heyo, I'm owen! I love clouds, laughing, and animation. He/him <3
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Spite can be a incredible motivator
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Can anything be done to help this wretched twenty four
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i always liked this one. the BC bud girl was my friends icon on discord for years
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When you let the teacher know that she forgot to assign homework
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One of my roommates is from China and neither of us speaks the other’s language but lately when she’s in a chatty mood she comes into our kitchen and shows me these douyin Matt Damon x Ben Affleck RPF videos and puts her theories about how Ben has been pining for Matt into google translate for me to read. fujoing out transcends language barriers
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In a Rare Daytime Appearance, Flying Foxes Keep Cool in an Indian River
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myths about sinking britain
“there is no historical precedent for sinking britain!” doggerland, which connected britain to the european mainland, was submerged by water in 6500BC. there is precedent for sinking britain.
“it is unfeasible to sink britain!” britain is strategically located to allow many nations to co-operate in its sinking
“sinking britain would raise sea levels!” the netherlands already has dams
“sinking britain would cause more problems geopolitically than it would solve!” we simply won’t know this until we sink britain
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“Oz Leggings” (1978) 🌈 Knitted fantasy with smiling sun, emerald city, and those iconic red shoes
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Paywall free
"South Korean President-elect Lee Jae-myung has always described his politics as deeply personal, born of the “wretchedness” of his youth.
In his last presidential run three years ago, when his conservative opponent Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor, appealed to the rule of law, Lee told a story from his childhood: how his family’s poverty pushed him into factory assembly lines while his peers were entering middle school — and how his mother would walk him to work every morning, holding his hand.
“Behind every policy that I implemented was my own impoverished and abject life, the everyday struggles of ordinary South Koreans,” he said in March 2022. “The reason I am in politics today is because I want to create … a world of hope for those who are still suffering in the same puddle of poverty and despair that I managed to escape.”
Although Lee lost that race by 0.73 of a percentage point — or 247,077 votes — it was Yoon who set the stage for Lee’s comeback. Impeached halfway into his term for his declaration of martial law in December, the former president is now on trial for insurrection.
In the snap presidential election that took place Tuesday, the liberal Lee emerged the winner, with South Korea’s three major television broadcasters calling the race just before midnight.
On the campaign trail, Lee framed his run as a mission to restore the country’s democratic norms. But he also returned to the theme that has, over the years, evolved from childhood yearning into his signature political brand: the promise of a society that offers its most vulnerable a “thick safety mat” — a way out of the puddle.
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Born in December 1963, the fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Seongnam, a city near the southeastern edge of Seoul that, by the time his family settled there in 1976, was known as a neighborhood for those who had been evicted from the capital’s shantytowns.
The family rented a single semi-basement room by a local market, where his father made a living as a cleaner. At times his family lived on discarded fruit he picked up along his route. Lee’s mother worked as a bathroom attendant just around the corner.
Lee spent his teenage years hopping from one factory to another to help. His first job, at 13, was soldering lead at a jewelry maker for 12 hours a day, breathing in the acrid fumes. At another job, the owner skipped out without paying Lee three months’ worth of wages.
A few years later, while operating a press machine at a baseball glove factory, Lee suffered an accident that permanently disfigured his left arm. In despair, Lee attempted to end his own life. He survived only because the pharmacist he went to for sleeping pills had caught wind of his intentions, giving him digestive medication instead.
Lee then began studying for middle school and high school at night after getting off work. He proved to be a gifted student, earning himself a full ride to Chung-Ang University to study law.
After passing South Korea’s bar exam in 1986, he was moved by a lecture given by Roh Moo-hyun, a human rights lawyer who went on to become president in 2003, and the 26-year-old Lee opened up his own legal practice to do the same.
Seongnam by then was rapidly developing, becoming the site of several projects, and Lee threw himself into local watchdog activism.
Ha Dong-geun, 73, who spent a decade organizing in the city with Lee, recalled the day they met: The latter wore an expression of great urgency — “like something bad would happen if he didn’t immediately hit the ground running.”
He added: “He wasn’t afraid of what others thought of him.”
Ha remembered Lee as a keen strategic mind, with a knack for “finding out his opponent’s weaknesses.” Yet despite the noise they made, substantive change proved harder to achieve, leading to Lee’s political awakening in 2004.
A year earlier, two of the city’s major hospitals had shut down, threatening the accessibility of emergency care in its poorest neighborhoods. But though Lee’s campaign had gathered nearly 20,000 signatures from residents to build a public hospital in their place, the proposal was struck down almost immediately by the city council.
“Those in power do not care about the health and lives of people unless there are profits to be made,” Lee wrote in 2021 of his reaction then. “If they won’t do it, let’s do it ourselves. Instead of asking for it from someone else, I will become mayor and do it with my own hands.”
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Lee was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018. During that time, he repaid over $400 million in municipal debt left behind by his predecessor. He moved his office down from the ninth to the second floor, frequently appearing in person to field questions or complaints from citizens.
But he was best known for his welfare policies, which he rolled out despite intense opposition from the then-conservative central government: free school lunches, free school uniforms for middle-schoolers and financial support for new mothers seeking postpartum care. For all 24-year-old citizens, the city also provided an annual basic income of around $720 in the form of cash vouchers that could be used at local businesses.
In 2016, when the plight of a high school student who couldn’t afford sanitary pads using a shoe insole instead made national headlines, the city also added a program that gave underprivileged teenage girls cash for female hygiene products. A few years later, Lee also made good on his campaign promise to build the public hospital that had first propelled him into politics.
“My personal experiences made me aware of how cruel this world can be to those who have nothing,” he said in 2021.
Though it has been years since Lee left the city to become the governor of Gyeonggi province and to stage three presidential runs, his track record still inspires fierce loyalty in Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, where Lee is remembered as a doer who looked after even the little things.
“His openness and willingness to communicate resonated with a lot of people,” said Kim Seung-man, 67, a shop owner in Sangdaewon Market, where Lee’s family eked out a living in the 1970s. “Working-class people identify with him because he had such a difficult childhood.”
And while the Seongnam Citizens Medical Center — which opened in 2020 — is deep in the red and has become a target for Lee’s critics who dismiss his welfare policies as cheap populism, Kim says it is a lifeline to this working-class neighborhood.
“It was a treatment hub for COVID patients during the pandemic,” he said. “Serving the public good means doing so regardless of whether it is profitable or not.”"
-via Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2025
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Customer: I LOVE THE CUTE BARKS AND CHIRP SOUNDS ANIMALS MAKE. DMV: YIFFY=SEXY OR HORNY (IN FURRY FANDOM) Verdict: DENIED
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“Medieval peasants couldn’t handle my Spotify playlist” but could YOU handle a medieval bard relaying the epic of Beowulf over the course of an hour? Humble yourself.
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