(╭☞-‿‿-)╭☞ just dandy

A South Carolina lawmaker on Tuesday had to fight back tears as he explained that an anti-abortion law he’d voted for led to a young woman nearly losing her uterus, and even put her life at risk. Republican State Rep. Neal Collins told the state’s House Judiciary Committee that he’d lost sleep after learning about the case of a 19-year-old woman whose water broke after just 15 weeks of pregnancy. He said that because the fetus had a heartbeat, lawyers advised doctors that they could not remove the fetus, despite that being the recommended medical course of action. The young woman was discharged from hospital. “First, she’s going to pass this fetus in the toilet,” Collins said. “She’s going to have to deal with that on her own.” He added that a doctor told him that there was a “greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus” and “there’s a 10 percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself die.” “That weighs on me,” Collins added. “I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.”

i get it. sometimes they say things that are so off-the-wall incorrect that the only way to respond is to laugh.

but the thing we've seen from alex jones (and many others) is that they don't need to be extreme the whole time. they just need to use shock value enough to get hate-watches. most of these people will demand that you "watch the whole video." this is intentional. at some point in their content, they will probably make a comment that you do believe in - let's call that comment "the gateway comment". (we'll come back to this).

from the point of view of someone who worked in digital marketing (sorry), every form of interaction with these influencers does benefit them.

most hate-watchers will navigate away. but the algorithm still sees that original click. at the minimum, that influencer will be rewarded for click-through. and every public mention of the influencer adds to their SEO. every ironic comment, every redirect, every angry response - it pays the influencer. and if you mention/see/interact enough with even negative content about that person, your algorithm will start feeding you "andrew tate related" materials. it only sees that you interact with that, it does not calculate for if you approve/disapprove.

it might even be able to find materials that have that above "gateway comment." you don't necessarily disagree with it, and it's not as extreme as the usual shit you've heard. but the gateway comment will lead you to influencers who aren't as extreme as the original. and those will have their own gateways. this is how you are slowly pulled into the sense that maybe something you used to see as extreme is now rote to you - and that is extremely concerning.

and no, none of us are able to escape this. the reason it works is because it's based on the law of large numbers - the algorithm works by over-feeding you. but what you remember is the stuff that is extreme. i am not calling you stupid - i'm saying that a very-expensive and constantly-learning machine program is very good at its job. it was designed to do this and only this. you were designed to be a person - you have other programming that is more important to your function.

the best way to engage with these people is to not engage with them ever at all. to give them no interaction. and to, as much as you can, lift up other voices instead. give the right people your click-throughs and your retweets and your name dropping.

Follow for recipes

Listen, everyone. You have pride because of leather daddies and Trans Women of Color. You have pride because of the same people you're ashamed to accept into the community.

We're all about to become targets, and we can't win separated. And we especially need to protect our most vulnerable, we need to protect the members of our community that will get targeted the most.

He's a goose

It’s scabbing and so it itches A LOT and I’m struggling a lot to not touch it... but it’s beautiful and perfect and everything I wanted.

Some pics from a cheese contest that took place at the village yesterday :) The cows responsible for the cheese were invited and had their own contests on the side, with a little podium for cows constructed out of hay bales. When Licorice the cow won a prize, the little girl that was leading her climbed on the makeshift podium proudly but hesitantly (“is that thing stable….?”)—meanwhile Licorice was rushing her, like let me climb up there! I won! It was so cute.

There were buffets where you could blind-taste dozens of different cheeses, a separate contest for cheese pastries, and a mini-street market outside where among other things local farmers were selling their cheeses in little cardboard cones like French fries.

The librarian’s husband told me he had been selected as jury member for one of the cheese pastry competitions and had to taste 24 different pastries over the course of the morning. He got to take the 3rd prize winning pastry home and then gave me a big slice of it (“for your dinner”) as he did not intend to eat cheese again in any configuration for at least a week.

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