If you vote for anyone that isn't the Democrat nominee, we are looking at a 7-2 right-wing SCOTUS. For how long? 30-40 YEARS.

RBG is 87. Breyer is 81. Chances of them making it to 2024 are not great.

For the record, I think this system is FUCKED and this isn't how SCOTUS composition should be decided, but it is how it is right now.

The current state of affairs with regards to how the country’s being run? Cancer. 

Bernie Sanders would have been a surgery that cuts the tumor out without long-term damage, but from the looks of it we’re at the point where that’s not a viable option.

Republicans ignore science, put children in cages, want to see me and mine dead, put children in cages, think guns are more important than people, and put children in cages.

And if people actually looked at Biden’s plans they’d see he’s like, a solid 80 out of 100 on ‘ticks all the boxes on things I support’ while the best republican is a 10. Maybe a 12.

The fact that homeless people do not have housing is a wrong done against them, not a sign they did something wrong.  To then try and ban them from public spaces and existing in public (including doing things we all have to do, like sleep or eat), is yet another grievous wrong.

If you’ve ever felt like someone should kick out that smelly person who takes a really long time in the bathroom at the gas station then you would have personally been acting to keep me from being able to have basic hygiene as I attempted to keep my 40-hour-a-week job that was paying barely enough to keep us fed and safe and gas in my car so I could take myself to work and my mother to her chemotherapy. 

It is not and has never been neutral which drug addicts and gamblers become homeless and which do not.  A number of studies have found that wealthy people use drugs, especially hard stimulants, at far higher rates than average, not lower ones.  

Also, drug addicts and gamblers are still human beings, they are still members of our communities.  They are not garbage to be thrown away.  Providing them housing and other services is the right thing to do, it’s also what is effective in reducing drug deaths and drug use rates.  Don’t fucking concern troll, if you cared about whether the living conditions of homeless drug addicts was improving, you wouldn’t be supporting violence against and criminalization of homeless people, you’d be seeking ways for society to provide them housing.  It’s still a wrong being done against them that they have no housing.  It’s still a wrong done against them when they are abused, harassed, arrested for living while homeless, etc.   It also makes drug problems much worse, and aggravates disabilities that many self medicate for.  It’s not some people being gamblers or drug addicts that causes homelessness, it’s a society that fails at housing all people.

People do not stop having value just because they’ve done something that causes you to clutch at your pearls.

Can you hear yourself? “We shouldn’t help people, because SOME of them have done things that I, personally, feel the need to make a moral judgement about!”

and living

and surviving

and proudly being yourself

and adding good to the world

and making people smile

and growing

and finding happy moments in chaos.

Because as an adult, this pervasive notion that there exists a perfect path for everyone, that people should love what they do, and that work is meant to function as a vehicle for fulfilling a person’s grand life destiny is not only inaccurate for many of us, it can be toxic.

The ideal is so ingrained that I have to remind myself constantly I’m not a failure because I don’t adore my job, and because I’m not rocking the world with my work. That is okay. 

my mother died at home in a hospice cot, slowly shutting down over the course of about a week. when she had stopped responding, i remembered what dad told me about wishing he’d played music for grandpa, and i put the radio on her favorite country music station and kept it on for her until she died.

daddy died in hospital. no cassette players, no decent radios. the day after he was brought in, i thought again of what he told me, and i bought a little portable bluetooth speaker. even though he never woke up, was never aware, i played music for him too.

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Herd immunity is the idea that if enough people get immunized against a disease, they’ll create protection for even those who aren’t vaccinated. This is important to protect those who can’t get vaccinated, like immunocompromised children. 

You can see in the image how low levels of vaccination lead to everyone getting infected. Medium levels slow down the progression of the illness, but they don’t offer robust protection to the unvaccinated. But once you read a high enough level of vaccination, the disease gets effectively road-blocked. It can’t spread fast enough because it encounters too many vaccinated individuals, and so the majority of the population (even the unvaccinated people) are protected.