It’s wild to see a church doing something actually Christian like. Good for them.

debt jubilee ceremony

let this become a thing pls pls

When I was twenty I was almost shot by a police officer because of my mental illness. I was peeling bark off a tree on public property to calm my anxiety.

Two officers pulled up very quietly in a squad car while I had my back turned. They did not announce their arrival. When I noticed them approaching me by the sound of their footsteps, I was frightened and reached for my phone to record them. They thought I was going for a weapon and one reached for his pistol. I put my hands up.

They illegally detained me and took my ID to run a background check. The one who had started to draw his gun on me asked me if I’d had any thoughts of hurting myself or others.

My background check came up clean. They released me and told me I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I went to my car and bawled my eyes out, thinking about how I’d almost died for the crime of “weird behavior.”

Don’t give these pigs a registry of the mentally ill. They’re already trying to kill us for no good reason.

Linden Barker, Elijah McClain, Ricardo Hayes, Osaze Osage, Isaias Cervantes, Eric Briceño, Jason Harrison, Stacy Kenny, Michael Eugene Pierce, Walter Wallace Jr., Ricardo Muñoz, Angelo Quinto, Keith Vidal, Porter Burks, Michael Noel, Sean Moore, Herman Whitfield III, Michelle Cusseaux, Brianna Grier, Jada Johnson, Irvo Noel Otieno, Christian Glass, Maddie Hofmann.

Not trying. Do.

One fallacy, I think, of anti piracy arguments is that a lot of them seem to assume that if I'm unable to pirate something I'm going to pay for it instead rather than going "oh! that's a terrible shame" and then quickly forgetting about it

"If you were not pirating [media] you'd be paying for it and therefore piracy is evil 😡" actually if I were not pirating that media I would be thinking about something else. I have made the decision to not spend any money on this and even god himself could not shake it

I feel like this bears repeating: the reason that manufacturing has moved out of the US and into other, poorer countries is that labor is less expensive in those countries, because labor laws are worse. It's cheaper for companies to produce things in Bangladesh because in Bangladesh you can pay your workers less and extract longer hours from them and generally treat them worse. This means that if you're an American who has been hurt by manufacturing moving out of the US, your most important allies are labor activists in the countries to which manufacturing has moved.

The US achieved the labor protections it did (like basic safety regulations, the 8-hour workday, and the weekend) through the work of unions and of the broad left-wing coalition that was the labor movement of the early twentieth century. These rights are among the principle reasons that labor is expensive here. If you don't want labor to be moved abroad, it is literally in your own self interest to support labor movements in poor countries where labor is cheep. If people in in places like Bangladesh had these same rights, there wouldn't be nearly the same incentive for companies to move labor out of the country.

If you're an American suffering from industrial decline in the Rust Belt, for instance, then supporting these movements isn't bleeding heart altruism, it is a policy in your rational self-interest.

this is also a large source of pollution. because capitalists would rather ship things around the world 2-3x than pay their workers. cargo ships are basically unregulated and their emissions are absurdly toxic and inefficient.

My mother works in manufacturing.

Her factory builds a portion of 2 parts. It all gets loaded and shipped off to China, where workers put those 2 parts together. Then it gets loaded back onto a ship, and then American workers than put those 2 parts into a larger part they made.

How does this make any sense?

It doesn’t, but the company would rather not pay American workers to build the whole thing, and they get crazy subsidies on fuel and shipping and don’t pay taxes and somehow this is more “affordable” for that company. And it’s killing the planet for a quick buck.

Hey kids! When this happens, which it does a LOT, you call your states insurance commissioner's office and file a formal complaint! Make sure you get a reference number for EVERY. SINGLE. CALL. you make, save every form of correspondence (email and mail) AND retain a copy of all your responses. If they stonewall you (That's not a covered service, we're not allowed to disclose that, etc) request a copy of your benefits, insurance is a CONTRACT and is legally binding.

Download a call recording app if you can, even if you can't share the recordings at first they can be useful for your reference and can be presented if you need to go to court.

I work with insurance companies all day everyday and have so for almost a decade. I trust them as much as I trust my dog to watch the Thanksgiving turkey. Approach each interaction with them *like* it's going to go to court.

(x) and a bit more detail:

A whooooooole lot of evangelical places should get shut down

For those who don't know what this means (like I didn't), a church is a 501c3 organization: a tax exempt entity. In order for it to stay that way they may not get involved in legislature- including endorsing a political candidate. So if you witness someone doing this, you can report them to the IRS using form 13909. (If you're in the US)

Abusive men pave the way for lazy men to get wives and girlfirends.

Lemme clarify, how many times have you heard your overworked female friends and relatives say “Yeah, Jerry drinks beer every evening after work while I cook dinner and clean up after everyone and does the bare minimum to help me raise the kids but he’s such a nice guy. He’s never beat me in my life. I couldn’t ask for a better guy in my life.”

Like no, Sally, your husband is a common stone among turds and you know it.

I try to explain this conceptually to people as a thing that happens not saying that this is good but it’s a thing that happens.

This is what male privilege is and how all men benefit from it.

This is why you are not exempt from statements about “all men” even if you are overall good.

You benefit from the bar constantly being lowered by systemic issues within the gender.

The expectations on you are always lower than they should because “at least you’re not X”.

That…is the best response I’ve seen to the “not all men” thing. Thank you.

Yeah, this post reminded me of this bit from a talk by Lundy Bancroft

The romanization of Hawai’i only tightens America’s grip on my people.

We are not the land of Lilo and Stitch. We are not a paradise.

We are a nation suffering.

There are only around 600,000 Native Hawaiians left. Only around 200,000 of them live in Hawai’i.

Hawai’i has the second largest homeless population in the nation, falling just behind New York. There are 19 million people in New York. Hawaii only has 1.4 million people. Yet their homeless rates are neck and neck. A majority of those experiencing homelessness in Hawai’i are Native Hawaiian.

Tourism destroys sacred land. Mountains are moved to make room for telescopes. People live in tiny concrete apartments that cost $2k a month because the rich move to the islands to carve their own paradise. My people spend every night praying we can afford to eat the next day

The Navy poisons the water over and over. They lie and say it’s safe. People fall ill. Then they dump the waste into the ocean and promise to do better. They lie.

End the romanization of Hawai’i. There is no paradise under American occupation.

I've been rolling something around in my head.

If everyone receives Minimum Basic Income, what happens to all the relationships where one of the individuals no longer has to depend on the other(s) to survive?

Just let that marinate for a moment.

Not just the economic landscape but the social landscape could be transformed.

Not for nothing, but this is literally part of the entire point of Universal Basic Income.

When abused people can just literally walk away, knowing they can still have enough money to live, the world will be a lot less sheltering of abusers and that is a massive fucking benefit.

It gets better than that, if we go with my ideal UBI scenario, in which we peg UBI to "enough to live in any major metropolitan city in the country" and do NOT adjust it for cost of living.

Suddenly, the poverty and scrabbling for survival of rural areas? Gone. That UBI will go a whole long fucking way out there. Suddenly, people who had to move to the cities to get jobs that paid enough? Can afford to move back. Heck, they can afford to get decent fucking broadband out there and continue working, just, not in the city. Suddenly, people who live in rural areas but want to move to the cities with like-minded people? That's affordable, too. Suddenly, people who want to have a bigger house, but are stuck in a tiny apartment in a city? They can afford to move out to where there are bigger houses.

Universal Basic Income would realign our whole damn society, and I think it would long-term be for the better.

Don’t forget the first victims when you go see Oppenheimer this opening weekend. Unforgivable not to include them in the narrative.

We love us some Nolan and Cillian but this is also a story that should never have taken place.

For further reading:

This is what happens when the US government goes nuclear-crazy during the Cold War and mines a shit ton of uranium. Lambs born with three legs and no eyes, and human stillbirths and agonizing deformities for those that survive. For decades it was referred to as a Navajo-specific hereditary illness. No one made the link to the mines and the drinking water.

'why are actors striking aren't they all millionaires' here's a paywall free link to an article that mentions how most of the cast of one of netflix's biggest shows had day jobs bc they couldn't afford rent

remember that actors are usually not well off at all. forget the big screen famous guys, they're the very few ones. this strike is for all the other ones, that deserve to have a livable paycheck for their job.

And a note to say that, had Orange is the New Black been on a not-streaming network which paid them residuals each time they screened the show the actors would have done fine or better than fine.

At the start of streaming rules were agreed to let these beginning ways of putting out stories over the web succeed and get established, and letting them not pay actors and writers traditional style residuals was part of what was agreed. They got established. They succeeded. The actors and the writers took the hit.

Streaming actors get screwed ten ways to Sunday. I'm still a part of the Union of BC Performers because I did work when I was young, and for a movie I was in when I was FIVE YEARS OLD, for around 30 SECONDS, in a movie that did poorly, I make more money in residuals than any of the leading actors in OITNB do for all of their hard work as adult professionals. It's sick, quite frankly, and I for one can't wait for the WGA and SAG to land lucrative contracts. There's no way in hell I should get more on my quarterly checks than the talent who worked on a show like that. By the way, once my movie hit Netflix in about 2012, my checks got slashed in half.

Good.

so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.

this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.

somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.

i used betterhelp.

i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.

the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.

they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.

the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.

i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."

i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.

the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her. take the pain of being gay away from her.

i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.

in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.

the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.

betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.

i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.

there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.

in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.

i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.

CHEERS TO GUY WALTON FOR “OUTING” THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES

From the article:  

Walton has devised his own criteria for named heatwaves in the US, based on duration and extremity, on a one to five scale similar to hurricanes. Heatwave Chevron is classed as a four and is “historic”, Walton said. The meteorologist said he has a list of 20 oil and gas companies – including Exxon and Shell – for upcoming heatwaves and will turn to coal companies if he runs out of names.

OUTSTANDING MOVE

Y'all know what to do. Use Walton's naming system. Make it catch on.

WHOA. Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the US, now credits BIDENOMICS for producing an “unexpected surge” in our economy & says this Bidenomics is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure.” Bidenomics is working. We must shout this from the rooftops.

It's about time the financial sector acknowledged that the economy is almost ALWAYS better under Democratic administrations.

For instance, according to a Feb. 2, 2021 article by David Leonhardt in The New York Times:

After eliminating some possible explanations for this data, Leonhardt concludes:

Duh! Like with nearly everything else in Democratic administrations, the Democrats pay attention to the conclusions of experts in various fields, rather than creating policies based on ideology.

Republican administrations tend to do the opposite. And with the ascension of Trump they in fact devalue (and often demonize) expert opinion and science and promote their own crackpot theories instead.

THIS is a very important message that Democrats have to get the American people to pay attention to.

Republican economic policies are evident in poor Southern red states.

Democratic economic policies are evident in wealthy Northeast and West Coast blue states.

The distinction is very clear.

This list includes doctors in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe!

Even if you're not the target demographic, please share for any of your friends who may be.

And if you or someone you know would like to be added to the list, there's a place for that!