Hedgeiii - Searching For Sang-froid

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.

2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.

3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.

4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.

5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.

6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.

7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day

8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.

9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.

10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.

11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.

12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.

13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.

14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.

15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.

16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.

17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.

18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS’ legitimacy).

19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.

20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.

21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.

22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

Idk, can't hurt.

[source]

Today is my second week of being laid off. I probably have to make my older son- 4 - switch daycares. My younger son, 2, just started, and its just so expensive. The potential place is okay and less money, but he said on the way to see it that he likes his current school, and I almost broke into tears at that second. I don't want to switch schools/ care centers. I feel like everything I've done, to lead me to a moment that I'm so barely prepared for anything, having less than the minimum to keep everything running (I'm already falling behind every month on bills)... I've really failed here. My wife gives birth tomorrow to our third - a girl- after our first two were IVF boys, we are having a girl naturally (all of our embryos were boys). I should feel more blessed, but I just feel terrified.

I love my kids and my wife. I really hate myself right now. I hope I feel any better after I cry, because right now, I really need to.

This is critical for everyone to understand about social media.

Any engagement encourages the algorithm. It's a skill to cultivate only your stuff, and on most meta platforms, impossible by design. They sneak (and often sledgehammer) stuff in to just engage you, especially stuff you might hate.

An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media

If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.

Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.

At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.

The thing is lads I cannot think of a better use for my tax dollars than feeding children. I want my taxes to give the single mother of three healthcare. I want my taxes to take care of the elderly and the disabled. I don’t care if they’re citizens or legal residents or whatever. I want my taxes to help people. Because we’re trying to live in a goddamn society. Instead my taxes go towards bombing schools and hospitals and refugee camps. Billions and billions sent to proxy wars. And still people quibble over whether we should feed children. What are we doing here. Feed the kids.

Content I'd love to see, as a movie, short, or anything in between.

I smell a franchise in Character X and Character Y (gender norms unintended) Verb [Topical] Right

Brock Samson and Sailor Moon Eviscerate Tyrannical Sympathizers

That sounds like a f***ing party and I'm very pleased with myself.

Gulf of Mexico in Maps

As of me writing this, MapQuest shows GULF OF MEXICO, which is the correct name for a body of water named for Mexico. My knowledge of Mexico historically is a little dubious, and while I THINK most of Latin American ethnic background is a mix of Spanish, some Portuguese, a lot Native North and South American groups/ Empires (Mayans, Incans, Dine'), and dozens or hundreds of other people, that knowledge did stay my hand in calling a name change pure Colonizer Bullshit (as Mexico itself is a product of European colonizer and the name origin of Mexico I am unsure of), but I am certain the world does not need more American jingoism and/ or ethnocentrism and thus Gulf of Mexico should remain if for no other reason than that.

So... I'll be going back to MAPQUEST while Google and Apple boot lick. Waze seems to sidestep by showing (or not needing to show) bodies of water, as it is, in fairness, a driving-focused service.

I know I have, like, three followers, but to you three, I hope you enjoy this until I muster the discipline to get into small snippets of Magic the Gathering content that I derive joy from, interspersed with sharing things like this to try and display that we're not... alone.

That’s what always happens in capitalist societies. They say that if you don’t want to be poor, there’s a certain thing you have to do. But then everyone does it, so it’s no longer effective. The system depends on making sure that there’s always a supply of poor people to exploit.