#worst country

[toenzy]

Your health secretary is an anti-vaxxer.

Joke of a country.

[redvelvetwishtree]

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[wwillywonka]

"A lie?" "An error."

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

[magicaldragons]

LMAOOO, why does every kdrama i start either have a potential gay ship or turn out to be queer-coded.

[mecachrome]

OSCAR: This is new, isn't it? Like quite new? LANDO: That's not new. It's quite old. 

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[proteusolm]

Discussed the "would you rather a run into a bear or a man when alone in the woods" question with my friend who is a black bear technician, and I have a lot of experience working in remote areas with a high black bear population myself. She and I both were instantly in agreement that: 1. If I'm in the woods deep in bear country, the bear is simply much more expected and less startling to run into than the man. It would be something we are prepared for and fully unsurprised by. 2. Bear safety is pretty straightforward, we know and have training in their behaviour, how to avoid conflict, what a black bear that is trying to hunt you looks like, and how to maximize your chances of getting out of the situation safely in the incredibly rare case of an attack. There's no equivalent handy step by step guide to respond to a dude attack.

Most people approach the question as a feminist one, thinking more about risk of violence from a man, but neither of us really even expressed much concern about the dude beyond knowing from experience that it is startling and unsettling to run into someone when in a remote wooded area far from any trails or residences. As two animal autistics that studied wildlife management in college and have spent a lot of time in the woods of northern Ontario, we both missed the intended point of the debate, instead coming to a stance solidly rooted in "why would be I be upset to see a bear when I'm knowingly in the bear's home?"

[yelenadelova]

The most frustrating part of this isn’t even Trump, look I’ve known he’s fucking sucked for years now. The absolutely gut wrenching part is having to come face to face with the fact that a huge section of the country I live in doesn’t give a shit about any of the values and things I hold dear. I’m upset with this country, with the people.

[feluka]

the sisyphean task of explaining egypt's military rule to foreigners every time something happens to a monument that's famous enough for the rest of the world to care about while we have to deal with this shit on a daily basis

[nanami-is-nanamean]

HS!gojo crushing hard on nanami is a comedy of errors and miscommunication. Every move he makes to try and connect with him flops spectacularly and its actually a wonder how he doesnt drop the bag

He thinks nanami is into astrology so he memorizes his and everyones star charts and becomes a bit of an annoying expert on it, when in reality he likes astronomy and is really into the history behind planets and stars and the study behind them

He thinks nanami is into mythology and thank goodness he's The Top Sorcerer because he can just easily peruse thru his clan houses many libraries to find out the origins of different yokai and spell, but actually nanami is into european and danish mythology and has been getting into those to reconnect with his danish roots

He knows that nanami likes bread and cooking so he gets really into baking to let them have something to talk about and makes him all sorts of sweet breads and milk breads and pastries, and completely forgets about the fact that oh shit. Right. Nanami hates sweets. And he just made an entire croquembouche.

(Cut to gojo crying in his room shoving cream puff in his mouth while shoko and geto try and fail to both comfort and not laugh at him behind his door)

(Dw, nanami recognizes that hes trying) (even if he keeps failing. Miserably.)

[toenzy]

sucks that despite living a whole ocean away, and only really sharing a language, I have to shit bricks waiting for the result of the US election.

I can't actually imagine what it must be like to be stuck living there. You're all in my thoughts, I hope it goes as well for you as it can :/

[tazmiilly]

new local man is tired from 4 day drive that he did....by himself...

[thapunqueen]

so i watched all 3 trolls movies in 1 sitting the other day and i uh

FALLOUT TROLL VEGAS IS ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT RN I FEEL CRAZY... bonus doodads:

[lazylittledragon]

happy deathiversary to the queen. can we do the rest of the bastards now

[3liza]

i don't feel strongly enough about this to get into an argument so please don't, but I read in it's entirety the post that purports to refute the "abstract expressionism was funded by the CIA as part of the culture war ("psyop")" claim, and it doesn't actually refute any of the facts, which are that the CIA was spending a lot of money on abstract expressionism during the cold war. because that actually happened. the post just goes on to add that the CIA was spending money on a lot of stuff during the cold war as part of selling American cultural Exceptionalism and supremacy. which is also true and happened. and the huffy tone of the post is clearly aimed at tiresome people attempting to say abex is bad because it was a cultural movement explicitly supported by the CIA, which is completely fair to get annoyed about, but it was just reasonably humorous to me that the position of the post itself, or how I understood it, was that "the CIA interest in and support of abex wasn't exceptional to abex, the CIA just does that kind of thing and here's a list of other things they have potentially invalidated by their meddling". like I think I completely understand what their argument is and I agree with it, it was just a sort of funny example (to me) of a post that is going to convince absolutely no one who does get farther than the headline, and doesnt just make up the rest of the post in their head as (they assume) another addition to the "net zero information" Tumblr post archive. and I know this because I am constantly telling people that Thing They Hate Especially is only exactly as corrupt as all the other stuff they think is still Pure and Normal and let me tell you, it does not get a lot of converts. like I said I just thought it was funny