housing is a human right

so let me tell you, in case you haven't heard this ever, that in my experience, being an adult is 100x better than being a kid or teenager. being able to more or less control my living space and who i spend time with, being able to prioritize my health and wellbeing, being able to be who i truly am and pursue my interests and hobbies... all of that is worth the other dumb stuff, and none of it was possible when i was a minor. honestly, I've just gotten happier and happier the older I've gotten.

And I want to give you an example of that.

Over in the UK, Boris Johnson has announced his intention to renege on key points of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement that his government signed with the EU.

Part of this Withdrawal Agreement is ensuring that a "hard border", that is a walled and manned border with checkpoints, isn't erected between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The lack of a hard border is a key part of the 1997 Good Friday Agreement, a peace treaty that ended several decades of civil war in Northern Ireland.

The reason why Johnson is breaking this agreement with the EU is because he wants a trade deal with the US, a trade deal that Trump has stated he will not give to Johnson unless he removes some product safety laws.

These product safety laws are also enshrined in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, because the EU doesn't want sub-standard products entering the EU marketplace, and the only way to avoid checks on goods for these safety standards at the Ireland/Northern Ireland border is to have the UK to continue to uphold these standards.

But Johnson so badly wants this deal with the US, in order to "prove" the UK isn't dependent on EU Trade, that he's willing to break two legally-binding international treaties.

To compound this, both Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly stated that if Johnson breaches the Good Friday Agreement, he will not get a trade deal with the US.

Because Irish Americans make up 10% of the US population, and that is a group both sides want to appeal to. And Irish Americans generally like the idea of peace on the island of Ireland.

But Johnson knows that Donald Trump is willing to go against his party, and that the Republicans will fall in line with Trump's wishes. He knows the Republicans' threat of "no trade deal if you violate the Good Friday Agreement" is a shockingly empty one.

He knows that so long as Trump is in power, he can get what he wants, even if he breaks international law in doing so.

And this is just one of many examples of how US internal politics heavily affects the internal and international politics of other nations. Like it or not, the effects of your vote go well beyond your borders.

Donald Trump is not just bad for your country, he is bad for the entire human race.

at least one cryptid definitely does exist in the sense that it was an actual creature who encountered and really freaked out a couple of humans- Mothman!

<art src- Tim Bertelink>

it was a barred owl.

see, owls have a really bright eyeshine at night, and in a really unusual color- blood red. 

and barred owls have the brightest eyeshine of them all- so bright you could swear you were looking at the oncoming headlights of the Hellfire Express! 

at close range, the eyeshine of a barred owl would be almost blinding- like shining a bright flashlight directly into those bicycle spoke reflector things. like this:

and wouldn’t you know it, barred owls are found in the areas where Mothman was first sighted.

so what presumably happened was that several people had very close encounters with one or several barred owls, and the red hellfire glare of the owl was so bright that it made the owl’s eyes look the size of fucking softballs!

and since it was night and the owl was moving the shape of it was too indistinct to make out, so the humans’ brains extrapolated a body outline for this unknown creature that was MUCH bigger than the owl actually was! it’s also stupid difficult to judge distances in the sky at night so they may have thought the owl was further away when it was almost on top of them. and HEY PRESTO, A LEGEND WAS BORN.

but this doesn’t mean that Mothman was never real, quite the contrary! Mothman is real in the only place that matters,,,, in our hearts 

support owl conservation efforts in your local area though, and you may someday see a Mothman of your own!