270 posts
Latest Posts by ryu289 - Page 5
Shooting ICE agents doesn't violate their rights at all in many cases, particularly in recent cases. The main moral/strategic reason to not shoot ICE agents is that it would risk escalation. But if ICE is escalating anyway, then past a certain point, this reason goes out the window. It might well be good if more people shot back.
ICE agents often act in ways that make them look like random thugs anyway, and it is often okay or good to shoot random thugs in self-defense and in defense of others. On a personal emotional level, morals aside, I want ICE agents to be afraid they might get shot, and I want them sometimes to get shot. I think this is sometimes morally good as well, though I leave it an open question how often.
I'm saying this on Tumblr and not on Facebook, because I think I'm entitled to say it, and I am less afraid of getting in trouble on Tumblr than on Facebook.
Really? Trump never censored free speech?
Then what do you call this:
"White male conservatives want to be oppressed so badly."
This isn't true at all.
If they're working class, they're oppressed by the rich.
Many of them could easily be neurodivergent in some way but undiagnosed.
Very likely a majority of them were abused by their parents.
So if they wanted to be oppressed, they most likely already are. They could easily speak out against their actual experiences with oppression.
What they want isn't to be oppressed. What they want is the feeling of victory over oppression without actually having to experience the oppression. Fighting back against the ways that they're actually oppressed would be hard work, would be met with massive opposition, ridicule, and possibly even violence, and would be an ongoing battle that only once in a blue moon results in victory. But if they claim to be oppressed as a white man, then they can feel victorious whenever they see a woman or a person of color suffering.
The problem isn't the construction workers who want to be compensated for their labor. The problem is the capitalists who hoard homes for profit.
The problem isn't the medical workers who want to be compensated for their labor. The problem is the CEOs who hoard medical care for profit.
Those who say that housing or medical care are a human right are not saying that the workers should be forced to work for free. They're saying that it shouldn't be hoarded for profit. If the only costs were the materials and labor, it wouldn't be anywhere near as expensive as it is now.
"The left" are always saying to tip your servers. "The left" are always saying to pay for artists with money and not with "exposure". "The left" are always saying that workers should be paid a living wage. Clearly it's not "the left" devaluing people's labor.
Unemployed Person: "No one will hire me because of my tattoos and my drug use."
Conservatives: "That's your own fault. They can hire whoever they want. It's your duty to make yourself employable."
Unemployed Person: "No one will hire me because I didn't get the covid vaccine."
Conservatives: "THAT'S THE EPITOME OF INJUSTICE! YOUR PLACE OF WORK HAS NO RIGHT TO DICTATE WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR BODY!"
Friends, Musk is trying to downplay the chaos he’s creating by saying it’s much the same as the cost-cutting efforts of the Clinton administration. “What DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s,” he posted on his X platform. Rubbish. I cut costs in the Clinton administration. The contrast with what Musk is doing couldn’t be sharper. As secretary of labor, I took the Department of Labor down from 18,500 employees to 16,600 — but did it without any layoffs. No chainsaws. No meat-axes. And we were careful to improve the services we were providing the public. For example, when people lost jobs in an industry that was shrinking, we devised a way to get them job-training and job-search assistance in addition to unemployment insurance. This helped move them into new jobs faster — which also saved the government over $1 billion a year in unemployment payments. We plowed that $1 billion back into job-training and job-search assistance, making the whole economy work better. In Musk’s attack on the federal workforce, thousands of federal workers have been fired without warning. Or they’ve been offered fake “deferred resignation” buyouts that were never authorized by Congress and may not be legal. Entire agencies have been gutted without legislative authorization, forcing judges to intervene. Our “Reinventing Government” effort was authorized by bipartisan congressional legislation. We worked carefully over several years to identify areas where government could be more efficient, notifying Congress of what we were doing. But the Republicans who control Congress today have allowed Musk to race ahead without them, even though the Constitution states that the legislative branch approves spending and federal law prohibits the president from cutting programs Congress has authorized without its permission. Clinton sought that permission, and Congress accepted $3.6 billion in cuts he proposed. We also involved federal workers, because they knew better than anyone what could be improved and how best to do it. We introduced performance standards, we encouraged our workers to embrace the internet, and we gave out awards to employees who came up with ways to cut red tape and improve service. “There was a tremendous effort put into understanding what should happen and what should change,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, which seeks to improve the federal workforce. “What is happening now is actually taking us backwards.” We were deliberative and careful. Musk is the opposite. Musk sees government workers as the enemy — as costs to be cut. We saw government workers as assets to be developed, our partners in getting better services to the public more efficiently. Musk also calls people who benefit from government programs the “parasite class.” Presumably that’s why he’s eager to cut back Medicaid. But Medicaid’s beneficiaries aren’t parasites. Half of them are children. Oh, but if we’re talking about people who depend on government, Musk is the biggest “parasite” of all. Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, often at critical moments, helping seed the growth that has made him the richest person in the world. That he views public servants as his enemy and the people who benefit from public programs as “parasites” tells you all you need to know about Elon Musk. When you hear Musk say his effort is similar to what I and others did in the 1990s, know he’s lying. When you see him call people who benefit from public programs “parasites,” know he’s a hypocrite. Thoughts?
I humbly suggest that true crime freaks should get into learning about scammers instead of serial killers. I LOVE reading about fraud and grifts and pyramid schemes. true crime ppl have all this paranoid energy about murder, which is rare in the grand scheme of things.....maybe instead that could be channeled into some productive rage toward capitalism.
I have a controversial idea too. If you don't want people to do something, don't tell them to do it. You tell people that if they never go to school, they deserve to work for a poverty wage forever. Now you tell them that if they do go to school, they deserve to be in debt forever.
Here's another controversial idea. Going into debt to get an education shouldn't even be an option.
i cannot keep quiet about this anymore.
if you're in the US or Canada and interested in learning a language using a free app please get a library card and download MANGO. it's very good and extremely free with a library card (there are many public libraries and universities using the service, so make an account and use the search feature here to find out if there's one near you).
mango currently has 72 available languages and dialects (that's right! different courses for french or canadian french! spanish or latam spanish!). it's set up basically like an audiobook with text. the idea is that the narrator explains the words while you read, and you repeat after them or say the translation out loud when prompted. there's a daily review where you go through flashcards. you can also use the flashcards at your leisure and create your own. at the end of each chapter there's a listening comprehension quiz and a reading comprehension quiz. i cannot emphasize how effective this all is. and it's free with a card.
if you're not in the US or Canada and/or looking for something more like duolingo (don't use duolingo btw tldr they fired translators and replaced them with "ai"), then try BUSUU! it only has 14 languages atm but the lessons are really descriptive and effective. it also has a feature where you can correct other people's open-ended speaking/typing exercises. you set your fluent languages, and exercises by people learning those languages will appear in your feed for you to correct. you can even add others as friends! and, much like duolingo, it has a streak and leaderboard system for you to strive for, minus the guilt-tripping owl.
busuu is free (you watch ads to unlock lessons and they're all skippable after like five seconds), although it also has paid premium/plus versions (i don't use the paid version—the language courses are available for free, and the ad system is Really unobtrusive).
so that's my wisdom for the day. mango and busuu. please check them out :)
Wait wait wait.
The chapter is called what?
What the “haha millennials can’t even make phone calls” crowd fails to appreciate is that making phone calls is a far more user-hostile and physically uncomfortable experience than it was 15-20 years ago.
🖕
'Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism' is a zine by Jewish anarchists on how people can organise and act in this changing terrain. Download it (it's free), read, print and distribute it IRL!
Trust the heroin addict who isn’t a doctor or medical professional of any kind.
🤦♀️
Going to ramble a bit before my latest question.
My scrapbooks aren't a reliable primary source of information. Their contents seem to shift every time there's a furshlugginer Crisis event, and there's a missing volume but every time I try to think what's in it exactly, it slips my mind. Plus of course they only contain the newspaper and magazine articles I or someone who knows about my hobby happen across, and some of those newspapers, like the Metropolis Whisper, are known to give false information.
Still, it's a fun hobby. The first clipping I started with was one my slightly older cousin pointed out to me about the Justice League fighting Doctor Destiny in 1966 (yes, I know). The mask Wonder Woman had to wear during that case was shown and fascinated me. Mom suggested making a scrapbook for the news items I was interested in, and it quickly became all superheroes and mystery men.
Once it turned out I was serious about this, I also inherited loose clippings on the general topic that my parents and grandparents had randomly saved. And now we're getting closer to my question.
I've got six items from the 1930s about a New York City mystery man, or urban legend, named the Shadow. Two are straightforward news reports of gangsters going to prison, with a mention that "the Shadow" was somehow involved. One is an official announcement from the NYC police commissioner of the time that no such person as the Shadow existed. Then there's a snippet from a gossip columnist where Orson Welles, the radio celebrity, allegedly claimed to have actually met the Shadow and helped him on a case. Finally, two letters to the editor, one claiming that the Shadow was made up by reporters as a hoax to sell newspapers, and another positing that the reason the Shadow had never been photographed is that he had the power to turn invisible (which was also why no one could catch him.)
From what little I could find in a cursory search, the existence of the Shadow appears to be controversial.
So, what's the current scholarly consensus? Was the Shadow a for real person, an urban legend, and either way, what's actually known about him?
Establishing the existence of a superhero or mystery man can be tricky in some cases and utterly trivial in others, making the hard ones even harder by comparison. For instance, it's pretty easy to establish that Superman exists. He acts publically on a daily basis, the world over, his face, his costume and his abilities are globally known and he interacts with the public and the media enough that establishing a profile on him is background radiation. It's just KNOWN. Establishing that a mystery man existed back in the late 30s and 40s is also usually easy. Green Lantern is attested in dozens of newspaper articles, photographs, newsreels and of course the man is still alive and directly connected to many other well known superhero organizations. Then there's the tricky ones. Superheroes who show up once and then never again, strange costumes and images that don't quite fit with any other report, things that mix closer to legend than fact. This is one of those.
(A sketch of the most well attested version of what 'The Shadow' may have looked like) Reports of the Shadow's existence stretch back as far as 1931, the better part of a decade before The Crimson Avenger and the Sandman would bring the era of the mystery man into the full public consciousness. There have always been theories, some more fringe than others, that they were NOT in fact the first Mystery Men of their era but in fact simply the two that went public and maintain their identities long enough to be well attested in the historical record. That's never become a mainstream position simply because all versions of it either fail to meet the definition: The Crimson Avenger and the Sandman are the first BECAUSE they directly lead into their generation being birthed as a social force. Even if other came before them they only arguably count as part of the same wave because they obviously didn't reach the war years. OR like in this case, because their existence is impossible to prove. I don't believe the Shadow exists because the more you try to dig into him the more his existence becomes something worse than unprovable, it becomes unfalsifiable. He can turn invisible, he's a master of disguise, everyone who has ever seen his face is dead, he can mind control people through hypnosis so even standing in the center of a well lit room he won't be noticed, he has dirt on literally every possible person in or out of power that's so airtight no one would dare leak his existence, etc, etc, etc. The more questions are raised about lack of evidence, the wider the circle becomes to justify how nothing about him has ever been pinned down. None of the other heroes who were active in the very early 'gangland' days like the Sandman, The Crimson Avenger or The Atom ever confirmed working with or against him, he was never a member of any team or organization, no photograph was ever taken of the man beyond a shadow of a doubt. Eventually it comes down to the fact that a theory that can't be DISproven can't be trusted.
String of Small Pink Pearls: Your muse is writing a secret-admirer letter; since they cannot use their true name, how do they sign it?
Eluvianna is something of a fan of a particular enigmatic hero who used his power to cloud the minds of his enemies. Many of his unusual tales can still be found in visual novels scattered across Azeroth...and beyond.
As such, she will often sign her more mysterious missives, romantic or otherwise, with his title:
The Shadow
She never truly intends to impersonate the legend. But the idea of leaving recipients bewildered—perhaps even mildly entertained—is a source of endless amusement.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”
Thank you for the ask @dawn-blossom! Of course referencing the exalted character from our own dimension.
Redesigns of public domain heroes
we got another good news roundup!
the fight is still on! don’t give up!
Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, have voted in tandem on nearly every case that’s come before them since Kavanaugh joined the court in October. They’ve been more likely to side with the court’s liberal justices than its other conservatives.
The two justices, both alumni of the same District of Columbia-based federal appeals court, have split publicly only once in 25 official decisions. Their partnership has extended, though less reliably, to orders the court has issued on abortion funding, immigration and the death penalty in the six months since Kavanaugh’s bitter Senate confirmation battle ended in a 50-48 vote.