifire https://www.youtube.com/@leejamiller ... and a whole lot more. I'll have to make a bigger list sometime.

[kennak]

His detractors say his repeated remarks on the subject have already spread dangerous ideas.“It’s irresponsible,” said Masaki Kubota, a journalist who has written about Dr. Narita. People panicking about the burdens of an aging society “might think, ‘Oh, my grandparents are the ones who are living longer,’” Mr. Kubota said, “‘and we should just get rid of them.’”Masato Fujisaki, a columnist, argued in Newsweek Japan that the professor’s remarks “should not be easily taken as a ‘metaphor.’” Dr. Narita’s fans, Mr. Fujisaki said, are people “who think that old people should just die already and social welfare should be cut.”Despite a culture of deference to older generations, ideas about culling them have surfaced in Japan before. A decade ago, Taro Aso — the finance minister at the time and now a power broker in the governing Liberal Democratic Party — suggested that old people should “hurry up and die.”Last year, “Plan 75,” a dystopian movie by the Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, imagined cheerful salespeople wooing retirees into government-sponsored euthanasia. In Japanese folklore, families carry older relatives to the top of mountains or remote corners of forests and leave them to die.Dr. Narita’s language, particularly when he has mentioned “mass suicide,” arouses historical sensitivities in a country where young men were sent to their deaths as kamikaze pilots during World War II and Japanese soldiers ordered thousands of families in Okinawa to commit suicide rather than surrender.Critics worry that his comments could summon the kinds of sentiments that led Japan to pass a eugenics law in 1948, under which doctors forcibly sterilized thousands of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illness or genetic disorders. In 2016, a man who believed those with disabilities should be euthanized murdered 19 people at a care home outside Tokyo.In his day job, Dr. Narita conducts technical research of computerized algorithms used in education and health care policy. But as a regular presence across numerous internet platforms and on television in Japan, he has grown increasingly popular, appearing on magazine covers, comedy shows and in an advertisement for energy drinks. He has even spawned an imitator on TikTok.He often appears with Gen X rabble-rousers like Hiroyuki Nishimura, a celebrity entrepreneur and owner of 4chan, the online message board where some of the internet’s most toxic ideas bloom, and Takafumi Horie, a trash-talking entrepreneur who once went to prison for securities fraud.ImageHiroyuki Nishimura, center, who owns 4chan. He and Mr. Narita are part of a handful of Japanese provocateurs who seem to enjoy breaching social taboos.Credit...Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean? - The New York Times