the world yearns for novelty buttplugs that make funny noises when you fart. train whistle, duck call, kazoo. I'd do it myself but I lack entrepreneurial verve
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what was the original one-button interface? that's right. the humble tummy
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when you're young, you think: blowing out is the enemy of candle, so air must be the enemy of fire. but no! it is a lie it is a trick it is a ploy by SECRET LOVERS air and fire. they play their games to make you think it's safe to leave them to their smoldering affair. but beware
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you grow up hearing people do stupid, kinda racist impressions of Al Pacino in Scarface. then you finally watch Scarface and it turns out Al Pacino is also doing a stupid, kinda racist impression of himself in Scarface
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youtube poops are the modern democratization of experimental film
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posted on annabookwriter.medium.com To My Unmasked Friend in the Fifth Year of COVID
But you didn’t wear a mask.
For whatever reason — you wanted to show off your makeup, it makes you itchy, you believed the messaging that COVID is endemic (what does that actually mean?), you just don’t think about it anymore — you made a choice that actively excludes people like me from participating not only in an event like a convention, but society at large. And yes, it is a choice. Every time you step out into the world without a mask on your face, you have made a decision that your very good reason, whatever it is, supersedes the right of disabled and at-risk people to exist safely in your orbit.
Well, hold on, you say. It’s not any one individual’s fault, it’s the inadequate public health messaging. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?
And I have. In the past, I have talked about how it is unconscionable that health authorities have thrown their hands up and rescinded guidance that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prolonged a pandemic that, to hear them tell it, has been bested. It hasn’t. Worst of all, the financial motivation that we all know is driving this premature victory lap isn’t even being fulfilled. Long COVID and other post-COVID complications are costing the global economy one trillion a year. Meanwhile, article after article handwrings about nobody wanting to work anymore, about the sagging college application scene, about declines in military enlistment, and the strain on our healthcare systems.
All of this is very much the fault of our leaders, who have decided the political ramifications of “normalcy” are more important than the health and lives of the 400 million people living with long COVID across the globe, the immunocompromised folks who are increasingly being shut out of every conceivable public space, and the disabled community which has been screaming into the wind about our marginalization since before the virus even hit US soil.
But I want to be very clear. You are helping them do this.
This hard but important post captures something I've wanted to express for years but have never found the words (or the courage) to say out loud. I try very, very hard to avoid getting outright angry at the people in my life who take no precautions against COVID. I tell myself over and over that their behavior is a product of larger structural forces that shape their understanding of themselves and of reality. This helps. It keeps me sane in an insane world.
And when I talk to people about COVID, I am as non-confrontational as I know how to be. I frame everything in terms of my own safety measures and say nothing about theirs. This keeps me sane as well, because I do not have the energy or the skill or the grace to try to convince everyone I…
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Quark DS9: I wonder what the Vortas' favorite food is...
Me: What is humans' favorite food?
Me, a second later: dumpling -
I just learned that Bette Midler's big break into stardom came from singing in a gay bathhouse, because NYC gays were such immense tastemakers pre-AIDS. What a wonderful little factoid.
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Noam Chomsky's evil twin
Yes'm Chomsky
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Honestly I kind of think it would rule to just start using "ain't" in technical writing. "null ain't allowed here", that sort of thing. I'm probably not the person to do it because that's not part of my dialect but someone should.
