May the Bridges We Burn Light Our Way Home

Self-defense, crime, policing, oppression, and Revolution.

Which is to say, let’s talk about civilian ownership of weapons!

This is a super-controversial subject that’s the main reason why people have blocked me on here, so it’s probably the big stumbling block between me and a lot of otherwise ideologically similar folks, so I’d like to dig around on this topic a bit.

First, I obviously need to say flat out, this is “about guns” but it’s really about civilian weapons ownership with a solid sprinkle of class and race issues on top, because that’s what the laws actually end up being about.

What, if any, weapons should civilians, of what ages, classes, races, genders, etc have access to? What is at stake when civilians are disarmed? Who has the right to defend themselves and their loved ones? The right to defend their own property?

How wealthy do you need to be for armed defense of your person to be licit?

How do these positions interact with policing and crime rates? The fact that at best, “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” and at worst, the police have zero obligation to piss on you if you are on fire and might just shoot your dog, you, and burn down your house “saving” you.

And how do they interact with threats of insurrection, rebellion, and Revolution? Can you have a successful Revolution while limiting your weapons for ideological reasons, or are the people proposing overthrowing the government with bicycle parts insane or feds?

Do physically weaker and outnumbered people deserve to lose violent conflicts?

squareallworthy:

People will add just about any favor to their coffee, and just about any flavor to their tea, but they never add tea to their coffee or coffee to their tea. Seems suspicious.

The Dirty Chai (Chai with espresso shot) and the London Fog (Earl Grey with espresso shot) are the big exceptions.

necarion:

My dad recommended we watch “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. It features basically every comedic artist active in 1963 in a wacky zany hijinx adventure. I was generally unimpressed for a few major reasons:

• The actual story was just a vehicle for hijinx. Normally this is fine, but the actual jinxing in question was underwhelming to me, as it was very repetitive and there were too many characters.
• It wasn’t all that funny if you weren’t aware of who everyone was as a comedic actor, or in all the cameos.
• My dad paused the movie every two fucking seconds to explain who the different people were and what major things they were in, also things I hadn’t seen or didn’t know about. There are a few people I recognized from old interviews with Johnny Carson or whatever, where I saw the interview because it was the start of some comedian I do know. Also a lot of things I’d heard of. And more things that I hadn’t. And it does not help the pacing of the already kind of slow comedy to keep pausing to learn that it’s really funny if you’ve seen [thing I haven’t heard of].

It’s an ok, if extremely long, and definitely dated comedy if it’s not being paused constantly. Probably one of those movies that’s better watched after getting some familiarity with what it’s referencing though.

flakmaniak:

Apparently Stoned Wheat Thins (the cracker) are no more. Strange and disheartening! Were they not profitable to make? They were one of the best crackers!

What?!

ohifonlyx33:

🦀🦀🦀

Reblog if you’re comfortable receiving crabs on Crab Day (July 29th) so all your beloved followers know who they can comfortably crab on crab day (July 29th) without feeling nervous about crabbing someone 9n Crab Day (July 29th).

🦀🦀🦀

(via squareallworthy)

thathopeyetlives:

I continue to be bewildered by how weird and selective “anti-war” talk can be.

Like, a good many foreign soldiers have gone to fight on the side of Ukraine, and many have died.

And you can say that this is a good thing to do or a bad thing to do. Or you could even say that it is good to fight on the side of Russia (You could also say it’s a good thing to drop rocks on your head.)

But someone was saying that foreign soldiersin Ukraine are “dying for Lockheed Martin”. What?

I’m pretty sure they’re dying for Russia to not be invading Ukraine, same as the Ukrainians are. And while Lockheed Martin probably benefits from war or the expectation of war, it seems weird to connect that to the outcome in Ukraine.

I think some people just adlib with standard arguments for their position in general to every situation regardless of how applicable it actually is to a specific situation. Having you seen anyone saying they are dying for oil?

thathopeyetlives:

Suppose the “evacuation of the USA” really happened.

Can you *imagine* the political chaos in Europe?

My assumption is that in such an event, someone like myself, who only speaks English, doesn’t have a STEM degree, and has no family connections to another country isn’t getting a visa to anywhere in Western Europe or Australia/New Zealand and probably not anywhere else that is desirable enough to require visas at all.

Like, it’s simply not a realistic concern for non STEM degree holders/second language speakers/second gen immigrants. We go down with the ship. Anyone with physical or mental health issues themselves or in a family member they won’t leave (read: literally everyone retirement age falls in here, so sucks to be a family unit looking to evacuate with grandma) is in the same boat.

max1461:

max1461:

Hmm yeah. I guess that’s the way I’m bisexual. I am a partisán of beautiful women (stress on the last syllable of partisan. European style) and a pokemon collector of beautiful boys. I think that’s the way I’m bisexual.

Like what I’m saying is I would be a nurse I would be a military nurse in a war hospital tending the boys back to health, the strong and muscular boys and helping them with their other needs too, and being oh so delicate with them and giving them whatever they need and you would ask me why I signed up for the service why I became a war nurse I would say for the beautiful women, I fight for the beautiful women. And I would do a salute.

(via loki-zen)

owlpellet:

i know i have made this specific gripe before but from the salesfloor, with love: stop sidesaddling your cart you take up the entire goddamn aisle and knock over all my nice displays with your oblivious wide turns the handle is right there it is literally easier to push the cart than to pull it why do you do this i want you to stop as much as i want to understand aaaaaaauaughghghggghg

Handling carts like that is also a risk to your shoulder and you shouldn’t routinely do it for your own safety. If you let your arm go behind your body while pulling a cart from the side, that is not good for your shoulder and can cause an injury.

(via ducks-n-dragons)

johannestevans:

androgynousangelwonderland:

johannestevans:

i’ve been listening to a lot more fat liberationist stuff recently and like…

so obvs i already had some backing in a lot of the basic theory, stuff like institutional anti-fatness in medicine, fashion, travel, etc, but like

so as a really thin guy who’s always found it impossible to gain weight, its been unbelievably emotionally and mentally liberating to hear people talking really casually about the disability that’s associated with thinness

so like being really thin, you lack additional joint and bone support - if you fall, you have less padding and less STRUCTURE to protect your bones from breaks and fractures, right?

obvs theres plenty of fat people that do have issues with bones and joints, im not saying thsres not, its just that normally i feel like im the lone person saying “being this thin is bad for me and is part of various health problems i also have”

and idk its just like. my whole life i was such a sickly child lmao

like i couldnt stand for long periods except “long period” would often be like. any period. i didnt understand how my peers were just standing for so long and just weathering that, bc to me it wasnt possible at all - i breathed badly, my joints were fucked etc

and looking back and realising as i get more disabled like the extent to which i was similarly disabled in my youth, and how i lacked the language to verbalise or sometimes even recognise my own pain and struggle

but also like

the treatment of me as so evil and lazy because i wasn’t exercising, or because like. a PE teacher would pick me out as an example because i was so thin, and then be furious that i wasn’t remotely physically fit, and that i was disabled

i remember multiple times esp from cis female teachers just. frothing rage at my diet and the things i ate, or when i wrinkled my nose at talk about diets, bc i was so thin so i had to be doing The Right Things, and if i was that thin and doing bad things i had to be punished

and its bc a lot of these ppl thought of fatness and being fat as a punishment, a target for abuse that people deserved, and bc i was a young disabled trans guy like. i deserved punishment for my laziness and nonconformity, and it became a lot about my weight

like expressing that i wanted to gain weight, that i was cold all the time, that i had no energy etc, that eating was hard but that i enjoyed food, all of that was met with such fuckin aggression and really sharp policing, esp from PE teachers and esp from women

and obvs all that is to do with the way that diet culture particularly targets women and those perceived as women, and the desire to engage in lateral violence to police others into complying with gender roles etc as they were upholding them

but idk like. fat liberationist politics is imo inherently tied up with disability liberation, because of the way that “health” is weaponised as a symbol of being good or deserving, and how fatness and disability are both used as targets and symbols of evil and punishment

MOST OF ALL for fat & disabled people

but for nondisabled fat people disability is often threatened as punishment - if you don’t become less fat, you’ll (deserve to) become disabled

and for disabled thin people, if you don’t act less disabled, you’ll (deserve to) become fat

and its not a punishment to be fat or disabled or sick. its just how some people are. its not BAD to be this way - and what makes things hard for us is not something inherent to the badness of our bodies, but instead the lack of kindness and accommodation anybody is willing to extend to them

I hope I’m not taking away from the original post, but I thought I’d share similar experiences and how true it is that many people view fat v thin is good v bad

I spent a lot of time being fat, I didn’t like it much because I have sensory issues about fabric on my skin and tried to diet but despite eating well and moving a lot I was seemingly going to just be fat

But then I started on new medication and a side effect was weight loss and low appetite. In a matter of weeks I was a thin person. At first it was great but then I couldn’t get it to stop. My diet had to do a 180. It was about how many calories I could get in with the least amount of food because eating more than even half a normal portion makes me nauseous. I live on snacks (fruit but also anything hi energy) because meals are often impossible. I hate this way of life.

The PRAISE I got from people for losing weight was unbearable. No it wasn’t on purpose. No eating smaller meals isn’t a choice. I explain how shitty things are but get nothing but “well I’d love to lose weight and eat like that”. No. I miss food. I drink high calorie high nutrient milkshakes to keep it up.

And I’m not even that thin anymore. My choices are eat almost nothing which is physically preferable and waste away or shove as much in as possible and stay average. There is no slim. Only average or wasting. But good god do people want me to be thinner.

Worst part? The only person not aware of my situation but thought my dramatic weight loss might be a worry was a fat person. Everyone else thought something great was happening. The one person who considered I might have a problem was someone who was fat.

To be clear, I dropped at least 40-60lbs in maybe a month? But nobody else thought to ask if I was ok.

Now that I’m thinner my diet is probably worse than ever, I’m tired all the time, I miss hearty meals. It’s shit. I’m more unhealthy than when I was fat but most people think it’s great. Diet culture fucking sucks

no, predictably in my life the people who show the proper concern or compassion for me when I say that my weight is difficult, or show concern about me getting enough to eat, are fat people! they’re aware most of all of the effects that not getting enough to eat have on anybody most of all, bc while not getting enough to eat doesn’t necessarily make you lose weight (and for many people actually contributes to weight gain in the long term, bc the human body perceives periods of starvation as recurring trauma and can change its metabolism to accommodate this), they do know that it can make you dizzy and sick and sad, bc they’re pressured most of all into trying diets!

fatphobia harms EVERYBODY, and fat liberation benefits everyone - although fat people receive the vast majority of societal bigotries in our institutions, such as not being able to get things like adequate seating, clothing, medical care, work, etc, society’s veneration of thin people and thinness ends up intersecting with ableism and other forms of bigotry that end up harming thin and fat people in ways like this

in different ways, because of the way that our society venerates thinness and loathes fatness (or even just weight, which can be muscle mass!), illness and disability are rendered further invisible through people’s biases around weight and size

doctors MIGHT listen to a thin person’s descriptions of symptoms, but they will ultimately punish any form of significant weight gain, even when caused by necessary medications, because thinness is seen as a corollary to ultimate health and therefore societal value, even when a thin person is demonstrably more sick whilst thin than fat or just average-sized for their body; a fat person’s concerns will be dismissed except - and sometimes without exception - in regards to the most serious of symptoms, because their fatness and weight entirely eclipse any concerns as to their actual HEALTH or their ability or their quality of life

and of course, because fatphobia and weight-based assumptions are intriniscally linked to white western society’s ideas and assertions of culture, class, gender, race, sexuality, and other vectors for marginalisation and institutional abuse, a lot of these aspects of bigotry are then further concentrated or issues of concern rendered further invisible by societal and institutional bias

Yeah, it’s been kinda concerning when I lost a bunch of weight fast and got praised for it… But I was a physical and psychological disaster and that’s why I lost weight. I now treat others losing a lot of weight fast as best responded to with a sincere, “Are you ok?” and concern for their health, regardless of their starting weight.

thathopeyetlives:

northshorewave:

caesarsaladinn:

caesarsaladinn:

caesarsaladinn:

what is it about patriotism that actively causes parts of your brain to die

like hypothetically you could brandish your country’s flag in defense of its best qualities and aspirations, yet somehow it’s only ever comorbid with the dumbest conservative ideas ever said out loud

nationalism is generally backward-looking, and certainly a mind sickness of its own, but it’s malleable enough that it can’t be the whole explanation

this is your brain on aesthetics-as-politics. don’t do it, kids. not even once.

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while but I think the short answer is that no one would buy it anymore. Most left-of-center people think like OP does, that patriotism is inherently a dangerous mental virus, so the only people left to say “America Fuck Yeah” at all are the boomercons.

I mean, there’s also “OP is frequently wrong about what qualities are good”.

I was cured of the left-lib boo light at patriotism by… Listening to immigrants and refugees who literally I am not exaggerating, would just come up to me and gush about how wonderful the US was, how they came here with nothing and all their children were in college now or something like that.