Samsungs has a similar setting where you can press the screen on/off button three times in succession and it’ll send an sos with your GPS, a picture from both ur cameras and a 5 voice recording to your designated contacts. !
let me share a memory with y’all. it’s from i guess 1978 or thereabouts. it’s high summer. i don’t remember where my mom was driving me, in our avocado green chevette, i just know there was a traffic jam that turned 35w northbound into a parking lot from horizon to horizon.
picture it – wait, you don’t have to use your imagination, this happened all the damn time back then.
every one of those damn cars was burning leaded gasoline. there were no emissions regulations. there were no safety regulations. there were just thousands and thousands of detroit steel shoeboxes belching visible smoke as they idled, engines loud and hot, here and there a radiator giving up in the heat, a cloud of burning oil rising.
i, a smeet of five or six, was choking on toxic smog.
i reckon it was about a half hour into the traffic jam that i first threw up. i remember a blinding headache, i remember being confused, i remember dry heaving with my arms and head hanging out the window, the green metal of the car burning my hands and my chin. i don’t remember passing out, but i’m told i lost consciousness before mom was able to get to an off-ramp, because there were no emergency lanes on the highways back then.
i lived. and life went on. what were we going to do, complain? if i’d died, the cause of death probably would’ve been recorded as heatstroke, not carbon monoxide poisoning.
i know i’m probably preaching to the choir here on tumblr. but i really wish i could tell that story to the people who think deregulation is no big deal. i wish they’d put themselves in my mom’s shoes.
or even just look at some old pictures, then look out the window.
ever notice how cityscapes used to have that orange tint and hazy aura? yeah, that’s poison gas.
remember how the mississippi river used to be a stinking soup of baby-shit yellow sludge covered with disturbingly stiff rafts of light orange foam?
i can’t even find pictures of the sludge and foam, i guess they didn’t end up on the internet. the smell was indescribable. that oily shimmer. the reek of dead things. people didn’t boat on the river for pleasure; it smelled too bad, it was too ugly, and you could get super super sick if you touched the water.
and now look at it.
i still wouldn’t want to drink it, but if i fell in i wouldn’t bolt for the shower in a panic, you know?
if the thieving billionaires get their way, we can kiss those sailboats goodbye, and learn the smell of toxic foam once more. the ultra-rich won’t even feel the extra money, they’ve already got more than they could ever touch, they just stash it in offshore accounts to rot, but the rest of us will return to a time of neverending nausea and weird cancers. a time when every elementary school class had at least one kind who’d been born with no fingers or their heart outside their body, and this was just… the way things were.
i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to longpost. it’s just. god. y’all have no idea how CLEAN everything is now, compared to when i was a kid. and these rich old men are counting on that, on people not knowing or not remembering how bad it was before regulation, not realizing how much we need these protections until it’s too late.
I enforce federal worker health and safety and pollution regulations.
When I was learning my trade, when my classmates and I were having a chuckle over the “well duh” level of specificity written into the Code of Federal Regulations (try “no hazardous material shall be stored in crew berthing” on for size), I will never forget the silence that followed when our instructor spoke these words:
“Your regulations are written in blood.”
These regulations were not written on a whim.
They were written because someone thought they could cut costs by storing however many more pounds of a radioactive, toxic, carcinogenic, or whatever else material in the same rooms where the human beings they paid to transport those materials slept, and then did that, because no one was telling them not to.
They were written because people died. Horrifically. Because unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering.
Can I say it again, for those not paying attention?
Unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering.
Therapists aren’t people who you “pay to pretend to care about you”, therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself
Me: I am violently depressed.
Therapist: Oh! Sounds like you need to do YOGA! That will help!
Me: *signs up for yoga*
Me: *is violently depressed in Downward Dog*
Me: I hate myself and only see my flaws
Therapist: ok lets refocus on things you like about yourself. This week i want you to try and journal about good things you’ve for yourself and others.
Me: *does the homework* yeah but i still hate myself but feel bad cause i shouldn’t
Therapist: feeling like you shouldn’t hate yourself is a step in the right direction. Mental health is complex and isn’t something that will ~magically~ improve. We have a lot of hard work head of us but I’ll be here to help you.
TL;DR stop perpetuating the idea that therapy is unhelpful because the results are not instantaneous.
FUCKING THIS.
As a psychologist the amount of bullshit on this site, the amount of fucking dangerous bullshit on this site about how therapy is neurotypical bullshit and isn’t worth it and how exercise is pointless and good diet is pointless and that therapy homework is pointless DRIVES ME UP THE FUCKING WALL
Exercise is fucking important. good diet is fucking important therapy is fucking important. WHY???
because pills alone don’t help. they improve the hormonal imbalance (as does exercise and good diet which ALSO are a form of very real self care as your physical being is sorta connected to your mental one but go fucking figure right?), but guess what? the suicidal thoughts, the thoughts of harm, the thoughts of hating yourself, they’re still there. suicides actually increase when medicated. why? because suddenly you have the energy to fulfill thoughts of harming yourself. which is why you NEED therapy alongside pills.
it has taken you years, or decades to create your maladaptive thought processes and behaviours. that shit doesn’t disappear overnight. core beliefs don’t change overnight. these are the very fucking core of your personhood, your being and personality. THAT TAKES TIME TO CHANGE
STOP ACTING LIKE THERAPY IS SHIT IF IT DOESNT WORK IN TWO SESSIONS
At least eight islands in the Pacific have already disappeared because of rising sea levels. Over the next century many communities, including my family, will be displaced and lose their ancestral lands and foundation of their cultural practices. Trump removing the US from the Paris Agreement, taking climate change off the National Security Strategy, and repealing the Clean Power Plan is a slap in the face and to me, intensely personal. PLEASE contact your representatives regarding climate change and taking steps to counteract the potentially irreversible harm Trump is doing to our planet.
I am working on setting up an online store in the next month or so and it will include all of my Disney Resists prints! 10% of everything in my shop will go to the ACLU and other civil rights groups putting in the time this past year 💛
So like please don’t buy nautilus shells they’re actually going extinct, largely because we kill them for their shells. They’re really cool little dudes but they’re not recognized as endangered because we “don’t know enough about them”, despite it being pretty clear to anyone who works with them, scientist or fisherman. Near nobody knows about this, so please be kind to these little guys and maybe spread the word?
Tbh I think that we just need to acknowledge that there isn’t just some strict binary between “slur” and “not a slur,” like not all words are either slurs 100% of the time or completely safe to use.
I think a lot of the time, whether a word is a slur or not is contextual. Like, who is using this word, and why are they using it? What are they referring to?
Is “cunt” a slur when hurled at female politicians? Usually! Is it a slur when it’s used in erotica because the word “vagina” feels too technical to be sexy? I wouldn’t say so.
“Queer” is a slur when it’s being used by a group of high school football players beating up a GNC kid behind the gym. That doesn’t mean it’s automatically a slur in a college classroom when you’re discussing history.
“Bitch” can be a slur when a guy says it to a woman who turns him down at a bar. It’s not a slur when my friend goes “B I T C H !!!” in excitement when we’re talking about fanfic ideas.
Someone talking about how “The Jews” control the banks is probably using it as a slur. Someone casually referring to their roommate as a Jew just as a factual observation, isn’t necessarily using it as a slur.
And like, this is gonna vary, and people are going to have their emotional reactions to certain terms. That kid who got beat up might be made uncomfortable by the word “queer” even within that college setting. A woman might not like conversations where the word “bitch” is thrown around neutrally.
And that’s fine, that’s understandable, but that doesn’t actually mean that the word in question is always a slur (which goes back to the whole idea that being triggered by something means it’s always inherently bad, which is just an impractical way to conceptualize triggers in general.)
Plus there’s regional differences between what’s a slur and how severe it is.
Like Americans see “cunt” as a very severe, very misogynistic word. Whereas a lot of flavours of british people use it in the same way we do “bastard” and “fucker”, and even endearingly sometimes towards friends. It doesn’t have the same shock value to a lot of people here, you’ll hear someone call their mate “a bit of a daft cunt” on the bus and if you’re under 50 and not very middle class, it barely registers.
The regional differences thing is exactly why I find “but i’m nonUSian and only assholes use the q slur here!” incredibly weird.
Okay, but I’m not telling you to be an asshole. I’m telling you that a USian who posts about “queer rights” isn’t necessarily an asshole, so don’t ride them like one.
“Cars kill more people than guns! What’re you gonna do, regulate cars next?”
You idiot. You moron. You utter buffoon.
Cars ARE regulated.
The permit test. The permit. The practice year. The regulations on how many hours you have to drive and at what hours and with whom. The driving test. The license. The requirements regarding insurance. License renewals. Road laws. Highway laws. Speed limits. Seatbelt laws. Carseat laws. Laws against drinking and driving and other forms of intoxication. Red lights. Not passing in intersections. Right of way.
WHO can drive and WHEN and HOW and WHERE are all regulated, because yes, a car in the wrong hands can kill a person. Just like a gun.
Oh but wait, there’s more!
I, as a licensed driver, can’t drive anything I want. I can’t drive a motorcycle. I can’t drive a speedboat.
You know what else I can’t drive? One of these.
To drive a semi-truck, I would need a Commercial Driver’s License or CDL. There are age limits involved, as well as required hours of training and study. There’s a written test and a driving test. There are also medical requirements.
And even if I passed all that, you know what I STILL couldn’t drive? One of these.
To drive a semi loaded with hazardous materials, you would have to get a federal H endorsement added to your CDL. And to get that, you have to jump through even MORE hoops, including another written test and a background check.
So yeah, guns should be better regulated. Any Joe Blow shouldn’t be able to stagger down to a gun show and get himself a sweet piece without some oversight.
And ESPECIALLY no one should be getting their hands on a semi-automatic assault rifle like an AR-15, aka the Hazardous Semi Truck of guns. There are professional reasons that a person might need clearance to handle and own such a weapon, but not a civilian. Not an unscreened rando off the street.
Try not to be such an utter wanker that you place the mere potential of a power-boner over the lives of actual children like those killed in Parkland, Sandy Hook, and elsewhere.
Let’s tick off some of the dumber attempts at rebuttals I’ve seen since this post passed 20k notes. (I expected to become Tumblr famous for my wickedly painful head canons, if anything, y’all. What the heck.)
In case your reading comprehension never made it past first grade, please recall that the above post specifically addresses the legality of semi-automatic and fully automatic assault weapons, such as AR-15s, the weapon used in Parkland, Las Vegas, and other recent mass shootings.
“You can still drive these illegally.”
Yeeeeeees? That’s literally a fact for every conceivable human action in the world. I can purchase ricin illegally. I can rob a bank illegally. I can attempt to enrich uranium illegally. I can break into your house and fill your bed with spiders illegally. The key word there being illegally. The point is to, y’know, make it illegal, with consequences like jail time.
“Guns have more regulations than cars!”
A mentally disturbed teenager who was too young to buy a beer or rent a car was able to buy a military grade weapon that killed over a dozen people. The man who killed 58 people and injured over 500 BY HIMSELF in Las Vegas owned at last count forty-two guns, not including his various magazines and exploding rounds. Many were fully automatic or semi-automatics that were modified to become fully automatic, as well as having grossly modified magazine capacities. Try again.
“More people are killed by cars than by guns!”
1) More people are killed by dogs than by polar bears. That’s how statistics work. The more there is of something, the greater chance that it will have a larger effect. There are more cars than guns.
2) The primary purpose of a car is to transport a human and/or cargo from Point A to Point B. The primary purpose of a gun is to kill. Intentionality is key.
“It’s my Second Amendment right to own a gun, you fascist!”
Don’t use big words you don’t know the definitions for. I’m not taking your gun, you overcompensating wanker. I am making a specific point about a specific type of military weaponry that has no business being owned and operated by civilians. Bypassing the argument that 2A was written in the time of dang muskets, it allows you to own *a gun*. It makes no argument as to the legality of specific types. Machine guns have been federally banned since 1986, and yet you somehow still are able to cradle your security blanket 9mil all you want.
“You’re discriminating against hunters and people who need guns for protection!”
Honey, breathe. Deep breaths, in and out. I’m pretty sure you don’t hunt with AR-15s, and even if you did, that is not the only hunting weapon available to you. You don’t protect your home with an AR-15. An AR-15 is a military grade weapon with a dangerous magazine capacity that is used by law enforcement and soldiers. I’m not taking your grandpappy’s shotgun.
“Anyone wanting to cause violence would just use a knife instead!”
“Why are we regulating nuclear warheads?? Anyone wanting to cause violence would just use a gun instead!” Do you see how stupid you sound? There is always a way to hurt other humans. That doesn’t stop us from minimizing the amount of damage one person can do.
“We don’t need gun control, we need better gun regulation!”
What… do you think… this is??? We are advocating using regulation to control who can legally own a weapon that can murder dozens of people in seconds.
“It’s your fault if your kids can’t defend themselves.”
There were six-year-olds killed at Sandy Hook. SIX YEARS OLD.
“The world is a dangerous place. You can’t stop evil.”
So why do you own a gun?
“This is a dumb argument, why do people keep making it?”
Because you’ve yet to combat it with anything of substance.
Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by a human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.
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