In posts that user has given different replies to the same comment of mine multiple times, minutes apart, seemingly unaware they were doing so. Sus to me.

Back when twitter was a thing, for my rep had a social media 'minion' army that managed propaganda accounts, multiple people per account to pretend to be voters with 'concerns' about Dems. This felt the same.

'Woke' schools adding litter boxes in bathrooms for furries.

I have relatives with master's degrees that work in education that you can not convince that cat litter bathrooms are not a thing.

This usually places undue burden on women, poor and generally anybody not a white dude.

Say you are a woman, okay you've got your certified copy of your birth certificate $10-but wait the name doesn't match because you got married.

Now you need a marriage certificate, thats another $10 and the trouble of contacting another municipal office.

Oh were you married twice? Thats tracking down another 2 municipal offices, another $10 marriage cert and now a certified judgement of divorce which will cost-ooh was your children's custody agreement a part of that? $40. Did you not remember your divorce file number from 30 years ago? It'll be an additional $5 per name per every 2 years searched.

I've seen women spend like $200 just on certified copies to get a realID driver's license. Has a chilling effect on registering, to solve a problem of voter fraud that doesn't really exist.

Progressives have been dropping the ball since before 2010? Why yes I agree.

Ah, so you were. Ngl wasn't following usernames and somebody's 'y tu Bernie' had me rage posting

Progressive policies are popular. But progressives have done a shit job of turning that enthusiasm into political capital. Waiting every four years for a nationally appealing, ideologically perfect candidate to magically fall in our lap seems to be a winning strategy—for republicans. Too many would be progressives give up if they can't have the whole cake handed to them instead of rolling up some sleeves and learning how to work from scratch.

Books. Cspan. Try again. I can't spoon feed you 30 years worth of politics in a lemmy post. Nothing you posted was in the parking lot of the stadium of truth.

I personally love the city watch books the most, which starts with Guards! Guards! and circle around themes of justice and social inequality in a way that will be satisfying if you are working class left of center. There's a sort of a timeline, but I read them wildly out of order and didn't feel the worse off for it. Pratchett really found his voice after writing a few books, so I think it's generally suggested not to start at the beginning. Each 'series' has a core motif it pokes at, but if you were only to read one to see if you liked the style... I think Going Postal?

It might be US only, does anyone know if a VPN would work?

Yeah. None of what you said it true tho? For the border I'd recommend this book Everyone who is gone is here by Jonathan Blitzer. And they can't codify without the votes? Remember Obamacare? To agree with you I'd have to only become political aware a couple years ago and never read more than headlines. Pick up a book, watch some cspan, try again.

Equal parts timeless social commentary, fantasy, and comedy. Not too grim, not too saccharine—always juggling the big existential questions, highjinks, and word-play it'll take multiple re-reads to catch. The personification of Death is a cat lady skeleton.

Sigh. There was a moment when I first joined lemmy that I was impressed how liberal of a space it was. And then I wandered into the comments of posts concerning gender. Fuucking depressing. Really, people would benefit from a gender studies class, or even anthropology or family and society, but for some everything is an attack and I doubt they'll listen.

Riiiiight. They'll never overturn Roe, that's got judicial standing. It's downright hysterical to suggest such a thing could happen. It's not like we could live in an America with a 3rd of American women under an abortion ban right, and a national ban looming? RIGHT? And it would be unthinkable to intentionally and irrevocably separate families right? Not for any procedural necessity, but just to brutally traumatize anyone who tries to make a crossing. That'd be a pretty fucked up inhuman policy RIGHT?

In general librarians are looking out for their communities the best they can with the meager resources provided. Libraries barely get funding to keep in books, much less security guards and lawyers. Who would enforce the age gating? Maybe it's an acab type of town, and closing the library for a spell is safer than calling the police. From the article they planned to put cameras in the library, which would help find-out come home to it's fuck-around.

I've deleted my account, but for twitter was nice for a run to get notifications on local road closures and weather alerts. Sigh.

Ah! I am a beginner, and use a much thinner quilting cotton. To prevent the glue showing I have to fill with mix of acrylic medium and starch paste (haven't found a ratio I really liked), or to back the cloth with paper. So to me your casing looked like witchcraft! I really like the etching effect. No idea how it'd work in practice, but it seems like you could make some gorgeous illustrationy covers by going over the cloth multiple times at different strengths for different values.

Ty for the post! Did you media fill the bookcloth with anything? What glue did you use?

Ty, I appreciate you throwing these type of breakdowns in the comments of 'national' polls too.

Nah, I'll bite

Candidates from the two major parties need signatures from 0.5% of qualified primary voters from their party in the congressional district. For parties not on the ballot for the last election, candidates must collect signatures from 5% of all general election voters, according to state law.

I don't hate this for statewide level* offices. Election offices are under funded enough, they don't have the resources to fuck around with every joke party somebody makes.

Examples of how toxic masculinity and the patriarchy affects life presented in speech rather than a bullet point list. These terms are describing social structures and expectations. Not about hating individual men. The examples all are absolutely negative products of hegemonic masculinity. Look into sociological/gender studies/anthropology resources on the subject. I don't have the bandwidth to try and give you a primer on these schools of study, but they readily exist.

girl got stabbed in the gut after giving a blowjob

well fuck a duck, they didn't make it up. That's a rough day.

The DAILY DOUBLE! Woo.

Real talk. The effects of toxic masculinity are tangled up everywhere, in everything, crossing the blood-brain barrier like micro plastics. If you honestly think it don't exist, it's big sign to me that you are wrapped up in it to drowning. People shut down empathy as a trauma response, or because they're trying to replicate behaviors of a perceived 'in-group' (this would be the patriarchy) to gain acceptance. Either way it's got you. We're talking a nationwide ban on healthcare based on gender for half the country, and you don't see it? You don't think having healthcare is pretty fucking foundational? Is it 1 in 3 women who live under a ban in America now? Having your leaders celebrated for sexual violence not cast down ain't a sign to you? 'Grab 'em by the pussy' is running neck and neck for one of the most powerful executive positions in the world. We're criminalizing men who wear feminine attire, policing who is woman enough to piss where. The right just fell over itself to mock a kid who was proud to tears of his father. God forbid a man express joy. I keep getting texts from friends floored over the photo of Walz getting bunny eared by his smiling kids. There's a big reason why seeing them so completely unafraid to tease their father in public is resonating with people.

I'd like to take 'repression, and over-compensating' for 500 Alex.

I'm not going to argue which gender is the bigger victim of toxic masculinity. The bodies are stacked too high for me to see over. But please don't say it impacts 'much less than a percentage of 1%.'

Like, my father used to tie up my dog and whale on it with a belt when he was angry and that's probably the least fucked-up-thing-your-dad-did story of my peer group. If you don't think it's affected you, you are either very lucky, or somebody who is long overdue to talk it out.

I've been screamed at a lot for daring to sit at the short edge of a rectangular table while in the presence of a man. Does that count for father-daughter lessons? This thread is wild.

I'm stuck on the convincing people it exists step—too much of an asshole to be an ambassador I guess. Fight for public schools, and access to healthcare, and the arts. No better tools than health, knowledge, and a shared language of empathy. Embrace every opportunity to put self-sufficiency back in the hands normal people instead of further consolidating under the control of rich white fucks. Even if it costs you something, or if you won't see the benefits right now. Buy local. Try and keep those profiting from your labor within metaphorical punching distance, should they ever need a metaphorical pop. Show up for local elections, run in local elections if you have a soul. If you care and are willing to learn you will be a godsend to some of your local boards.

The more the ruling elite have, the more they rig the system for themselves, the more the way to squeak up or cling to a rung on the ladder of prosperity is to emulate them, the more a narrative of superiority calcifies, the more stratified and shit people become. Trump tells them that's fine, the truth is what feels the most comfortable. Not to think critically about how we got here because for his ilk the system is lining the pockets intended. Tells them to stop doing the painful work of looking within and pulling up any pernicious roots they might have grown out of; that it is okay to close their eyes to any consequences and causation if it makes them uneasy. Rural places more vulnerable to Trump's rhetoric are more than capital poor. There's nothing there to shake up these narratives before they harden and he's telling them that's not a tragedy, but cause for celebration.

Vast inequality in a society built upon a white supremacist/patriarchal power structure.

God I picked a shit time to tune in. They should have gone with the sax.

Hm. You seem to contain multitudes. Perhaps literally.

Absolutely rage bait. Imo the language might read as non combative, but in application it feels like just a blind to slip a ban. Read through some of their exchanges with Mx. SMCF; it's pointing a hand in somebody's face and using the 'I'm not touching you' of defenses.

Hm. Does this line of argument want me to be displeased with AOC? Or to wave off the disporportional hardship and ruin metered out by Hyde? It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world and I'm gonna haveta to admire AOC and still remember the faces of those would advocate roadblocks to basic rights in the off chance our paths cross in hell. 🤷‍♂️

It gets tacked on to that which must pass, yes, but I was under the impression years ago he was a more stalwart supporter of it-which to his credit, he's done a complete 180 on in recent years.

Not recently, but he used to support the hyde amendment. Which prevented federal funds from being spent* on abortion care-low income assistance programs, etc.

~(Christ alive I'm illiterate before coffee)~*

My guy. I live in a deep red area and am very lucky that it is kept in check by the blue state government. I have no idea how the poor fuckers stuck in the bible belt survive it.

Both sides ain't the same. Its fucked to begin to suggest so.

Nah. I wait to see if it's a post from GPS or Monk first.

Because I dont know what the hell any of those words mean, I think it's been a good life.

Yeah. Many of us have an alarm set to take a fucking pill every fucking day and at the same fucking time for decades, but sure, yea, it's not 'normal' to think or care about reproductive rights. This fucker. *

Wait. There are places where your primary party is not public knowledge when you vote? Fuuuck. (it's usually a fire hall, not a lodge in my experience.)