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"I want to live in a world in which teenagers can fulfil their natural purpose of being annoying" and "I do not always want to be annoyed by the teenagers" are compatible sentiments

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i love when people call the Palestinian protest movement uniquely performative, they tried to deport people for writing an op-ed for it, antizionists became the first and only group of people to graduate from columbia whose degree was revoked without any academic misconduct, palestine action is the only "terror group" in the UK that has never killed anyone, much less a civilian. of all things you can accuse them of, you cannot say they lack the courage of their convictions. they are braver than almost any other pet cause in nato land you think matters more. and it can simply be also true that criticism of them demands more courage, because the odds they are facing are still lower than the odds faced by the people they are doing this in defense of. fuck liberal zionists forever.

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The headline: UK Drug Dealer Feeling Bleu After Cheese Photo Leads To Arrest

The article: Police cracked encryption on a privacy-focused phone service provider and ran fingerprint analysis on photos posted by users.

Like I get that law enforcement does things like this, that’s literally what it exists for, I’m just really upset by the cutesy framing.

Also. Like. Don’t organize shit online or over the phone. Law enforcement has been pressuring tech companies to put backdoors into encrypted services for years, this whole crackdown happened because of a device-level attack, and you never know who’s listening.

And yeah. If you’re setting up an anonymous ID online for any reason do not, under any circumstances, post or share any identifying information under that ID or with devices associated with that account.

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Like a new friend!

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My lukewarm take is that one of the greatest privileges of all is the ability to exist as the «default setting», being seen as just a person, and not as a representative of a group of people who share your gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or cultural/religious background. Which is why the «not all men» pushback against any mention of structural sexism was what it was. Because suddenly people who were used to being the default setting were being made into representatives of their gender, having to prove that they were better than the stereotypes forced upon them. And they did not like that one bit.

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Your post about homeless shelters calls their issues "uniquely liberal". Can I ask what you mean by that? /Gen

To me, there's nothing more liberal than a finely tuned system of bureaucracy that is hand-crafted to seem politically neutral despite still negatively impacting our most vulnerable populations en-masse.

When you enter the shelter system, you lose status as a person and instead become a measurable outcome. The nonprofit complex (which most shelters fall under) is a massive industry with billions of dollars flowing in and out. Their continued existence & expansion- which could include hundreds of people's jobs- live and die on 2 things: 1) they must constantly prove that they are socially necessary, or that there is a high/growing need for them to exist, but also simultaneously 2) proving "positive outcomes" and making it look like they are helping people transition out of homelessness with a program that works.

Whether it DOES work doesn't really matter, and in fact, if it worked that might actually be worse for their business. I mean, if there's no homeless people, what happens to the shelter? Our jobs? Our funding? But it especially does not matter to the people at the top of these orgs; a board of directors who likely will never interact directly with the staff, clientele, or even site locations at any time. All they interact with are numbers, and every decision is based on what those numbers say. It doesn't need to work, it just needs to look like it works.

I'll give you a personal anecdote to highlight what I mean.

I recently briefly worked for a very large system that runs several HUGE shelters in one of the most homeless metropolitan areas in the country. It's a very liberal company that mostly employs people of color and trans folk (which I now recognize as a massive red flag lol they want our labor for cheap). They are focused on things like *equity* and *accountability* blah blah

Success in these shelters is measured in a very prototypical way; how many beds are we filling daily, and how many people are "leaving shelter of their own accord" (i.e. not being kicked out for violating rules, and presumably leaving because they have found housing)? Essentially: how many beds are we turning over each day? And the higher that number = positive outcomes.

But here's the thing. If someone "forfeits" their bed, they can be counted as a tally under that "left shelter of their own accord" category, even if they immediately just get back on the waitlist (and oh yes, there are wait lists) to return to the shelter. So what these shelters do is they maintain a VERY strict, convoluted set of rules around what it means to forfeit your bed.

Back 5 minutes past curfew because you're visibly transgender and had 3 Uber drivers decline your ride when they saw you? Forfeit. Late for curfew because the bus' wheelchair lift didn't work and you use a power chair? Forfeit. You ARE back on time, but your partner is seemingly AWOL (because, as we discovered later, he was picked up by immigration and disappeared for several days)? Forfeit for the both of you, because this is a couples-only shelter. Sorry. You can jump back in the list as a single, and return to shelter after sleeping outside for a few days, though.

(all of these are real situations I really encountered, and you can very clearly see the type of people impacted)

Any bending of these rules requires documentation (like for clients that work late, for example, giving proof of schedule) but that documentation needed to be renewed WEEKLY. Beyond being impossible for clients to keep track of, it was impossible for US to keep track of. We were so understaffed and on top of everything, we have to keep track of 200 people's work schedules? No. Of course stuff slips through the cracks- and that's a function of the bureaucracy too- making it such a fucking chore to maintain legitimately, that people are encouraged to fudge shit and lie.

And as a result of all these policies, you get a constantly turning conveyor belt of people "exiting" shelter and then re-entering it, both of which count positively for outcome numbers. Why WOULDN'T they make that cycle part of the routine? And they did- almost every client I worked with had accidentally forfeit their bed at least once. Some clients had done it dozens of times.

When it comes to nonprofits I always keep this saying in the back of my head; if you're not paying for a product, you are the product. Assume that bureaucracy will always bend in favor of the industrial complex, because you're just the product. You're just a number. You're just an outcome. And if that outcome doesn't look pretty for their bottom line, they'll force it to. All while smiling and preaching equity. Really, what's more liberal than that?

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@PSCENTRAL EVENT 40: TYPOGRAPHY/QUOTES

Ursula's guide to navigating burnout ↪ Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

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"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

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😈 You are not bound by the Hays code.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.

😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.

😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.

😈 You are not obligated to teach your audience a moral lesson.