reverse-mccarthyism

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incredible website

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like brother if it even crosses your mind for a second to call the cops on ANYONE for ANY REASON you are not punk or progressive or whatever label you use to try and feel Cool and Moral. you are a poser and a threat to the vulnerable individuals in your life

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family

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I'm going to the Hardware Store

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alice slips a security guard in volterra a thousand dollar bill??? not only is that a defunct form of payment in america but she's in ITALY

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Xiao Wen Ju by Zhong Lin for Marie Claire China March 2024

Styled by Austin Feng. Makeup by Clive Xiong. Hair by Minghu Zhang.

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In 2005, the moral panic about “obesity” was ramping up, and there was big money at stake, all resting on the idea that fat kills. 

Well, Flegal’s research pulled the rug out from under those views, not only showing that fatness was associated with only 1/3 the associated deaths that previous research estimated (and even that smaller estimate can be critiqued), but also showing that being “overweight” conferred no increased risk at all, and may even be a protective factor against all-causes mortality relative to lower weight categories. 

The reaction to these results – which have been verified over and over again in the years since and in decades of prior research – was swift and vicious. Powerful people launched a smear campaign against Flegal and her work:

Her research became the target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer. The goal appeared to be to undermine and discredit her work.

Flegal’s first-hand account of her experience illustrates how power and stigma pervade and bias weight science. This can have a chilling effect:

One of the effects of the public insults may also have been to deter or intimidate other investigators. An anonymous researcher was quoted elsewhere as saying if character assassination is the price for publishing data that contradicts established beliefs, fewer academics will be willing to stick out their necks and offer up fresh thinking.

And all of this is terrible for science and horrific for Flegal. But when the dust settles, who is really hurt? Fat people. Always.

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Discover Armand Pierre Fernandez’s surreal and vibrant take on long-term parking in the 1980s, a playful commentary on consumer culture and urban life.

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what are you talking about

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Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel, Cricket In An Armchair, 1911

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cinnamon bread recipe

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I love Spike so much. He's the most character of all time. But it's more than that. He's more than bleached hair, a pretty face, and bloodlust. He makes sense. The character makes sense.

He's William. He's still, despite it all, William Pratt, the god-awful poet and pathetic wet cat of a man under the thumb of mommy his whole life. He just wants to be loved and held and to satiate his unending bloodlust. He's not the big bad. He's pathetic.

He's burnt out on all the plots and schemes. Plots and schemes are Angel's thing. Serving some grand evil purpose is Darla's thing. Cruelty is Drusilla's thing. William Pratt is a poet and a mama's boy who just wants a strong woman to love him and tell him what to do. He's tired. He's so tired of the plots and schemes.

Sure, he knows how to have a good time, he plays kitten poker and sells demon eggs to the highest bidder but that's a matter of making money or hanging out with friends. It's not what he WANTS. The only thing he wants is to be loved by someone who loves him back. The problem is, he's toxic and obsessive. He doesn't fall in love. He becomes consumed. His whole world revolves around the object of his obsession. So when he's with Drusilla, he's the big bad evil guy doing schemes. Trying to impress her with extreme violence and death. Because that's what Drusilla is into. Torture and death. She's Catholic. And a vampire.

He also tries to impress Angel by killing Slayers because Angel is into Slayers and Angel and Spike canonically slept together don't at me. This man is bisexual.

When he's with Buffy he's a loyal dog. A bad boy, a part of the demonic world, but a dog nonetheless. He's a soulless monster but his obsession with Buffy turns him into one of the good guys. It's not natural for him. He feels it happening and he fights against it, but he's madly in love with her and he will be and do whatever it takes to impress her and make her love him back. He's obsessive.

He knows it, and he doesn't like that side of himself. He doesn't like that he's a pathetic dog. Sometimes he pushes against that side of himself. He tries to be a good person, for real. Not just a pathetic stalker of a man.

But he can't fight it. He is what he is.

And unfortunately that is a soulless vampire.

Hence that one scene that I pretend didn't happen.

But despite being definitionally evil, he can't stop being consumed the person he's obsessed with. Buffy wants him to have a soul. She wants him to not be the monster he is. So he rips William Pratt from his grave and resurrects him for her. He goes through hell to put his soul back inside his body for her. It takes her a long time to accept him again after what he did.

But he's the good boy now. He's a good dog.

Only she doesn't see him that way. In the end, he has her trust. Her love. She cares about him and sees him as her equal. As someone she can trust. She can't trust her friends because they're messy and constantly fucking up and betraying her because they don't understand what it is to be The Slayer. To have a human body and a human soul, with demonic power inside, and the divine mandate to sacrifice yourself for others, to save the world. No matter what that does to you.

Spike has a human soul, a demon inside him, trauma, and a divine mission to save the world. To sacrifice himself for everyone.

Spike is the only one who understands Buffy, and maybe the only one who ever will.

He's the perfect culmination of all her other relationships.

He fucks. Unlike Angel, Spike can fuck. He can experience joy alongside her.

He respects her strength and isn't emasculated or intimidated by the fact that she's stronger than him. He loves that she defeated a god. Unlike fucking Riley.

He's lived lifetimes worth of traumatic experiences. But he isn't currently experiencing an ongoing mental health crisis like Faith was.

And he likes poetry!

They even have the same ex boyfriend!

In conclusion He and Buffy are both the most character of all time and the narrative's favorites and therefore they are both perfect for each other and have the potential to be extremely toxic together and I'm so happy for them, I hope she pegs him, I know he would love that.

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one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.

and none of these people wanted to walk away from a guaranteed job, so very few of them ever quit. they just kept doing the same show eight nights a week... for twenty or thirty years... and by the time it finally closed last year most of these musicians (who had been working together for DECADES) hated each other and really really fucking loathed phantom. I can't stop thinking about it. it's indescribably hellish to imagine but also the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

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A Los Angeles sex worker called 911 for help. The LAPD arrived and shot her.

A Los Angeles sex worker called 911 to report being held in a motel room against her will. When the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) showed up, one of the officers shot her.

The woman, Linda Becerra Moran, died on February 27 after nearly three weeks on life support.

Advocates in the area are both mourning Moran's death and worrying about what message it will send. "This has such chilling connotations for survivors in L.A….if they're afraid that police are going to shoot them when they call 911," Soma Snakeoil, executive director of the nonprofit Sidew

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adhd will get you thinking "i should make this doctors appointment" every day for 7 months and counting