Dempanator

here’s the official fbi memo about it! you can view the whole document here

The research suggests that when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing

Martin Luther King and the ‘polite’ racism of white liberals

White Americans long for the 1950s, when they didn’t face so much “discrimination”

lmaoo white people love to act like we don’t have centuries of examples of who they are. always want to act brand new. like this suspicion and mistrust of your character isn’t earned every fucking day by your behavior, your treatment of black people, native people, brown people, by who you vote for, who you support with your money, who you tone police, your “jokes” and more. foh!  like there isn’t a trail of dead black, native and brown bodies in your wake. we watched y’all whitewash the fuck out of mlk’s legacy (AFTER KILLING HIM BTW) and then tried to use that whitewashed version to limit our fight for liberation and justice to just the acts your comfortable with and then have the fucking nerve to say that calling out your typical behavior to be “guilt tripping?” fuck you.

no effort whatsoever. like mlk said…

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers, bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

MCCPDC CEO Alex Oshmyansky reached out to Cuban with an idea for a low-cost generic drug company in a cold email. It was launched in January last year. They were motivated in part by “Pharma Bro” Martin Shrkeli’s outrage-producing price hike of the lifesaving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet while Shrkeli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Cuban told Forbes last year the pricing for generic drugs was “ridiculous.” He said he decided to put his name on the company to “show capitalism can be compassionate and to send the message I am all in.” It’s not clear how much he had invested in the company.

—

please note that prices are location dependent on goodrx—it shows you the options at pharmacies near your location. i’m in pittsburgh, pa; if you’re in a different part of the country and you try this, you may get slightly (or wildly) different numbers. 

fluoxetine is generic prozac. thirty 20mg capsules costs $12.80 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $3.90.

atorvastatin is generic lipitor. thirty 40mg tablets is $10.95 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $4.20.

omeprazole is generic prilosec. thirty 20mg capsules is $13.90 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $4.20 at costplus.

aripiprazole is generic abilify. thirty 10mg tablets is $17.73 at the cheapest local pharmacy (and $260.60 at the most expensive—and that’s with a discount, still, yikes); $6.00 at costplus. 

lamotrigine xr is generic lamictal xr. thirty 25mg tablets is $36.59 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $8.40 at costplus. 

maybe that doesn’t seem like a huge discount, but the goodrx prices change *all the time*—last time i used it to buy fluoxetine, which was in the last couple of years, it was $31. also, many people are on multiple medications, or have multiple people in a household taking multiple medications, and $5 off every prescription adds up real fast. 

THE CHEAPEST I CAN GET IT IN PERSON ANYWHERE IS $13 AND THE STANDARD PRICE FOR THE GENERIC IS $82.

TAMIFLU IS ON HERE FOR UNDER $4. IT’S AN ANTIVIRAL USED TO TREAT SEVERE CASES OF INFLUENZA AND REGULARLY COSTS OVER $100.

There is a medicine on here called Valcyte, it’s an HIV medication, he’s offering it for $100.20 which sounds outrageous (and I mean still kind of is but wait for it, wait for it) UNTIL YOU REALIZE ON GOODRX IT’S LISTED FOR $179 AS THE ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST PRICE I CAN FIND AND MY LOCAL WALGREENS SELLS IT FOR $1,009 FOR A MONTH’S SUPPLY.

i sure hope not

who’s to say

that’s between me and God

i’ll tell you for $100

i don’t think so, why?

not to my knowledge

sometimes

No I just work here.

I’m an Artist!

I’m sorry we’re out of those, may I interest you in an Amish Paste Tomato instead?

Not until 5:30

I’ll have to check with my supervisor.

A what or a what-what??

*ominous chuckle* We don’t have those ‘round here.

Congratulations to Oriini Kaipara! This is long overdue, and hopefully she will not remain “the only one.”

My revelation regarding this was spurred by a little-known film that actually didn’t do very well in theatres at all, from the early 90s called Corina Corina.

Starring heartthrob of the time Ray Liotta, fresh off his Goodfellas fame and…..Whoopie Goldberg??? as his love interest??????

Bear with me here.

Corina Corina is the story about a man whose wife died, leaving him alone to parent his 8-9 year old daughter alone in what appears to be the late 50s-early 60s.   His daughter, Molly, is non-verbal due to the trauma of her mother’s death and is dealing with feelings of isolation as a result of her mourning process. Ray Liotta’s character makes a concentrated effort to be a good dad for her, but it’s real clear that both of them are still dealing with the death of his wife. Because Ray’s character works full time, he needs to find a nanny to watch his girl and pick her up from school. After a couple of terrible experiences (one with a hilarious appearance by Joan Cusack) he decides to hire Whoopie Goldberg. Whoopie Goldberg’s character is a college educated black woman (in the 50s!!!!) who appears to be doing domestic work because its the only work white 50s America will hire her for. She and Ray’s daughter Molly get along well because she is the first person to take Molly’s decision to be non-verbal seriously and learn an alternate way to communicate with her.

Long story short, Whoopie Goldberg and Ray Liotta fall in love and live happily ever after. 

But, more importantly, the way the movie built their love changed the way I was able to process hetero couples on screen forever.

1. First, they were both provided with alternate romance options from the beginning of the movie. Ray was given an extremely attractive white lady love interest, and Whoopie was given an attractive and charming black man love interest. Both of them were given opportunities to return their affection but both pointedly chose not to.

2. They were attracted to each other based on common interest. They both liked the same music, they both bonded over their ability to play the piano, they both loved molly, they both helped encourage each other in their chosen fields (whoopie’s was english, and ray’s was being a songwriter), they both respected each other’s opinions and they both were honest with each other about the circumstances they were in.

3. They were realistic about the issue of a black woman being in a relationship with a white man in the era, and didn’t glide over racial identity issues. Ray made sure that his white neighbors knew that he loved her and didn’t care what they thought. He even explained to his mom that Molly emulating black culture wasn’t shameful and that she should mind her business about the way he felt about Whoopie Goldberg.

4. When Ray confessed his feelings, it was incredibly heartfelt and he was literally crying.

5. They didn’t pursue a romantic relationship until Whoopie wasn’t working for him anymore. And they didn’t gloss over the issue of power disparity in that equation. Ray doesn’t condescend to Whoopie at all through the movie, but once he’s aware he has feelings for her, his new goal is to let her know that he unquestionably considers her his equal both in private and in public And its clear that he’s aware that this is the first thing that must be settled before anything else. 

By the time you get to the end of the movie, the entire concept of Ray Liotta being with Whoopie Goldberg seems not only normal, but exceptionally romantic and you’re left wondering why you thought they would be a gross couple to begin with when they’re sO cLeArLy MaDe fOr eAcH oThEr

I now call this the Corina Corina standard. 

If a movie has a hetero couple and their relationship isn’t as fleshed out as Ray/Whoopie, I now have difficulty accepting whats occurring. 

The concept that two hot straight people who are vaguely near each other just doesn’t do it for me anymore after watching Ray Liotta walk through a black neighborhood in the 50s and knock on Whoopie’s door to beg her to come home to him.

Oh so you say your characters are in love?

Outcomes of scientific studies such as Marks-Block’s often affirm what Native people already know from tradition and experience, but that doesn’t mean the studies aren’t useful, Tripp says.

“We knew what the outcome was going to be,” he says. “But nobody listens if it isn’t written down like that.”

“When we look at forest gardens, they’re actually enhancing what nature does, making it much more resilient, much more biodiverse—and, oh yeah, they feed people too,” says Armstrong.

The paper may be the first to quantify how Indigenous land stewardship can enhance what ecologists call functional diversity—a measure of how many goods an ecosystem provides. It joins a growing scientific literature revealing that Indigenous people—both historically and today—often outperform government agencies and conservation organizations at supporting biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and generating other ecological benefits on their land. Leaving nature alone is not always the right course, scientists are finding—and the original land stewards often do it best.”

…

“ “Western science for too long has embraced the idea of primordial wilderness,” says Jesse Miller, an ecologist at Stanford and Armstrong’s coauthor. “We’re seeing this paradigm shift to recognizing how much of what was thought of as primordial wilderness were actually landscapes shaped by humans.” 

The forest gardens Armstrong studied once supplied Indigenous villages with food and medicine, including plants that had been imported from elsewhere. “Historically it was really important to have all the resources here,” says Willie Charlie, a former chief and current employee of the Sts’ailes Nation of the Coast Salish people. “If you had all that in your family, you were pretty self-sustaining.”

Willie Charlie, tirelessly explaining Indigenous practices to/with scientists

…

“In other cases, however, government policy continues to diverge from both Indigenous knowledge and science. This spring, for example, the state of Wisconsin authorized a wolf hunt that both scientists and tribes had protested.

“People outside the tribal community tend to … think a lot of our positions are culturally based. But I would argue they tend to align much more with science than the non-tribal worldview,” says Peter David, a wildlife biologist for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents 11 Midwestern Ojibwe tribes.

Peter David, a wildlife biologist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, hanging out with some wild rice

“The tribal worldview says wolves ought to be able to establish their own population levels, and they do that at very low levels…it aligns much better with the science.”

More than enough for these children, their parents, and the rest to all have their own home.

Pride theropods!