there is not one name on this list that isn’t a lifetime achievement of fucking

This guy fucked.

"sexually conflicted" he doesn't seem conflicted about it at all

glorious tag thank you @howdidyouallgetinmyroom​

“hi, i’m an author and this is my american character, chair lightbulb.  in american, ‘chair’ means to be in a position of leadership, while ‘lightbulb’ means intelligence.  yeah it’s kind of an unusual name in american. she’s always been distant from her  american heritage, but her parents wanted her name to honor the american language, while still being unique.  don’t worry, she’s very embarrassed about her heritage and it will hardly ever come up.”

“she lives with her cousin, george washington backstreet boys oreo® dq blizzard® creme.  he also doesn’t know a lot about his american culture.  this is symbolic of how i also don’t know a lot about american culture.

person of interest honestly is so hard to like, introduce to people in a way that grabs them, because explaining it ruins some of the satisfaction you get from having it unfold in front of you. but…

person of interest’s perfect summary is a swagless man remembers 9/11 so hard he creates God, who is transgender (also fuck the United States military-industrial complex)

another question that gets me is… would u be friends with your parents if they were your not your parents/ were the age you are now?? hard to tell bc who knows what they were really like at 20 something but….. we wonder. and we wonder and wonder. 

My partner: Takes me to a beautiful beach at sunset with his family.

Me: "Look! Algae mustache!"

Can't take a phychologist anywhere nice.

Try “psychologist” instead. Spelling counts people…learn how or look it up in the dictionary for a change

Hi there, @mac-3-impact !

A phycologist (with an H) is someone who studies algae.

I am a phycologist (with an H) because I study algae. That's why me putting algae on my face is the joke!

Glad to be part of your learning journey today.

OhmyGOD Okay. I picked the third option, because my family plays uno the way most people play Monopoly or Catan.

We have a time limit. For the first 45 minutes, we draw till we play. After that it drops down to draw four. If the game last for another 30 minutes it gets dropped down to a draw 1.

Now you may be wondering, "Why are your uno games lasting over an hour????" There is a simple answer: my entire family is ruthless cheaters. So the entire time we play uno, there is also another spy/heist game underneath it. Like pickpocketing each other for the hidden draw fours and hiding cards in the fridge to catch others in a false uno.

And adding on top of that, we use the custom blank wild cards they sell at Walmart. These include such hits as: passing your cards to the person on the right, throw the cards in a pot and shuffle them, first one to say a word draws 10, everybody gives the victim two cards, first one to fail at rhyming draws five.

And we stack the +draws of course.

im obsessed with you

The people who learned about the CIA abstract expressionism thing and RAN with it because it confirmed their existing biases against modern art are some of the dumbest on the internet.

Like your brain is inoperable.

Tumblr user posts about gender, Tumblr user likes abstract expressionism, abstract expression is CIA mind control (citation needed), ergo gender is CIA mind control. This is a whole new level of unwell.

I'm reading I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter again

I hope she's doing well out there somewhere and everyone who was cruel to her for this eats sand

Like really genuinely one of the best short stories anyone has written about being queer and specifically about being trans and some of the worst and dumbest people on earth looked at the title and said she must have really been a reactionary man and drove her into hiding without even reading it

Not just into hiding but into detransitioning. The author referred to Isabel Fall as being 'dead' in an interview.

Fucking shameful that people did that to her.

Incredible how many times I've begged on here and tiktok for intersex awareness and inclusion and how many people have told me directly "intersex people don't want to be included in queer discussions"

To me, an intersex person BEGGING for inclusion

I've had intersex mutuals on tiktok post about their own experiences and had dyadic queer people swoop in to tell them intersex people don't want to be included in the queer community

Why the fuck are yall like this? Yall are so comfortable parroting exclusionist radfem bullshit if it's about intersex people

"Intersex people aren't queer" is a conservative and radfem take. I've met exactly two intersex people who believed that and they were terfs. There are so many more intersex people who are begging yall to include us and to pay attention to our genocide.

But we aren't as important as everyone else I guess :)

What I have always heard is "some intersex people want to be included in the queer community, and so they are queer, and some don't, so they aren't". It seems like a pretty reasonable take to me, what do you think?

That's true with literally anyone who falls under the queer umbrella by definition. There are intersex people who refuse to identify as intersex, even.

My point is, in what world are replies like that useful when intersex people are begging for solidarity and inclusion? Why is it when we speak about the genocide that has erased us so thoroughly, the bills being pushed to classify us as disabled and therefore unable to use either male or female bathrooms, the efforts to mutilate and erase and kill us off. I get "but some intersex people don't wanna be queer :)" like cool, okay. Sounds like those intersex people are privileged to not feel impacted by anti-queer legislation and anti-queer violence. We aren't talking about them.

There is no point bringing up that some intersex people don't want to be considered queer. We are treated queer our bodies are queer and we are being outlawed from public in 2023. Stop replying to those of us begging for solidarity with "not all intersex people"

ESPECIALLY if you're not intersex

It’s especially terrible for this messaging to be spread when the anti-trans legislators are putting clauses in their bills that make sure that they can continue to mutilate and abuse us as infants. We need to be a part of this. We are a part of it. Even if some intersex people don’t identify or label themselves queer, the world has put us in the same boat.

It's not JUST clauses to continue mutilating infants.

I believe it's Kentucky that is voting to classify intersex people as disabled specifically to bar us from any restroom that isn't one of those gender neutral family bathrooms. This would also bar any intersex person from women's shelters and domestic violence shelters.

And any of these bills that affects trans people on the basis of appearance will affect intersex people who are visibly intersex, like me.

I'm also an afab intersex woman looking into testosterone - my body responds better to T than E. If I was still living in Texas and not New Mexico, I'd not only be unable to access the hormones my body requires, but I'd be on a fash list somewhere.

It's important to think of intersex infants - but equally important to remember we as adults have been driven out of the public eye, forced into "normalizing" sort of treatments and at risk of violence and discrimination if we LOOK intersex.

Customer: CAR MODEL NAME IS CORONA AND YEAR OF CAR IS A 69 DMV: 69, SEXUAL REFERENCE Verdict: ACCEPTED

Below the poll is a series of animal images labeled A through J. A is the least close to the birds we have today; J is the closest. If you encountered these animals in the wild, which would you call birds? If you pick a higher up option, then that means you consider all the below ones birds as well - so if you pick A, then BCDEFGHIJ are all birds. If you pick J, only J is a bird.

A:

B:

C:

D:

E:

F:

G:

H:

I:

J:

PLEASE REBLOG THIS SO IT CAN LEAVE PALAEOBLR. I NEED PEOPLE WHO DON'T RECOGNIZE THESE ANIMALS ON SIGHT TO VOTE.

I apologize to all of y'all with vision impairments for whom this poll is inaccessible. Alas, this is an experiment, and I cannot name the taxa. Thank you.

All alt text includes artist attribution; I did not make these pictures myself.

what if I drew the silly website warrior cat gijinkas because we got a new site migration going. what then.

got too silly

Shamelessly poaching someone elses idea, social media poll but the options arent solely geared 2wards 15 year olds

Reblog 4 a bigger sample size dadada you know how it is w polls

I had this work friend at my previous job who was gay. Lovely kid, from a kind of traditional family.

He hadn't told anyone he was gay, because he was scared of being judged. But... thanks to the resident lesbian, he was outed to everyone without his knowledge because she clocked him and asked everyone about it while he was off work.

Everyone then put the clues they'd noticed on their own together rather than what they were doing beforehand, that being remaining blissfully and politely unaware of how his variety of behaviours linked back to him being gay.

Had I already clocked him? Absolutely. But I should not have been told about him, before he chose to come out to me.

This pride month, remember that even in the most accepting of environments, even if you personally feel comfortable being out where you are, that doesnt mean someone else around you is too. Do not assume that someone is comfortable with everyone knowing, or that everyone knows.

Because we might not have known. That person might not have told us yet. We might have been politely ignoring the signs because we didn't want to assume.

It's not your place to tell everyone someone else's business.

The YouTube content creator community was wracked by macabre tragedy this morning after Amelia Bedelia was instructed to hang streamers for a six year old’s birthday party

am i having a stronk?

*strok

*stornk

*stroke

Wait I forgot I could have just edited the post

QUEST-CE QU'Y'ALL DOING AUJOURD'HUI

qu’est-ce qu’y’all’d’ve done hier?

i think beyond normal sex-negativity literally everything trans women do is seen as disgusting and perverted. from innocent stuff like feeling good in the clothes you wear, to even vanilla and basic sexual stuff

like something crucial about mousegirlgate was that it was literally a pun. sex-negativity is awful but like, it was a joke which was so innocuous and non-sexual that the backlash was completely ludicrous

On a Wednesday morning in May, Hannah got a call from her lawyer—there was a warrant out for her husband’s arrest. Her thoughts went straight to her kids. They were going to come home from school and their father would be gone. “It burned me,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He hasn’t done anything to get his bond revoked, and they couldn’t prove he had.”

Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using it for the past month to surveil not only Hannah’s husband but also the devices of everyone in their family. To protect their privacy, WIRED is not disclosing their surname or the names of individual family members. Hannah agreed to use her nickname.Prosecutors in Monroe County this spring charged Hannah’s husband with possession of child sexual abuse material—a serious crime that she says he did not commit and to which he pleaded not guilty. Given the nature of the charges, the court ordered that he not have access to any electronic devices as a condition of his pretrial release from jail. To ensure he complied with those terms, the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law.

In near real time, probation officers are being fed screenshots of everything Hannah’s family views on their devices. From images of YouTube videos watched by her 14-year-old daughter to online underwear purchases made by her 80-year-old mother-in-law, the family’s entire digital life is scrutinized by county authorities. “I’m afraid to even communicate with our lawyer,” Hannah says. “If I mention anything about our case, I’m worried they are going to see it and use it against us.”

Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar market of “accountability” apps sold to churches and parents as a tool to police online activity. For a monthly fee, the app monitors every single thing a user does on their devices, then sends the data it collects, including screenshots, to an “ally” or “accountability partner,” who can review the user’s online activities.

For Hannah’s family, their Covenant Eyes “allies” are two probation officers in Monroe County’s Pretrial Services Program charged with scrutinizing their web activity and ensuring that Hannah’s husband does not violate the terms of his bond while using one of his family members’ devices.

Covenant Eyes doesn’t permit its software to be used in a “premeditated legal setting,” such as monitoring people on probation, according to its terms of service. But public spending documents, court records, and interviews show that courts in at least five US states have used Covenant Eyes to surveil the devices of people who are awaiting trial or released on parole.

Neither Covenant Eyes nor multiple officials in Monroe County responded to repeated requests for comment and detailed questions about the app’s monitoring.

While the use of Covenant Eyes in a criminal-legal setting likely only represents a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people under court-ordered electronic surveillance, the stakes are still high for those required to use it. The app’s accuracy could determine whether a loved one lives at home or behind bars. Legal experts say that its use raises serious constitutional and due process concerns.

“This is the most extreme type of monitoring that I’ve seen,” says Pilar Weiss, founder of the National Bail Fund Network, a network of over 90 community bail and bond funds across the United States. “It’s part of a disturbing trend where deep surveillance and social control applications are used pretrial with little oversight.”

[...]

Jonathan Manes, an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office, says the surveillance Hannah’s family faces likely violates several of their constitutional rights. “This feels like an extraordinarily intrusive violation of the family’s First Amendment rights to be able to access the Internet and communicate without being monitored,” he says. Manes adds that because the software effectively enables continuous and suspicionless searches of the devices of people who haven’t been charged with a crime, the family’s Fourth Amendment rights were potentially violated.

Lastly, Manes points out that by indiscriminately surveilling whatever the phone is displaying, the app could collect sensitive data that includes the family’s communications with their lawyers, as Hannah feared. “It’s interfering with his right to speak in confidence with his attorney,” he says of Hannah’s husband. “It’s impeding his ability to prepare a defense and exercise that Sixth Amendment right.”

“This strikes me as quite chilling,” Manes adds. “It’s what happens when someone’s home becomes their jail cell, and now everyone they live with is subject to the same kind of surveillance as the person who is charged.”

Several legal experts expressed concern about the monitoring conditions imposed by the judge in Hannah’s husband’s case. But Phyllis Emerick, the chief deputy public defender in Monroe County, argues that because Hannah’s husband and his family consented to the surveillance, they gave up their rights to privacy. “He agreed that he would not access electronic devices in his household in exchange for release,” she says. “It was the family’s choice to continue living with him.”

Weiss, of the National Bail Fund Network, disagrees with the idea that any type of surveillance is permissible so long as a person agrees to it to avoid jail time. “Sure, they consented to this, but it’s at the barrel of a gun,” she says.

When I read the full article, it got even worse. This is absolutely frightful, and it's forcing the victim of this overreaching surveillance to pay a third party for the government to spy on the family. Very clearly violating the 4th and 8th Amendments.

DO NOT LET SOCIAL MEDIA TURN YOU INTO AN AMERICAN

As an American: Seriously, please don’t

ok well i don't

"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

This is a big problem in other English speaking countries. I live in the UK, in England no less, and there was a point in my childhood where my brain would bring up 911 as the emergency number. And on top of having our culture's stomped on we have people making fun of the way we do things and justifying it as "well you deserve it because you're English" like the backwater underfunded poverty stricken areas people mock have ever had any power. There's an Americanisation of food, and culture, an import of social justice issues as the American understanding of things is superimposed over our own history by kids who mean well but have learned all their vocabulary from Americans. We share many things but these issues are not the same and treating them as the same can be detrimental to the change people want to bring. (For example our most diverse prime minister's have all been Conservative, and the last one to bring up God while in office was "left wing" Labour. Even the colours of left and right political parties are different here.) Poverty is experienced differently. Class is experienced differently. Race is experienced differently. Racism is experienced differently.

And half the time if you even talk about it you have god damn 19 year olds hopping up and down screaming like toddlers because you're not doing it right for their needs.

If people are jumping to the idea they should call 911 rather than whatever it is in their country, That's A Problem and people should say so.

--An American

We actually have it set up in Australia so that if you forget it's 000 here and dial 911 instead, it will still connect you to the emergency centre. That's how much of a problem if was.

I've had to put actual effort into making sure my child, who lives in the UK, learns to speak its own language and not what Americans speak. Its mad I had to put limits on American media consumption. I never had to do that with ANY other countries media. Not even the dominance of RP in English media did as much damage as American media did. As if its not hard enough trying to keep regional dialects alive. Theres kids growing up with American accents ffs! (And yes you could criticise the parents and screen time but this aint happening with other accents. I think that's important to recognise)

And I am forever having to remind people what country they live in whenever politics come up. Its not uncommon for people to *only* know American politics and not even realise it. They have just learned thats "the way things are". And the same with law! Trying to tell their own solicitors to do things the "proper" (american) way! Brits walking around talking about their constitutional rights! First amendment! Its fucking ridiculous! People thinking "oh I know my rights" and woops now you're arrested because you can't actually talk to the police like that and your silence can actually be used against you.

I've seen multiple British poc be torn apart online for discussing their lived experiences, and even other British poc back up that harassment because they've been taught to think about things the American way, so the American racists attacking British poc must be right! Trying to discuss any non-american race politics (for the benefit of the fucking opressed) is always inevitably derailed because how dare we not fit the whole worlds experiences into the tiny boxes americans can relate too. Which in turn just destroys people's ability to educate and give people the vocabulary they need, which then deprives people of the understanding and connection they need to process and deal with their oppression.

Thankfully things have changed in the past few years but there was a time it was almost impossible to find (free) educational resources for BSL because well, why learn that when you can learn ASL?

Even when trying to engage with other languages and cultures, its ruined by American culture. My kid abandoned its language studies for years because it just could not deal with the demand of having to not only learn a new language but also learn American to use apps like duolingo. How discouraging for a young child to be told over and over that they are wrong for using the correct, very common but not American word.

And it just permeates everything. I lost my native dialect to classism and fought so hard to get it back. And yet I have to keep diluting it online so I can just talk about things else everything I post will be derailed by americans cooing over the silly little brit using weird words instead of like. Enaging with what I say in a meaningful way. Or I'll get threatened with doxxing by some bratty teenagers because I used a BRITISH colloquialism that coincidentally occurred in an American dialect and they just can't get their heads round the fact america doesn't own everything.

And yeah the 911 thing is a fucking problem. I've encountered near zero little kids these days who will remember 999 first no matter how much the adults around them try to help them.

keep seeing Temu ads on here so just to share cause idk if people are widely aware