Okay, not really (sorry). Posting that to get more traction for this:
The Senate and House versions of the tax bill have significant differences: they have to reconcile those differences and both chambers have to vote again. IF JUST ELEVEN REPUBLICAN HOUSE REPS CHANGE THEIR VOTES, WE CAN DEFEAT THIS BILL.
One House rep (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, FL-27) voted yes on HR1 in order to have leverage to change it in reconciliation. Whatever *she* thinks that means, I think it means she needs to hear again from us every day what this “monstrosity” of a bill (*her* word!) will do to people in this country.
Here is the list of HR1-yes-voting reps most susceptible to pressure, because they’re in Dem-leaning districts. If you’re a voter in any of these districts, call, write, visit their offices, ring their doorbells, give them no peace because this thing is corruption incarnate.
anyway so i feel like the western obsession with romantic love is symptomatic of the absence of community we experience in our socially isolating society,
It is it’s also absolutely necessary to sustain capitalist reality
If ppl were able to cultivate true community + love + communal healing fractured identity couldn’t sustain itself n capitalist assault would not be able to be replicated
Also very relevant here: the weird emphasis on separating romantic relationships out from everything else, and the heavy pressure to do them ideologically “Right”. As if there could even be such a blanket thing for everyone.
Form over substance, with something that’s supposed to be so absolutely central to the vast majority of people’s lives. (I would say “everyone’s”, but there is also kthe undeserving category that some groups of people get thrown into.)
In the American suburbs everybody “goes up the wall” if you don’t wear just the right kind of clothes. One of the motors of Western civilization, as you know, is self-doubt. That’s the reason we go out and build careers and rocket ships and fortunes and empires.
There are longterm reasons for that, and none of them are particularly good for the people caught up in the whole system.
A North Carolina cop who shot an unarmed black man in the back is going to jail for at least 19 years.
Michael Slager killed Walter Scott in 2015, while an officer with the
North Charleston Police Department. He was fired after video surfaced
that showed Slager firing at Scott as he fled. It was clear from the
footage that Slager was not in any danger: he just wanted to kill
Scott.
Even then, it took two years and one mistrial to bring him to justice.
remember being little and thinking dandelions were fun or a pretty color or something and every adult in an 80 mile radius wouldn’t let you say that without screaming ITS A WEED
also like:
dandelions are edible, easy to grow, and are rich in vitamins a, c, k, beta-carotene, calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium
dandelions can be made into wine, tea, soft drinks, and a coffee substitute
they are used in herbal remedies to treat liver and digestive problems and as a diuretic
they’re good for bees!
they make good companion plants for various herbs and tomatoes; their long taproot helps bring up nutrients in the soil and they release ethylene gas which ripens fruit
dandelions secrete latex which means they can be used to make natural rubber
they make great flower crowns
Why ARE they considered a weed? They’re a good flower? Who decided they were bad? =(
You can also make beautiful jelly from the blossoms!
They’re considered weeds because they were a poor person resource and not having them was a status symbol.
Let’s back up.
In Europe dating back to the 1500’s and even earlier, you could only have immaculate manicured lawns if you had just pots of money and were able to own land. So, rich nobility had swaths of land, and they demonstrated their wealth and power by hiring people to physically cut the grass and keep their gardens and dig weeds out of the turf by hand. It was a demonstration of money and power. It said “I can afford to have eight people employed full time just to dig things that aren’t grass out of my grass. I can afford to have all of this land doing nothing. It’s not producing food. People don’t farm it or live on it. I can afford to just grow grass, and have someone tend to that wholly useless crop.”
Fast forward a few hundred years. Europeans come to America. Many of them are from the poorer classes in Europe. Many have never owned land before, and now all of a sudden they can (because they stole it from the Native Americans but that’s a whole other rant.)
Now, at first you see little cottage gardens like the lower classes in Europe always had around their homes; places where they grew food and herbs and kept chickens or other livestock. Dandelions were welcome here; they were eaten and brewed into wine and used for medicine, just as they’d been for centuries.
But then people start making a little money, and we have the whole phenomenon of people who can demonstrate that they are Moving Up In The World by buying all of their food and medicine, just like the old landed gentry back in the Old Country. So they do. What goes in the place of those cottage gardens? Why, the same thing that went in the place of productive land back in the Earl of Chatsworth’s front lawn; a lawn.
So. Dandelions were a symbol. They were a throwback to the old days. They were a sign that you were somehow less prosperous than your neighbors, or lazier. (A Mortal Sin in America.) But, many Americans work, and can’t afford to hire a gardener just to grub dandelions out of the yard with a trowel all day.
Enter the lawn care industry, which began to market a dizzying array of poisons and fertilizers aimed at making your lawn a sterile moonscape where only grass grew with minimum effort from the homeowner. This continues to this day and is a multibillion dollar industry that has huge negative impacts on the environment and human health, but we can’t seem to shake that old ideal of a manicured lawn.
We pour water on deserts and poison on native wildflowers to attain it. We expose our children to poisons. We poison pollinators and pets. The days where we recognized a well kept lawn as a symbol of aristocratic leisure are gone, but we’ve been successfully fed a lie that some dandelions and chickweed are Bad by the lawn care industry in their ads for decades. They, obviously, want to keep it going because they’re making fat $$$$$$$ off of us.
THAT’S why dandelions are viewed as weeds.
Also yeah dandelions are really good for bees, and beloved by native bees and honeybees alike. So please, leave them blooming!! You can support bees and do your bit to smash capitalistic exploitation of the working class and the environment all in one go!
Lawns are terrible things, a redundant status symbol (‘I don’t need to grow food on my land’ is no longer a proud boast), boring verging on ugly and vastly consuming of water and labour. Let the dandelions grow!
I can’t believe dandelions suffered classism.
Oh my god IM SO SHOOK I ALWAYS LOVED DANDELIONS AND GOT SO EXCITED TO LET THEM GET SO TALL AND LOVE THEM TO DEATH. TIME TO MAKE MY YARD A GODDAMN BOTANY EXPERIMENT
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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