“this is the hill you want to die on?” oh no i just love arguing. i fully intend to leave this hill once it gets boring. sorry for the confusion!
idk looks fine to me
date of origin: 31st of may, 2013.
reminder this pride month that disabled people in the US on SSI and SSDI do not have the same marriage equality as people not on SSI and SSDI. its called the marriage penalty.
by getting married, a disabled person can lose their income, benefits, and health insurance.
if a disabled person marries an able bodied person, and combined their assets are $3000 or over they will lose all benefits, including medicaid (health insurance).
if a disabled person marries a disabled person, their assistance is lowered 25%.
we don’t have marriage equality until all disabled marriages are equal.
i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways
a) i forgot how fun this is
b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!
c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"
d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot
me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?
teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.
me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.
I hope random brands turn their logo rainbow for no goddamn reason. I hope they do it even if its a desperate bid to seem supportive. I dont fucking care if its shallow. Bud light made a limited edition rainbow can and white men with big trucks took machine guns on them. Target runs a line of admittedly cringe rainbow merchandise and is the subject of domestic terrorism. A random company going rainbow for a month is shallow but its showing the people that want to kill us that they can't win. The pride flag will be everywhere and itll piss them off and theres nothing they can do about it. No matter how much violence and hatred they dish out, they'll be too many goddamn companies to boycott, to threaten. You dont have to buy shit from them, just use rainbow capitalism against them.
And speaking of scurvy, I am eternally amused by the thing where some ancient form of healing that was born in a time where people didn't know exactly how the human body works, or what causes it to stop working sometimes, that still somehow worked. Like how so many old folk medicinal plants were listed as a cure for various ailments that - from a modern view - are clearly just symptoms of scurvy, and the plant itself is rich in vitamin C.
I recall reading some story, no recollection of the exact time or place, where the king of a large empire suffered from constant horrible headaches and was incapable of falling asleep unless drugged or blackout drunk. Sick of taking temporary fixes to dull the pain and having to be sedated every night, he called up some old sage healer who was said to know how to fix things nobody else could explain, and the healer heard his symptoms and went
"Hmm. You spend too much time being a king. Your skull is packed so full of kingly thoughts that they don't all fit in there and that's why your head is in pain. You need to spend time not being a king." And prescribed him to schedule three days every month where he must go to a peasant village where nobody knows he's the king, live with a family there under a fake name and identity, work in the rice fields with them, eating the same food and sleeping on the same mats. Absolutely nobody is allowed to address him as the king, speak to him of any royal or political matters, and he himself is not allowed to think any kingly thoughts or think of himself as the king.
And naturally, this worked. Taking a regular scheduled break from a highly stressful office desk job to completely decompress, paired with physical exercise in the form of hard but simple physical labour, plain and simple food and Just Not Thinking About Your Fucking Job All The Time does help chronic stress, which here was worded as "spending too much time being a king clogs your brain."
Sometimes you do have ghosts in your blood, though I'm not entirely sure whether you should do cocaine about it.
I still think tvtropes is fun to read :)
alternatively, not bad or brilliant analysis but a secret third thing (just a long straightforward list describing things that happened in a story that is somehow still a blast to read through)
sometimes my partner does funny things but he does them quietly and i don’t notice them right away and i guess that’s just gonna translate to tumblr now too
There are political newspaper comics that aren't this succinct
kendallroy-deactivated20210425
also with all due respect the main reason the left loses so much is that y’all refuse to compromise on the language and messaging you use to speak to voters. i swear if you rebranded “defund the police” as “invest in community safety from the ground up” most white suburban moderates would be like “that sounds great” and i know that because that’s how i’ve literally reframed it to white suburban moderates who think “defund the police” means we’re going to live in a scary lawless mad max world
kendallroy
like maybe it comes across as mealy-mouthed and corny to people steeped in online cynicism but just to be clear, this is the country that wouldn’t eat french fries after 9/11 so we renamed them “freedom fries” and everyone was suddenly cool again. americans are not, by and large, super sophisticated about this stuff
kendallroy
okay, so, as a followup…. basically, i joined this “christians against trump” fb group for a work research project in 2017 and just ended up never leaving, bc it turned out to be such a great experiment in just… observing and listening and talking to people and figuring out the language that works! so like, as a basic glossary for talking to the well-meaning anti-trump moderate dems in your life about progressive policies:
- instead of “defund the police,” say “invest in community safety” and emphasize things like participatory budgeting giving you power over where YOUR taxes go and reallocating funds to after-school programs, social services, and food pantries
- instead of “abolish ice,” say “immigration reform” and “create a new agency for immigration and citizenship services”
- instead of “medicare for all,” say “universal health care” or even just really harp on making healthcare affordable and accessible to everyone
- instead of “the green new deal” (which was a great piece of messaging in the first place before it became inextricably tied up with aoc’s theatrics), talk about what an effective piece of climate legislation will create, not what it will destroy. when you say “ban fracking” or “ban fossil fuels” or “reduce methane emissions in agriculture” people go “YOU WON’T TAKE MY JOB OR MY FARTING COWS.” climate is really an area where being able to reframe it through the language of capitalism helps. say “let’s give tax breaks to farmers, especially small family farms who are already being squeezed out by the big guys, so they can invest in the future of their business” and other noise-shaped air stuff like that. instead of “ban fracking” talk about the jobs that renewable energy will create in communities that have been left behind by our reliance on foreign oil. i mean, fuck, the phrase “climate change” can be a real problem when you’re talking to the whole country because of how effective the “climate and weather are the same things” and “climate change is a hoax” disinfo campaigns have been over the past 20 years or so - but when you talk about “conserving our natural resources” and all that teddy roosevelt, ranger rick shit, it just comes across different.
- instead of “abortion rights”…. listen, you know i hate equivocating about abortion but at the end of the day, when you’re talking to people who are probably anti-abortion for religious reasons but will still vote democrat because they’re not a single-issue anti-abortion voter, don’t say “abortion (on demand without apology etc),” say “the constitutional right to privacy” or “the right to make personal medical decisions without the government intervening.” fearmonger about attacks on abortion the way sarah palin fearmongered about how obamacare would lead to “death panels” deciding whether your grandma would live or die! and if you’re talking to someone who just doesn’t feel that strongly about abortion because yada yada roe is settled who cares, talk about how “empowering women to decide when they start a family fuels economic growth and leads to more wanted children growing up in stable, happy two-parent homes” and so on.
- inversely, instead of “abolish the death penalty,” talk about “saving the lives of the innocent” and “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” if you’re talking to a christian and honestly just look at the libertarian arguments against the death penalty and ape some of those - cost to the taxpayer, high wrongful conviction rates as a reflection of government incompetence. honestly, the libertarian right is frequently aligned with the left on criminal justice issues and i know we all love to dunk on libertarians but the language they use is pretty appealing to moderates who might be coming from a more conservative background or region where it’s just normal
- instead of “democratic socialism,” just talk about, like, values - ending poverty and hunger, living wages and better educational opportunities, creating jobs and protecting ordinary working people and families and putting money back in their pockets and creating a stable economy. people really do vote based on kitchen table issues and you can really make a moral appeal on the rest.
- instead of “tax the rich,” say “cut taxes.” period. never talk about raising taxes. not on the rich, not on the middle class, not for any reason whatsoever, even if you’re saying “if we raise taxes on billionaires we can give everyone a pony.” i don’t care how much you want to tax billionaires, don’t fucking bring it up. i hate bezos as much as everyone but we live in america, where everyone is simply a temporarily embarrassed billionaire and convinced that taxing the ultra-rich will somehow hurt them too. don’t expect middle-of-the-road normies to get on board with the “i’ll pay more taxes if it means other people have health care” thing you see from avowed liberals and lefties, because they will not, i’m sorry. frankly *****i***** have no interest in paying more taxes because nyc already taxes you out the nose regardless of where you are on the socioeconomic scale and if someone suggested i should pay more, even if it meant paying less on private services in the long run, i would simply be like, “nope!” so like, yeah, obviously the goal is to eliminate corporate tax loopholes and tax the ultra-rich at a higher rate while cutting tax burdens on everyone else, but what you want to say is stuff like “small business owners shouldn’t pay more in taxes than the companies like apple and amazon that are already squeezing them out” and “we’ll cut taxes and frivolous government spending,” period, no embellishment. “making american companies pay american taxes” is a succinct catchphrase i like to use.
- instead of “defund/spend less on the military,” say “why is the government spending so much on building outdated outdated tanks and submarines from 50 years ago and so little on services for veterans? we need to revitalize our military spending so that we can spend less on safer, more modern equipment, preserve those manufacturing jobs, and make sure that veterans get the health care and job opportunities they deserve.” get it? like, republicans have been selling the “cut waste, cut taxes, cut spending” line for decades because it sounds good and people really respond to it. unfortunately, one of the many cursed legacies of ronald reagan is that most people still think that balancing a government budget is like balancing a checkbook, and obviously that’s not true but it lends a lot of familiar comparisons and metaphors, so like… use them.
- don’t equivocate on “black lives matter” - it’s too important and too urgent - instead, give the non-activist liberals you already know the accessible language they can use to help normalize the phrase “black lives matter” in their own lives and encourage them to do so. they won’t convert the full-on blue lives matter cult members and other assorted balls-to-the-wall racists, but there are people in the middle who just need to hear a targeted explanation of why that isn’t a combative or controversial statement, and that totally depends on the individual… there’s the very basic 101-logicky “if saying ‘save the whales’ doesn’t mean you think dolphins can kick rocks, or if saying ‘spinach is a vegetable’ doesn’t mean that you think lettuce isn’t, why does ‘black lives matter’ imply that other lives don’t?” and i saw someone in the christians against trump group cite a brene brown quote they said (“In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.”) that made it click for them and they like to use to make it click for others, and there’s also this example that i think is probably pretty resonant for christians:
the point is, as with all the rest of this, that there are a lot of people out there who are alienated by the language (because there has been a billion-dollar media propaganda machine working overtime to make the language as alienating as possible) but not by the content of the argument. the right is SO good at messaging to its base by speaking their language, dog whistles and all. but because the democratic party is a coalition of moderates and liberals and leftists, you really have to be strategic about your messaging in a way that the right doesn’t. frankly, that’s why joe biden won - he made those same broad appeals to morality and civility and unity and prosperity that people want to hear.
i realize that everyone feels that if you have the moral high ground, you shouldn’t have to put in work to persuade people because they should automatically grasp that you’re right, but like i said above, this is america, and it doesn’t work like that. we need to talk to people, not in buzzwords or in highly stigmatized language that risks turning them off immediately, but in language that already means something to them. if you want to persuade people you have to actually make things sound appealing to them, whether that means evoking warm and fuzzy mental images or appealing to their principles and moral convictions and religious beliefs or just doing your best to sound like the adults in the room. you gotta do this stuff to build a majority instead of just a plurality within this party, because that’s just what we need to win.
If you want to see this side of the argument in action: witness Dan Price on Fox News reframing Universal Basic Income as “taking money out of the government and putting it in the hands of everyday Americans,” which is just. *chef’s kiss* Speaking as someone raised by and around conservatives, they will eat that shit UP.
I think a big moral in all of this is that you can’t expect the VAST majority of Americans to be educated or knowledgeable about these kinds of issues. I don’t even mean that as a dig, just a reality. Most people, living their lives, working their jobs, do NOT use the internet for activism. They don’t read about these issues in detail. They don’t really understand WHAT those little phrases mean or WHY they should want them. Which means IF you want to be an activist and you if you want to get those people on board- you gotta get on their level and EXPLAIN it to them without the slogans. Which is work, and you are not obligated to spend your time doing it, or doing it all the time, or doing it with radicalized Trumpers who aren’t here in good faith; but it is THE work, ya know?
See also: Republicans have mastered this in the opposite direction. They take something Democrats or liberals want, reduce it to a Scary Soundbite, and done, now people hate it.
See: critical race theory
Critical race theory is actually a law school level class about how legal systems can disadvantage people of color in the United States. It’s been around for forty years.
Republicans have conflated it with “indoctrinating children to think being white is bad and hating America.” Moral panic ensues.
The Affordable Care Act becomes “Government takeover of Healthcare.” Etc etc etc
People need to be meet where they’re at with accessible language that understands the audience or else you’ll lose them
My mother is in favor of “universal healthcare” but against “socialized medicine.” The language used for these things really matters
I got the Top 4.47% on this English Vocabulary test
I’m in the last 47.33%
I shouldn’t have taken that test
Am I fucking stupid LMAO
*blushes* 0.23%
So I'm halfway through Gideon the Ninth and how come nobody has told me about Dulcinea?? She's so good, you'd think people would go bonkers over her
Ah.
Ngl ive had Gideon the ninth in my to read pile on my kindle app for months and this post is what inspired me to finally open it now
Ah, I see.
......well now I'm curious.
The opposite of “only vaginal intercourse is sex” isn’t “all sexual contact is sex.”
It’s “sex is what you and your partner want it to be.”
The opposite of “sex is a huge commitment” isn’t “sex is meaningless.”
It’s “what does sex mean to you?”
The opposite of “sex exists to make babies and keep husbands” isn’t “sex exists to give pleasure.”
It’s “sex exists for the purpose you use it for.”
The opposite of “you should be ashamed of sex” isn’t “you should be shameless about sex.”
It’s “sex is a thing people do.”
abandonedandurbex
Amusement park in Berlin left to nature’s devices [640x480]
It was “left to nature’s devices” because the owner got caught importing a roller coaster with 180 kilos of peruvian cocaine inside it
The park went bankrupt and shut down first, and then the former owner turned to drug-smuggling. But he did indeed try to get 180 kilos of cocaine into Germany hidden in a theme park ride.
christ
This post took 3 years off my life
I’ll take “words that perfectly describe the Académie Française but which would literally kill them to hear” for 500, Alex.
@ every parent in the world: yes your kid is special because every child is special but they are not specialer than every other child so please be normal about them
Some parents have done what I can only describe as fandomize their child where they’ve taken the child and altered it in their mind to make a cooler version that fits their specific interests, and now sometimes I have to remind them of the canon material.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a youth theater director and teacher. Every audition season is a personal ordeal.
Target audience reached
i saw a post that's like "stop supporting the nimona movie because it was written by scabs! how dare a movie come out during the wga strike!" BRO.....the movie was written a billion years ago. it is no longer in production. the animation is finished. the movie is ONE month away from being released. the movie is locked. how was is going to be written by SCABS when the strike wasn't even happening when it was written. that post was truly spoken by someone who has 0 idea how productions work and just want to sound so progressive when Nothing they're saying makes sense.
"why isn't ND steveson listed as a writer? must be because he supports the wga strike and was therefore removed!" dude. talk about a reach. ND is AT THIS VERY MOMENT vocally supportive of the movie, and the reason he's not listed as a writer is (get this) BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WRITE THE MOVIE. he wrote the source material, but not the movie. it's not that hard to understand.
obviously this is just one person's icy cold false takes in the sea of the internet but golly gee am i sometimes very concerned about people on the internet