skweetis

People are weird. But also, as an old, the influencer economy is so funny to me. Either they’re accepting money/gifts/promotion to “influence” on behalf products, in which case they are just going to stop taking the money? Or they’re editorially pure and they’re just going to stop supporting a product they have previously genuinely endorsed because more people can enjoy it? It’s all dumb.

I love the line about "we have 30 tools for [preventing this thing that keeps happening from happening] ". It’s marketing-speak all the way down. Like, wow! Thirty tools!

I didn’t say they were scared of gay people. I said they were scared of reality, which includes gay people, America’s history of racism, global warming, and scientists who know more than they do. These things threaten their identity, which can feel like actual physical danger. Certainly, the powerful and sleazy opportunists have used demonization of out-groups to manipulate the masses since the beginning of time, but I don’t think these maniacs screaming about pronouns at schoolboard meetings are pretending at gay panic as a clever ruse while they calmly and knowingly execute a fascism. My husband recently peeked at the facebook of one of his MAGA cousins and she is a maniac. There is nothing strategic about her behavior. She is wrapped up in an ecstasy of hate, driven by fear. It’s an old joke, but she is literally terrified that trans Muslims are going to sneak across the border to forcibly inject her with 5G. Literally.

And to be clear: I don’t care what is going on in their heads. It is unknowable. What I care about is how they are understood and defined by the ambient culture, and my recommendation is to relentlessly portray them as scared diaper babies desperate for their government daddy to come and save them from the big scary world.

We have to keep repeating this: These people are terrified of reality and think that it is everyone’s job to protect them from the real world. I don’t know if it’s helpful to use the term “snowflake”, but it is apt. Queer people exist in the world. There is no doubt. Trans people exist in the world. The Civil Rights movement occurred and was a big part of US history, as was slavery. If someone’s religion says that ham is a sin, we don’t ban it from school cafeterias. That, as we say, is a you problem. We have got to start hammering home that these people are afraid of reality and want big government to protect them from it. And we also have to start saying “Tough shit. Grow up. Learn to deal with the rest of the world or hide in your basement. I give zero fucks.”

“Speech code” lol. Calm down, Mary.

Here’s something you may not know: When you are gay, you have to come out constantly. That’s why famous people “announce” that they are gay. And let me assure you, gay people do not want to be the constant subject of public debate. We are the constant subject of public debate because people hate us and want us to die. And because people who maybe don’t hate us or want us to die are really obsessed with making sure that those people have platforms on social media and other mainstream media platforms. So, if it’s really wearing you down to hear about all these different kinds of people, maybe go yell at some bigots and the people who platform them?

Really wish we could stop with the “openly gay”. If you know somebody is gay, then they are out. If they aren’t out, you shouldn’t call them gay - with an exception for anti-gay bigots who should be called “probably gay bigot”. It’s minor thing, but I feel like this terminology fuels the right wing propaganda that gay people could just not exist if we weren’t so stubborn.

In competitive youth swimming, which I did as a child, the age groups are like 11-12, 13-14, 15-16. So, it was possible for someone who was 12 a week ago to swim against someone who turns 15 next week - a HUGE difference in terms of physical development. And if your birthday happens to fall in the weeks before the big championship meet every year, you are always at the bottom or middle of your age bracket for your entire childhood, never at the top. But the specifics don’t even matter. Age groups and grade classifications are to try to make things a little more fair so that little kids aren’t swimming against basically adults. But it’s not in any way perfectly fair. And also, it doesn’t matter! Let kids play sports and get the benefits of that activity. Your kid’s team winning - or losing - some sports game in 10th grade doesn’t matter. Keeping this girl from playing volleyball isn’t fixing any problem. In Utah they made a ban and there were literally 4 trans athletes in the entire state. It’s culture war bullshit. And people who start quoting bone density studies or whatever are either falling for it or willingly participating in it.

What is the distribution of athletic performance in volleyball between 14 year olds and an 18 year olds? In high school volleyball, it’s perfectly possible for a team made of all 18 year olds who are 6 feet tall to play a team that is all 14 year olds that are 5 feet tall. The idea that without the participation of trans girls, high school volleyball is completely equitable is ridiculous. High school sports are for fun, learning teamwork and discipline, and fitness. Who wins a high school volleyball game is not important. Certainly it’s not more important than the health and safety of trans girls - and non-gender-conforming cis girls who have been and will continued to be tortured by laws like this.

We all know what to call you.

I don’t know anything about the legal details - besides what I’ve read on the internet, aka RESEARCH - but I unfortunately watched the clip of Junior getting interviewed about his knowledge of GAAP and, in my opinion, the prosecutor laughed and played along with his “jokes” and he of course loved the positive attention and let his guard down. To some degree that seemed like a pretty good “set-up”, but just like everything else, in a totally legal and normal to court proceedings way.

I don’t know, man. The comment that is getting downvoted proposes a narrative where people steal things from Target and then Target has no choice but to move out of the poor neighborhood to open up stores in a nice neighborhood, and therefore the people stealing are responsible for that harm to their communities. I’m downvoting that because it’s wrong in like a thousand ways, some evidence for which is illustrated by the quote and article I linked to.

My bad on the “lemming” thing. I’m reading this on kbin so that’s not in my vernacular, and the patronizing “tiny worldview” insult had me reading your comment in a certain tone.

I just happened to be in that Ballard target for the first time last week to get my Covid booster and it was weird. Besides the pharmacy, there were basically no employees. No cashiers, one person who ushered you over to the self-checkout, and two greeters (aka loss prevention). It’s just anecdotal observation, but there was no visible sign of, you know, crime problem, i.e. nobody camped out on the sidewalk. But there were also zero customers. That store is tiny for a Target and seemed to have basically the same amount of inventory as a Bartells. For example, we bought a laundry basket while we were there and they just had one style and color (ugly as fuck!). And there is a CVS and a Walgreens basically a block away. And the Target has paid parking. So, I feel pretty confident that this Target was a loser due to bad business decisions.

The article this thread is about is talking about Target losing 2% of their $27 billion annual PROFIT (as in the money the shareholders keep after they pay their employees) to theft. And here you are blaming poor people for the state of their communities.

“The fantastic journalists at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) did an analysis and found that this single video spawned 309 separate articles about the Walgreens incident in the 28 days after it was posted. The researchers found that there was not a single article about a multi-million dollar wage theft settlement paid out by Walgreens to its California employees. (On January 5, 2023, after I wrote this essay, a Walgreens executive admitted publicly that the company had overblown their claims about retail theft.)”

https://equalityalec.substack.com/p/the-volume-of-news

You are the lemming, buddy.

What the actual fuck?! When I read this story a month ago I was furious because they claimed he was out of the car and lunging at them with a knife when they shot him through a closed car window. Mistaking someone for being out of the car and lunging at you when they are inside the car with the window rolled up is not the same as (claiming to) think a knife is a gun. So, you get to lie about what you were scared about and then revise your lie to something more plausible later on? So much fucking bullshit.

Also, it should be noted that the police only “walked back” the statement about him being out of the car when the family went door to door and found ring cam footage that he was in the car. And they had to do this because the police wouldn’t share body camera footage with the family.

I don’t care who fucks who UNLESS you are trying to make it illegal to have a book that just mentions that gay people exist in a public library. Then who you fuck becomes relevant. And I still don’t care who you fuck, but I am only interested in the limited strategic political value it has to embarrass these shitheads. And, yes, conservatives do not care about hypocrisy, but I still think it’s good to publicize this kind of thing in case it just subliminally diminishes some of their supporters’ enthusiasm, even though it they won’t ever actually withdraw their support.

I’m not going to hang out in a bar that allows Nazis to hang out. You can if you like, but people are going to call you a Nazi supporter, and they will be right. If you don’t allow Nazis in your bar, they can still stand outside and freeze peach as much as they want, you are not curtailing anyone’s freedom. So, yes, I cheer businesses that don’t allow Nazis and I am critical of businesses where the management trolls unions (and allows Nazis), and that’s not hypocritical in any way because there’s a difference between good things and bad things. Anyway, enjoy your Nazi bar, weirdo.

They Might Be Giants - The Communists Have the Music

deleted by creator

Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows “capital” (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It’s not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren’t much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it’s hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:

https://therealnews.com/biden-infrastructure-report-pushes-disastrous-water-privatization-schemes-watchdog-says

And this doesn’t even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today’s capitalist society.

If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.