Oh hi Mark

You don’t speak for all leftists.

Signed, a leftist.

Trump said he’d make the courts partisan and he did exactly that. Now we have some of the most extreme right wing federal courts, and an extremist christofascist supreme court.

Alabama declared that IVF embryos are children. A federal court is arguing that FDA overstepped in approval of mifeprostone, an abortifacient and uterotonic medication that is considered essential to first world medical care. Roe v. Wade overturned. Gay marriage on the docket. Interracial marriage in their sights.

Do you really want to have Gilead at home?

What the fuck mate.

Trump literally just said “time to finish the problem” regarding the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

I know it’s a shit choice, but it’s the choice between the status quo of global imperialism, or global imperialism AND domestic fascism.

I don’t want either of these things, but I really don’t want to get executed at home.

Right, that’s why you right wing lunatics referred to him as “God Emperor of the United States”

No, I think I’m far enough on the left to be aware of capitalist propaganda. In all fairness to you, my statement did not treat the subject with the appropriate nuance the subject should require.

The DDR was socialist. However, it was state socialism, which in my opinion is not ideal and not something we should strive to replicate. Yes, the means of production were “owned by the people,” but the state tasks itself with protecting the people. And therein lies the problem with state socialism - the state is easily commandeered by a corrupt minority who then uses the governmental apparatus to run an authoritarian regime. Precisely what happened in the DDR and the USSR.

We should be able to recognize the imperfections in prior socialist attempts, without immediately calling it “capitalist NGO propaganda.”

Even the DDR wasn’t doing socialism. The public had to be all-in the idea, or they were discredited or arrested. It was an authoritarian autocracy acting in the name of socialism.

Lol. Nice erasure of the existence of McCarthyism.

Communism pwnd itself bruh - shit sucked so hard they didn’t need Anti-Propaganda like:

Is This Tomorrow? America under communism!!

Shit was so bad, that the US didn’t need to run any covert operations to subvert, discredit, arrest, jail, or even, allegedly, assassinate the prominent figures and leaders of progressive, socialist, and communist movements – I mean, if they did, they certainly wouldn’t have called it COINTELPRO. It’d be a dumb name anyway.

Pfft

“If you can dodge taxes, you can dodge a ball”

Bruh - where’d anyone say there isn’t a genocide happening in Ukraine?

Let me be clear: The question of Russia’s genocide of Ukrainians is no less uncertain than Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. If one is genocide, both are genocide.

You’re acting like this is some big-brained, “checkmate atheists” point you’re making, but it completely falls apart when you consider who is and isn’t getting help.

The US is arming Ukraine in it’s defense against genocide.

The US is arming Israel in the perpetration of genocide.

If the US was arming Russia instead of Ukraine, you could bet your ass that “the kids” would be “whining” about it just the same, and you’d still be calling it manufactured outrage.

On the other hand - this all begs the question - would the US be so readily aiding Ukraine if the population weren’t white and culturally similar? What if the Palestinians were white and christian?

To be fair to people with legitimate celiac disease - many factories process multiple products and don’t have to disinfect and sterilize their equipment between products. They may run wheat one day and rice the next. If they don’t treat the equipment with a disinfectant certified to eliminate proteins, the rice may pick up gluten from the equipment.

If they state they are gluten free, it (should) mean that they are taking necessary steps to isolate or clean their lines.

It doesn’t matter.

Even if the third party candidate was literally the best candidate possible in the eyes of every American - they still wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at getting elected under a first past the post system.

We must enact and enforce a ranked choice voting system nationally, otherwise it will always come back to red vs blue, and a third party vote is electoral masturbation.

Are you glad because I’m not very inventive, or because my description demonstrates I’m disturbed?

And I have so many additional questions.

1. Do they feed this secretion to the live young?
2. If yes, wouldn’t that technically make them mammals?
3. Is the milk harvested before or after live birth?
4. If before, where is egg/larva sack, anatomically?
5. If in abdomen, how separate are these organs - in other words, are we talking like milk sack, reproductive sack - stick the needle filter too far one way and you’ve missed the milk and got larvae - or is it like a liquefied mess in there, and that’s why they need the filter?

I can go on, but man this is weird…

What the fuck did I just read.

If I had an ounce of skill as an artist I’d draw the image evoked by your 13 words.

Tiny milking machines hooked up to billions of restrained cockroaches, extracting their milky secretions.

God damnit

But alcohol is cool right? Tobacco?

Shut the duck up you nazi

…they put just enough oxygen in those helium canisters consumers can buy to stop people…

I’m not so sure that’s true… At least, I know for certain it wasn’t true for at least one brand of consumer grade helium canisters sold in the US, around 12 or 13 years ago.

In the early 2010s, I worked the day shift as an EMT for a small town ambulance company. One morning, right as I was clocking in for the 5am shift change, a call came in for an adult male unresponsive. My partner and I didn’t think much of it - it was a college town and we worked the Friday morning shift, so it wasn’t unusual to get early calls for drunk frat kids passed out in a yard from the Thirsty Thursday parties - don’t get me wrong, these were often serious situations, but run of the mill stuff for the job. So we told the overnight volunteers to go home, jumped in the rig and got on our way to the scene.

I started to get a bad feeling on the way over though, because it was at the local fishing pier, which was in a park - kind of a scenic place, not really near the college - but my partner played it down, said rush week had just finished so it’s probably some pledge bullshit or something.

We arrive at the park, pull into the parking lot, and see the police lights off to the right - the dock is off to the left, with a small beach to the right, with the parking lot overlooking the coast - the police officer has back against the trunk of a grey Nissan, thumbs in his vest, head hung low - looks up at the ambulance makes eye contact with me and shakes his head.

We get out of the rig, ask him what’s going on, he tells us that we’ll need to pronounce, and it isn’t pretty.

I walk around the driver side of the car and see a kid in the front seat. He couldn’t have been older than 20. There was a clear plastic bag over his head, the edges pulled taught to his neck with a length of string tied in a bow, the bag mostly inflated so it wasn’t touching his face. There was one end of a tube inside the bag, held in place with an extra knot from the string. The other end traced back to a tank sitting on the front passenger seat, still in its cardboard box with pictures of happy children playing with balloons on the side. There was a bottle of brown liquor in the cupholder.

I’ll never forget the blank stare of his semi-open eyes, set in his young, handsomely featured, yet now lifeless face - his skin the ashen, mottled, and pale blue-grey color of the recently deceased.

It was immediately obvious this young man had parked there for one last nice view of either a sunset or sunrise, drank up some courage, donned his gear, and drifted off to a final sleep.

I stood there only for a moment, but it felt like an eternity passed as I absorbed the emotional intensity of what had transpired there. I regained my sense of composure with the crack of my partner shattering the driver-door’s window, saw him reach to check for a pulse, turning his head away after a moment while waiting for the full, painfully requisite 60 seconds, pronounced him dead, and we were back in the truck on our way back to the station.

I’m still not right from that call.

I really hope things have changed, and that manufacturers are required to add oxygen or bitter compounds or something that prevent this kind of thing from happening.

If you’ve read down this far, I thank you. Writing this out was helpful for me to process - I took a few minor liberties in writing this story, mostly to obfuscate potential recognition, and for dramatic effect - but made no changes to what I felt and saw in my description of that scene.

And lastly, if you’re struggling with your mental health or substances - you’re not alone. This world can be hard and cruel, terribly isolating and dark - but there is warmth and kindness too. If you feel like hurting yourself, please don’t. You are loved. You will be missed by the ones who love you. If you’re in crisis, and there’s someone you know and trust, call them and talk to them. If they cant talk or don’t pick up, or if there’s no one you feel you can trust, call a crisis prevention hotline any time, any day, and they will listen to you with the utmost respect, dignity, and empathy.

[US and Canada] Call 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline. Call 911 for life-threatening/imminent situations. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention

[Most other countries] Call your local emergency line, most often it’s 112 if you’re outside of North America - they will direct you to help if you’re in need.

Additional information: https://www.cnet.com/health/suicide-hotlines-crisis-hotlines-to-call-when-you-need-help/

What do you mean by “police speech?”

Not if Ianthe has anything to say about it.