Forbidden cheese
potion of donald duck noises
Tired of watching your pot for the water to boil? Skip the wait with this one weird trick!
SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules
ALTToday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks
It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html
The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.
Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.
The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.
They hate you and they want you to die.
Fucking corporate greed. Assholes.
people on here r rly like 'attraction to big people is fetishistic, attraction to small people is pedophilic, having sexual thoughts about a real person is objectifying and basically harassment (and having them about fictional people is perverted), kinky sex is immoral, if youre open about your sex life in any way youre a pervert, if youre not open about them you are queerbaiting. basically you should be completely sexless while everything you do is sexualized and up for debate/speculation. this is good for the lgbt community'
Western Canadian Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Eastern Canadian Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Cultural differences.
A few folks have commented that the preceding post is overly reductive, and I have to admit that I was perhaps a bit glib. Here’s an attempt at a more accurate summary, then.
British Columbia Literature: “The mountains are cold and empty, like - holy shit, a bear!”
Alberta Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my attempts to reconnect with my heritage.”
Saskatchewan Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Manitoba Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my relationship with my father.”
Ontario Literature: “The hills are cold and empty, like my faith in humanity.”
Quebec Literature: “The River is cold and empty, like my faith in God.”
Newfoundland Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Nova Scotia Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my relationship with my son.”
Nunavut Literature: “The tundra is cold and empty, like the legacy of white colonialism.”
I think that about covers it.
LMAO TWITTER IS REALLY TURNING PVP IM LAUGHINGGGG
FREE FOR ALL, ITEMS ON, ANY STAGES
LOL
It's actually more sinister than that, sadly.
(Sorry, I'm not alt-texting this shit. If someone else wants to, that would be great.)
ALTProminent asshole, Proud Boys boot-swabber, and mobile milkshake platform Andy Ngô told a shitton of lies about trans journalist Alejandra Caraballo. She covers things he'd rather not see talked about, like the tweet he quoted, and these:
ALT
ALT
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So Andy decided to complain to Elon, who of course has never met an alt-right bully he didn't want to suckle the toes of, and so he immediately went about trying to make the site deliberately more dangerous for marginalized people reporting on the shitty things that bullies do:
Of course...
ALTI mean, he CAN, but his app will become unable to be downloaded from both app stores and will probably just straight-up stop working on iPhones if he does.
I saw this on FB today and I wanna try and express something about it. Like, you know the curbcutter effect? Where when curbcuts are put in it benefits everyone (bicyclists, people with baby strollers etc) and not just disabled people?
There is also whatever the opposite of the curbcutter effect is. And this is that.
This isn't just anti-adhd/autism propaganda... this is anti-child propaganda.
Kids have developmentally appropriate ways that they need to move their bodies and express themselves and sitting perfectly still staring straight ahead is not natural or good for ANY CHILD.
Don't get me wrong, I was punished unduly as a kid for being neurodivergent (and other types of kid will ALSO be punished unduly for it... Black kids come to mind) and thus UNABLE to perform this -- but even the kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED WELL by it. They don't benefit from it.
This is bad for everyone.
The idea that bc some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don't hurt them... is a dangerous idea. Compliance isn't thriving. Expectation of compliance isn't fair treatment.
The image above expresses the attitude towards children I grew up with, in a fairly conservative United States suburb in the 1990′s. Expectations for children’s behavior were strict, and when children failed to meet them, their parents were blamed publicly and privately, to a traumatizing degree.
When I went to the Kids R Us, Toys R Us, even the supermarket I constantly heard parents yelling and nagging at their kids over virtually nothing, and telling them not to cry. Kids had their own segregated food (unhealthy, tasteless fast food and pizza), clothing, and activities (full of plastic junk toys and meaningless crafts that would get thrown out the day they were made).
Parenting advice was everywhere, in grocery checkout aisles and doctor’s waiting rooms, with the format “push button, receive behavior” and the goal of making kids do what you wanted easily, without conflict. It drove my mom frantic that it never worked for neurodivergent kids like hers.
In school, we had to get permission to go to the bathroom. I’ll never forget nearly wetting myself for a half an hour waiting for the kids with the passes to return. I learned that even my most basic basic bodily needs were unimportant and unacceptable.
No one seemed to think kids were actual people, and the segregation and contempt pissed me off even when I was young enough to use a kid’s menu. The anger and hurt are still there, under the surface.
And yes, I was one of those kids who couldn’t focus on busywork or stand in line for a long time. I’d wander off to dance or draw or I’d just let my imagination wander, “zoning out.” It’s the same old story everyone in neurodivergent communities hears ad infinitum.
Meanwhile, I was told, and I believed, that school was designed for all the other kids, who seemed to do what was expected without struggle. Many of them even seemed content with school and life. It made me feel even worse about myself. I didn’t understand that they were suffering, too, until I saw my generation and then Gen Z going through the resulting mental health crisis.
Somehow, I never realized that strict expectations that require kids to go against their own needs, that teach kids their basic needs don’t matter, are a reverse curb cut effect.
“Even kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED well by it...the idea that because some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don’t hurt them, is a dangerous idea.”
Yes. All kids deserve better.
Neurodivergent ones are just the canary in the coal mine. Things that hurt neurodivergent kids, tend to be bad for everyone.
Thank you for pointing this out, OP.
Oh holy shit they found Silphium alive and growing in the wild.
Like now that I am awake I need to reiterate how huge this is. It was presumed harvested to extinction by the Romans. It was a favorite flavoring and according to historians one of the best contraceptives ever known. True or not it would be fantastic to study that but it being extinct made that impossible.
This is such a huge deal! I hope they get it figured how to grow it.