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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • This isn’t a hypothetical. We had literacy tests in the USA and they were designed to discriminate against minorities and newly freed slaves. And we have current politicians in power passing ID requirements with the explicit intention of preventing minorities, immigrants, and people of lower socioeconomic status from voting.

    My examples were hyperbolic, but the underlying phenomenon already happens every single day. How many districts are gereymandered? How many polling places have been closed to limit voting in specific areas? Disenfranchisement is already part of the battle, and we the people are not winning it at the moment.


  • The trouble is that barriers to voting will always be manipulated by the people in charge to exclude specific people. In the case of the USA, they are used by far right mouth breathers to exclude their neighbors on the basis of the color of their skin.

    We see it with ID laws already, but imagine if the Republicans could write exam questions to select who is patriotic enough to vote. They would include questions like “Name the Confederate hero who selflessly defended his state from Northern aggression” or “Which Nascar team has the fastest pit time?” or “Under penalty of perjury, write down the names of all the illegal immigrants you know of residing in your community.”

    That’s why literacy tests for voting were ruled unconstitutional.












  • It’s crazy to think about what a big deal it was for me when Hogan turned heel in the ring. I knew wrestling was scripted, but adolescent me still felt betrayed by a hero. I had to come to terms with the worldview that people aren’t inherently anything, and things change. It also helped me separate the acting from real life, realizing that the facade you present to the world can be anything you want. It shook me to my core, but it was an important lesson for a little hulkamaniac.

    Seeing the cracks in his facade fall away, revealing the grotesque shitbag behind the bandanna, that was just further disappointment and sadness. I had already let go of the hero that I thought existed, but seeing him be himself retconned my entire childhood. The happy memories of jumping off a bunk bed in my underwear are tainted by the realization that I was being manipulated by monsters.

    Monsters are real, and they’ve shed their disquises. One of them is dead, and the world is better for it.




  • Statistically, the most popular restaurant in America is Wendy’s (excluding dessert and donut shops). Wendy’s is pretty good for fast food, but it’s objectively not high quality food. That’s not to say people shouldn’t enjoy it, but if you’re learning to be a chef, you’re probably not aspiring to mass produce baconators.

    I’ve read two Dan Brown books (Angels and Demons and DaVinci Code). I’ve read 8 Rowling books.

    My criticism of Dan Brown would be that he wrote one book and then wrote it again. It’s not great literature, but it’s easy to read and doesn’t strain the mind with complexity. I understand that he’s written four more novels, but I haven’t read them. I have heard people say that it’s the same formula, and if you enjoy it, there’s no judgement here. Reading should be fun and exactly as challenging as you want it to be.

    Dan Brown also made absurd amounts of money. Do you know what he thinks about trans rights? No, you don’t, because he doesn’t use his position of relative privilege to be a shitbag to minorities. Maybe he’s a bigot, but I wouldn’t assume that of anyone without evidence. Dan Brown created a series of popular books and then fucked off to cheat on his wife. That’s all we know about him.

    Rowling, by contrast, is a garbage human being. She’s actively awful, and goes out of her way to stir shit up and make life miserable for people she doesn’t know and will never meet. She is a bigot, and isn’t shy about spreading hateful propaganda or punching down. Being a bad writer is the very least of her flaws, but it is among her flaws. When people compare her to other artists who have created masterpieces but had “problematic” personal lives, the comparison is distorted by both the lack of quality to her art and the magnitude of her shittiness as a human. Even if you can separate the art from the artist, it’s like picking the solid shit nuggets from a massive steaming pile of diarrhea.



  • She’s a terrible writer. She has no original or clever ideas, her imagery is boring and vague, and her characters are one dimensional at most. The Robert Galbraith book that I read was really bad, too, and the television offer came after she revealed that it was hers. Fucking Cormoran Strike? What the fuck kind of hacky bullshit name is that? She’s a dipshit, which is nothing compared to the fact that she’s a hateful bigot.