sleep deprived since 2011

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.

😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.

😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

You definitely still have people who will be like "that's totally different!" but it takes the wind out of their sails on a lot of counter arguments. You can't tell me it's murder if you believe in using lethal force to protect your property. You can't tell me "it was my choice to have sex and therefore I have to live with the consequences" when it was your choice to buy a house and expensive things people want to steal and your home security system failed. You can't tell me it's different because it's not "life or death" when over a quarter of a million people die every year due to pregnancy complications and more than a third of those who survive experience long term (even life long) negative health effects as a result. In fact, the average person is 5 times more likely to die in childbirth than in a home invasion!

Abortion genuinely is a form of self defense.

Maybe don't be dicks about it? Let people come in, and give them a little raccoon mask and teach them how to have grubby little raccoon paws.

[text from Twitter user evacide: "Some of you have never had your home on the internet crumble beneath you like chalk, and it shows."]

You will realize that there are people you only know in a online space, and you will realize it when that space goes dark. You won't know the size and shape of space it takes up in your head and heart until it vanishes. Those little interactions on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even occasional basis mean nothing until they're gone, and suddenly there's a weird fucking hollow space when an icon on the other end of a screen just isn't there anymore - and not just one, but multitudes are gone.

You won't understand how you're mourning just a silly website, until you realize the way your day or week flowed around it like water around a boulder in a stream. Is it better or worse? That's not the question - how different is it? And how does that difference feel?

The first time a BBS I dialed into went dark, I realized there were people I enjoyed talking with that I would never chat with again. It's like they fell off the earth. "Were they friends" is not the question - suddenly there was a thunderclap of silence because people who had been there were suddenly gone, and I knew I would never ever talk with them again.

It's just a stupid hellsite until you realize it's all people. And you're a human animal who is hardwired to notice the absence of other humans. Capitalism foundationally sucks, but it is the foundation. Good or bad, right or wrong, money goes in and hellsite comes out. If money stops, hellsite goes away. You're looking at one of the last big bastions of old-school weirdness out there. They're not offering participatory monetization like ad-free and blaze to get rich, they're doing it to keep the lights on.

(x)

A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.

But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here

Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.

Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:

But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:

Also for LOOK magazine, but leaning on his themes of youth and suburban life. Expressing both hope for the curiosity and open-mindedness of children, and the bitter recognition of the suspicion of adults towards racial integration (see the face peeking out of the window in background). It’s notable that this is what he wanted America to be, too. He hoped for a better future.