#us government being stupid

[musicofthenightphantomoftheopera]

KOSA UPDATE:

(I made this it's own seprate post since the original is so long)

I saw someone reblog the original post whomst is from another country and is unsure of how to help.

So if you're in another country, here's how you can help:

If you have ANY friends that live in America, tell them about this bill. You can show them my original post talking about it if you want to because it's now pinned to the top of my page.

I have seen not a SINGLE person outside of tiktok besides myself on ANY other social media platform talking about this bill even though this thing literally spells the end of social media and the internet itself as we know it. and that's SCARY. I've been doing everything I can to spread it, but I'm just one person and it's still not enough.

And unfortunately, looks like my statement in the orignal post about how it will also effect those that don't live in the US has been proven correct in more ways than one. I was notified an hour b4 I made this post that a mass internet censorship bill similar to KOSA just got passed in the UK. It hasn't gone into effect yet, so there's still time for public outcry to overturn it, but the fact that a KOSA copycat bill got passed in another country is scary.

So yes. If you live outside the states, tell EVERYONE. Use your own platforms across all your social to spread the owrd if you have any. and ensure any friends or mutuals you have that live in the US are notified. Share the links to the petitions and resources and action items in my original post. we CANNOT afford to let this fascist nightmare come true

And I should also add another tidbit i recently found out. The right wing organization known as The Hertiage Foundation that authored what is essentially a Mein Kampf 2.0 style manifesto of how republicans plan on destroying our democracy if a republican wins the presidency in 2024 called The 2025 Project (which you can read on their website) has stated that KOSA is directly aligned with their goal which makes this even worse. again. When I say we cannot afford this Fascist nightmare to come true, I'm not exaggerating

[solradguy]

The hell's up with all these anti-trans men/masc memes lately because I'm getting real sick of it real quick. It's not cute and it was never funny.

[wormy-worm]

ok u know what maybe if the world isn't ready for sunrazer post that means that the world IS ready for Amoveous siblings post. This is Milo and Enho and theyre my DARLINGS and i love them SO MUCH. i have. SOOOOOOOO many thoughts abt them but after the previous post massacre i do not really feel like typing all of that xoxo love <3

[friendofthecrows]

One of the worst things about everything being tracked on the internet is that I know Far Too Much about certain topics but can't correct misinformation for Legal Reasons. I see someone say the stupidest fucking thing and I just have to keep my mouth shut. Hell on earth.

[nerdfighterwhatevernumbers]

I'm literally just Some Guy but I think the reason Americans are fat is hyper-capitalism

Genetics also play a major part so no, not having capitalism wouldn't get rid of obesity and that's perfectly fine, but the environmental factors that cause weight gain are another thing

See, in the 80s the sugar lobby spent a lot of money promoting the idea that fat is to blame for health issues and weight gain over sugar, lobbied the FDA to not include daily sugar requirements on nutrition labels, and fought to get sugar into basically all our food, a lot of it. It's really really easy to see from that alone how weight gain in the population would increase.

Then our jobs changed, became more sedentary, but also we have less time to ourselves for exercise or outdoor activities. Solid 9-5 jobs aren't much of a thing anymore, most people are working longer days or irregular hours that are hard to plan around and there's less time to prepare full meals with fresh groceries.

Obviously inflation makes buying healthy food even harder. Cheap meals, let alone quick ones, usually aren't the healthiest. Our healthcare system means if you do want help losing weight you need to pay to ask a doctor about it. The very poorly regulated diet/wellness/supplement industries make us fatter by lying about new 'healthy' foods, pills, and diet habits that can't be sustained and make us gain back more weight. But these industries make massive amounts of money (why not sell 'keto' and 'reduced fat' versions of everything?) so there's huge incentive to keep pushing them.

And, of course, the welfare system is messed up and getting out of poverty is extremely difficult, but the poorer you are the stronger all these other factors affect you.

Like I said there's nothing actually wrong with fat people existing and getting over fatphobia is more important than placing blame, but I still feel a certain way about the perception of Americans (especially by people in the U.S. government) being that we're fat lazy idiots when our environment seems to have set us up for decades of weight gain

[lucianinsanity]

Once again I'm scared as fuck for my country and the awful people that this unleashed

[aces-to-apples]

You know, funnily enough, I actually can use the canonical enslavement of the clones as a point of criticism against the Jedi and senate and all other characters in Star Wars. And I do. Because the clones are literal, by-definition slaves. And it is a worthwhile point of criticism regardless of narrative framing because the heroes very literally and textually use slave labor to fight their fundamentally unjust war. Like it happens right on-screen, no ambiguity about it at all. And it doesn't matter that talking about it isn't how you "professionally analysis media" because I'm not getting paid to call George Lucas and Co. an insufferable hack, I do this for free and fun! For the joy of calling the creator of a slave army of brown men a cunt! And also yes I apply it to every single character in Star Wars and consider them all at least mildly evil for accepting the widespread evil of slavery to exist, nay, flourish unchecked, and that actually supports my analysis of Star Wars, to wit: age up the intended audience about 10 years and it's just Game of Thrones In Space. Everyone is shit, they all suck, there's no winning only widescale losing because the fights are literally never going to not be about stupid esoteric religious bullshit and maintaining the status quo in favor of the rich elite at the expense of the actual fucking people. Ta-da.

[hauntingblue]

Why do they say dragon is luffy's father but doesn't look much like him... I mean it is true but why point it out... in that way he doesn't look like garp either

[emdotcom]

If i was the twin towers, I woulda just dodged.

[daisyachain]

“Only 14 people have been able to get out. The motion could have consequences for others who are waiting, he said.

Miller said he was not saying that the motion was "a bad thing to adopt," adding it represented a "principled position" as amended.”

A Canadian minister is implying to the national news service a) that Israel is holding Canadian-linked Palestinians hostage in a war zone, b) that Canada’s foreign policy is dictated by fear of US military allies, c) that the Israeli government with US backing will kill allied residents/connections even for adopting a toothless non-binding motion in accordance with OECD norms.

It’s nothing new to know that the Canadian government is too craven to make a comment on US politicians openly threatening to bomb us as at a New York Democratic event earlier this year. It is also nothing new to see that Israel uses its murder campaigns to threaten foreign nationals or foreign-connected nationals to influence international policy, as seen in the delay in releasing Brazilian and South African citizens from Palestine.

What is bizarre is to see the Canadian government say that Canada believes wholeheartedly in supporting Israel not because of any conviction but because we are certain that Biden and the US will initiate or arm retaliation against Canadians’ families for our independent policy movements.

The key and only important power dynamic in this situation is the genocide of Palestinians by the colonizer states US and Israel. One weird sideshow is that the US is taking this opportunity to exercise its de facto colonial possession of fellow colonial power Canada. The events aren’t unusual. The semi-half-open-mostly-implied discussion of it is.

[technovillain]

oh man. i am so......... i will vent in the tags

[francisforever2014]

on that note conversations about online safety are so funny bc on one hand online safety and not freely giving out personal information is so important but on the other you have people that are like if you use your real name on the internet you’re a DUMBASS and asking to get doxxed like ok.

[nicollekidman]

threads like this are so funny because like. yes. but also how does a giant thread name-checking every current vaguely progressive person in us politics as part of the system like. do anything to help people currently stuck living under the us government. like. we actually do still live in this shithole “democracy” so the constant “don’t fall for the optics these people are ALSO evil” while not incorrect is like. okay so???? uh??? what now! i don’t think aoc is wonder woman but it IS actually good to have someone with a popular name expressing things that are more closely aligned with goals/rights we are striving for while 95% of the airtime/published space is going to the alt right and fascists 

[lord-squiggletits]

Ahhhhh I really didn't imagine it, I still dislike Barber's way of writing Orion/Optimus just as much as I did on the first reading and all it took was rereading a few screencaps from one specific scene.

Literally I don't know which part annoys me more: Jetfire existing in the background solely to go "ORION PAX FUCKING SUCKS AND IS A HYPOCRITE", Orion being written like an edgy asshole who hates everyone, or Soundwave talking like an unhinged terrorist and the narrative expecting me to see Orion as the hypocrite for using violence to arrest terrorists.

Soundwave is seriously like "You have no proof we assassinated the Senate, but if we did assassinate the Senate it would've been justified, but also totally trust us bro, just because we could've hypothetically murdered the entire reigning government doesn't mean that we're violent bro come on just bc we assassinated-- I mean could have hypothetically had the means and cause to kill like a hundred people doesn't mean we were gonna kill anyone else, come on bro why are you calling us violent just bc we think some murder is okay" while Jetfire is in the background like "WOW ORION I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE WILLING TO BE VIOLENT IN RESPONSE TO OTHER PEOPLE BEING VIOLENT. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OWN SIDE'S FLAWS EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE LITERALLY DOING AN INVESTIGATION TO DECIDE WHETHER ONE OF YOUR COPS COMMITTED AN UNJUSTIFIED KILLING OR NOT. YOU HAVE DONE LITERALLY NOTHING TO TRY AND FIGHT THE CORRUPTION IN SOCIETY." (Jetfire had no way of knowing about OP and crew fighting the Senate's schemes in Shadowplay and Elegant Chaos, but as a reader it's very frustrating seeing Orion getting lambasted as never having done anything to fight society's corruption when he literally did, and by the time he was even working for Zeta Megatron was already evil and had the whole Senate assassinated.)

Like ughhhh oh my god I could have maybe enjoyed this story under a better writer but as it's written it's some "yet you participate in society, curious" levels of political commentary where at least one character seemingly only exists in the scene to shit on OP (something that happens a lot in Barber's works, like with Pyra Magna and Slide) and where OP is framed as a hypocritical asshole for a reaction that's very understandable given the context.

And also it's weird because Barber wants so badly for you to read Orion as some sort of hypocrite for being against terrorist activities but being willing to employ violence himself to arrest terrorists, yet... it turns out the big twist of the story is that the Decepticons WERE smuggling weapons and Soundwave DID lie to Orion (even if it was unintentionally), thus vindicating Orion's entire distrustful attitude? Like, it seems as if it was supposed to be an ACAB story showing how evil the police are for killing people and how Orion (as a cop) is evil for being a cop that uses violence on behalf of the state. Except uh. Then Barber wrote a plot where the Decepticons literally were smuggling weapons all along (and this is alongside lore from Megatron: Origin where we as the readers know for a fact the Decepticons/Starscream killed the Senate) so.... Like, it just seems to me that if Barber wanted to write an ACAB story about how the state monopoly on violence is bad, he probably shouldn't have written the Decepticons as actually being terrorists who literally did lie about smuggling weapons?

I feel like a better way to write an ACAB/anti-state-monopoly-on-violence would've been to like, explore the way that states take advantage of catastrophe/using scapegoat political movements to gather more power to themselves and justify removing citizens' rights with "it's an emergency, we're taking away your freedoms to protect everyone." Like, maybe Zeta passes some law saying that officers can search citizens without a warrant, which he justifies with the fact that Decepticon terrorism is so rampant that officers need immediate permission to conduct raids/searches. Except this is obviously a problem because people have a right to privacy, and probably the cops are super overzealous and end up arresting innocent people without cause (like idk, maybe just being friends with someone who is sympathetic to the Decepticons gets someone landed in jail? Maybe Jetfire gets arrested bc he's critical of the state and has hung out with Decepticon sympathizers before). So then Orion has an actual "are we the baddies?" moment where he wants to stop the bad people, but he realizes that his side are infringing on people's citizens and justifying police brutality for the sake of a nebulous "greater good," and that even though he and his cops were given greater power to supposedly "protect citizens," in practice they're actually doing great harm to citizens by invading their privacy, creating a surveillance state, and imprisoning people without just cause? Basically "we were given this power to stop terrorists from hurting civilians, but now we're hurting civilians too so are we actually doing any good?" Because that way Orion and his cops would ACTUALLY be in the wrong and their state monopoly on violence would be an actually widespread institutional thing where they're clearly being allowed to do bad things just because they're cops. Not just Orion investigating one singular police killing.

But with the story written as "Orion suspected the Decepticons of murdering the Senate (he's correct about this) but still investigated one of his officers to see if he committed a wrongful murder (literally him paying attention to his own side's wrongdoings, Jetfire), and it turns out the Decepticons WERE smuggling weapons and doing terrorism (Orion was correct about this)" it's just.......... like, Orion may not be morally correct, but his hunches/investigations about the suspected criminal activity were literally correct. AND HE WAS WILLING TO DO THIS INVESTIGATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. But for some reason he's still framed as if he's an asshole for this? Even though this is a point in the pre-war lore where Megatron won't back down from violence and has lost his way from his original pure intentions, so it's not like Orion can just go "let's put down our weapons and be friends and mutually trust each other to not stab each other in the back."

It just feels as if Barber's intentions to write an ACAB story where Orion is framed as being too judgmental and quick to be violent don't line up with the actual events of the story. The story is desperately trying to call Orion a hypocrite, but he really just seems as if he's reacting understandably to the events that are happening around him, so there's a real dissonance here where I don't understand why the ACAB story had the cops be right about the Decepticons committing terrorism, and I'm also supposed to see Orion as an asshole for correctly not trusting the Decepticons???

[wheresmulder]

This is way too personal for tumblr but I think I wanna leave my fiancé lmfao

[arthur-r]

being involved in local politics is exhausting