For anyone unaware. California uses slavery to fight fires. This is why cops have a higher budget after cutting the Fire Budget. Anyone arrested for non-violent crimes, who serve a sentence of 10 months or more are pressured to join fire camp. They are not given full PPE. They get less than $1/hour when fighting active fires and it’s extremely dangerous. They can’t even be hired by Fire Departments when they leave prison.

This is why being unhoused is criminalized. It fuels the slavery machine. Other states lease out prisoners to work fast food, make clothes, etc. The USA is heavily backed by slave labor still to this day.

As a fellow asthma haver (it ain’t easy being wheezy) I really hope you have access to an inhaler🙏

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OI5fABy5KVY

I’ve seen this! Good recommendation!

Fun fact Firefighters lobby heavily for large roads (in the US) that contribute to increased traffic accidents…that they respond to. It’s the biggest part of their job.

This was reported for potential harassment. Just to clarify for other users, doctor’s sausage is a Russian sausage. It’s pretty similar to saying “damn, you don’t know spam when you see it? Shit…” (spam has a similar history…kind of)

Pretty sure this was a joke but The Faraway Paladin is an isekai that seems VERY inspired by, if not derivative of, The Hobbit.

Japan has insanely long titles for light novels (which was also adopted by manga) in order to get people to pick up books. There’s such an influx of light novels the writers starting turning the titles into summaries.

No that was my point. Weird that they still clasp so tightly to class differences despite all the lessons they should have been learning from their entire history.

I had to look it up… unfortunately. Coming from a Brit is crazy though, considering their whole history as a country.

I think I saw some creator on TikTok speak on it, this explores some of the themes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOs2YM3PAc0 - OH EW WTF I JUST SAW A COMMENT ON A DIFFERENT YOUTUBE VIDEO: “The fact that she based Bella off of herself to a dot really makes the fact that her brothers name is Jacob so much weirder.”

banned /j That’s horrifying

It’s weird how much of Twilight overlays with Mormon lore. The vampires Stephanie writes are basically angels, with the “bad” vampires being the ones who fell.

Banning the user above for anti-trans rhetoric. Explaining the position here because we’re consistently repeating ourselves and it’s exhausting.

Drag’s user name is Dragon Rider. I would assume the neopronoun “Drag” is a shortening of Dragon but even if not bare with me… Pronouns exist to replace nouns. Our name (or in this case online, our username) is a proper noun. People rejecting pronouns in favor of just using their name isn’t new. I don’t know why the community is so upset about this. You are well within your opinion to not like people. Whatever, you’re allowed to hate Drag as a person. Don’t hate Drag because you dislike Drag’s pronouns.

Even then, why tf do you care that someone wants to be called Drag? I don’t care about alternate account’s NAMES. We can’t prove whether or not Drag has alt accounts and even then, why do you care? Care about Drag’s actions.

The problem lies with users who default to they/them even after being informed of the correct pronouns, especially users who continue to do so in the same comment thread. Making mistakes is going to happen, but quickly apologizing (even if you’re arguing) and editing your message to resolve the mistake is the bare minimum. Even as a mod I really only recognize a few users and remember their pronouns (honestly, mostly because they overuse the reporting system), but when I engage with or talk about users I check profiles to see if any pronouns are posted in the bio. This is a trans-inclusive queer instance, respecting gender identity (YES EVEN CIS-HETERO PEOPLE) is incredibly important.

1st, Ada is the instance mod, we have no control over who she decides to ban.

2nd, let’s look at your comment. “I think some post modern schools of thought have a danger of getting high on their own farts, and sometimes it’s important to push back so we don’t lose grip on reality.”

Defend this. Be more specific. Communication requires a mix of efficiency and effectiveness. Your extremely broad statements allowed the instance mod to “misinterpret” your argument due to it’s lack of effectiveness. A lack of specifics forces the reader to interpret your meaning. “Post-modern frameworks” or “post modern schools” can mean anything from critical race theory to anti-Marx criticism.

Be nice. There’s no need to insult.

People aren’t required to teach you anything. Anyone educating during their free time is doing volunteer work.

If only good empirical books on trans research weren’t burned by the nazis at the start of their regime and trans literature/research weren’t being banned in the U.S. by the GOP…

1. I have published work in academia so I know from experience. Empirical evidence CAN be extremely biased depending on who is doing the writing. There’s a reason there’s a million (exaggerated, obviously I hope) studies showing that games are both good and bad, studies showing red wine both causes and prevents cancer, studies showing that the Brontosaurus wasn’t a real dinosaur but a misplacement of two different fossils, oh wait just kidding there was a new study that says it IS a real dinosaur. People are people, there’s no perfect study. When studying humans and their behavior, we only have theory that is constantly being rewritten. We have something called cronbach’s alpha that states that as long as data reaches 71% consistency or higher, it’s a valid study. All to say, you can’t always trust empirical evidence

2. Science already supports the idea of different genders. A basic college biology course could tell you that. Forget “there’s only two genders” the “two sexes” thing is also a myth. Humans have two different kinds of sex chromosomes, x and y. We can have I BELIEVE up to 3 at a time? XX is typically associated with FEMALE and XY is typically associated with MALE unless of course you have de la Chapelle syndrome and your XX chromosomes make you develop a penis instead of a vagina. This is just one example of being intersex. Up to 2% of the population is intersex, 4 times more than the number of cops in the U.S.

3. Gender being a science doesn’t mean boomers are open and willing to unpack their views of gender though. Unlearning things is painful, scientifically speaking. People HATE unlearning things. There’s lots of studies on cogitative dissonance, if you want to go read your empirical references.

Same could be argued with n-slur and f-slur. Those were not terms chosen by those groups. Both were created by the socio-economic dominating class in an attempt to dehumanize. That’s the whole point of the word “reclaiming” that I used. Takes the power back. There’s a user above (kitten for the sake of reference) who is Autistic and uses the R-Slur. I’m autistic as well but I don’t use it. For kitten, I’m sure there is power in taking the word away from people to apply to themselves.

I can see the argument how there could have been an attempt to reclaim it, much like the n-slur, f-slur, or queer. Not sure if there was actually an attempt or not to reclaim, just to be clear.