We are not going to let that fuckwad DeSantis gain a foothold in the 2024 election.
You are going to fucking vote for Joe Biden, and you are going to give us a fucking chance to save our country from fascism, and you aren’t going to fucking complain about it, because there is literally no other choice.
We will not let another election be a close call. Are you listening?
Vote for Biden. Vote for whatever Democrat is most popular in your local elections. Our system sucks, but this is what we’re working with. Just fucking vote.
“But he’s –”
It doesn’t matter. It does. not. matter.
Not every battle is about progress. Sometimes it’s just holding the line until we get reinforcements. And they are coming. The Gen Z vote was monumental in stopping the red wave, and there are increasing numbers as more and more come of age.
Hold the line.
Also, and this is most paramount, vote for your representative and senator. No more filibuster and undoing all the harm in state laws through federal laws.
Also?
Think about a heavy object hurtling toward you when you actually want it going in the other direction.
You don’t just step out of the way. And you don’t magically get it moving in the right direction by tapping it.
You brace yourself and you STOP that motherfucker, you let your feet scrabble in the dirt and you shove back.
And when it is finally STOPPED you get to push it in the other direction.
The object is our democracy, and you want to push it further left? You better fuckin’ plant your feet and stop it first.
Kids? ^THIS.
#VoteBlueToSaveDemoccracy Then, you can fix it/make it all better. Don’t JUST #VoteBlue for Pres/Senate/House. #VoteBlue for your state legislators and judges and attorneys general and governors and school boards and mayors. They can do lots o’ damage/good, too. You know how to use the internet to figure out who to vote. Go to your county elections site and find a copy of your ballot ahead of time and do a few minutes prep and save the world.
I’m on the old end of GenX. Outnumbered. Barely remembered. Frustrated as hell that the Boomers are so damned selfish and short-sighted.
You’re our only hope, GenZ Kenobi!
Decisions are made by those who show up!
Show up for everything you’re allowed to vote for!
Do you want your school library to provide LGBTQ+ books? Then vote in your school board elections.
Do you want your town and county to be safe for immigrants, transgender individuals, non-traditional families, and kids who are trying to figure out who they are? Then vote in your local elections.
Register as a Democrat and vote in the Primary elections for State and National positions- choose your ideal candidate there. Vote on the propositions.
But when it comes to the elections in November? Vote Democrat down the ticket.
Show up! Protect our kids. Protect your community. Protect our damn country from these people that would rather have guns in schools than books.
There is power in voting.
If there wasn’t, the Republicans wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you. Don’t let them.
Show up and vote.
If you don’t think this makes a difference, look at what the Minnesota legislature accomplished so far this year:
Set up free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students
Implemented automatic voter registration and a number of other reforms to increase voter access
Made abortion access and reproductive care a fundamental right
Provided up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave
Banned conversion therapy and made Minnesota a safe state for trans people
Indexed school funding to inflation
And much, much more
Our cities, our states, our country – they can do this, too! The Minnesota legislature isn’t filled with perfect people, but it has enough people who are willing to work together to get things accomplished.
Vote for people who will make progress. If you don’t have that option, vote for people who won’t push us farther back!
When we moved to Oregon in 2019, we always planned eventually to move back “home” to Pennsylvania, the state where, before that, I’d spent all but a year of my life since we moved there in ‘88.
Today, I’m going to have a conversation with my partners. I think we just have to assume I – we – can’t go home.
Maybe ever.
Pennsylvania itself is in a low-risk category within two years, but it could easily – well I know it – swing into red if the next election cycle breaks another way.
That’s not the kind of place where you buy the house that you intend them to “take you out of toes first,” as I joked with my wives when we last talked about our plans.
That’s what these laws mean to people like me. They mean “the state you consider home might become actively hostile to you within the next 5 years, so you can’t plan to buy a home there.” They mean “you shouldn’t even board a plane that has a likelihood of having a layover in Florida, and you’re definitely not going to repeat your 2019 drive across the country, one of the best and worst experiences of your life and the most time you’ve gotten to spend with your brother in one week since you graduated from high school.” They mean half the states in this country are actively hostile to you, legally speaking, in a way you thought was finally behind you.
Sometime soon, I’m going to call my mother and tell her that we’re not planning on moving back.
I don’t have a clever closing line for this. I’m just sad.
I still think of y'all every time Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market would roll around. Big part of my college years. I’d always hoped you’d be back on the circuit some day, but for the love of all gods and little goldfish, keep your family safe.
I miss TPRFM like a genuine ache in my gut. I really wish we could come home.
Every time I see news about a new piece of hate legislation, I want to curl up and cry. I don’t know if my life-entwined partner will ever be able to visit my family in Kansas again, especially since we have to go through Missouri and/or Iowa to get there.
It’s scary how many states went from “moderate risk in 2 years” to “worst active anti-trans laws” between December 2022 and May 2023. Most of these laws will be challenged, and many may be overturned. How many people are going to die in the meantime though? Even when laws are struck down by the courts, will people ever feel safe there again? How long until those laws are replaced by new ones that are just as bad but more subtle, or until people don’t have the energy and money to keep fighting against them?
every time i see discourse about pedohysteria amidst a trans genocide i think about that news article from 2016 about the mexican immigrant who voted for trump because trump said he’d get rid of all the “bad hombres” from mexico, only to be deported himself because it turns out what trump was really saying was that he wanted to deport all mexicans, not just “the bad ones”
not just him, but there were many other examples too, like white conservatives who have mexican immigrant friends and family or people in the community important to them who were mexican immigrants, and they voted for trump because they thought trump was just getting rid of “criminals”, and then they regret it when their families and communities get torn apart by deportations of their spouses, their friends, their favourite restaurant owners, etc.
anyways, i hope young queers, trans people esp, understand that when conservatives talk about “pedophiles” and “groomers”, they’re not talking about actual child abusers, they’re talking about all queer people. they’re talking about all trans people. it’s why in florida, they’re categorizing “drag” as a child sex crime, and making sex crimes against children punishable by death. they’re trying to execute every single trans person, and that’s just the rhetoric they’re using
so stop buying into the pedohysteria. it’s easy to think “well, i’m not a pedophile, so i’ll be safe” when you don’t realize that in the eyes of conservatives, every single queer person is a pedophile and deserves death, and contributing to their rhetoric by trying to figure out which trans woman is a pedophile is just accelerating your own march to the gallows
When I was in school, the argument – and in fact the standard belief – was that no gay person, ever, could be a teacher, because all gay people were pedophiles and groomers. It was for the “safety of children.” Lesbians and gay men couldn’t be allowed in locker rooms with “normal” people because we would ogle and assault them. Every gay, every lesbian, every trans person, every bi person (pan didn’t really exist as a term then) had the assumption of being a sex offender just waiting for an opportunity.
Literally everything they say about trans people now, they said about gay people 30 years ago.
There are people right now in government trying to outlaw gay marriage again, saying that Pete Buttigieg – the human equivalent of a Wonder Bread pb&j sandwich, as wholesome in image as they come – shouldn’t be allowed to raise his children because he’s abusing his children by raising them. People on Twitter have started openly calling for rounding up and executing anyone who ever helped a minor access HRT - parents, doctors, nurses, the receptionist who checked us in for my daughter’s appointments - and while those are only random people online, that isn’t a thing you saw happening frequently just a couple of years ago. Louder voices have started calling for mentally ill people – starting with trans and gay people – to lose our rights to vote.
Do I think queer people are being rounded up right now? No. Do I see the rhetoric escalating? Yes. Is it aimed at all of us? Oh yes.
Groomer, pedo, degenerate, freak: they mean all of us. There are no exceptions. If you think there are, you’re fooling yourself.
Join, or Die.
Also, librarians are being called groomers and pedophiles for having books about LGBTQ+ people in their collections, and for having books about actual history as it pertains to people who aren’t WASPs. The people who are trying to legislate and scare us out of existence are going after anyone who supports us as well.
Even if you aren’t LGBTQ+ or BIPOC, if you think we deserve to have rights, you need to speak up before the leopards starting eating your face, too.
@katy-l-wood put this in the tags, “#deciding what to eat for dinner #EVERY NIGHT #what should I cook? #babe what do you want for dinner? #I love food #but when I have to ask that question #I suddenly forget every food I like #and it never ends #personal”
My partner and I have this problem! It doesn’t help that neither of us are good enough cooks to decide something on the spur of the moment that we’ll both enjoy, so we have to plan a week’s worth of dinners before we get groceries.
One thing that helps us is having a spreadsheet of dinner options. It includes where the recipe is, what type of protein it has, and what cooking method it uses. (We should probably add how long it takes, but we haven’t gotten around to that.) This lets us look for slow cooker recipes or a way to use up the package of ground beef in the freezer.
This isn’t perfect – we still spend a lot of time staring at the spreadsheet, trying to find something that we’re in the mood for and haven’t done two of the last three weeks. However, it helps a lot with the “I suddenly forgot every food I like” problem!
This is a really, really, really excellent basic primer on changing a flat.
The most important safety tips in this video:
1 - Never trust a jack to support a car (do not work on or get under a car supported only by a jack; that is why he says to put the flat tire under the frame while you put the spare on) 2 - Don’t put a donut spare on the front of your car, take the good tire off the back and put it on the front, then put the donut on the back (If you have a full-size spare, it is fine to put the full size spare on the front - a donut spare will be much smaller than your regular tire, so it should be very obvious if it’s a donut).
If you’ve never changed a tire before I strongly recommend getting out your spare, jack, and wrench and practicing taking off your tire and putting it on in a safe, low-stakes, non emergency environment. Take half an hour some time to make sure the parts are all where you need them to be, that you know how to remove the various covers and equipment, etc.
Changing a tire is pretty easy if you’ve got all the tools and know how to do it, but is almost impossible if you don’t have a jack and you didn’t know that until you got a flat. You should check your spare, jack, and wrench today, and you should plan a time soon to practice jacking your car up and removing/replacing a tire.
When tightening up the bolts I was always taught to do them in a star shape, so tighten one a bit, then go across to the opposite bolt and do that one, then across to do another opposite and so on, as if you’re drawing a star. Don’t start at one and move around in a circle. This just helps keep it better balanced afaik
Also, if you drive on a flat for ANY length of time that tire is no longer safe and needs fully replaced.
Your flat tire is more likely to happen during difficult conditions, when it’s harder to see the road and any hazards. If you can, keep an old blanket or sleeping bag in your vehicle so you have something to kneel or sit on when you’re changing the tire.
i don’t normally support xmas shit before american thanksgiving is done, but this is an amazing exception to the rule.
I don’t have many followers, but if any of you know someone in the Chicago area with kids who want to take them to a queer-safe Santa, please pass this along!
I know so much of the pre-election messaging is like VOTE!!! VOTE!!! IF YOU DON’T VOTE YOU’RE A MONSTER!! and that can get tiring after so many elections. So I want to take a moment after this election to say: so many of you clearly did get out and vote, despite not always having the most inspiring options, and with SO much on the line 18-29 year olds specifically helped win some of the most important and impactful races across America. So from one of the many “just vote” scolds on the internet: thank you!!
