Normal is Boring

If you think "children should not be allowed in this space," you HAVE TO reckon with the fact that you are now excluding parents (and very often women specifically) who don't have access to childcare. You are isolating people who are poor, or rural, or single parents, or any number of other factors that might prevent someone from having on-demand childcare. You are cutting them off from being able to exist in public. You are denying parents and children the ability to fully participate in society.

My mom spent several years only leaving the house to buy groceries or take me to school, and even then, people would still come up to her to complain TO HER FACE about how she shouldn't bring a crying toddler to Walmart. Entitled strangers would literally try and demand that my mom leave and come back without the kids.

"Why can't your husband watch them?" Because he was at work, usually working extreme amounts of overtime so we didn't get evicted, because landlords don't like it when you stop paying rent.

"Why can't you send them to daycare?" Because that costs money.

"Why can't your teenager stay home with them and babysit?" Because I also deserved to be able to leave the house for something other than school, and taking me to the grocery store was how my mom taught me to manage a household budget, shop sales, and meal plan.

"Don't bring your kid in public if you can't CONTROL them and make them stop crying!" Kids cry when they're upset, and being dragged around a store is upsetting! Don't be an asshole! Children are human beings who are still learning how the world works, and they don't have a lot of agency. You'd cry, too.

"Spank them until they learn to stop crying!" That's just straight-up child abuse, Jesus Christ.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

He knew.

The bastard KNEW.

At least three inhabited planets reduced to rubble, a dozen galaxies placed under threat of annihilation, the Earth caught in the center of a battle that would be waged for the fate of all existence against a mad tyrant seeking to remake all of creation in his own vile image.

And President Lex Luthor knew about it. MONTHS in advance. And he kept it to himself to make himself look good. And then he lied about it. And he used a convicted fugitive TO lie about it. And then he tried to kill us all so he could reign over the ashes.

(A "war poster" created during Luthor's administration and the Imperiex War)

The Imperiex War as it has come to be known was an assault on the Earth that caused devastating damage to Topkea, Kansas, the island of Themyscira and half a dozen other locations and was instigated by the mad alien Imperiex. Seeking to undo the "imperfection" he sensed in the universe by destroying all of creation as we know it and resetting things with a new big bang. Which would, of course, kill all beings in THIS universe not counting all the sentient beings he killed in his regular military actions against planets that happened to be in his way. The death toll on Earth was upwards of 7 million, the death toll in the wider universe is beyond our ability to count.

And Lex Luthor knew about it nearly a year in advance.

Superman had gone off to fight one of Imperiex's probes during their FIRST planetary assault. Bringing back information about Imperiex's plans, his army, his tactics, everything we could possibly have needed to begin assembling defensive plans and marshalling resources for the arrival of the enemy's first wave.

Save that most of that defensive posture would probably have including a combined plan, using the Earth's superhuman defenders as the vanguard and spear point in any counterattack. And they'd get most of the credit, because they'd do most of the fighting and bleeding for Earth's future. As they most often do.

Instead he waiting until the attack arrived, catching world governments AND the superhero community flat footed so that he could make the "hard choices" of basing most of his defensive strategy around allying himself with Pokolistani dictator General Zod and literal space god of tyranny Darkseid. Also giving him the leeway in the midst of a global panic to "draft" superheroes outside the confines of the law (even Article X, which he never invoked despite this being the kind of situation it was made for), toss them out on hastily planned suicide missions so that eventually he would be the one making grand speeches and standing for the flag in the aftermath.

And we won. Barely. Because our heroes are the kind of people who can find the light in a situation like that and pull our fat out of the fire. After 7. Million. Deaths. And the devastation of a major American city that in many ways still hasn't recovered.

Lois Lane and Clark Kent of the Daily Planet, because they are VERY good at their jobs, uncovered a trail stating that President Luthor did intentionally sabotage Earth's defense for the sake of his own popularity. Using this information they got him to commit to testify about it under oath, using the psychic powers of the Martian Manhunter as an actually effective lie detector test. Backed into this legal corner Luthor then pardoned and began working with internationally convicted terrorist Manchester Black, using Black's mental abilities to shield and misdirect the Manhunter's scans. A bit of legal chicanery that temporary cost both Lane and Kent their jobs and their reputations.

It was only after Black turned on Luthor, shortly before Black's suicide that the truth began to come to light. A desperate Luthor once AGAIN keeping the existence of a massive Kryptonite meteor a secret for weeks in an attempt to either solve it himself OR shift blame to Superman and then finally settling on a Vault Tec style plan to ride out the crashing of the asteroid and reign over the Earth's ashes. He failed, again. And this time when he was caught on national television ranting like a madman in a public brawl with Superman wearing Apokoliptan war armor there was no pretense left to be had.

Laypeople (and also a concerning number of scientists) have often got the idea that unethical human experimentation is some sort of ultra-effective super science that would fix all the disease and discover all of the medicine and we only don't do it because it isn't nice (see: every science fiction show ever). No! Jumping straight from abstract theory to human trials is a terrible way to do science. It produces incoherent results and useless observations and nonsensical conclusions. We have pages and pages of historical precedent demonstrating this.

And lots of people have got the idea that totalitarianism is some sort of magic super-government that does all the government stuff really effectively abd efficiently and we only don't do it because it isn't nice. No!!!! "Let's put one idiot in charge and do whatever dumb shit they say" is the worst way to organize any project at all, let alone an economy and a political machine. Fascist regimes are models of corruption, waste, and inefficiency.

Eldritch siren 🫧🩻👁️

I wanted to do a little something for mermay with a little monster design! She’s lightly inspired by my OC Ekānta and a very old mermaid piece I did in 2019! All around was a fun idea to revisit!

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.