Paul Wesley Gets A Lot Of Shit For Not Looking Much Like Shatner’s Kirk (even Though He’s Got The

The next time you've got a friend over, set an example and put your phone on the table, visibly there but not too far away, to let them know that you're intentionally present, not distracted, your attention is undivided and you want to be fully focused on being right there to spend time with them. Don't mention it or draw attention to this, you're not doing this to be preachy or wanting praise, you just want to be a good friend and you value your friend's time. Ideally, your friend will either notice this or even pick it up without conscious notice, and set their own phone aside on the table as well.

Then, when your friend takes a minute to go to the bathroom, grab your phone and take a photo of your friend's phone sitting on your table. Do not touch it, and put your own phone back exactly where it was immediately once you've got the picture. Carry on with whatever you two were doing.

Once your time is up and your friend has left for home, wait for a good 15 minutes or so, for them to either get back home or be well on their way there. Text your friend, "hey, you forgot your phone", and send them the photo you took of their phone on your table. Set a stopwatch running from the moment your friend sees the message.

Measure how many seconds it takes for your friend to process this and tell you to go fuck yourself.

Listen to me. Listen very carefully:

They are trying to wear you out.

They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.

So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.

Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!

GovTrack.us

GovTrack.us

Tracking legislation and votes in the United States Congress.

congress.gov

Congress.gov | Library of Congress

U.S. Congress legislation, Congressional Record debates, Members of Congress, legislative process educational resources presented by the Lib

Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.

That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.

Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.

Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.

Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.

It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?

Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.

*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.

**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.

In this picture you can see how much the artist craves summer 🏖️ As I've told you, I haven't completely abandoned digital painting. So just look at them! Where are they? Risa? Some Cardassian tourist planet? I want to know more

Fragments (including Garak's terribly content face) are under the cut

Today is June 7, and today's leap is:

Miss Deep South (S3, E6) June 7, 1958

hi all :) little video I made cause I wanted to play around with a new animation app.

song - slow life, by of monsters and men

I imagine when Julian gets bored he'll go track down Miles in the Jefferies tubes and bother him. this has absolutely led to several incidents where Miles is up to his elbows in circuitry and Julian suddenly pops in upside down from an access above him like "hi Miles :)" and Miles jumps so hard he hits his head on the tube's ceiling

Launching my first art blogs with a small comic based on the amazing words of Ursula K. Le Guin!

I cannot over-emphasize the degree to which ive been preparing my entire life for this moment @jone-slugger

This is so stupid