Horizontal Refreshment

I saw a post this morning saying we shouldn't bother trying because nothing ever changes, and that is just not true. Over the time period that I can actively remember, things have gotten so much better.

Infant mortality is down across the globe.

AIDS is no longer a death sentence

34 countries have legalized same-sex marriage - something that was unheard of less than 20 years ago

Acid rain is no longer destroying vast swathes of wilderness

The ozone layer is healing

Nuclear war is mostly off the table

Women regularly run for office and get elected

Global poverty rates are plummeting

There's still bad shit: climate change is going to wreck our shit, and racial equity in the United States is appalling. The Republican party has gone batshit fascist. We're coming out of a global pandemic that killed millions and left more with long term effects.

But even there, I see progress from when I was a kid. We're making real strides on renewable energy and thinking about ways to reduce carbon footprints. When I was a teen, most white people didn't wrestle AT ALL with racial inequality. Now there are policy changes being made at multiple level of society. Progressives, liberals and leftists are starting to get their shit together. And even Covid resulted in mind-boggling advances in vaccine technology. (Covid's hard to find a silver lining on. There is one, but it's mostly overshadowed by the awful. OTOH, I've been told that a global pandemic was due for 20+ years, and many of the models were worse.)

Things are changing SO DAMNED FAST, y'all. And I know it's hard to see from a perspective of 5 or even 10 years. But at 20? 25? Holy shit things are different. And better. And it's because people haven't accepted "things never change" as an answer.

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

it's a bipartisan bill too! and for anyone unaware, people on SSI (which is different from SSDI), can only have $2,000 in assets (unless they have an ABLE account, which comes with its own rules). this assets limit has been in place for FORTY YEARS and is a giant part of why being on SSI keeps people incredibly impoverished.

i've also heard they might remove the marriage penalty but i don't have the spoons to read or explain it so someone else please add on!

For reference here's the link to the Senate bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2767 and the House version: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5408 I recommend looking at these to see who is already sponsoring them and make sure to either call in support OR to call asking them to work on this.

It's also pretty short! Here is the full text of the bill (same text for both the Senate and the House):

SEC. 2. Update in eligibility for the supplemental security income program.

(a) Update in resource limit for individuals and couples.—Section 1611(a)(3) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1382(a)(3)) is amended—

(1) in subparagraph (A), by striking “$2,250” and all that follows through the end of the subparagraph and inserting “$20,000 in calendar year 2023, and shall be increased as described in section 1617(d) for each subsequent calendar year.”; and

(2) in subparagraph (B), by striking “$1,500” and all that follows through the end of the subparagraph and inserting “$10,000 in calendar year 2023, and shall be increased as described in section 1617(d) for each subsequent calendar year.”.

(b) Inflation adjustment.—Section 1617 of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1382f) is amended—

(1) in the section heading, by inserting “; inflation adjustment” after “benefits”; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

“(d) In the case of any calendar year after 2023, each of the amounts specified in section 1611(a)(3) shall be increased by multiplying each such amount by the quotient (not less than 1) obtained by dividing—

“(1) the average of the consumer price index for all urban consumers (all items; United States city average, as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor) for the 12-month period ending with September of the preceding calendar year, by

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