one of the things that's the most fucking frustrating for me about arguing with climate change deniers is the sheer fucking scope of how much it matters. sweating in my father's car, thinking about how it's the "hottest summer so far," every summer. and there's this deep, roiling rage that comes over me, every time.
the stakes are wrong, is the thing. that's part of what makes it not an actual debate: the other side isn't coming to the table with anything to fucking lose.
like okay. i am obviously pro gun control. but there is a basic human part of me that can understand and empathize with someone who says, "i'm worried that would lead to the law-abiding citizens being punished while criminals now essentially have a superpower." i don't agree, but i can tell the stakes for them are also very high.
but let's say the science is wrong and i'm wrong and the visible reality is wrong and every climate disaster refugee is wrong. let's say you're right, humans aren't causing it or it's not happening or whatever else. let's just say that, for fun.
so we spend hundreds of millions of dollars making the earth cleaner, and then it turns out we didn't need to do that. oops! we cleaned the earth. our children grow up with skies full of more butterflies and bees. lawns are taken over with rich local biodiversity. we don't cry over our electric bills anymore. and, if you're staunchly capitalist and i need to speak ROI with you - we've created so many jobs in developing sectors and we have exciting new investment opportunities.
i am reminded of kodak, and how they did not make "the switch" to digital photography; how within 20 years kodak was no longer a household brand. do we, as a nation, feel comfortable watching as the world makes "the switch" while we ride the laurels of oil? this boggles me. i have heard so much propaganda about how america cannot "fall behind" other countries, but in this crucial sector - the one that could actually influence our own monopolies - suddenly we turn the other cheek. but maybe you're right! maybe it will collapse like just another silicone valley dream. but isn't that the crux of capitalism? that some economies will peter out eventually?
but let's say you're right, and i'm wrong, and we stopped fracking for no good reason. that they re-seed quarries. that we tear down unused corporate-owned buildings or at least repurpose them for communities. that we make an effort, and that effort doesn't really help. what happens then? what are the stakes. what have we lost, and what have we gained?
sometimes we take our cars through a car wash and then later, it rains. "oh," we laugh to ourselves. we gripe about it over coffee with our coworkers. what a shame! but we are also aware: the car is cleaner. is that what you are worried about? that you'll make the effort but things will resolve naturally? that it will just be "a waste"?
and what i'm right. what if we're already seeing people lose their houses and their lives. what if it is happening everywhere, not just in coastal towns or equatorial countries you don't care about. what if i'm right and you're wrong but you're yelling and rich and powerful. so we ignore all of the bellwethers and all of the indicators and all of the sirens. what if we say - well, if it happens, it's fate.
nevermind. you wouldn't even wear a mask, anyway. i know what happens when you see disaster. you think the disaster will flinch if you just shout louder. that you can toss enough lives into the storm for the storm to recognize your sacrifice and balk. you argue because it feels good to stand up against "the liberals" even when the situation should not be political. you are busy crying for jesus with a bullhorn while i am trying to usher people into a shelter. you've already locked the doors, even on the church.
the stakes are skewed. you think this is some intellectual "debate" to win, some funny banter. you fuel up your huge unmuddied truck and say suck it to every citizen of that shitbird state california. serves them right for voting blue!
and the rest of us are terrified of the entire fucking environment collapsing.
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Danny got out.
Danyal al Ghul was created by the League of Assassins alongside his brother Damian.
Created, not born. Though they were both grown in the same lab, Danyal always felt the status quo. Damian was the heir, the real son, the one they cared about. Damian got to be a person, the one for whom human terms like “born” would fit.
Danyal was just the extra. The bodyguard to die in his brother’s place and a spare should he be lost.
And Danyal died.
Shed his old life like a snake’s skin and vanished into the bustle of a crowded city.
They would tell Damian it was a mission that went wrong. A failure, like Danyal always was.
But Danyal would call it his first real success.
Danny Fenton loves their new life.
Jack and Maddie, for all their unsafe work practices, care for them. That’s far more than their blood “family” in the League ever did.
Far more than they felt they deserved for the longest time.
So when their brother reached out, tried to reconnect as if they were normal siblings instead of born tools, is it any wonder they lashed out, told him to never come back?
Danny got out. Danyal is dead, one ghost Danny is happy to put down forever.
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You know, it's rather interesting to me that Taylor Swift's parasocial relationship with her fans is honestly more akin to a YouTuber than a writer's. When I scroll through her tag on tumblr/Twitter, it's far more regarding the connection to her personal life/relationship developments than the actual metaphors/fictional story she might be telling. Everything comes back to how her songs reflect back on her relationships with Joe/Matty/Travis/Jake/insert ex-boyfriend here. And what fascinates me about it is that even though she complains about it, she leans into that very perception because it strengthens the parasocial bond.
The marketing for TTPD so clearly being about Joe Alwyn and the songs to Matty Healy. The marketing/video for Red TV so CLEARLY being about Jake Gyllenhaal, with so many of the new lines in All Too Well specifically being digs at him (I'll get older but your lovers stay my age, casting an actor that looks like him for the video, specific lines in I Bet You Think About Me). The fact that songs like Getaway Car and Bejeweled and Gorgeous and London Boy and Lavender Haze being picked apart at time of release and long after for signs of relationships crumbling. The way she uses surprise songs in relation to her relationship development with Joe/Matty/Travis. The damn TTPD "stages of grief" playlists where she deliberately undid/changed the meanings of old songs just to keep her audience speculating on her love life.
It's not sexist to point out that her wielding her love life is a marketing tool and that the strongest connection to her audience isn't the strength of her writing/the composition of her music- it's her deliberate crafting of a connection between her music and her personal life, leaving the audience invested in her music as an extension of Taylor the Person/Girlfriend rather than Taylor the Artist.
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She has not just been raped and murdered, she was very much tortured and brutalized like Nirbhaya. It is all over the Bengali news. I don't understand why no one is talking about this.
A 2nd year Respiratory Medicine in a well known government medical college in Kolkata, West Bengal, India is found in a semi-naked state and the college/ hospital called it a suicide.
I'm a MBBS student in second year. After reading about her, what crossed my mind is the amount of times she would have felt this fear, before this worst fear of hers eventually materialized.
"A young resident doctor was found dead in the seminar room of her medical college in Kolkata. Initial autopsy report suggests possible rape and murder."
As all are saying,
She wasn't walking the street at odd hours. She wasn't wearing clothes that were provocative. She wasn't loitering in dangerous neighbourhoods.
She was a resident doctor, looking for a place to rest in her own hospital.
She had been on duty and had gone to rest in the early hours of Friday.
The one place which was supposed to guarantee her safety failed her, miserably.
Someone comes, rapes a female pg who is merely resting in a seminar hall because there is no proper place for her to rest, brutalized her and kills her. How did NO one know? The college and police initially call it a suicide. Excuse me? It is also being said that under pressure from local politicians, the Principal and Dean attempted to alter the post-mortem report. Autopsy confirms sexual assault.
What are the actions taken? One man arrested because his behavior seemed "shady". This is clearly not an act of one man. And this was a very well aware of and a well executed criminal act.
Also, all this happening in WB right when the situation of bangladesh is in turmoil and news of Bangladeshi Hindus being killed and tortured, seems wrong, VERY WRONG. Happening right before NEET-PG, as 24 lakh doctors prepare to write an exam on Sunday to be resident doctors, this news has wrapped us all in agony and rage,
What are they working so hard for? Why should they aspire to be in a system that ignores their basic needs? The minimum requirement of a workplace is safety. That should be non-negotiable.
This profession demands extereme hardwork, a lot of mental strength and Physical Assaults, harassment, low paying jobs with odd working hours with intense humiliation. Now its the worst of all seeing a bright mind losing her life in the most disrespectful state of all. This should never happen to any woman.
I'd also like to question why isn't any big media house covering this news, where are all the international news channels all this time.
What are the students in other medical colleges doing? This talks about their own safety and lives. What are the medical students across the world doing? It's time for us to stand for the most basic Human right, safety.
Yesterday when my roommate, an MBBS final year intern was heading for her night posting, I feared and prayed for her to come back safely. Thinking about it, in a few years I will also have night posting, I'll also return from my hospital duties late at night. I'll also have to go through the same fear, and I'll also have to keep praying that my worst fears don't turn into reality. So many female doctors, nursing staffs, other Healthcare workers, other working women, non-working women go through the same fear, probably multiple times a day.
It is a shame to be born in such a disgusting world and society, it is shame to witness such a brutal crime, and it is a shame to live in this fear daily.
Those RAPISTS need to be hunged infront of the whole natio...if needed burned alive. People should fear the idea of raping, more than getting raped.
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these 'not all men' clowns are beyond embarrassing, women are talking about their constant agony and these clowns expect them to say 'all men are trash except my neighbour raju who is unproblematic and helped me to put my scooty's stand one day', sharam karle thoda.
it's crazy to see men act offended, going to the extent of bringing up things like abuse against men(when they laughed it off when modi sarkaar made sexual harassment against men legal), sending rape threats, groping women in a rally arranged by the women for the woman who died mercilessly tortured at the hand of a man. men in fact. what is this world?
and the few women i can visibly see still bootlicking these men, i hope the manworshipping was worth all the threat you cause to your own kind.
not all men are rapists but all of them benefit from a patriarchal society.
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