Liz

I also happen to specialise in gambling addiction (although I'm not practicing in that area right now), and all I could fucking think about was how these fucking apps were conditioning me in the same fucking way gambling apps do. To be constantly plugged in, consuming. To not even think about just picking it up and having a look. To feel bored when I wasn't watching them, to think about watching them when I wasn't watching them....

That shit is fucking evil.

I deleted it. I'm not exposing myself to that.

That shit will fry your dopamine/reward system so fucking bad you will never read a book or watching a movie again without it.

Love yourself and your potential enough to put that fucking shit away. Watch longer form things that require focus and engagement. Listen to podcasts and audiobooks. Read books. DO ANYTHING BUT CONSUME SHORT FORM CONTENT IN AN UNSTRUCTURED WAY.

If you MUST consume it (I'm sure people will be like 'but my classmates' or 'but my own channel'.... etc), do it in a siloed and structured way. 30 minutes between x time and x time on x day. Focus on it. Don't eat and do it. Watch each short form video to completion. Engage critically with the content. ANd never watch them first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

daniel howell please the trans guys and the lesbians

daniel howell please the trans guys and the lesbians

Yes they do. It's just that their morals are rooted in "protect the people and things closest to me at all costs". Their values are extreme tribalism. They also believe those outside the group are constantly threatening the safety and prosperity of the in-group.

This is why so much of what they do seems contradictory and hypocritical. Yes, they want prosperity for those they consider "like them", but they are also willing to do things that harm themselves if it harms the "enemy" more. And, they blame the enemy for that harm, not themselves.

It's literally "this is why we can't have nice things". It's your fault.

A conservative may think, "welfare might be nice, and it's true all my neighbors depend on it, but those welfare queens are stealing it, so we can't have it. Public pools might be nice, and they provide a safe place for my children to play, but people I consider unclean might use them, so we can't have them."

This is how a conservative woman can justify an abortion for herself, but not for others, even though anti-abortion laws make it harder for her to get that abortion in the first place.

I (being a teenager) was confused by this because this issue is so much larger than just her daughter. So I tried again to explain how many people are harmed by sex work criminalization and how decriminalization would decrease sex trafficking and she repeated again, with a smile on her face: "I don't want my daughter to do that and decriminalization would signal that that is an acceptable thing for her to do".

like it just sounds like conservatives beliefs are based on fear of something hurting them & their family.

MAGA is many things, but above all it’s a movement about redistributing respect away from those who command too much (overeducated coastal elites) to those who don’t have enough (white Americans without advanced degrees who feel left behind). You see that redistribution at work in the Trump administration’s project to devalue medical experts and empower wellness gurus and vaccine skeptics, and in its dismissal of “deep state” national-security professionals in favor of TV pundits.

Nowhere does the demand to redistribute respect come into starker view than when guns start firing. In Trump’s first term, Kyle Rittenhouse—who shot and killed two men and injured a third during protests against police brutality in Wisconsin in August 2020—became a MAGA hero largely because he was enforcing the MAGA vision of respect due. Many Americans saw him as a trigger-happy 17-year-old vigilante, but to the MAGA faithful he was a brave soldier in the larger war against MAGA enemies, real and imagined.

The ICE agent who killed Good is Trump’s second-term Kyle Rittenhouse. Of course the agent could have walked away and left everyone unharmed. By law, perhaps he should have walked away: It’s generally illegal for a law-enforcement officer to kill a civilian seeking to escape, more so if the civilian is unarmed, and even more so if the civilian is not a criminal suspect of any kind. But letting protesters drive off unscathed, without punishing them for their disrespect, would let them “get away with it.” And that would be an intolerable affront to the MAGA vision of who must submit to whom.

Essentially, it's in-group vs out-group taken to its most violent extreme. What we're seeing, particularly in white conservative spaces is that as soon as you express support for the out-group, you lose your proximity to whiteness. That's what happened to Renee Good.

Per Heather Cox Richardson:

David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” He claimed that those people organizing to protect their neighborhoods from ICE may be “criminal conspiracies.” He complained of “self-important White women” protesting “with a weird and disturbing glee.” He seemed to threaten them by warning: “if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want…, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.” On Monday, Will Cain of the Fox News Channel echoed Marcus, saying: “There’s a weird kind of smugness...in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority.”

Conservatives will look at this and excuse the violence because in their view, Renee Good was no longer one of their own (a white woman, the very type of person that conservatism is supposed to protect). We can and should argue that as a queer woman, Renee Good was never going to be considered one of their own, but that's a different post.

ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.

ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.

ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.

They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.

They are smashing windows in cars and homes.

ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.

They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.) I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later. But the community is fighting back.

Protests are happening every day.

Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.

Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.

Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.

Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.

Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.

Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.

Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.

Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.