Randomonium

funnytwittertweets:

(via justalittlebitwitchy)

renthony:

There was a popular post that went around two years ago that said something along the lines of “we have to be willing to look paranoid–it’s better to be overly-cautious than to be careless and prolong the pandemic!”

It’s pretty much the only thing holding my sanity together now that it’s year three of the pandemic, everyone’s decided it’s over even though it’s still killing people, local data suggests my area is under-reporting new cases, and people keep telling me VERBATIM that I’m being “overly cautious” and “kinda paranoid.”

(via justalittlebitwitchy)

thelavendersage:

demonic-mnemonic:

marinella-ela:

MAJESTIC

LET THE WATER CLAIM ME

slfcare:

Needing and receiving help isn’t a bad thing. Continuously giving and giving and giving has to be paired with accepting the aid others offer you in return and asking for it when they don’t. Saying “I am not doing okay and I need your support” doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human experiencing human things. Give people the opportunity to be there for you.

mini-wrants:

Opinion: If Roe falls, middle-class women won't be 'just fine'

What it would cost to terminate a pregnancy in post-Roe Michigan.

Detroit Free Press

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2022/05/12/roe-michigan-abortion-cost/9705993002/

As Rebecca Traister writes this week in an excellent piece in New York Magazine, there’s a wide gulf between enjoying a relatively secure middle-class life, and having sufficient money to safely flout or circumvent the law.

And, she notes, it’s bad political strategy to tell women of means that they’re not in this fight, because they’re the ones most likely to vote in this year’s midterm elections.

According to Planned Parenthood’s website, a first-trimester abortion costs up to $750. If Roe falls, the closest destinations for legal abortion will be Illinois and New York State.

(Some have suggested that Canada would be a reasonable destination for women in southeast Michigan. But entry to Canada has been complicated by changing COVID-19 restrictions. It also requires an enhanced driver’s license or a passport. Just 37% of Americans have a valid passport, and around 38% say they’ve never had one at all. Obtaining a passport takes weeks or months, not days. For a woman who plans to terminate a pregnancy, time is of the essence.)

This kind of trip won’t have the luxury of a two- or three-week advance fare. Per Google Flights, airfare to Chicago next week runs $261 to $337. A flight to Buffalo, where Michigan women often traveled pre-Roe, starts at $346. (It might be cheaper to fly to New York City — anywhere from $218 to $349 — but the higher price of accommodations, transportation and meals in the city would likely negate any savings.)

With a reliable car, it’s a much cheaper trip. But it’s still a five-hour-plus drive to either destination. Gas is at a record high of $4.36 a gallon, and prices continue to climb.

Most abortions performed in this country now are pharmaceutical, requiring two doses of medication. Generally, the initial dose is taken at a doctor’s office or clinic, and the second within 24 to 48 hours. Under Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban, prosecutors I’ve talked to speculate that ambiguous wording about who may be held criminally responsible means a woman who obtains the needed medication lawfully in another state but takes her second dose after returning to Michigan could subject to prosecution.

Regardless, medicine abortions cause bleeding and cramping, and it might not be possible for a woman who has taken either round of medication to hop on a plane or drive five hours while experiencing such symptoms. So throw in at least one night’s stay in a hotel room, plus meals on the road.

Add in time off work (if the woman even has paid time off), a babysitter or other childcare arrangements if the woman already has children, and travel costs for a partner or friend, and I figure the cost of traveling out of state for an abortion to be at least $1,000. That’s driving directly to Chicago and back, with no additional expenses like meals or an overnight stay. If it’s a plane flight, with a hotel room for one or more nights, that’s $1,500 or more.

For some women, these costs wouldn’t be prohibitive. For others — those with multiple kids, out-of-work partners, or heavy student loan debt — it’s a daunting prospect.

I’m a middle-class, college-educated woman who has held professional jobs since 1998, and I’m not ashamed to admit that for all of my 20s, most of my 30s, and some of my 40s, coming up with a thousand dollars on short notice would have been challenging, if not impossible. And I’m not alone: Just 41% of Americans say they could come up with $500 cash in an emergency.

(via glowinglnthedark)

slfcare:

You wouldn’t be more worthy, more loved, more deserving if you were stronger, smarter, better. I know how difficult it is to remember in a world where you might feel lonely or singled out, where it seems like everyone is better than you are or where it seems like you’ll never measure up, but nothing about you is a mistake. Not even the things about you that you feel set you apart or make others uncomfortable. Take up the space you need without apologizing for it.

(via justalittlebitwitchy)

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

scarlet-sasquatch:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

iconuk01:

espanolbot2:

virovac:

espanolbot2:

moodycow210:

kansascity-marshwiggle:

greenygal:

kansascity-marshwiggle:

overlord-puffin:

dainslefsblog:

mounmantaka:

prismatic-bell:

armchair-factotum:

prismatic-bell:

gehayi:

lightweightkate:

I’ve been cackling about this for like five minutes now

He’s absolutely right.

Also, the Joker started killing innocents for fun and profit in Batman #1 (published April 24, 1940)  and has been killing his henchmen since at least 1975. 

(He poisoned a former employee named Dubek with a rare tropical disease. By the way, Dubek was in prison and was refusing to tell the prison administration squat about the Joker. So Dubek was completely loyal–out of fear, granted, but still loyal–and the Joker murdered him anyway.)

Don’t forget that in B:TAS, they weren’t allowed to show him straight-up murdering people, so he also canonically uses motherfucking nerve gas. Which is HORRIBLE AND INTERNATIONALLY ILLEGAL TO THE POINT THAT HAVING IT IS A WAR CRIME. Not even using it! Just having it!

Like. Your best-case scenario as a Joker henchman is that, when facing down the motherfucking Batman, you start crying and telling him you were trying to pay off your student loans, and he sends you home and the next day you get a phone call from Wayne Industries with a job offer. And then you have to hope the Joker doesn’t fucking find you.

Meanwhile working for Lex Luthor is basically just an Amazon job with a slightly higher chance of getting lightly shoved by Superman, which you could probably get a company insurance payout for if you pretend you’re actually trying to fight him first

NGL I feel like if you started crying because of your student loans while dealing with Superman he’d be like “hit me” and you’d be like “….what” and he’d be like “HIT ME, that way you can claim it’s a workplace accident” and then he’d knock you out.

Like he would 100% be onboard with helping you pay your loans. (And then he’d call Bruce and be like “I have somebody in Metropolis who needs a job….”)

Lex luthor I thought was supposed to be a decent person just anti superman?

Come on now, you should know by now that rich business man = super evil person.

Ehhhhhhh it strongly depends on the continuity and the writer, but I’d say on the whole he’s definitely not a decent person. There are a couple where Lex is legitimately a good guy but is a villain on account of being incredibly paranoid about Superman. There’s probably even more where he’s an out and out cackling mad scientist. If I had to pin what I’d call his defining characterization, it’s someone who thinks of himself as a champion of humanity, but who in reality is quite self-centered, is willing blithely sacrifice people to advance his goals, abuses whatever power he has, and who acts out against Superman primarily because of an inferiority complex. The movie version of All Star Superman captured it pretty well:

Luthor, to Superman: “If it wasn’t for you, I could have saved the world!”
Superman: “If it had mattered to you, Luthor, you could have saved the world years ago.”
Luthor: “…You’re right.”

Lex Luthor: Man of Steel is another comic which I think does a beautiful job of building up and them brutally demolishing the “Lex Luthor is a decent guy to everyone but Superman” idea.

I seem to remember there was a comic at some point where the atmosphere was flooded with kryptonite so Superman had to leave for a year. When the kryptonite was gone he came back and went to Lex and was like “Okay, I was out of your hair for a year. Where are all the improvements to the human condition you said you could get done with me gone?” and Lex just didn’t have an answer because he’d still been doing supervillain stuff all year.

I don’t know what comic this was but I definitely remember this scenario happening?

SUPERMAN 653:

For context, in this story Lex is trying to destroy Metropolis because they don’t appreciate him anymore. But it’s all Superman’s fault. Sure, Lex.

Hey, it does exist! Thanks!

I figure that superman would work with Batman (or Clarke Kent with Bruce Wayne) to make it so that to save face lex has to give good benefits and pay to his workers.

Because if he wants to consider himself a good guy then he has to at least be on par with Bruce Wayne in terms of his payment plans or people might start thinking that lexcorp is an evil corporation compared to Wayne enterprises

As said about, it generally depends on the version of Lex you’re dealing with in regards to how much of an asshole he is to his staff. Like, in one mini-series, Lex made a point of always remembering the names of his janitorial staff and being nice and courteous to them whenever they interacted. He even got one of his janitor’s kids a scholarship to a fancy new academy Lex had paid for in the middle of Metropolis…

Which Lex subsequently blew up, killing the child among dozens of others, purely to make Superman look bad when he attempted to stop the superhero Lex had recently created (called Hope, whom Lex also was having an affair with) from killing Toyman, whom Lex framed for the bombing, in “revenge“ for the act of mass-murder… Lex also blew up Hope as well, if memory serves.

Honestly, Joker being such a bad boss feels like bad writing at this point because it makes it harder to believe he can get away with everything. 

But the idea of Lex Luthor being a good man…that comes out of gross revisionist attempts by writers or fans who emphasize too much with xenophobia. 
Like that terrible Fanfic where Superman deserved to die for …not truly looking human and using holograms to not freak people out

I mean, the Joker being a bad boss kinda sorta has some parallels with the behaviour of some real world criminals (even HH Holmes had henchmen… whom he killed, told their family that he’d faked this husband/dad’s death, and then subsequently murdered them as well one by one), but GENERALLY SPEAKING, the successful ones are notable for not being like that because it was bad for morale.

Like Blackbeard for example, while he did murder people, Our Flag Means Death got it right where he mostly tried to scare people into giving up without a fight because the average person doesn’t like killing over humans. Additionally, when engaged in a criminal enterprise, not screwing over your partners or employees is generally seen as being more “professional“ because it also makes them less incentivised to mutiny, or murder/ turn their leader over to the authorities for a reward.

Generally speaking, there are examples of criminals who do make a thing our controlling their gang through fear (there was one guy in Mexico who was a gangster who also did human sacrifices for example), but it kind of seems like in those cases that the henchfolk either are making a ton of money OR they buy into whatever justification the lead criminal has for their behaviour (in that guy’s example he had kind of a cult going on, for example).

The example I see cited most often about working for the Joker is that the pay is phenomenal.

The idea being that he commits crimes to attract Batman, not for the things he steals. So if he steals a dozen diamond, ruby, emerald and amethyst tiaras because they match his skintones scheme he will probably throw a couple to each henchmen to do what they like with because it was never about the tiara’s (Though one of them is probably booby trapped if you try to wear it, because that’s the Joker for you)

Of course, that worked a lot better when Joker was an actual criminal who commited strings of themed crimes because he saw it as an artform, rather than “all murder, all the time”, as the actual pickings from “everybody dies” is probably a lot less than raiding a platinum vault, or the Gotham Bank branch at the intersection of Laurel Lane and Hardy Street.

Regarding the “Is Lex a good guy when it doesn’t come to Superman or not?” thing it’s also worth remembering that some of the things his character has done include

• Offering women in poverty millions of dollars if they agree to be his slave for a year and then driving off if it looks like they’re desperate enough to do it, just to psychologically torture them in a potent mix of hatred of the poor and having weird issues with women
  
• Sending a box of cigars to Perry White every christmas with a note saying “To your health”. Perry White  who survived lung cancer caused by smoking, 
• Killing a shit-ton of people who took his Metahuman Gene Injection purely because he thought a new superhero in town was Superman in disguise and he wanted to make him look ineffective 

Like, Lex isn’t just supervillain evil he’s a petty, cruel bastard man who is basically like Mr Burns played straight instead of for laughs.

Mercy: Lexcorp has a bit of an image problem sir

People view you as something of an ogre

Lex: I OUGHT TO CLUB THEM AND EAT THEIR BONES

I was just reading that part of 52 a ways ago and it struck me as the most Lex thing I’ve ever read. The first metahuman he killed was a teenager he gave superspeed to without helping her cope with the change in any way other than drugs, and what struck me is that he did not choose to kill her primarily because of a larger plan, but because she insulted him. Everything else was secondary.

Lex has such a huge and fragile ego its genuinely terrifying

Lex genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of altruism.

Not even on the most basic level

sadoeuphemist:

A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”

“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”

“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Climb aboard, then!” But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown. “Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.” 

“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”

___

…But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the frog felt a subtle motion on its back, and in a panic dived deep beneath the rushing waters, leaving the scorpion to drown.

“It was going to sting me anyway,” muttered the frog, emerging on the other side of the river. “It was inevitable. You all knew it. Everyone knows what those scorpions are like. It was self-defense.”

___

…But no sooner had they cast off from the bank, the frog felt the tip of a stinger pressed lightly against the back of its neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the frog.

“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

They swam in silence to the other end of the river, where the scorpion climbed off, leaving the frog fuming.

“After the kindness I showed you!” said the frog. “And you threatened to kill me in return?”

“Kindness?” said the scorpion. “To only invite me on your back after you knew I was defenseless, unable to use my tail without killing myself? My dear frog, I only treated you as I was treated. Your kindness was as poisoned as a scorpion’s sting.”

___

…“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

“You have a point,” the frog acknowledged. “But once we get to dry land, couldn’t you sting me then without repercussion?”

“All I want is to cross the river safely,” said the scorpion. “Once I’m on the other side I would gladly let you be.”

“But I would have to trust you on that,” said the frog. “While you’re pressing a stinger to my neck. By ferrying you to land I’d be be giving up the one deterrent I hold over you.”

“But by the same logic, I can’t possibly withdraw my stinger while we’re still over water,” the scorpion protested.

The frog paused in the middle of the river, treading water. “So, I suppose we’re at an impasse.”

The river rushed around them. The scorpion’s stinger twitched against the frog’s unbroken skin. “I suppose so,” the scorpion said.

___

A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Absolutely not!” said the frog, and dived beneath the waters, and so none of them learned anything.

___

A scorpion, being unable to swim, asked a turtle (as in the original Persian version of the fable) to carry it across the river. The turtle readily agreed, and allowed the scorpion aboard its shell. Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell. The turtle, swimming placidly, failed to notice.

They reached the other side of the river, and parted ways as friends.

___

…Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell.

The turtle, hearing the tap of the scorpion’s sting, was offended at the scorpion’s ungratefulness. Thankfully, having been granted the powers to both defend itself and to punish evil, the turtle sank beneath the waters and drowned the scorpion out of principle.

___

A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” sneered the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back.”

The scorpion pleaded earnestly. “Do you think so little of me? Please, I must cross the river. What would I gain from stinging you? I would only end up drowning myself!”

“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Even a scorpion knows to look out for its own skin. Climb aboard, then!”

But as they forged through the rushing waters, the scorpion grew worried. This frog thinks me a ruthless killer, it thought. Would it not be justified in throwing me off now and ridding the world of me? Why else would it agree to this? Every jostle made the scorpion more and more anxious, until the frog surged forward with a particularly large splash, and in panic the scorpion lashed out with its stinger.

“I knew it,” snarled the frog, as they both thrashed and drowned. “A scorpion cannot change its nature.”

___

A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. The frog agreed, but no sooner than they were halfway across the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.

“I’ve only myself to blame,” sighed the frog, as they both sank beneath the waters. “You, you’re a scorpion, I couldn’t have expected anything better. But I knew better, and yet I went against my judgement! And now I’ve doomed us both!”

“You couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion mildly. “It’s your nature.” 

___

…“Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”

“Alas, I was of two natures,” said the scorpion. “One said to gratefully ride your back across the river, and the other said to sting you where you stood. And so both fought, and neither won.” It smiled wistfully. “Ah, it would be nice to be just one thing, wouldn’t it? Unadulterated in nature. Without the capacity for conflict or regret.”

___

“By the way,” said the frog, as they swam, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s on the other side of the river?”

“It’s the journey,” said the scorpion. “Not the destination.”

___

…“What’s on the other side of anything?” said the scorpion. “A new beginning.”

___

…”Another scorpion to mate with,” said the scorpion. “And more prey to kill, and more living bodies to poison, and a forthcoming lineage of cruelties that you will be culpable in.”

___

…”Nothing we will live to see, I fear,” said the scorpion. “Already the currents are growing stronger, and the river seems like it shall swallow us both. We surge forward, and the shoreline recedes. But does that mean our striving was in vain?”

___

“I love you,” said the scorpion.

The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”

“Absolutely. Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog. Might as well be scared of breathing air. And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”

The frog swam on, the both of them silent.

___

“I’m so tired,” murmured the frog eventually. “How much further to the other side? I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming. I’ve been treading water. And it’s getting so very dark.”

“Shh,” the scorpion said. “Don’t be afraid.”

The frog’s legs kicked out weakly. “How long has it been? We’re lost. We’re lost! We’re doomed to be cast about the waters forever. There is no land. There’s nothing on the other side, don’t you see!”

“Shh, shh,” said the scorpion. “My venom is a hallucinogenic. Beneath its surface, the river is endlessly deep, its currents carrying many things.” 

“You - You’ve killed us both,” said the frog, and began to laugh deliriously. “Is this - is this what it’s like to drown?” 

“We’ve killed each other,” said the scorpion soothingly. “My venom in my glands now pulsing through your veins, the waters of your birthing pool suffusing my lungs. We are engulfing each other now, drowning in each other. I am breathless. Do you feel it? Do you feel my sting pierced through your heart?”

“What a foolish thing to do,” murmured the frog. “No logic. No logic to it at all.”

“We couldn’t help it,” whispered the scorpion. “It’s our natures. Why else does anything in the world happen? Because we were made for this from birth, darling, every moment inexplicable and inevitable. What a crazy thing it is to fall in love, and yet - It’s all our fault! We are both blameless. We’re together now, darling. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”

___

“It’s funny,” said the frog. “I can’t say that I trust you, really. Or that I even think very much of you and that nasty little stinger of yours to begin with. But I’m doing this for you regardless. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s strange. Why would I do this? I want to help you, want to go out of my way to help you. I let you climb right onto my back! Now, whyever would I go and do a foolish thing like that?”

___

A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”

“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”  

“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Come aboard, then!” But no sooner had the scorpion mounted the frog’s back than it began to sting, repeatedly, while still safely on the river’s bank.

The frog groaned, thrashing weakly as the venom coursed through its veins, beginning to liquefy its flesh. “Ah,” it muttered. “For some reason I never considered this possibility.”

“Because you were never scared of me,” the scorpion whispered in its ear. “You were never scared of dying. In a past life you wore a shell and sat in judgement. And then you were reborn: soft-skinned, swift, unburdened, as new and vulnerable as a child, moving anew through a world of children. How could anyone ever be cruel, you thought, seeing the precariousness of it all?” The scorpion bowed its head and drank. “How could anyone kill you without killing themselves?”

(via trespasserswilliam)

kalofi:

kalofi:

i tried the “ask your mom what she would do if you were a bug” trend

asked my dad too

(via justalittlebitwitchy)

uroko:

Dmitry Medyancev

stitch-x-stitch:

thevib3:

spongebobssquarepants:

Can’t catch you cheating if your side pieces are from different timelines 🤔

(via fluent-in-lesbianism)

the-restisconfetti:

(Source: bozhenasheremeta Instagram)

People in Mariupol haven’t had acess to phones, electricity, internet qnd any other means of modern communication for month and a half now.

Please, spread this message. Ask your government to send more weapons to Ukraine and impose stronger sanctions on russia.

(via astaankova)

dudsb:

sad-enby:

mama didn’t raise a quitter she raised a burnt out perfectionist who settles for mediocrity

if at first i do not succeed i will try and try and try again until I hit some invisible bar and decide “never mind, that’ll do”

(via finnglas)

featherpluckn:

silvatitties:

btw a group of mutuals is called the circus

THIS IS MY CIRCUS AND THESE ARE MY MONKEYS

(via korrasami-did-the-thing)

trans-trendy:

trans-trendy:

cbthemanesix:

nickelodeonhistory:

1998 nickelodeon trade ad

It’s amazing how they could make an ad from 1998 that looks like a shitpost made a week ago.

Here’s a template

(via anniemurphy)