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Reminder that the intention behind saying “SA” or “grape” isn’t to be sensitive to victims. It’s because platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram bury videos where the words sexual assault and rape are used, effectively keeping people who are searching for this information from finding it and making a damn mockery of victims by saying someone got graped. And the reason people say this so they won’t get demonetized or lost in the algorithm (but mostly, let’s be real, it’s the money that worries them).

These videos function as a form of citizen or indie journalism, which traditionally means that the writer is free from the restrictions of a publication owned by a wealthy individual who doesn’t like it when truth is spoken to power. In the past, this has been media that pays less at the expense of saying more. Because being able to say more IS THE ENTIRE POINT.

On these platforms, people want a comfortable career that is entirely video essays or quippy response videos, and they bow down to the restrictions of the wealthy in order to keep that money coming. The benefits of indie journalism are lost if you have to willing comply with what is essentially censorship by algorithm. That just IS mainstream journalism with a facade of indie splashed on it.

The only difference is the bosses have figured out a way to make you work for free until you prove you’re good enough to get paid.

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“I feel like if I ever opened a shop, it would have to be the kind where you can have a shop cat. Like a cozy bookshop with a big happy tabby.”

“You should do that. Open a bookshop with a cat.”

“Like, just for the shop cat?”

“Definitely.”

- Career advice from the barista at my favorite cafe this afternoon. I don’t think she’s wrong, I’m just not sure how to word this on a business loan application.

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I’ll be real with you, this is my flavor of horror. Someone sees him and says “aw come here cutie, look at this lil guy!” and then he turns to look at them directly and it’s like THIS, and then he devours them. It’s like Nope with ancient sea creatures.

It’s funny how sacabambaspis is like the funniest looking animal in every hypothetical except for that one picture that makes me feel like I’m about to be killed

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As someone with a college degree, who also cheated on an Economics test in 1995 with formulas written on the paper of an Altoid tin because what the hell do I need to know Econ formulas for, I have to reluctantly agree. Initially I stopped here but I had to come back to edit it because of the crass anti-environmentalist, anti-intellectualism of it all.

Because fine, I wasn’t getting a degree in Econ and no, cheating that one time has basically no impact on anything. And fine, some people do get degrees they don’t end up directly using, and there are jobs where all you need is a degree, any degree, and that IS essentially class signaling. If all you want is a job where you work indoors and don’t specialize in anything at all really, sure, that’s what a degree is. But I can’t stand the “all you did here was get paper that means you’re fancy” take, as if education is completely pointless and has zero value if you can’t trade it for capital. I learned an awful lot in my art history class, and that has never made me any money, but it has a lot of value in my life.

Also you only have to think for a couple of seconds to understand that there are lots of jobs where you SHOULD get a formal education, and it’s willfully dumb to say that the degree is just a class signifier. Does anyone want a surgeon with no formal education? Do you want engineers and architects who have no idea what structural stability is, they just think this shape of vehicle or building is neat? Are teachers a member of the elite? Are social workers? Would you like to explain to them how their degree was nothing more than a class signifier?

And finally of course, using ChatGPT to write an essay is like asking an intelligent gallon of water stolen from an impoverished community to please do a shitty job at writing an essay on the symbolism of the blue curtains for me instead of bothering to learn the critical analysis that class was trying to teach you. The kind of critical analysis that might make you think for a second before dismissing the value of all higher education and tacitly endorsing environmentally catastrophic AI tools.

you're scared that chatgpt is lowering the value of your diploma. youre scared that cheating will make a college or university education less useful. youre not clocking that these institutions and these diplomas exist primarily as a class signifier. that whatever youre learning, or not learning, has no value in the job market other than the piece of paper you get at the end. like what. you think nobody has cheated their way through college before aigenerated essays?

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i like how at five guys they're like oh you want one burger okay "ONE LITTLE BURGER" and then the guy cooking the burger is like "ONE LITTLE BURGER FOR BABY FAGGOTS THAT CAN ONLY HANDLE ONE PATTY COMING UP" and then if you can't finish it they make you wear a maid costume and handcuff you to the sink in the men's bathroom

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I put one in an iPod, because I am tired of unethical streaming services. I’m combining the Old Gods of Media with the New in order to kill the Aberrations.

I can’t believe 1TB microsd cards are like a thing that exists, thats like crossing a line, thats alarmingly close to playing god, where the FUCK are they PUTTING it

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Also obviously therapy is important and your friends are not therapists - but if you’re asking chatGPT therapeutic questions, please I beg you go talk to a human being. If you don’t have friends who are intimate enough to discuss emotional issues with, just find someone to have a casual hang with.

It is not therapy, I can’t emphasize that enough. But we’re social animals. Talking to other people needs to be up there with going for a walk and drinking water in terms of things that are not the same as professional care but that are vitally important.

I know it can be hard. I’m currently in a weekly DND game where the story of how every single person joined the game is “I needed people to hang out with so I very anxiously went to a game shop and asked ‘can I please play games with you’”. But it’s a tremendous relief to me to have a weekly hang out that is only about fun. There have been game days where I feel crushed by things happening in my life and I feel like “I have to skip the game tonight, I have a responsibility to sit here and be crushed” but I go anyway and I am always so relieved and don’t feel crushed anymore after.

guys. please

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Actually I feel like people expected me to become a normie adult woman and instead I became a pokemon evolution. I went from Freak to Freakizard.

like people forget that weird girls grow into weird adult women. it doesn't just go away. and no you don't perish when you turn 25 or automatically turn into a wife and mother like some kind of Pokémon end evolution, you end up like me.

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Andor finale 3 of ? When politics is useful and when it most definitely is not.

Symmetrical because, um. Bail and Organa are politicians? This thesis is not perfect.

Mothma’s speech is politics at its best. She is a passionate and charismatic speaker. When everyone else is clearly clinging to an anti-Ghorman narrative out of fear, she cuts through the bullshit and tells it like it is. The timing is perfect, she knows this speech can’t wait a week or a month, it needs to go out on newsfeeds now, while the shock of the story is still fresh.

And of course Bail Organa helps to coordinate this moment for her. This is also politics working correctly; deals made, alliances called upon, plans finally coming together for this moment.

But the thing is, politics do not move fast. Mon Mothma had to wait ACTUAL YEARS making lots of other speeches that basically got ignored to build up to this moment. If government is working right, it’s usually better for politics to be a little slow. If our systems prioritize people, we want the machine to move slowly enough that no one gets caught in the gears. Trouble is that it’s not a very agile vehicle when someone uses power against people. And because it’s slow, it also takes a very long time for that vehicle to swing around and get pointed at the enemy. People have to - very slowly - be convinced something is wrong. Mothma could only make that speech AFTER a genocide.

In 2x12 Organa makes a speech of his own. Immediately after learning of Luthen’s death, he uses the power of political speech to convince a much smaller room full of leaders to slow down, both dismissing Luthen’s sacrifice to the rebellion and running the risk of costing them valuable time to act on fresh intelligence. This is why Kleya resisted coming to Yavin even though she knew the Imperials were coming for her. This is politics at its worst: saying all the right things, walking the line of what will make everyone in this room look upstanding, and caring more about that than the urgency of the situation.

Obviously it works out in the end, we all know how Star Wars goes, but I do appreciate that Andor takes the time to remind us that even good politicians can be INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.

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Post 2 of ?: Symmetry in the Andor finale:

Mothma and Dedra both had to lie to those they loved, and we see how that’s going for each of them here.

Mothma lying to Perrin was strategic (Perrin definitely did not need to know Rebel secrets) but it was also a kindness. Seeing a glimpse of him made me realize that Mothma probably has not spoken to him or her daughter at all since her rescue after the speech, and that’s a sacrifice that was also a kindness to them. They can very honestly say they have no idea why she did that or where she is. They get to go on with their lives, Perrin having an affair and her daughter probably being a Real Trad Wife of Chandrila, complete with all the luxury and misery that implies. It doesn’t feel good, but I suspect Mothma is glad that she no longer has to live half a life in secret, and that secret life is no longer directly interfering with the lives of her husband and child.

Dedra lied to Syril to follow orders. Even when she made him part of the plan, he never really knew the plan. His anger is understandable, his death predictable. She probably really could have told him the plan. Syril probably would have locked-step with her. But the Empire really does not care who it destroys along the way, whether its an entire planet or one of its own loyalists.

And what did following orders get her? Alone in prison with literally no one in the entire galaxy who cares or wonders where she is.

I just think it’s very interesting, that Andor plays with the gray parts of even very black and white characters. And I think it’s very smart that our hero’s choice to lie to a partner is a choice made in his best interest, and our villain’s choice to lie is in the best interest only of the Empire.

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Lot of symmetry in this final episode, so here’s post 1 of ? on the subject:

Dedra is a true believer. She was raised by the Empire, and she swallowed everything they fed her. All she lived for was what she perceived as the lawfulness of it all: her parents were thieves, thieving is wrong. Why did they do it? What did they steal? That doesn’t matter, it’s against the law. This is the story Dedra has of herself; she is not them. She is lawful. The Empire, so she believes, is lawful. Those laws saved her from the chaos of her real family, that is the myth she lives by.

Whenever she sees flaws in the Empire, she believes these are just stupid people. She doesn’t realize that it’s just how fascism works, that fascism IS stupid. She doesn’t see that is stupid to just be lawful with no sense of judgment of your own. She tried to work in that system, chasing Luthen and Cassian out in the open, and Partagaz scolded her for it: catch them before you go bragging about it. This encouraged her to work more secretly. Doing so led to her achieving what she wanted all along.

And now she’s in prison for it, because the fascist system is never in your favor. Work within the rules, and you deserve the punishment you get when you fail. Work outside of the rules to be more efficient, and you’ll get punished even more severely. Her cleverness and obedience were at odds inside her in her zeal to serve the Empire, and it’s not even a matter of choosing the wrong one, because there are no right choices.

The system works like this on purpose. It works so that a tourist who happens to be near a crime ends up in prison, and the officer who gave everything including her love to capture him also ends up in that prison.

Dedra doesn’t realize the awful irony of it all because the system she revered as perfect is so crappy that they never even managed to identify Andor, thanks to the lack of due process. What poetic justice for the Imperial who despised the chaos of freedom but could never see the stupidity of fascism.

DENISE GOUGH as DEDRA MEERO

“JEDHA, KYBER, ERSO” | ANDOR 2X12

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Reblog this if you think the 2040 plant president from ghostbusters is still a better candidate then Donald trump

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I’m going through that thing where you go from vaguely knowing who a musician is to finding out that this is your new fave very rapidly right now, and I have to say, it’s been a while.

I haven’t had this experience of a fandom feeling like a new crush in a while, and wow. I have really missed the feeling of falling in love with someone’s art.

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I agree but I also say we don’t settle for “just taking my work fuel, pay me for it”. Enjoyable paid lunches for all.

all lunch breaks should be paid im serious. im not even enjoying this im literally just making sure i dont pass out or something. this is part of The Job as far as im concerned

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So the fan theory is that Kreese murdered Tory’s mom. That’s how much he cares about winning karate tournaments. Enough to murder her mom and also make it look like a tragic but natural death.

Not only do I think this is true, I think he also killed Johnny’s mom. Johnny was an adult by then, but Kreese knew this would help him to manipulate Johnny 20 years later when they would inevitably be in the same dojo again. He probably also killed Mr. Miyagi, just out of spite. Snuck in the hospital and pulled the plug, it’s plausible. I wouldn’t put it past him.

He also traveled back in time and killed Daniel LaRusso’s father. Now I know you’re thinking, that doesn’t make any sense! Well, he was going to SAVE Daniel’s father because that would prevent Daniel from needed a father figure and finding that in Mr. Miyagi. But he realized that he didn’t want to avoid Daniel, he wanted to beat him, and so he killed Mr. LaRusso just to create that emotional tension. He thought it would alter the timeline, but this is when Kreese realized that the All Valley Under 18 Tournament was a fixed point in history, and that he was absolutely right to believe that teen karate tournaments really are the most important thing in the world.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: oh crap, Kreese killed Betsy! That’s where you’re wrong. Obviously Captain Turner arranged a special ops mission where he personally ran Betsy’s car off the road, so that in a key moment he could manipulate Kreese with this information. Just like all of the other bad behavior Kreese learned from Turner, he learned the trick of “kill what someone loves in order to emotionally manipulate them, even if you must bend space and time to do it” from Turner as well.

I predict that the big season ender is going to be Hilary Swank appearing as Julie Pierce to say “I am here to avenge my parents, who you killed in that car wreck so long ago!” and then taking him down.

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Voting for Democrats is the "leaving the house, getting some exercise, and drinking more water is good for your mental health" of societal change. Everyone keeps telling you to do it, worst of all your mom keeps telling you to do it, and it's not a magical cure-all, but it actually works and rotting in your room shitposting does not help in either scenario.