we simply do not give enough attention to the fact that the US is. Shooting itself in the foot at every turn. not in a individual incompetence way, not an an orange idiot in the White House Way, but in a “the US spent a century designing a world order where everyone was either reliant on the US or terrified of the US (often both) and now people at every level of federal government are destroying that system” way. While USAID very much did in fact contribute to like, food and medicine and whatever to people in need around the globe, this was not out of the kindness of American hearts, this is an arm of liberal empire. the carrot so to speak. and as for the stick, the point of having a military the size of the US military is not to use it. It’s to park on peoples lawns until they stand down. when you use it, and then lose, or deliver anything other than immediate and crushing defeat, you illustrate to the people whose lawn you’re parked on that spending billions of dollars isn’t enough to win a war necessarily. Iran could have closed the strait at any point, but they didnt bc the USA would bomb the shit out of them. When they get bombed first, there’s no reason not to close the strait. The US played its hand and it came up wanting. this is to say nothing of the damage to alliances with other liberal democratic countries. the people currently in power swallowed USA propaganda hook line and sinker, believed in it so completely, that theyre shaking the foundation of what lent that propaganda its believability. to say nothing of the fact that their aims are despicable, their methods are just. an embarrassment to empire building. they took a perfectly good empire and started lopping shit off. they’re trying to increase the output of a machine by ripping cogs out of its still-running engine.

I enjoy a joke about fucked up German fairy tales as much as the next nerd, but it's genuinely striking how often the source for the really fucked up stuff turns out to be "yeah, this is only in the Brothers Grimm version and doesn't appear in any extant oral tradition, and we're like 80% sure they added it themselves". To a large extent it's not German fairy tales that are fucked up, it's two specific German dudes.

in retrospect we probably should have given the fairy tale writing to the Brothers Happy instead

the most valueable skill a white leftist can ever learn is how to take an L with grace.

You gotta be able to take an L if your moral and ethical belief systems are to be capable of guiding you. Otherwise you just have an idealized self where you get really mad and scared when anyone points out it isn't actually you. How the fuck are you gonna walk the walk if you can't handle being told when you are not, in fact, actually walking it

you cannot just socially transition into being a good person you are going to have to settle for being a messy human being who has to try and fail and keep trying to get better like everyone else. yeah even when it's embarassing and sucks for you a lot.

Ya gotta learn to earnestly and honestly say "Oh shit, my bad."

And to then end the sentence there, not launch into a paragraph of explanation or panicked super-apology.

the problem with genetically modified crops is not so much the genetic modification but the patenting of genetic codes (and crops in general) as a tool of maintaining agricultural imperialism, and for this reason I can't talk to most people about GMOs

And so he (Shane Hollander) gets to die a saint but she (Ilya Rozanov) will always be the whore

oh its bad back there.

warner exec (on the phone): Hi, Gerard, me again. So we've crunched the numbers and ran your idea past our lawyers and insurance people. I'm sorry to say, but there's really no safe or cost effective way to burn you at the stake during the next tour.

ilya's silly april fools "shane is pregnant 💕" post with shane's comment "not with playoffs around the corner. abortion"

yesterday at work i held a baby for five (5) minutes and fed him a bottle and then that night i got tipsy and started texting my boy best friend about wanting to get pregnant. i feel like a shitty plot beat in a romance novel was enacted upon me

for equality’s sake and my reputation as a probably bisexual i will mention i also texted my girl best friend to say I Am Drunk In A Grocery Store At 8pm On A Thursday And I Just Bought Some Bullshit and she responded omg that’s so reallllllllll 🫶