🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)

Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)

They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)

Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)

Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)

Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)

Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)

Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)

Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)

Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)

Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)

They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)

Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)

They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)

I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)

A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)

They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)

Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)

Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)

Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)

They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)

Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)

And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)

Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)

No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.

Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)

They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)

Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)

Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)

👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html

fewer posts about “why do straight women date men who hate them” and more posts about “why do so many men hate women that it’s genuinely difficult for straight women to find romantic & sexual intimacy with a man who doesn’t hate them”

this post was written by a trans person & is about misogyny, which affects all women, including trans women. transmisogynists begone, please.

every moment of every day i am thinking about this tiktok

Lumpfish come in a variety of shapes and colors.

[He scoops up the fish, it spits water and he turns it toward the camera]

This one is stumpy and green. Very beautiful, very powerful.

[He picks up another fish and turns it toward the camera]

This is what a normal lumpfish looks like. It is more elongated, but still a vibrant blue color. Very beautiful, very powerful.

[He picks up another fish and turns it toward the camera]

This is one of the stumpiest ones we have. Its hump is very high. It is very stumpy, but yet very beautiful, and very powerful.

[He pans over a lot of fish, all looking up at the camera]

My fish army is ever growing, and soon I will over throw the world. Very beautiful, very powerful.

because of this tiktok, i frequently murmur "very beautiful, very powerful" at myself, and i cannot recommend it enough.

This dude, the one who's tiktok this video came from, is the greatest. The lumpfish dont flop all over the place like most fish would because theyre USED to being held, so they can be weighed and measured. He also keeps crabs, urchins, shrimp, lobsters, and starfish. He might have more, idk its been a while since I checked his tiktok.

But he's pretty great and I love this video so much, very beautiful, very powerful.

Reblogging with the explanation because some people in the comments were worried

reblog to bonk the person you reblogged it from with a hollow cardboard tube

if thousands of conservatives could quit bud light over making a SINGLE can with a trans persons face on it, you can quit chic fil a for them donating millions to anti lgbtq groups and harry potter for being written by the face of TERFS.

GUYS IVE RETURNED TO SHOW YOU A BUG!!!!!!!

[ID: an image of a very small, brown bug with a long snout and antennae coming off the snout. The video shows the bug turning around before flying off.

End ID]

He’s my friend now c:

Also does anyone know what kind of bug he is?

Thank u all sm for the help identifying him! He is a weevil/snout beetle for anyone else who didn’t know! :D

Sharing a pic I took a whiiiile ago of this red cheeked grumpy old man.

(think I settled on it being a tree hopper)

Okay, jumping on the share train as well:

"Portrait of a Bug on a Rose"

- me, today

[ID: the image from @/abandon the woods is of a very small, round bug sitting on a finger. It’s tannish and appears to have little red cheeks. The image from @/hexthelex is of a long-ish, black beetle sitting right in the middle of a large, pastel pink flower.

End ID]

Y’all these are amazing, keep cute bug pics coming I’m obsessed lol

GUYS IVE RETURNED TO SHOW YOU A BUG!!!!!!!

[ID: an image of a very small, brown bug with a long snout and antennae coming off the snout. The video shows the bug turning around before flying off.

End ID]

He’s my friend now c:

Also does anyone know what kind of bug he is?

Thank u all sm for the help identifying him! He is a weevil/snout beetle for anyone else who didn’t know! :D

in light of the exposed emails about the media obsession with transphobia being a manufactured moral panic to increase conservative votes id like to remind you that we've been saying for years that the right will try to divide and conquer the queer community. and you are a traitor if you are a cis LGB person who let the right sucker you into transphobia and voting for politicians who will put laws in against us. they will come for you next.

Real lawyer plays Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Japanese law doesn't require evidence to be presented for review by both parties. "SURPRISE!!! I have facts you weren't aware of!" is very much a thing there.

The entire game was written to show how messed up the Justice System is there.

Japanese courts have a 99% conviction rate. In essence, if you are accused of a crime you are already considered to be guilty and it is up to you to prove otherwise if you can. Remember in the end of Persona 5, where the person who falsely accused you of assaulting them confessed to everything on national television but you were still in prison until your friends tracked down every witness and got them all the recant their testimonies individually? That was in no way exaggerated.

Also Japanese police have a 90+% rate of successfully arresting a “suspect” for every crime they investigate. At first this sounds really impressive, how they always track down the criminal, until you realize that they do it through a combination of refusing to investigate crimes which seem hard to solve or are likely to involve organizes crime or politicians (lots of “suicides” and “accidents” which are very blatant murder), and any time they do open a case but fail to figure everything out in the first day or two they just grab a convenient scapegoat (usually poor, frequently an immigrant or ethnic minority).

There are also very few restrictions on how long you can be “interrogated” for after arrest, or what they can do to you during the interrogation. Almost all the accused confess to everything... eventually. Regardless of whether they were actually anywhere near the incident in question.

self proclaimed schizoposter nervously typing '911' into their phone and hovering their thumb above the 'call' key as they hawkishly watch a disheveled guy at a bus stop make repetitive movements and ramble to himself

You know what lemme just come back to this post because I (physically disabled, joint pain, cane user) was on a full train last night with the biggest heaviest backpack you could imagine bcs I’ve just become homeless and I was on my way to a friends house. I tried to ask people for a seat and got flat out ignored. Nobody would even look at me. It got to a point where I was literally shaking crying sobbing dry heaving resorting to begging “I’m really sorry everyone but can someone please give me their seat I have joint problems I’m in a lot of pain”, speaking to people directly “excuse me but you’re in priority seating and I’m disabled and I really need to sit down” and the only person in the whole train who would even LOOK at me while I was wheezing and clutching my stomach and sweating about to pass out in some of the most rancid pain I’ve ever felt in my life. was an old disheveled guy with a tic who was mumbling to himself. and he quietly tried to console me and convinced me to just sit on someone’s suitcase. I hope all the unnatural hair coloured pierced 20 somethings on that train that night ESPECIALLY never know peace for the rest of their fucking lives

You seriously can’t call yourself a leftist or a progressive or whatever if you can’t treat other people like actual human beings. I’ve had disheveled people who a lot of ppl would assume are homeless, be quicker to offer me a place to sit on a train than 20 somethings with unnatural hair color and “Be Gay do Crime” pins and stickers do that (esp when I injured my ankle coming back from work nobody except a mumbling elderly lady offered me their seat). They’re also not the ones who threaten to call cops on me when I’m taking foodstuffs from grocery stores! You can post about anarchy and being progressive and unhinged all you want but the fact that you would treat people who are physically disabled and in poverty this way makes you just as an awful person as anybody else

treating people kindly is an action, not an aesthetic.

[id/ Andrew Wortman @Amoneyresists tweeted: if you want to rid the nation of the epidemic of police execution of people of color (emphasis) get rid of qualified immunity (/emphasis). If every officer knew there was even a chance of them facing real consequences for killing someone in the line of duty, they'd exercise infinitely more restraint. /end id]

Five Songs I've Been Listening To

Tagged by the ever lovely @pearlcaddy so thank you!!

1) Let Me Down Easy by Daisy Jones and the Six (though honestly the whole album)

2) Six of Crows by Gio Navas

3) Chronically Cautious by Braden Bales

4) Hope by NF

5) Can't Leave the Night by BADBADNOTGOOD (Intro song to lockwood and co and it slaps)

Tagging @molinapattersons @futurearchaeologyprof @faithfulfangirl @tillstarscollided @bowtiesareavenged if yall want!

post was long but my buddy dabida tagged me :)

Pursuit ~ Cornered from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Life Will Change (instrumental) from Persona 5

Fake Happy by Paramore

Holding on to You by Twenty One Pilots

uhhhhh I basically only listen to one playlist (upbeat video game tracks are the audio form of taking adhd medicine) & two cd's in my car. there is no unique 5th song 👍

idk I'll ask @witch-without-gender @peachygos @monktavious-kidsworth

Ooooh all good choices! I tend to listen to a lot of the same songs over and over but lately I’ve been getting back into pagan music again!

1. We All Come from the Goddess - Lila

2. Under a Beltane Sun - Damh the Bard

3. The Witches Tree (Elder) - Cernunnos Rising

4. Ivar’s Revenge - Danheim

5. Satyros - Faun

Beltane is my favorite Sabbat for a lot of reasons, mainly because it’s the first Sabbat I ever celebrated after becoming a witch! So I’ve been listening to more and more witchy/pagan music to get into the mood for Beltane and I’ve had a lovely time with it!

I will Never forget the april fools day when I was 13 and my mom woke me up to tell me neil gaiman had drowned in his bathtub ajsjdkflglk