presented without comment
You can tell a lot about the health of a civilization by their warning signs. Places with a lot of dumb folks will have very broad, very dumb warnings in public. "No feeding the birds." "Stop swimming in this drainage pond." That kind of thing.
Advanced civilizations have very precise signs. They've covered the bases of their regular, run-of-the-mill idiots, and now they're working hard to cover that other end of the bell curve: the talented idiot. When I was in Germany last time, there was a big warning sign that consisted of a 76-letter-long word that means "stop bothering this particular goose, Sven." I don't know who Sven was, but the goose looked pretty calm. It worked.
Now, I have a secret to tell you. You can just make your own signs. There's no law against it, except perhaps "littering," and the municipal sign factory doesn't have very good security. If you show up there past close and put in the door code that you shoulder-surfed off one of the employees returning from lunch a week prior, you have all night to fuck around with their sign-printing machine, making the most official-looking placards you can think of.
Is this wrong? I don't think so. It's a public space, and being able to put up an aluminum sign that says wacky crank shit is your right. For instance, just last week, I banned pickup trucks from parking by the playground. The cops figured out something was going on, because they didn't get any calls for toddlers getting backed over for a couple of days and sent a patrol truck to investigate. Took my sign right down.
What I discovered after that is that nobody keeps records of what signs are supposed to be there. Why would anyone put up a sign for no reason? They cost money, after all. The city is now suing the shit out of that officer for stealing the "no trucks" sign, thanks to an anonymous tipster who called in the theft. Guy wearing a reflective vest came by and put like four more of them up after the lawsuit made the news, just out of spite. I'm not entirely sure if he's actually a city worker; we ran into each other at 3am at the sign factory and just grunted. He was working on some really crazy signs about not feeding a particular swan. Probably German.
if you want to know what the situation is for gay people in portland oregon my friend got comradezoned last week
me giggling and kicking my feet re-reading the out-of order, almost completely unconnected scenes that I wrote for my specific asf fanfic that I published a month ago and still only has one chapter because I write the scenes I want to which do not happen to be in chronological order
As a trans woman you can generally expect not to be believed about most things: The legal processes you've navigated, effects you've had from transition care, what you had for breakfast, and so on.
But there's one major exception, which is when you're clearly joking.
If you say something like "I'm going to forcefem Richard Nixon for his crimes", you will be subjected to a person who fully and entirely believes that:
You possess the infrastructure and resources necessary to operate a real life forcefemming dungeon sophisticated enough to forcefem not just any captive, but a US President
You intend to wield the power of this forcefem dungeon over political disagreements, and are taking active steps to do so
Your intended target is Richard Nixon, famously a corpse who has been dead for 30 glorious, Nixonless years, and you are apparently going to be able to put him in a state that would be receptive to forcefemming, which is generally understood to require a subject who is alive
Despite the evidence that you are a necromancer with substantial kidnapping abilities, you are receptive to being informed, in a strongly worded post of concern, that necromantic forcefem is immoral.
And once they've caught you in your dastardly scheme, they will not relent at attempts to clarify
Fire Lord Zuko passing a law that forbids challenging anyone under the age of majority to Agni Kai
Fire Lord Zuko waiting until the day he reaches the age of majority to pass this law, lest anyone think he is a coward
(No one. Literally no one would have thought that, but it’s generally regarded as a very classy move regardless)
Happy pride
All of the re-writes I've seen of Light not having the Death Note butcher his character. I want him to be a little jealous freak. I want L to see how fucked up he is and still assume he's Kira. I am a firm believer that he is a freak with or without the Death Note