Group hug. Everyone get in here. It’s time for hugs.
How the hell do people shade Nightmare Moon when she’s literally just black?
Maybe using some black light effect?
Credit where it’s due. David Wong wrote a good article about why Trump won.
Yes.
That’s actually a really good article, didn’t think I’d say that about anything coming from Cracked lately.
I know there are a lot of people terrified of a Trump presidency for a lot of reasons, but some of the most vibrant horror I’m seeing is coming from young queer people. These people were in middle school or grade school when Obama was first elected, when Glee came on with its revolutionary act of portraying a blatantly Disney-saccharine gay love story. RuPaul and Ellen are huge tv stars, Sulu owns Facebook. RENT is a musical theatre standby performed in high schools. Marriage equality and bathrooms have been their biggest fights. So this? Looks like the apocalypse.
It’s not. Within my lifetime, a president laughed at hundreds of thousands of people dying of AIDS. Within my lifetime, that was a death sentence, not a footnote on a Grindr profile. Within my lifetime, “transsexuals” only existed as cruel punchlines. The only trans guy I had even heard of at 19 was from a movie about him being murdered. Ellen was a pariah who had lost her show for coming out. Being gay was career suicide if you were anything but a hairdresser. It was automatic dishonorable discharge from the military.
This is not saying Trump couldn’t undo a lot of that. But not all of it. And even if, EVEN IF he did? Queer people survived. Flourished. Got to where it is now. And where it is now includes a younger generation who will not go back, and in another 20 years, will be the CEOs, the senators, the governors, the president.
If you don’t give up.
Don’t you fucking dare give up.
With the election coming up, I’d like to express one final piece of advice.
Vote with you conscious. Do the research and analysis. Vote for whoever you feel will better run this country and bring it to the future.
Whether it be Clinton’s shadow politics, Trump’s frat-boy revolution, Johnson’s don’t-give-a-shit policy, or Stein’s pandering pile of nonsense. I can’t judge you for wanting the same thing I do.
But given the ridiculous nature of this season, I’d like you to keep your choice in the back of your head. Keep it there for the next four years.
Note your satisfaction with your victory or attempts at such. Note if you ever regretted your choice. If you voted third party, note how your decision affected the turnout of the election. Could something else have been done? Is there still time to fix this?
Maybe there is. So please keep that in mind and good luck.
Edited to remove my rather rude generalization of third-party voters. It was uncalled for, and I apologize.
But on that note, let’s talk about why I don’t believe in third-party power in the US.
Is there a Green in congress? Is there a Libertarian in congress? No, not really. And that’s kinda the point. Third-parties have no power and no backing in the place that really matters. All they do is show up to elections with the futile belief that they’re a good alternative, and then they lose and never get go anywhere until four years later.
Which isn’t to rag on third parties in general, of course. Other countries do them just fine! Why? Because they actually have representatives to back them up
Just look at Canada’s House of Commons. Liberals (red) dominate along with the Conservatives (blue), but look at the NPD (orange) sticking out there. And the row of Bloc Québécois (light blue) members behind them.
The German Bundestag! Look at the distribution! It’s as if people vote for the party that mosts represents them and if enough people desire it, they can get a voice1 And they got alliances and stuff that lets you vote for a minnow party that hooks up with other bigger parties and you get in as a whole!
The Russian State Duma! Sure, the United Russia party makes this look like a single-party state, but you got your Communists and Liberal Democrats in there a bit. And know your political system is fucked when even Russia looks more like a rainbow than your own lower house.
The United States House of Representatives. See the difference?
American third parties don’t exist with regards to who’s making our laws. Sure, plenty of niche parties exist in the countries I just mentioned, but at least you get all the good ones represented in some way. And granted, parliamentary systems elect heads of government in a different way than we do, so there’s also that.
But where does that leave us? Well, if you’re a firm supporter of a third party, that is, you align yourself the most with that party’s platform and policies and wish to see it grow in the potential future, then I wish you good luck. Get motivated. Rally more people year-round instead of only at election time. Build up a consistent and loyal base. And get someone into Congress so it can look a little more colorful.
But if you’re voting third party because you’re bandwagoning on a hatred of having to pick between two lackluster candidates, then I have no respect for you. You really don’t believe in the third party you’ve chosen, and you’ll just abandon them after the election is done and they haven’t won a thing. You remove votes from the race that does matter and skew the results, most likely away from your favor. And you get a pile of nothing but annoyance and possibly regret.
Your message of dissatisfaction gets redirected to a wall because you didn’t win a single electoral vote in the college. Newsflash: the popular vote does not matter in the presidential election (see 1876, 1888, and 2000, years where the college elected a president who lost the popular vote). Win a handful of states, see how that affects the election, then we’ll talk.
Do you believe in your third-party choice for 2016? Prove it. Stay with them, rally with them and don’t ever look back. Protest-vote like you actually mean it.
Otherwise, flip a coin or something for crying out loud.
i put “All I Want for Christmas is You” through a MIDI converter, and then back through an mp3 converter
the result is this garbage
I’m driving myself up the wall because I swear I can hear the vocal line but I don’t know how that could be if it was truly converted to MIDI. Unless you can replicate speech sounds entirely with modulated MIDI notes, in which case I’m actually impressed with this tire fire of an MP3.
Why I hate coconuts
We were playing Dungeons and Dragons and coming up to the big finale boss fight. House rules are that three 20s = instant kill.
The party decided to allow their pet sentient cactus to fight along with them after teaching it how to throw and retrieve a coconut. I went along with it for the laughs, treating it as an improvised weapon with pretty large negatives on dice rolls.
The very first round of the fight went to the cactus. The cleric instructed Needles the Cactus to throw his coconut at the boss.
MFW 20
MFW 20 20
MFW 20 20 20
MFW my uberboss was one-shotted with a coconut
MFW I had to think of how a coconut, thrown by a two-foot tall walking cactus, had managed to slay a black dragon.
@chaotic-conundrums because he’s a DM
Yellow is usually me.
Green, purple, and teal for me.
Green, and especially yellow. They go hand in hand in my case.
#Yellow is so presumptious #like if you don’t think they’ll get it #say it so they do #Ur hur I’m an introvert cause I’m smarter than everyone #no you’re just a jackass
I dunno about that.
Every time I talk, I feel like I convey nothing, or convey some pointless and useless thing that no one could possibly care about.
It’s like I’m not saying anything at all, even if I try my hardest. The others would just look at me for a second, then flat-out ignore me because they’re just so much more interesting and expressive than I could ever be.
Sometimes that’s alright (teal), but sometimes it’s frustrating and exhausting to be trying to join on a conversation only to be seemingly shut down right from the start. So really, what’s the point of trying to say something if no one’s gonna listen or understand?