#like what do you mean you call cops on people

[ultramaga]

Hang on - Downs is a terrible example. The brightest examples are about nine years old equivalents. There are many who legally can not make decisions. It's not like being blind or being in a wheelchair.

Now a dress is trivial. But the other decisions are not.

As for the wheelchair example, offices have dealt them for a century, that seems to be out of place.

Touchscreens replaced printed maps so being blind doesn't make you worse off than before.

If anything, the one blasting great example that should be used is the replacement of websites - which do accommodate disabilities - with apps and QR codes.

For example, the Australian government mandated the use of mobile phones. The trouble was, I have relatives who can't use them as the touchscreens don't detect their fingers.

Because the analogue network was removed, the crisis response relies on mobile phones, which will fail for many reasons in emergencies.

There are mobile phones that work with that disability BUT the Australian government decided that a weird variant of 5G was going to be mandatory, meaning it is a bitch to get many phones to work here.

Old and crippled people, as a result, are actually more vulnerable now thanks to the reliance on new technology.

There's a shotgun of bad examples here. I can not really address them all.

And yes, for the record, I'm disabled. Disability sucks. Expecting others to pay more to accommodate you is dubious, however.

I suspect a lot of business will just go broke trying to accommodate that dwarf, for example. Even working in an office for a call centre is quite difficult, as it also is if you are tall.

I was under six foot and still struggling, the taller men around me ended up leaving or getting back problems.

By the time I left, I think we had one standing desk, but essentially if you were disabled other than wheelchair, or just too tall, you were only working from home.

Wheelchairs were ok because, as I said, offices are pretty friendly for them.

I have to laugh because governments used to use websites with html to communicate information to the disabled. This worked very well.

Then they replaced them with PDFs, which are a nightmare in every way.

But they do it because everyone else does it, and they forget that the PDF was invented as a way to control and reduce the access to information, enforcing copyright, which is the exact opposite of what government websites should be doing.

It is done because it is done.

I used to try arguing with politicians about it. They could not grasp technology and just figured newer equals better.

just wanted to share the National Down Syndrome Society’s message for this year’s World Down Syndrome Day (21st March) 💛💙

[hamliet]

Adolescence Review (by someone who used to work in child protection)

Recently watched Netflix's Adolescence and it was probably the best TV series I've seen. It's superbly acted (how was this Owen Cooper's first role?), fascinatingly filmed (every single episode is shot in one take), and brimming with empathy and nuance.

It also resonates personally with me. Once upon a time, I worked in child protection for a year. I've worked with kids like the main subject of the series, Jamie Miller. I can't and won't give details, but this series probably captures the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing reality of what it's like to work with kids who do horrific crimes.

Episode 1 is an excruciatingly detailed account of the dehumanization of arrest and imprisonment, and that's even with everyone doing their best to be kind to Jamie because he's a child (13, but looks younger). I guarantee you most cops don't try to be nice to most intakes.

There's really only one moment where a cop is cruel until the interrogation, and that's when Jamie's being strip-searched. The man conducting the search tells his father, who asks, in essence, "how would you feel if you were thirteen and strangers wanted to do this to you?" that "I was never accused of a crime." Well, bully for you, jerk-face.

Yet the viewer also understands the cruel necessity of having to conduct such a search, while also wanting to throw up. I do think a lot of the discourse around juvenile criminals resorts to "throw away the key" without considering what that means, and what humiliation and abuse kids go through when they're arrested (rightfully or wrongfully). The show following each and every motion and forcing the viewer to observe the father's face rather than the actual search forces the viewer to face their own thoughts on juvenile justice (especially because, at this point, you don't know whether Jamie did it).

But at the same time as Jamie is dehumanized in this way, you're confronted with the reality of how much he's dehumanized his victim at the end of the episode, when you see that he absolutely, 100% did do it. This thread of how Jamie dehumanizes women in particular continues in Episode 3.

Episode 2 is easily the weakest of the series. It's still great and offers, via a chaotic school with checked-out adults who can't care anymore and adults who do care completely overwhelmed and limited by their own humanity, a symbolic picture of what teenagers face. How can they learn when they aren't willing to listen? At the same time, how can they learn when no one is teaching? How can people teach when they are drowning themselves?

My criticism here is that the school appeared not exactly unrealistic, but also slightly hyperbolized. I think they could have stressed the struggles of trying to care when there's too much to care for even more than they did via an additional episode, an episode I think the second one almost introduced and then left dangling--one that focused on Katie's loved ones.

We hear about Katie's mom, and we meet Jade and see her rage over losing her best friend. We even see one detective voice how frustrating it is that Jamie will be remembered but Katie won't be. I wouldn't quite call this lip service because I do think the aim of the show isn't quite about this, but I do think the show should have spent an episode on Jade and/or Katie's family.

We know Katie isn't perfect as a victim, but that doesn't mean in any way that she deserved to be stabbed to death (or to have her pictures leaked). In fact, the show makes this emphatically clear. But I still think they missed a chance to make her more human, to show the loss through her loved ones.

If Episode 2 is the slightly-less-than-the-others episode, Episode 3 is the standout. The psychologist examines Jamie and he vacillates between inappropriately flirting with the psychologist to childishly requesting more hot chocolate to terrifyingly screaming in rage to sobbing in fear like a child in a nightmare to condescendingly mocking her like a rabid fan of Elon's would to desperately trying to wrench away the reality of what he did and trying to talk himself out of facing reality. And Owen Cooper, the child actor, makes all of this believable.

The reality is that the cruelty of what Jamie's done sinks in during Episode 3. He tells his psychologist that most other guys who have assaulted their victim, but he didn't, so he's better, right? And then he screams and sobs minutes later begging for someone to tell him that they like him, anyone. I found myself wanting to grab the psychologist and beg her to say that she "cared" (something I said in a similar moment during my work doing child protection). But I also understand why she didn't--not just professionally, but in terms of Jamie having to realize that he can't be entitled to people liking him when he's so cruel to women.

The psychologist also asks Jamie if he understands what death is. While he says all the right words to show he does, everyone over the age of 20 knows that he doesn't, and the show knows it too. I genuinely think that, until you get older, you cannot fully understand what it means for someone to be gone from this earth.

And therein lies the paradox of the show: Jamie doesn't fully understand what he's done. At the same time, what he's done has permanent, gruesome, irreversible consequences for everyone around him--and beyond that, because of the internet's influence beyond local boundaries.

Episode 4 is an episode I would call beautiful in a lot of ways, despite the fact that it's jagged and raw. We follow Jamie's family (dad, mom, and older sister) as they try to celebrate the dad's birthday about a year after the crime. We see how they're wrestling with the fallout and agony of knowing they raised Jamie--but they also raised Lisa, who is kind of an awesome kid.

And while Episode 1 actually has detectives musing that the parents might be abusive and that might explain it, this episode removes any doubts: Eddie and Amanda, Jamie's parents, are good parents. They are not perfect. Eddie has a temper. Amanda should have monitored his computer use more. But also? No parents are perfect. Arguably, the detective who interacts with his son in Episode 2 is a worse parent than they are. Yet his son is great, and Lisa is great.

There simply isn't a good explanation. Jamie was hurting, yes, but his pain can't be pinned down to a singular cause. The internet hurt him and gave him messages about masculinity that were harmful to say the least. But he also got those messages at school, even if he wasn't on the internet. And he got love at home, as well as some flawed interactions with his parents.

So who is responsible for Jamie's actions? Jamie himself. He chose.

Yet, the series also acknowledges that Jamie is a child, and he is not just "born bad." We see how other kids, like Jade punching Ryan, and Ryan loaning Jamie the knife, and Tommy joking around, and the bully leaking Katie's pictures--they have no comprehension of the extreme ramifications of their actions... but some of them also don't appear to care to learn. Normally, society would demand they care to learn, but that's not happening.

So then what? If society creates these kids, then what does society owe them? That's a question the series wants viewers to walk away contemplating, rather than giving a simple answer.

And there is some hope: Jamie deciding to plead guilty and accept responsibility. In that, we see how kids are supposed to be able to make mistakes and learn and grow. Yet Jamie's "mistake" is so shattering that Katie will never get to grow beyond it because of him, and to what degree Jamie can after pleading guilty isn't clear either. And in an era where their every action is captured online, can they ever really grow beyond?

I don't know that I have an answer to that. I've seen some kids I worked with grow up to be awesome. And I've lost touch with others, particularly those whose cases were more serious. There is no agony like seeing a child who has done something horrific and is suffering themselves and knowing you can't save them, and not knowing what the future holds for them. All you're left with is being able to hope that they'll learn to accept responsibility and grow, but in a system and society that makes that really impossible, is that even much of a hope?

[p5-apotelesma]

AS I SAID I WOULD: heres the post yapping about how Makoto's Career Choices have Ren Putting Her At A Distance

by no means do they stop being friends. she just ends up drifting a little further away from him in his circles of intimacy. they raise their walls around her a little. there's some part of him feels betrayed but. he'd sooner let the earth swallow him than bring it up. ren feels like an asshole for feeling uncomfortable about their friends goals.

what right does he have to tell her what she should or shouldnt do. he just doesnt. (especially when he already made the call to take a happy future away from her once. a future with her dead father. who she wants to honor by becoming a cop in the first place)

i think it would have potential to come up during strikers. because. (looks at the circumstances of strikers through the lens of rens trauma)

yeah.

they've essentially been blackmailed by the police again. who are out to arrest ren and his friends for shit they didnt fucking do. and they have to put their trust in one of them. and ren is Really Not Doing So Good But Hes Repressing That. and meanwhile makoto's over here talking to the cop whos infiltrated their group about what its like being on the force. and ren wants to start slamming his head through the walls

ren, who has spent the past 4 months living with their shitty parents and has fallen back into old survival patterns is. REALLY not up for creating a situation that could create potential for confrontation. but makoto is no dummy and can probably tell that hes really not comfortable (in general) but that. particularly. the ways they interact have changed. and she would want to get to the bottom of whats bothering them

and god, what hasnt been? had the metaverse not come back maybe ren would have been able to relax enough to talk to his friends about what hes been going through at home. but theyre tight lipped about that now. his problems arent as important as everything else going on. but i can see ren cracking.

REN: i dont want to convince you to abandon the path. you want to travel. i know your dad. means. a lot to you. you want to honor him. because of what he stood for-- he was a hero to you. REN: but your dad is gone makoto. REN: while i-im still here. and i almost wasnt. i could have--- i almost died. i wished i had. (i was in so much pain i just wanted it to be over) REN: all because of people who you would end up having to answer to. i dont (god breathing is hard) REN: understand. how you. can reconcile with that. how you can try. and comfort me. when im in the crosshairs of the police. and then turn around and chat with the guy. who threatened to arrest me. about how you want to join the force REN: i know you makoto. and that's why i dont understand. and i dont. know how to be okay with that. im not. im sorry but it just makes me sick to my stomach every time it comes up

honestly whether rens feelings about it would come up during strikers or not til Rens Distortion Arc. she would be like. oh god he thinks i dont care. and it would BREAK HER HEART. like. especially because i think makoto could feel some guilt about the plan she primarily helped throw together to trick goro so last minute that. put ren through what he considers the worst day of his life. the ren that went into that concrete room did not come back out.

[ii-neutral-confessions]

Neutron...

"..."

Neuuutrooon...

"...shut up."

What? I just wanna talk to you. Do you know how boring it gets being stuck with you all the time? Being a vengeful ghost 'n shit isn't as eventful as it used to be.

"..."

I'm not gonna be like that weirdo on your phone, Neutron. You know that.

"...what."

You remember that one proton you shoved in the dumpster?

"Oh, so you're gonna talk about our past victims. Cool. We're done talking."

...actually, why do you keep saying "our" and "we" when you're referring to yourself? You've been doing it a lot lately. Especially when you're thinking to yourself.

"..."

Come ooon. Nothing I can even do with this information, anyway.

"..."

Neutron?

"...hm."

Are you, like... multiple people or something? Is that it?

"...yeah, basically."

Oh. Oh shit, for real? I was joking.

"Yeah. Me 'n Neutron."

...wait. So you're not Neutron right now?

"No. Mamba."

Huh. I don't get it. I thought, like... Mamba was just Neutron's old name.

"Sort of. Not really."

You gonna explain, then? 'Cause I still don't get it.

"Didn't expect you to."

Then explain it, dumbass.

"...after I got out of jail, I wanted a new start. So I made Neutron. Let them take control 'n stuff. New person, new life. We could leave everything behind."

...huh. And you two are completely different people, right? Like its not some alternate identity thing?

"No. We're different."

...I still don't get it. What's even the difference between you two? You're both, like... emotionless 'n shit. And boring. You act the same.

Sigh. "Think of it like this. Mamba is the old me. Neutron is the new me. After jail, I did a reset and... shed my old me like a snakeskin. I still have that snakeskin. That's the old me. Mamba. The new guy's Neutron. They're separate from me. Does that make sense?"

Of course you use snake metaphors. But yeah. I get it a little better. Not much, but a little.

"Better than nothing."

...

"..."

...so that means that Mamba's the murderer one. And Neutron's, like... innocent. Never did any of that.

"That was the goal, yeah. Fresh start."

You know that, like... nobody's going to see it that way, right? The cops sure won't. I'm having trouble understanding it.

"Maybe I'll just be called crazy and locked in a rubber room. With rats or something."

Yeah. And to me, it seems like a real cheap "stay buddy-buddy with Proton" kinda thing. You could just pretend to be "Neutron" forever and not have to face all the shit you did 'cause "Neutron's" the innocent one. And they didn't do all the shit stuff. So you get to be friends with Proton forever.

."...it does look a lot like that, doesn't it?"

Uh-huh. But I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. 'Cause clearly you're still guilty about the shit you did. And the people you ate. And killed. So maybe you aren't pulling all this shit off to keep a friend and you've actually got a legit reason.

"Wow. Thanks a lot."

Don't mention it.

"You're awfully friendly today. No hauntings or reminders and guilt-tripping."

I got bored. And it's clear that you feel bad about killing innocent people. Maybe with some therapy 'n shit I could grow to tolerate you on a daily basis.

"Mmm. Do therapists accept murderers as clients? Or are there special heavy-duty therapists for people like me?"

Dunno. You can go and find out.

"...eh. I'd rather not."

...

"..."

...you avoid stuff a lot, y'know.

"Whatever could that mean?"

Like... it still feels like you made Neutron so you could avoid confronting all the shit you did. So you could just be some guy. Not some murderer.

"...I suppose that was a reason. I did want a fresh start..."

Yeah. And speaking of avoiding shit...

"...no."

You are literally going to have to tell her sooner or later. Best to do it sooner 'cause your relationship's already strained and time is probably not going to help it. So just get it over with. Tell her what you did.

"I have no clue what you're talking about."

Yes you fucking do. Last I heard, you were Mamba, not Neutron. You know what I'm talking about. That stupid "iunno what you mean" excuse doesn't work here.

"...they didn't know that they would be her. If I knew that my roommate would be... them, I never would have let them take that shit up."

But you did. Funny how fate works.

Groan. "I wish I never locked that dumpster."

Oh, I know. I can hear each and every single one of your thoughts. You think about that memory so much that even I can remember it clear as day. Wouldn't have made it better, though, if you didn't lock it. 'Cause you still-

"Shut up. Don't say it. I don't... I don't want to hear it."

...fine. But you'll still have to face it soon.

"...I'll get to that eventually."

Suuure. How many times do you think that poor proton rebirthed in there? You ate a chunk of their head 'n arm 'n leg. You think they get phantom pains there sometimes? I know a proton who gets phantom pains there.

"Fun. Here comes the haunting."

I know how many times they rebirthed in there. Saw it all myself. Tally marks scratched on the dumpster walls - one side was for days passed, the other side for times rebirthed. There were so many tally marks there. So many. So fucking many.

"I wasn't in the right mind-"

How do you think they rebirthed? Starvation? Dehydration? Sickness? Asphyxiation, maybe? Heat stroke? Generally feeling hopeless? Panicking? Probably all of those. Maybe worse ones, too.

"This is really making me not want to te-"

But you'll have to. You'll have to and you'll have to face everything that happened to them. Everything. Actually- I should be using her right pronouns! What am I thinking?

"Stop. Shut up. This conversation is over. We're not talking about her anymore."

It's only over when you take your meds, lizard bitch.

"Great. Where are our fucking pills..."

[dom-guilfoyle]

Hi there Dom! Just finished a binge of Mistholme at the suggestion of a friend! What a wonderful, heart wrenching, and absolutely beautiful story. It’s absolutely changed the way I plan to tell them moving forward, so thank you for that. Few questions, if you are willing:

1) Were Dee and Diana ever best friends in the historical sense?

2) Can we get the name of the Head of Patronage?

3) And on an unrelated note to the first questions, any last names on any of the heads? For curiosity’s sake, I’m sure you understand.

Thanks again for Mistholme and can’t wait to follow up on the other show!

Hi, thanks for listening, it's surreal but genuinely heart-warming to read that I've inspired people in their own writing!

As for your questions, I don't have the most satisfying answers, but you can have them nonetheless.

1: If you like. I'm not really someone who cares to think too much about my characters sex lives or their romantic relationships. In fact, i think that defining the relationship between two beople in fiction, saying "they're girlfriends" or "they hate each other" is less interesting than putting their interactions before the audience and letting that story grow inside the minds of the people who absorb it.

I think in many cases a hint can do more than an outright acknowledgement or elaboration, and i think that in their interactions we see the outlines of a fairly lengthy relationship between Restoration and Research. They have different work styles and focuses, and there's a lot of friction there that only increases over the course of the show. But I think you can definitely see the mutual admiration and respect between them, a genuine care for one another. If you think it has a vibe of more than friendship, then in a way that means it worked, and the characters had a life beyond what I directly wrote.

2: The Head Of Patronage is named John Smith, because my idea of him is just that he's a truly normal guy who has no business getting wrapped up in all this alternatural nonsense. There's a short bonus story for Patrons about him, if you're interested.

3: Nah, no last names. I don't see why we need to know that, feels unnecessary. For some, maybe that feels like a cop-out, or like a gap in the settings verisimilitude. But the fact is, we didn't need to know their last names. We find out their first names because of their relationships with one another: Retrieval calling Restoration Diana as an appeal to their friendship, or maybe to slightly manipulate her, for example. Their first names were part of the emotional narrative between them, but they're not going to use their surnames in any organic way so we don't need to know.

Hope those are satisfying enough answers! If you can't tell, i do overthink this stuff a bit. As for other shows, Tales From The Low City has just wrapped up so hopefully I can get full focus on my next project, if my day job doesn't keep completely sapping my energy all the time. Cheers!

[genbabureki]

being on this website is such a culture shock because of the deluge of white suburbanites asserting their way of thinking is completely normal and good instead of absolutely deranged

[kacievvbbbb]

Honestly despite my feelings about how the last arc of MHA went down I really love Deku and his story.

I just feel like a lot of the time we get these protagonists whose whole philosophy is it doesn’t matter what you were born as everyone can achieve greatness. But then the series goes on and it turns out that actually it DOES matter because the protagonist has this really great lineage and these really great powers you can only have through birth they were actually born born, predestined if you will, to do this.

But MHA actually sticks to its guns. Midoriya wasn’t revealed to have some great connection to all might that the universe had put in place. He wasn’t defended from some great lineage that makes him uniquely suited to this. Hell All for one didn’t even turn out to be his father, there was no hidden powerful quirk he was always meant to have. He was just Midoriya Izuku a boy who was in the right place at the right time and simply decided to act while the world did nothing. And that’s what really made him a hero.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I believe him a bit more when he goes anybody can be a hero if you just decide to act

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

.

[miraclemaya]

i do think especially arguments about this stuff that hinge on going, well im a victim and i think this is bad are unworkable because you will find a hundred other victims who go oh it helps me process it or whatever else

[sturionic]

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

[berrysong]

I already have a ton of homework that the mental illnesses wont let me do and a summative essay I have to write in my school's weird study hall-like-thing on monday but like what if I missed school monday to drive 9 hours away, pick up a dog, and go sightseeing and shit with my parents

[theabstruseone]

I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.

The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.

The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.

The logo is ���� which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.

Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.

The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.

Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".

He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

Edit to add further developments:

Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.

Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.

The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.

The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.

The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.

TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).

This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".

This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")

X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.

Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.

The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.

One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.

Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.

[musical-chick-13]

"[man I refuse to name] is innocent! I know this for absolute fact because of research and investigation I have done on my own!"

Yeah, hi, quick question: what were your thoughts on the A.H. v J.D. trial. Did you believe her? Did you "do your own research" then? Did you also claim you knew "for an absolute fact" that she was lying because of "investigative research"?

[stellardeer]

TL;DR - How would you kick someone out of your house without involving police? and Should you?

My no-note blog is probably not the best place to ask this question, but maybe someone will come along and answer, who knows.

So in the ideal circumstance that we abolish the police, I've been wondering about a specific scenario. Say there is a person in your home, for whatever reason, who has no legal right to be there, and you do not want them there (again, for whatever reason) but they refuse to leave and you want to forcibly remove them from your home.

Most people nowadays would threaten to call the cops on them, and usually that alone is enough to get people to leave. I've never actually had this problem myself, but I've known numerous people who've talked about these kinds of situations (and coincidentally they were all middle class, if that tells you anything...) I, personally, would think twice (or a million times) about calling the cops on someone, especially if the person in question is particularly vulnerable to police brutality. So, even if the police aren't abolished, I still want to know the proper alternative to handle this kind of situation.

I'm a pretty weak, easily overpowered person, so my first instinct would be to like.. call someone I know or go get a strong neighbor or something to help me get this person off of my property.

I know that the specifics of the situation also play a key role here, too, on how to handle it. Like, if the person is reasonable, I would hope that just telling them to leave would get them to go - easy enough. But if they refuse to move.. what do I even do? If it's someone that I know very well, I might think to take a break and just walk away from them and hope we can sort things out once we've calmed down. If it's someone that I don't know very well, though, (not even necessarily an intruder, but just say someone who is overstaying their welcome) and especially if tensions are not even high, I wouldn't really know what to do. Some states even have squatters rights, so like.. sometimes you literally CAN'T do anything about this person being in your home, and in some cases they can even get you kicked out. I think it's kind of obvious that if the person clearly has violent intentions towards me, then I have a right to defend myself, but again, I am not going to be able to do that by myself, and I don't know what the legalities are around asking for help from another citizen, i.e. not a cop, if someone means to do you harm?

And what if you do ask for help and your helper ends up injuring the person in the process of trying to get them out?? I'd imagine it's still better than calling a cop, and risking getting a life-ruining criminal record, or worse, shot and killed. But I'd also imagine there could be grounds for them to sue if they get injured by the helper since the helper is not a professional of any kind and not protected in anyway. Only some states have protections against self defense anyway, and I don't know if it even counts if you invited the person into your home willingly and they weren't being violent to begin with. Like.. if they person is just stubbornly standing there and then your burly neighbor puts hands on them first, I don't think that even counts as self defense for the homeowner? At that point if the person fights back then they have a case for self-defense.

And I don't know what the leftist attitude is towards personal property like that anyway, like should we even have a right to our own home? I don't know the leftist view on that, I get the idea that individualism is not the move, but like.. do we still have our own personal space? Space that we are allowed to bar others from entering? Even if that space extends to the entirety of a 2-bedroom home? I'm asking sincerely, because I really haven't read enough socialist theory, so I don't know what the opinions are on home ownership in general. Like in an ideal society, would we supposedly just allow the person to stay for as long as they like, as long as they aren't hurting anything? That's another part of it, like what if they aren't doing any harm but I still don't want them there? Am I wrong for wanting them to leave, even if I don't know them? Supposing even if they are an intruder, if they haven't stolen anything or hurt me or my animals, but they just... won't leave, should I even be mad about that?

But again, forget an ideal society, let's take it back to reality, assuming that I live in the US and the laws are exactly the same as they are in this moment, police are not abolished, but I am choosing to not involve the police in this matter... what is the right thing to do???? Should I just resolve myself to accept that this person lives with me now?? I don't even live in a state with squatters rights, so I don't legally have to, but.. should I? (more thoughts and anecdotes if the tags if you feel like reading)

[tobiasdrake]

Like, getting political for a moment. A thing a lot of people need to understand is that, ultimately, rules only exist if they are enforceable. The mechanism of enforcement is what determines the realness of a rule.

If you're playing Monopoly and you decide that being in Jail sucks so you move your piece to Go and call it a tunneling loophole, there's nothing built into the game to actually stop you from doing that. Other players yelling at you and banishing you from the table is how the rule is enforced. But if they don't, if they let you do that, then I'm sorry but that's just how the game is played now. If you're allowed to do it then it's not against the rules.

We all instinctively understand that when you're running track, you're not supposed to cross the lines into someone else's lane. But the lines are not a wall. They're not physically preventing you from doing anything. If you decide you want to run into the lane to your right and jump-kick the other racer, you physically can do that.

The line on the ground is a social construct. It's part of the magic circle; A thing that takes on special meaning, even psychological power, so long as we exist within its play space. But it's not real, and it only has power if somebody comes over and drags you off the field for striking that other racer.

At the highest echelons of power, a lot of what "can" and "can't" be done are actually just the boundaries of a magic circle with few real enforcement mechanisms. The President can't do that. But. Like. Who's going to stop him if he does?

The biggest thing we learned during the Trump Presidency was just how many restrictions on government power are illusory. Trump spent his four years in office testing the limits of what he can and can't do. Stepping over the lines of the magic circle to see which ones had enforcement mechanisms and which were merely decorative. And revealing that an alarming number were decorative.

Because the thing about the highest offices, about POTUS and SCOTUS and Congress, is that they're the highest offices. There's nobody above them. The only check on their power is each other and, contrary to what high school social studies might tell you, those checks aren't very strong at all.

Trump wants to redefine the game rules to be dictatorial. The magic circle says he can't do that. But the only factor that truly decides whether he can or can't is whether the other players at the table will let him do it. And if you listen to the way Republican Congressmen talk, it's not reassuring.

There are no executive super-cops who will arrest Trump if he breaks the rules. The Avengers are not going to show up and stop him from continuing to reconfigure the magic circle to his liking. The only thing, the only true restriction on his power, is the vote. It's the fact that we, as a population, get to make a choice as to whether or not he even gets to sit back down at the table to play again at all.

In a democracy, voters are the enforcement mechanism. Let's try and remember that when November comes around.

[thenixkat]

op really did choose violence onto us because we dared talk about how the new 5/1 building kicked out our relatives#or how that metrosexual airpod kid would literally call the cops on the neighborhood street band for being too loud (via blackfilmmakers)

Fuck it, Urbanism hot take night, none of you bitches actually know what gentrification is