1. Sharing your feelings or troubles with others will make them feel burdened.
2. Sharing your feelings or troubles with others will chase them away.
3. If you let other people see how you feel, they will use it against you.
4. Sharing your feelings with others will make you look weak.
5. Letting others see your weaknesses puts you at a disadvantage.
6. It’s best not to fight if you want to have a good relationship.
7. Talking about a problem isn’t helpful. Only action solves a problem.
Fortunately, not one of these beliefs is true. In fact, they are each and every one dead wrong. (The only exception is if you share your feelings with another emotionally neglected person, who may not have any idea how to respond). When you grow up receiving consistent direct or indirect messages that you should keep your feelings to yourself, it is natural to assume that those feelings are burdensome and undesirable to others.
President Fuckface knows he stands no chance if our democratic systems remain intact. This could backfire, or it could be exactly as bad as we’re worried it is.
Yes. It is this serious.
As I’ve said: Don’t assume that the 2018 midterms are even a remote possibility.
Remember: when a fascist says anything, especially when it is obviously false, the important question that you should be asking is: what action would this be used to justify? In this case, the answer is “rigging elections.”
anyone remember hozier? that wild son of a gun loved church
He recently invaded an apartment block with a bunch of homeless people and barricaded it from being retaken by the cops to protest Ireland’s disgusting treatment of the homeless and highlight the crisis we’re facing
Please sign this petition here to bring refugees banned from the US into New Zealand if you are from NZ. We are almost at the goal of 400 signatures and I would really appreciate if this was spread.
In honor of Lord Byron’s birthday I would like to remind you all of the time that Shelley and Keats, having not heard from him for some time, became concerned for his safety and it was determined that Shelley would go looking for him. Keats received a letter some time later that Shelley had found him in Venice, where he’d been having so much sex that he’d nearly died from malnourishment and dehydration. Keats’ entire response amounted to essentially, “You should probably have let him.”
“I found him, he’s in a gutter.” “Well go put him back”
I got this from someone I know in North Carolina: Senator Richard Burr is apparently wavering about Betsy DeVos. If you are one of his constituents, you can call his office about it at
202-224-3154.
All the Democratic senators have apparently promised to oppose her. We need 3 Republicans to jump the fence.
I don’t think people in the US got this as much as we did over here in Europe and the rest of the football (as opposed to hand-egg) loving world. But this:
is a vuvuzela. The football loving (or just tolerating, or culturally affected by) world met these things en masse during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. They were mass produced, they were fucking everywhere. They sound like this:
Over wide open terrain, perfect to summon your people for say, village council, which was what the original instrument was apparently used for. The plastic mass produced thing, in close terrain, is perfect to make it impossible for anybody to hear themselves think, let alone speak. Could it be perfect to disrupt a nazi, for instance if you are not able, for whatever reason, to punch him in the face? My friends, it just might be. Because these things were so heavily mass produced, at one point they couldn’t give them away. There is almost certainly still bunches of them sitting around waiting for the opportune moment, and the opportune moment is now.
If you’re someplace where nazis come to hate speechify (campus etc) get one. You don’t have to be super close for these things to be super effective, which is helpful if you’re not willing/able to get close up in somebody’s face - the damn things are just as disruptive from ten metres away.
It’s Vuvuzela revival time.
(Alternatively, I’ve seen collapsible ones on ebay and aliexpress for $2.50 and free shipping. Just saying)
it’s times like these I remember there are good people in the world. lawyers are literally sitting in airports finding ways to get refugees and immigrants into the country. they’ve been working all day. this makes me cry.
If you don’t fight fascism, if you give it a platform, if you allow it to organize, if you remain neutral in the fight against fascism the you have completely betrayed those whom the fascists seek to oppress. You have betrayed them and you have sided with fascism.
This isn’t a fucking game and you don’t get to pretend that those who are trying to defend themselves against violence and oppression are as poisonous as those who are endeavoring to oppress them. You’ve either learned nothing from history or you haven’t got a damn lick of morality in you. Don’t like fascism? Fucking do something. Your inaction is not the moral high ground that you think it is.
I made this post at six am before going to bed and it has blown up a lil
Your inaction is not the moral high ground that you think it is.
no, not just your representatives in the national Congress, but your actual state-level legislators. (my national reps are all GOP and all worse than useless, for example)
one of my colleagues is Iranian & her family lives abroad & they need help so we put her in touch w/ one of our local Democratic senators. They’re organizing w/local attorneys and other resources, and they’re trying to help. Don’t restrict yourself to whoever represents your district, either – hassle ALL the Democrats, especially if you know anything about their record / their slate of experience. Even if they’re the minority in the legislature, they can still help put you in touch with people & organizations in your area.
When I first saw star wars vii i remember thinking how absurd it was that not even a century after the empire they’d let another fascist regime rise but you know what on second thought art imitates life
The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay halting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries tonight, following widespread protests at airports around the country.
The court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who were denied entry to the US upon landing at JFK airport in New York City and detained indefinitely by Customs and Border Patrol. Darweesh spent a decade working for the United States military in Iraq as an interpreter and engineer and had been granted an entry visa after background checks; Alshawi had been granted a visa in order to join his wife and son who are already permanent residents of the US after their similar service with the US military.
So i work as your friendly underpaid barista and currently we’re having problems with one of our regulars hitting on our women staff members. The first woman he hit one, he wrote a note to her….as in elementary school note passing. Now of course, she’s at work and the model in f&b and retail is that you do everything in your power not to piss off the guest.
So in hopes of not causing a scene, she kindly wrote on the note that she appreciate the interest but she’s a lesbian. Now, 1) she shouldn’t have to out herself to a complete stranger all to avoid a bad yelp review. 2) She shouldn’t be forced into a situation where she has to entertain a guests unwanted attentions to avoid at the least, a negative review on yelp.
So once she passes this dude the note, he then starts jokingly exclaiming “I always fall for lesbians” in the middle of our cozy cafe, effectively outing her to anyone within earshot. Now my co-worker isn’t closeted, she’s out and proud etc, etc. However, that doesn’t give someone else the right to disclose her sexuality without her permission, and especially not after he effectively coerced her into outing herself in order to avoid his come-ons.
Another one of our regular guests, hits on one of our baristas on a regular basis. No matter how much she casually brings up her boyfriend. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to literally stand in front of her so he can’t force eye-contact with her (Naturally we do this kind of thing in a low-key manner so that we don’t actively piss off guest and thus put our jobs at risk).
I’ve had to actively shut down people on behalf of my women co-workers (Nah dude, she’s seeing someone. She’s not interested in that sort of thing. Dude, chill out.) because they simply can’t understand the fact that they are at their jobs and simply just want to get their jobs done and go home. Stop taking advantage of the unequal power dynamics to force her to engage you. She’s seem nice? Of course she is, her job revolves around being nice. She seemed into you? No, I can promise she’s not, she’s doing her job and told me five minutes ago how you were clearly staring down her chest.
“But how am I supposed to let her no I’m interested in her?” you might say. My answer, that’s not my fucking concern. There are plenty of opportunities to meet people in this world that don’t revolve around you forcing them into an uncomfortable position while they’re literally trying to earn a living. Not every person your interested in obligated to entertain that interest.
Simply put, stop being goddam creepers and let people do their goddamn jobs.
Fuck off. Some of us have a hard enough time talking to people without shitheads like you guilting us over it.
No one’s guilting you over anything. The point of this post is for you to stop doing it, not to do it and feel guilty.
If you feel awkward hitting on someone who’s not in a position where she can safely be honest with you or leave if you make her uncomfortable, that’s good. Listen to that awkward feeling. It’s telling you that you’re transgressing a boundary.
Now, if you feel like you’re always awkward and always crossing a boundary, then posts like this should be a gold mine. It’s telling you in clear terms where boundaries actually exist and why.
Story time:
There was this dude I knew through a monthly infosec meeting. He knew me and my fiancee and my friends through this meeting and he started coming to the coffee shop while I was working. He took a shine to one of my coworkers. He started asking me when she would be on shift and when I wouldn’t tell him he started showing up every night just in case. So she took on afternoon shifts and he started showing up in the afternoons. So she took morning shifts and he started showing up in the morning. So she started taking random shifts and he started showing up all day, from four thirty am when we opened until close at one am.
The thing is, while this is creepy in hindsight he wasn’t doing anything overtly creepy. The shop billed itself as “Smalltown’s Living Room” and there were a few regulars who hung out all day. And this guy bought endless iced teas and ate all his meals off our menu and bought ice cream for regulars and tipped extravagantly. He must have been spending close to a hundred dollars a day at the shop and never did anything beyond placing his order, chatting for a minute, and sitting in a chair where he could always watch the counter. Sometimes he’d talk to me after I locked up and asked if she liked him and ask me how he could get him to like her and no amount of “dude, it’s not going to happen, she’s not interested” could convince him. “But she’s so nice to me,” he’d say, “she smiles when she sees me and listens when I talk to her. No other girls do that for me.”
The owner felt a little hogtied by the whole thing - the guy hadn’t DONE anything, except spend more money than my coworkers and I made on a shift each day to have the opportunity to see her. At least five hundred a week on product. Almost the payroll of a full-time employee every week. And there was always a ten or a twenty from him in the tip jar at the end of every shift - five or ten dollars that represented about an extra hour’s worth of labor to everyone working there. So my co-worker and I felt bad too - he wasn’t really being THAT creepy, was it worth it to deprive our other co-workers of this extra income? (Spoilers: yes)
After a couple months of this (and yes, it was terrible that it went on for that long) my coworker got a better-paying, stalker-free job at her university and nobody was happier for her than me. It was my stupid bullshit that had infected her life and if I hadn’t told this acquaintance to swing by the coffee shop sometime she wouldn’t have had to deal with being scared and tense and having to hold a brittle smile every day at work just so that five or ten would reliably show up, so that someone’s hours wouldn’t get cut because of the dip in sales.
And when she left this guy was crushed. Didn’t show up for a month. Then he started coming in again. Started talking to me about how heartbroken he was, hanging out for my entire shift and thanking me for being such a good listener and marveling over the fact that my fiancee, his friend didn’t appreciate me the way I deserved. He’d follow me out on my lunch break and sit at my table. Eventually I went to the Smalltown Police Department and asked what I would need for a restraining order.
“Well, have you told him in clear words that he is not to speak to you and to leave you alone?”
“I can’t, he’s a customer and he only speaks to me in front of other customers.”
“Well, unless you tell him to cut off contact and he violates that there’s nothing we can do.”
And that was the real nastiness of this trick - always being in front of other customers. When you’re on register you can’t tell a customer never to speak to you again then casually move on to the next person in line. When you’re getting a muffin out of the pastry case you can’t tell a customer “go away and never come back” in front of some soccer mom who believes the customer is always right. You can drown someone out with a blender or an espresso machine, but only temporarily. There was a cubbyhole where we put our purses under the register - eventually it got to the point that if I saw him through the windows I’d let my coworker know then crawl into it to hide. Sometimes I’d spend half a shift doing dishes and making sandwiches in the back where he couldn’t follow me. At least we’d never run out of clean mugs, right?
It was too much. I told my fiancee and a couple other infosec friends what he was doing. He’d stopped coming to the meetings months before over a tiff with another dude so they weren’t seeing him. The had jobs to go to, they didn’t have the time to sit at a coffee shop with me all day. So they took a day off work in the middle of the week and when this guy followed me outside on my lunchbreak I texted them that he was there with me. I didn’t respond to anything that he said during that lunch, I only said “I don’t want to talk to you anymore, please leave me alone.” I said it quietly, but I said it in clear words, per what the police department had told me. He continued to talk while I continued to look at my book and try to eat my food when my fiancee and his friend showed up and joined us at the table. My fiancee (who is, by the way, over six and a half feet tall and built like a fridge) sat down next to him, our other friend sat down on the other side. They both very casually asked what he’d been up to recently. He didn’t say anything, just bit his lip, glared at me, and stormed off. He never came back to the coffee shop.
He DID email a friend of mine to rage about how I’d broken his heart and lied to him and misled him and sent mixed signals - how it was so nasty and two-faced to be smiling and nice one minute and turn on him the next, how he thought we had a connection, and why would I spend so much time listening to him and laughing at his jokes and smiling at him otherwise?
For two months nothing happened, then he showed up at the infosec meeting and as my fiancee and I were getting into the car to leave he charged at us and started trying to hit my (once again, goddamned enormous) fiancee and trying to push past him to come at me. This guy was about five ten and not terribly strong, and while we were scared we didn’t want to fucking KILL him, so my fiancee just sort of knocked him down instead of having a serious fight. The guy got into his car, rushed around bunch of us in the parking lot, which was genuinely terrifying because we thought he might try to run someone over, then sped away into the night. We called the cops to file a report of assault. The cops didn’t want to talk to me, said I wasn’t involved in the altercation. They took a statement from my fiancee and two other guys who had been in the parking lot, then took down my number and a note that I claimed he’d been “close” to me. I told them he’d been harassing me but they just said that it wasn’t harassment if he just showed up at my job and didn’t actually DO anything.
Well, it turns out that while we were making our report this guy had driven to our friend’s house and rammed the house repeatedly with his Honda. He completely caved in the garage and tried to charge the living room but was stopped by a reinforced concrete wall. When the cops showed up there he was on the lawn raging about how we were all against him and trying to control him.
I missed all my classes the next day because I went to my college campus police department and said I needed a restraining order. I explained what had happened and their first question was how long I had dated the guy. Why did he think we were dating if I hadn’t been flirting with him? Had I led him on or tried to make it seem like I was interested in him? They escorted me to the women’s violence prevention center on campus and I spent approximately six hours filling out paperwork before the director of the center drove me to the county courthouse and made sure I was granted a temporary restraining order that day. It was made more difficult because I only knew this guy’s first name. At every step I had to reach out to my infosec friends or my fiancee to ask for his address, to check the spelling of his name, to confirm the make and model of his vehicle. This guy had chased my coworker out of a job, been showing up on every one of my shifts for months, and I didn’t know anything about him because to me he was just a customer who was an annoyance that had become a threat. But in his head I was the nice girl he’d had a meet-cute with at a fucking hacker hangout who blossomed into a romance in the goddamned coffee-shop AU he was scripting in his imagination, who spurned this rich, considerate, shy boy in favor of her lunk of a boyfriend who wasn’t good enough for her. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to explain a fifteen-year-old gray-hat hacker meetup to a judge in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re selling heroin? Calling it a professional infosec networking group didn’t work well enough to include it on the list of places on my restraining order. He couldn’t come to my coffee shop, my home, or my school but was free to return to the meeting where he’d attacked us that was full of my friends who DIDN’T have restraining orders so long as he left when I showed up.
I hate coffee-shop AUs, in case that isn’t clear. It perpetuates this idea that the person behind the counter is your ONE if only you’re persistent and sweet and generous and bashful enough to keep forcing them to endure your presence in their place of employment.
Look, it sounds fucking shitty to say it but most customer service jobs can be accomplished by machines. Automated phone trees can take the place of receptionists, you can get a latte as good as anything you’d get from a Starbucks out of a machine, cashiers can be replaced by self-checkout. Even bartenders can be replaced by some tubes and buttons if you have enough money to burn. The reason customer service still exists is because it is emotional labor that the customer is paying for. An automated phone tree can’t reassure you that it’ll pass your message along just as soon as possible and that we’ll make sure the tech gets back to you. An automated espresso machine won’t smile at you and ask if you’re having a good day. A self-checkout doesn’t make small talk about how great that ice-cream is or how nice the day is outside. A drink machine may be able to listen to your problems but it won’t say “I feel you,” and tell a funny story to make you feel better. We live in the fucking future, almost everything you could want can be accomplished with an machine an a cellphone. If you’re interacting with a human it’s because you want to interact with a human and you want that human to be nice to you. You are paying for their kindness, for their smiles when their feet hurt and their questions about your day when they haven’t had lunch yet.
Flirting with customer service workers at work, asking them out when they’re on the clock and paid to make you happy, telling them you think they’re attractive and expecting a gushing response - that’s breaking the rules. That’s a lose-lose situation that you’ve set them up for. If they continue to do their job and be nice to you they’re “leading you on” and if they react negatively and ask you to leave or to not speak to them that way it’s “bad customer service.”
A good rule of thumb if you’re thinking about asking someone out or flirting with them is to ask yourself this question: “if do this thing and it makes them uncomfortable can they leave this place without it impacting their livelihood?”
If the answer is “no” and you do it anyway you’re a jackass. That person is trapped. You have cornered them. You have put your desire to flirt with them over their ability to earn a living.
“Oh good, I’ll do it now, when they can’t get away” is not an effective dating strategy. It’s abusive, it’s creepy, and nobody is well-paid enough to put up with unwanted sexual or romantic advances while they’re trying to do their job.
He may stop the ads, but nothing beats old fashioned word of mouth. Make sure everyone you know (and those you don’t know) they can still sign up for obamacare/ACA until January 31st!
the more people sign up, the less eager republicans will repeal it, especially those in swing states and districts, and we only need three GOP senators to vote no on repeal.
Hey folks, PLEASE reblog info about this if you can today. They have cancelled all ads and emails alerting people to the fact that the deadline is at the end of this month in an attempt to sabotage enrollment. Jan 31st is the last chance people will have to get on this plan.
Doesn’t have to be this post, just please spread the word however you can!
White liberals, this is your chance to put your corny jokes to a rest and actually - physically, materially - do something for Muslims, refugees, and immigrants in the United States. You can save your tweets in the drafts and do something worthy and commendable instead of getting retweeted and ♥-ed.
If you can’t afford to donate, there is no shame in that. You can offer support to local mosques and community centers by simply going over, checking in with people, making sure they feel at home. But please, for fuck’s sake, give the shitty corny done-to-death jokes a rest.
no offense but yall gotta stop acting like its the end of the world if a bi girl ends up with a guy
but then there’s no cute lesbian-ness and that’s what makes it so gr8
honestly shut up
do these ppl realize that bi girls are actual people who aren’t getting into relationships for the sole purpose of performing good politics / cuteness / adequate proof of their same gender attraction / whatever else you’re judging them on 2day.. bi women’s relationships are Not For You, bi women shouldn’t have to wake up daily and think “how do I make my personal interactions with other people good and pure in the eyes of others.”
one of the most damaging things about biphobia is that girls attracted to multiple genders end up constantly and guiltily analyzing their personal (and I’m gonna repeat, personal) relationships for ideological purity, whether or not they’re performing LGBT-ness hard enough, etc etc, and that’s not at all conducive to a healthy relationship. when u have bi girls spending more time thinking of whether or not their relationship is good enough for others than, idk, if their relationships are healthy and loving and fulfilling or not, that’s an issue.
lesbians / bi women who primarily or only date women are going to perceive w/w relationships as more relatable, cute, or refreshing to see. that’s a reality and a personal set of feelings/reactions. but why would you think it’s even remotely ok to take that and hurl it at bi women in the form of over-scrutinizing their (once again personal)relationships to the point where it’s dehumanizing, why would you think it would be ok to tell bi women things like “aw but now u don’t have the cuteness of a w/w relationship” which directly imply that you see bi women’s relationships as yours for consumption and judgement??
besides, saying u approve of bi women in w/w relationships more because “it’s cuter” is such a fetishy way of looking at w/w relationships and lesbian/bi women in general, I can’t tell if the commenter is a lesbian/bi woman or not but if not that makes it even creepier, especially the way they talked about “lesbian relationships” being cuter like.. that shit harms and fetishizes both lesbians and bi women, knock it off.
while we’re on the topic of “inappropriate ways people approach bi women about their relationships”: bi women partnered with men do receive some conditional benefits from that which women partnered with women do not, it is ok to talk about this. it is NOT ok to pick apart bi women’s personal relationships to the point where their personhood is impossible to see in it all.
also, to address another common one, yes there are higher statistical likelihoods of bi women being hurt in certain ways in m/w relationships due to misogyny. it is ok to talk about this (especially when the discussion is led by bi women). it is absolutely NOT appropriate however to tell bi women how disappointing and a bad choice it is that they got into a personal relationship with a man (seriously guys, that rhetoric implies that it’s the bi woman’s fault if she’s hurt because “oh, well she went there, she chose 2 date a man” which is.. frankly a horrible way to respond to a woman being mistreated)
This post means a lot to me. It’s become difficult for me to not look at my relationships in a political way, I’ve been with people who made me feel like my personal life is political and it’s such an awful feeling.
As in literally within your house, in your basement, in your attic.
Reblog this post if you would.
What I want to know is if people will be willing to fight, to put their lives at risk, to refuse to allow things to get to the stage where people need to be hidden.
I would hide anyone in need in my fucking suitcase if necessary. Like. It’s a big bag, I’ll MAKE it work.
today on international holocaust remembrance day, please make sure not to forget the more than 1 million romani murdered by the nazi regime. (x)
romani were defined as “enemies of the race-based state” alongside jewish people in the nuremberg laws and marked, deported, forced into labor and mass murdered in the same way, wiping more than half of the european romani population out. i don’t say this to downplay the shoah but to impress upon all of you just how devastating the porajmos was to romani and how horrific it is that so very few people know it happened.
it took until 1979 for west germany to admit to any wrongdoing towards romani during world war II. even given that, the porajmos is still regularly erased from history books or ignored.
even now, many of the laws targeting romani during that time are still legal in many european countries, such as forceful sterilization of romani women (x) or segregated schools (x).
romani victims and their families deserve to have their sacrifice and pain heard, not erased and swept under the rug. dikh he na bister.
this years holocaust remembrance day is very important, given the current political climate. take today to remember the horrifying acts committed against jewish and romani people. take today to recognize the beginning of those same acts forming against PoC in america today. take today to resist those in power however you see fit, and after today, dont stop resisting. i am a jew still personally affected by the holocaust even 2 generations later. every jew is affected by the shoah, but there is a special pain to know what happened to your own family. or worse, not knowing what happened to the unknown people you see in old family photographs. we as a people will never be the same. remember the holocaust today. dont let this happen again.
non-jews are absolutely allowed/encouraged to reblog this
27 January - International Holocaust Remembrance Day (all victims)
27 Nisan (Hebrew Calendar; Gregorian Date varies by year) - Yom HaShoah (Jewish victims)
2 August - Roma Genocide Remembrance Day (Roma/Sinti victims)
It’s never OK to challenge or downplay the suffering endured by the latter two groups, but if you specifically hassle Jews or Roma with your “but what about the X” bullshit on their own remembrance days, you are a special breed of asshole.
A king has no sons, no daughters, and no queen. For this reason he must decide who will take the throne after he dies. To do this he decides that he will give all of the children of the kingdom a single seed. Whichever child has the largest, most beautiful plant will earn the throne; this being a metaphor for the kingdom. At the end of the contest all of the children came to the palace with their enormous and beautiful plants in hand. After he looks at all of the children’s pots, he finally decides that the little girl with an empty pot will be the next Queen. Why did he choose this little girl over all of the other children with their beautiful plants.
The seeds were all dead (burned, fake, etc.). The other kids cheated and got different seeds and planted them. The little girl didn’t cheat and was not able to grow anything because the seed was dead. She was the only one who didn’t cheat.
damn
Nothing like original fairy tales!
i get the moral it’s trying to convey but that king is an idiot and the kingdom’s doomed. you don’t appoint an honest kid who will forthrightly admit a failure like that to leadership of a country, you put that kid in charge of like… the army, or something. the department of agriculture.
i’d send out dead seeds, then appoint the kid with the biggest and most beautiful plant anyway. ideally the same kind of plant as the dead seeds were from. and ideally a kid with a really good pokerface. that kid knows:
a) how to perceive failure early (a well developed second plant means they knew how soon the first seeds should sprout and didn’t fuck around when they didn’t)
b) how to fix the situation (a second plant of the same species means they got someone to help them identify the seeds and plant more, or are observant enough to do it themselves)
c) how to get the best people for a job in to do it (kids aren’t great gardeners. a beautiful science project probably means mom did all the work— just what you want from a child ruler and their regent)
all around, that kid (or their mom) is the kind of devious results-oriented bald-faced liar you want to go toe-to-toe with the lords of your country and the rulers of your neighbors. not a little kid who admits defeat so early and in a situation with such high stakes. ‘whoops i didn’t grow a plant’ sounds a lot less sweet when you phrase it like ‘i give up on ruling my country’.
you know, i think i’d also send agents out to encourage the kids to destroy each other’s plants. let’s see who’s good at seige warfare, too.
