troacctid

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advice from dad

So, my Dad is a 73-year-old Mexican man who has lived here since he was 16. He was in Watts during the riots in 1965; in 1992, when I was in LA, as soon as the Rodney King verdict was announced, he called me, told me what was coming, told me how to stay safe. He has survived horrible living conditions, being kidnapped, physical abuse, prejudice, discrimination. He learned English, got his green card, pays his taxes, works hard, and has three daughters. 

I thought he would be devastated today.

But he wasn’t.

He saw that I was sad and angry, and he asked me why, pretending he had no idea. I almost started crying. And then he said, “no se me chicopale.” 

It means, don’t lose heart. Don’t give in to despair.

I asked him why he wasn’t upset.

He said, basically, “The world has always been this way. There are always people who are afraid, who are racist, who are awful. This is not new. And it will never go away. He won. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is what we can do. Fight for what matters to us. Take care of each other. And don’t lose heart. And here, I got these unsalted cashews for you and a bag of jamaica drink mix and can you show me how to use the new washing machine because it’s not working.”

And, for reasons I can’t articulate, I feel a little better. 

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A useful article.

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"He filled the cabinet with his uncles and brothers and distant cousins. And all of City Hall was full of swine!"

Phineas and Ferb S4 E20, "The Klimpaloon Ultimatum"

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My dream for the election is that it’s definitive. I want a 2012-style Election Day where everyone built it up beforehand to possibly be close but then the results start rolling in and it was like “Oh, nevermind. It’s obviously Obama. Everyone go to bed.”

I just want voters to put a stake right through the heart of Trumpism so that it crumbles to ash before our eyes. That’s the dream.

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I am very tired of people using “my brother in christ” i didn’t vote for him. Has allah not shown you better carpenters? Has tumblr not given you greater metaphors? My neighbors-in-peace my matadors-in-the-comments, my humanitarians-in-humility, i beg of you, can we not find a way to call out to one another, soul-to-soul, without involving Josh?

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The 101 worst things about Trump’s shambolic presidency

Some people seem to have forgotten how bad a president Trump was, so I made a list of the worst things about the Trump presidency, in no particular order. Please share and add anything I missed.

Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.

Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is …

Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of how …

Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.

When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.

According to Trump’s former acting Homeland Security secretary, Trump proposed selling the entire island of Puerto Rico.

Trump said there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the January 6 Capitol attack.

Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. All of the criminally false business filings he was convicted of were committed while he was president.

Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who he knew would overturn Roe v. Wade. As a result, 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives under an abortion ban.

[NOTE: I tried to post the whole list, but it exceeded Tumblr's character limit! See this linked source post for all 101.]

There's so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to late-night tweet binges.

I can understand why a lot of people want to block all this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.

And remember this, too: Trump would have done far worse but for people around him who refused to follow his orders. If he gets another shot at the White House, he’ll make sure he’s surrounded by lapdogs who will do whatever he wants.

We sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.

— Robert Reich via Substack

(source)

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“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

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I don't know where it came from, but several years ago this idea popped into my head unbidden, and for some reason it tickles me. I don't know if it's funny, but I like it and I made it into a zine, I hope you enjoy it.

It lays out really nicely as 3-up spreads on A4 paper, so you can print, staple and fold it, then cut it into 3 zines. It made it really easy to print up 20 of them to trade at this art social thing I went to

micron, rotring and sharpie on printer paper, coloured and screentoned digitally, 2024

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Macbeth and Saruman better watch the fuck out.

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i believe "nothingburger" is the cowardly enemy of the humble and kind everything bagel

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So there's something I want to say re: intentionally withholding your vote, and I want to do it without coming across as condescending or dismissive.

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

All this to say: In my direct experience as an organizer, abstaining from the vote sends a message. That message is not "You need to try harder to win my vote." It's "Don't waste time on me."

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Gonna show this post and all the notes to everyone who says those words are totally gender-neutral

do you think a dude ever had sex with another guy

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got chased by a skeleton but when they caught me they just gave me a kiss and hug. turns out it was an xoskeleton.