I think it should be said. I went to a reading of the names this year, as I have in some form every year since 2015; and I’ve never seen so many children’s names read. For context, the names are of the people murdered in transphobic hate crimes in the past year. It used to be a notable tragedy when a 15 year old was driven to suicide and this year we had multiple 14 year olds dead by others’ hands.

Speaker Johnson doesn’t care though. I’m sure he’d say his behavior today was in those children’s best interests, but no the transphobia he is promoting is killing children both by emboldening bigots and by driving them to hopelessness.

I hope someday he has to stand before his victims and a deity and explain himself. I hope he begins acting in a way so as to make it a less unpleasant experience when he gets to that point.

Given how much trans porn keeps finding its way on conservative computers (and there’s nothing wrong with that if you aren’t a bigot) i seriously worry she’s going to be sexually assaulted in there. I trust her to not let it stop her, I’m sure she knew it was a likely possibility, but yeah she’s not safe in there

What else would he be doing? Fixing the economy? Repairing infrastructure? Going home to spend an evening with his family? It’s not like America has bigger problems than specifically telling one junior congresswoman that she has to use a different restroom than she’d prefer.

They’re trying to break her, the only winning move is to shrug it off with poise. The goal is to demonstrate herself as a serious legislator and them as the lunatics who are more concerned with hurting her than helping their constituents

If you want tips for how to make it uncomfortable, slow, and humiliating you can crib from Real Life Experience (RLE) the process that they used to make trans people go through to prove our genders

Yeah but they immigrated from Europe and do you think Europe will take both them and white Americans?

And be sure to encourage those in your life to empathize with us. Bigots are attempting to dehumanize and other us, to make us into monsters and freaks, when someone understands us as just people, neighbors, friends, family… then the virulent hate becomes seen as shameful. It disemboldens them

Oh fuck

Oh hey, surprised devoss didn’t buy it again. I assume McMahon’s platform is more concussions for children

That actually doesn’t mean much. Constitutional law is a specific subset of law and a specialization. Maybe she dealt with constitutional law as a judge, but most judges don’t. Things like family law, criminal law, IP law, and other basic everyday things are far more common. I would expect her specialization to have been something like mediation

He’s the embodiment of America but dammit some of us really thought our country might be willing to attempt being better.

Ok but the golden age of television is when tv stopped being constrained to news, sports, unintelligent serials, or the occasional series of one off episodes with a brain like twilight zone and Star Trek. It’s the era in which it stopped being exceptional for a tv show to have artistic merit thanks to the rise in expectations of continuity from episode to episode. It’s the least dumb tv has ever been.

This is the product of social media and the failure of the education system

We all knew it’s run by idiots. That’s what “by the people” means.

Also dude is from California. I don’t know how you don’t know about Americas mountains there. Iowa or Illinois, sure, the mountains are very far away from you. But anywhere west of the Rockies you’ve got too much geography too close to not know that there are mountains in America

We have a lot of mountains. But seriously while I’d prefer trains (which would likely require the same deal), the interstate makes sense for this. Overland shipping in this country often uses it (once again, stupid compared to trains). And it’s important to understand that the interstate isn’t a public works project, it’s with GPS in the category of military infrastructure that’s open for public use

Yeah, I’ve been really enjoying discussing the themes and deeper meanings in the stormlight archive, but a ton of its themes are deeply American or focused on mental illness or theology and those are areas I have background in. If I were to read the tale of genji or some Dostoyevsky I’d miss so much. I can’t imagine someone in China really getting Huckleberry Finn because it’s deeply American satire, hell I don’t expect a Brit to get it particularly well either.

Oh shit, he’s in the home state of illiteracy now

Sorry I’m allergic

That’s ok. I’m proud of those of you who are doing that. I’m leaving, I’ve spent a long time working out of my martyr complex and my wife and I have decided to flee.

I think the biggest thing we can do here as a community is respect each other’s choices and try to figure out what we can do to help most from the position we take.

I want to make sure our history isn’t lost. I want to make sure that if we need voices advocating for us somewhere people will listen that I can be one. And I want to make clear that until I feel safe returning home that I am an Ohioan in exile, and that that means things aren’t ok over there.

Fight well and know that some of those of us who are fleeing are setting up networks to get y’all out if you need it.

It wasn’t just that they had guns. It’s that they stood there armed, watching people get arrested, and started reading rights. It’s not enough to have guns, you need to use those guns as an implicit threat while brazenly not only following the law, demanding the cops do so as well