you are saying that discrimination is a reason to arm yourself. people are being discriminated against. therefore, you are saying people should arm themselves. what about this is so hard to understand?
I've read a decent amount of theory and the like, but I'm ashamed to say most of it has been written by straight white guys. However, I did very much enjoy Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.
sigh
Alright, what WAS I supposed to take from your post if not "minorities should arm themselves"?
I will also note that you did not initially deny that you had been making such a recommendation.
You heavily implied that people of color, at least, should purchase firearms.
What? When the government tells you what your rights are that's good and normal, but when a random person tells you what your rights are that's fascism? Nothing about that makes any sense at all.
God. If you're this deliberately dense, there's no point in arguing with you. Enjoy whatever this shit is rattling around in your brain. Blocked.
My recommendation for people to arm themselves isn’t going to encourage to or dissuade anyone from doing so.
Then literally why say it?
they have a right to own them
Yeah, and maybe they shouldn't. There's lots of dangerous shit you have no right to possess. Guns should be in that category. And for the record, I don't believe the government should be sending armed people to enforce shit either.
You sound like my mother.
Smart woman.
Yeah, if I'd literally said, "I speak for us." All I said was, "You don't speak for us." Which is true. I never claimed to be speaking for anyone but myself.
Did I say I spoke for the entire class of people?
Because when you recommend that people arm themselves, you are talking to us too. Mental illness is much more common than you think, and becoming even more common as late capitalism exacerbates the conditions which produce some forms of mental illness. Moreover, mental illness can hit at any time. Someone who showed no symptoms of mental illness before can snap one day and commit suicide or murder their family. When you recklessly recommend that people buy guns, you are increasing the likelihood that someone will commit suicide or homicide, due to mental illness or otherwise.
I didn't say they weren't a vulnerable person, merely that even if they were they did not speak for us.
To be clear, it wasn't "you have to do literally any paperwork" that stopped me. It was the sheer amount of paperwork and hoops you have to jump through in my state to get a gun.
If anyone is lying here, it's you. Literally just google it.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2763812
This is not about terminal illnesses. I too support euthanasia. This is about mental illness. The fact is that if more guns are purchased, more mentally ill people will die.
As someone who has attempted suicide many times, I have no idea what you're talking about. The fact is that if you want to end your life reliably and quickly, guns are your best bet by far. As part of being suicidal, I did intensive research into what the best way to kill myself was. The universal conclusion was guns. My other attempts did not work, obviously, and not for lack of trying. It is much, much harder to kill yourself than most people realize. Besides, statistics show that having a gun in the home significantly increases the likelihood of suicide.
Gas stoves used to be a popular method of suicide. Do you know what happened when they stopped being made? Suicides went down. So yes, the method of suicide IS responsible for suicides. It's not true that people will just find another method of killing themselves. Suicide is often undertaken on a whim and people who survive attempts often never wind up killing themselves.
As the kind of person who is targeted by rising fascism, I would prefer you did not speak for us. I am firmly against gun ownership. The statistics show that having a gun on you makes you less safe, not more.
People are numbers. Thinking you will be the exception to statistical realities is a fool's errand. And it would be all well and good if the only people who suffered from the myriad gun deaths in this country were the people who bought the guns, but that's not the case. They are also endangering their families and neighbors. It is just objectively true that you and the people around you become less safe, not more, the moment you buy a gun.
As someone who nearly killed myself with a gun and was only stopped because I was too depressed to fill out the paperwork to buy one, my life was directly saved by gun control. If I had lived in a state where buying a gun was easier, I would be dead. If I had still been living with my dad who owns guns, I would be dead. And I am part of a hated minority, just like the people you seek to protect. The statisical reality is that people like me are still more likely to kill ourselves with guns than to be killed by bigots, and moreover, that having a gun on you does not protect you from bigots. It only gives them something to take from you and use against you. Adding a gun to a situation only ever benefits the most violent and unhinged person in that situation.
You are statistically much more likely to--accidentally or intentionally--kill yourself with a gun than successfully defend yourself against an attacker. Arming minorities will just result in more dead minorities.
I wish the left (the real left, not corporate Democrats) were half as good at strategy as conservatives are. It's a shame such brilliance is wasted on the worst people on the planet.
TTRPGs count as gaming, right? So tell me a little about what you have going on!
I'm currently in two DND 5e campaigns.
The first one is a homebrew setting, but still pretty standard as far as DND settings go. All the usual races. My character is Velena Zausek, a level 3 half-drow draconic sorcerer. Her backstory is that her drow father escaped the Underdark when he was young, then he and her human mother went on to start a successful weaving business. One day a badly wounded man stumbled into their town and they gave him shelter, fully expecting him to die. But he miraculously recovered, and then he claimed to be a dragon in disguise. As thanks, he offered them a boon: He would ask his dragon god to bless their bloodline. Thinking he was just nuts, they accepted and thought nothing more of it... until Velena hit puberty and started growing scales and setting things on fire.
When she reached adulthood, Velena inherited the weaving business but was bored to tears by it, so she decided to set out to be an adventurer. She and her buddies just finished fighting some drow who were about to sacrifice people to perform a ritual, and I suspect we'll try to figure out what their whole deal was as our next move.
Oh, and one of the party members is a draegloth (drow monster thingy) who took one look at Velena and decided she must be in charge lmao. Velena didn't initially realize this, but upon figuring it out she is so uncomfortable with it. I'm loving roleplaying it.
The second campaign is set in the Old Margreve, though I believe the DM just borrowed the setting and isn't planning on using any of the premade stuff otherwise. This campaign is newer, so I have less to say about it, but it seems really fun so far. Amusingly enough, we're following what seem to be drow through the forest, so drow are possibly the bad guys in both my campaigns.
My character is a Tabaxi swashbuckler rogue named Wind on Water. He just hit 4th level, and if anyone has any suggestions for feats, that would be appreciated. (I already have Alert.) He doesn't have as much of a backstory as Velena, but he grew up dirt poor in a big city and is adventuring to make money for himself and his brother. He and one of the other PCs are con men who were hiding out from their last heist when they got roped into this adventure. Their game was that his companion would steal from nobles, then Wind would "catch" him and turn him in for a price before freeing him. Kind of like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, if you've seen that.
Both Velena and Wind are a blast to play, but for very different reasons. Velena is my first DND character, so she's a lot like me because I figured that would be easier to roleplay. With Wind, I wanted to try something harder, so he's not much like me at all.
But enough about my bullshit. Tell me about your bullshit!
yup. we have to raise hell ourselves, because even the non-queers who nominally support us won't always fight for us.
one kind of dumbass will also be another kind of dumbass. worth knowing, but not especially surprising
I can't back this up, but I've heard the mods there are literally feds.
I know a lot charities are terrible, and I can't guarantee that all of these aren't terrible, but I thought it might do more good than harm to compile this list.
Feel free to let me know if you have any to add. Or if this would be better suited for a different community, as I didn't know where to put this.
Probably due to my own childhood experiences, it makes me very upset to see an individual or group persecuted because they are doing something or are something that is not harmful in any way whatsoever but have been arbitrarily categorized as unacceptable.
Holy shit, MOOD. I cannot stand people insisting that harmless things are bad just because they're weird/they're gross/they make them feel bad somehow. Especially from leftists like myself. They should know that that feeling is exactly the same feeling that drives conservatives to hate queer and kinky people.
When I see banal evil, or wrongdoing committed out of apathy and selfishness, I want to shake them and explain to them that they are deteriorating the social fabric and ultimately creating problems for themselves through sheer stupidity.
Right? Even if you don't care about anyone but yourself, YOU ALSO BENEFIT FROM THE WORLD BEING A BETTER PLACE. And you can actively contribute to that!
I don't see how politely suggesting what a racist should do with their time is "threatening violence," but even if it were, we should at least both have received warnings.
ADHD and autism are both strongly correlated with justice sensitivity. If you need an explanation for what that is, here's a quote from this article:
>Justice sensitivity is the tendency to notice and identify wrong-doing and injustice and have intense cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to that injustice. People who are justice sensitive tend to notice injustice more often than others, they tend to ruminate longer and more intensely on that injustice, and they feel a stronger need to restore justice.
Do y'all experience this? If so, how does it manifest?
For me, I can't see injustice and do nothing. Failing to stand up for my beliefs makes me hate myself, and I'll usually do it even if I know it's a bad idea or I'm surrounded by people who disagree--if anything, I feel more compelled to do it then. Since some of my beliefs are wildly unpopular, this often winds up in me feeling ostracized, rejected, and depressed.
I don't know what to do about this. I can't just not stand up for what I believe in--it's clearly the right thing to do. But it's a deeply unpleasant experience I keep repeating. I'll choose standing up for my beliefs over not being hurt if I have to, but that doesn't make it fun.
I'm a huge fan of David Graeber. Bullshit Jobs was part of what radicalized me, and I read it whenever I'm feeling isolated and misunderstood by an unjust world. He gets it, man. His other works are amazing too, and I'd highly recommend them all to anyone interested in socialism. I'm still heartbroken that he died so young.
Peter Kropotkin is another beloved author of mine. I'm not an ancom, but A Conquest of Bread is a great introduction to anarcho-communism, not to mention being beautiful and inspiring.
Who do y'all like to read?
<p>Mia discusses the emerging expert consensus on the Chinese economy and how the actual structure and function of Chinese State Owned Enterprises confounds and refutes it.</p> <p>You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available excl...
It's common among anti-tankie leftists to claim that China is a state capitalist economy, but as Mia Wong explains, the "state" part of that phrase is debatable. China is arguably just another neoliberal country with a more complicated chain of ownership for its corporations.
Transcript:
Shere Khan: Myar!
Sansa: MEEOO
Sansa: MWEEW
Me: Sansa, are you hungry?
Sansa: meww
Sansa: MYOWOW
Me: Myow!
Sansa: moo
Me: Mow!
Sansa: Myowwooo
Me: What about you, Shere Khan?
Shere Khan: Myap!
Me: Yep. Sansa!
Shere Khan: Myarreearr!
Me: Oh, goodness. Sansa!
Sansa: myoo :(
Me: Moo!
Sansa: myew!
Apparently these days, the most popular dream job among children is influencer. I've seen articles about it, and both the articles and the comments are invariably full of judgy statements about how Kids These DaysTM are such narcissists/their brains are being rotted by social media/they don't want to do anything valuable with their lives.
But like. I think the kids are onto something, tbh. The thing is, working a 9-5 (or 8-5, as the average job is nowadays) job is a pretty shit deal. You have no say in your work environment and have to do whatever you're told. The hours make a medieval peasant's workload look light, and that's not even counting the commute you'll likely have to make. What little free time you have left over is spent recovering, so you don't have time to do anything fun. And you get to do this for the rest of your life.
At least if you're an influencer, you set your own hours and may wind up working much less than 40 hours a week. You get to work from home, and there's a small chance you'll hit it big and get rich. There's zero chance of that at your standard office job. If you can swing it, it's not a bad deal at all.
And I don't think there's anything morally wrong with being an influencer. Are some of them shitty? Sure. But that's true of any job. You could argue that being an influencer contributes nothing to society, but really, how many jobs do contribute anything worthwhile to the world? Is it really more respectable to type numbers into spreadsheets all day just to make your boss richer? Or to write up reports no one reads? At least influencers entertain people.
TL;DR: The kids know the grind is bullshit, and they see becoming an influencer as a way to escape that.
balerion @beehaw.org fake gamer | sporadic shitposter | pro-ship | BLM | trans rights | head of the antifa PR department | 🚩 🏴
i block tankies, right-wingers, and others with garbage opinions lol <o/