Mad Gastronomer

One thing I’m still pissed at Bernie Sanders about is turning a generation against the Democratic Party. Every piece of social progress in the last 80 years, from Social Security to Medicaid to Medicare to integration to the Civil Rights Act to Title IX to Roe v. Wade to labor rights to environmental protections to public health protections to Obamacare to Obergefell, all of it directly or indirectly powered by the engine of change that is the Democratic Party. And then Sanders comes and says this whole apparatus, which he had no hand in building, is corrupt and needs to be completely replaced. Now we have countless young people who think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the same partly because they were told that an engine of change and an anchor of stagnation and oppression are equally bad because they were fed the lie that no one in the Democratic Party does anything to improve their lives.

Nothing makes me more embarrassed about my age or generation than BernieOrBust/StillJill/NeverHillary supporters who are basically doing the GOP’s work for them and refuse to acknowledge it. As much as I hate the ageist bullshit I see Baby Boomers come up with, I can see why they think so many millenials need to get their head out of the clouds or don’t know how the real world works when I see the way people my age talk about politics. Like, I know it’s bullshit and I still don’t blame baby boomers for getting mad that young people think they know everything. Because fun story: my university campus is very liberal and very politically active, and during the last quarter there most students strongly supported Bernie Sanders…except for most of us in or connected to the Political Science Department (so Poli Sci majors, International Relations majors, certain other ‘bureaucratic’ majors, etc.) We also loved Bernie, but we all pretty bluntly said we were voting for Hillary and thought she’d be the best President. Most of us were pretty blunt about how “as much as we love Bernie’s message of change, we think Hillary can actually accomplish more of it in the real world”. We were basing our decision on our studies of politics, of what kinds of change have and have not worked in history and why. This support for Hillary, even with our love of Bernie, came from a place of deep understanding of how politics work, of why certain policies or political goals fail, and what various political leaders’ real powers and challenges are. We were called “over-educated elites” because of this.

Nixon, fucking Nixon, signed the core of the ecologic protection laws.

I don’t have a problem voting for “political insiders” because *they freaking know how the sausage is made.* I want a goddamned professional in the job. Wanting an “outsider” strikes me like saying, “I don’t want a surgeon that went to some hoity-toity university and is friends with the the department head! I want some guy who learned how to remove appendixes by pulling himself by his bootstraps and learning by trial and error!”

Oh WOW what a lovely portrait!

People have overused Catholic Guilt to the point they cannot recognize the clear and haunting Protestant Shame in front of their eyes. that character Knows they could have worked harder

[Image description: A tweet by David Wolfe: "If vaccines improved health, today's kids would be the healthiest in history. Instead, chronic illness is at an all-time high" with an illustration of a needle held by a hand. This was followed by a heading: Readers added context to this image: Child mortality is currently at its lowest rates in history. A dead child cannot get a chronic illness. ourworldindata.org/child-mortalit… bigthink.com/health/child-m… /end ID]

He is perfect because of all his beautiful flaws.

Poirot is literally like "I keep you around because you were made in a vat to be the world's most stereotypical Englishman so if I ever want to know how the average Englishman would react to a situation I can just ask you!" It's great.

One time I was watching a gay pornographic film from the 1970s and the bedroom set had a life sized cardboard cutout of James Dean from the Rebel Without a Cause promotional material. I feel like that is exactly what he would have wanted but also I was so fucking jealous I couldn’t even focus on the fucking, I was green with envy because dude, that fucking rocks. I think this was what inspired me to design a James Dean and Marilyn Monroe themed bathroom when I first moved out on my own. There was probably someone in the 1970s who saw this cardboard cutout of James Dean and was like ‘That is the perfect set dressing for this porno about a college student home for the summer, that is the pinnacle of horny gay college aged guy decor, audiences will love it.’ and they were painfully correct.

Does he- you know, *gestures vaguely* have a life sized cardboard cutout of James Dean in his room?

They should invent an Anime where women are allowed to be fat.

Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!