Day: September 22, 2018

Care to debate abortion?

curiousconfusedpoly:

kiwianaroha:

prochoice-or-gtfo:

motherbychoice:

Nah

Mood.
-V

This reminds me of a party I went to last year. I was standing with some friends, chatting, and someone said something that indirectly implied that sexism exists. Some trivial recounting of the basic facts of daily life for most women. Something so mild, so uncontroversial, so mundane that I don’t even remember what it was. 

Suddenly, this man standing on the outskirts of our conversational circle piped up with “actually, I think men are more discriminated against than women these days.”

 All conversation died.

I turned to look at him and he had this smug, insufferable grin on his face, relishing this moment, expecting us to waste our time and energy refuting this ridiculous thing he had just said.

The Devil’s Advocate was among us.

And, in my mind, I saw the next 15+ minutes playing out. The parade of facts and statistics in a vain attempt to defend ourselves, our gender, and to prove that misogyny is real. The glib, snide denials from some shithead who is getting off on our pain and frustration. The Gish Gallop of bullshit that would take a whole evening to properly dismantle. It was depressing and overwhelming. I hated it. I had to kill it before it began.

So I looked him dead in the eye and I said “OK,“ shrugged, and just walked away. 

Nothing I have ever said to another human being has ever been so crushing. As I walked away, I watched the smug grin vanish and confusion and anxiety set in. The rest of the group turned their backs to him and carried on as if he had never spoken – as if he was invisible. He was still staring at me when I walked over to another friend and told her what he had said. I pointed him out for her and made direct eye contact with him while we both laughed.

tl;dr: Don’t feed the troll. Let it perish, cold and hungry, in the wasteland of your indifference. It is weak and you are strong. Live your best life.

I loved this!

Do you think it’s a good idea to include my cat’s keysmashes in my novel?

taimproblem:

neil-gaiman:

spiffbeeblebrox:

neil-gaiman:

Unless your cat is litigious. Technically your cat’s keysmashes are copyright your cat.

But wouldn’t said cat have to file for copyright?

You have copyright at the moment of creation. You don’t need to file. (Of course, if you are going to sue, you would need to file in order to get statutory damages.)

(I am assuming in this case that you are a cat, that you know how to use the mail service, and that you have the $25, or whatever it costs these days, for copyright filing.)

See, this is why I erase Mori’s contributions to my writing…

kayka136:

unpretty:

when i saw the headline ‘golf digest helps free man from prison’ i thought it was gonna be, like

“he’s clearly in the background of this golf photo! that proves he wasn’t at the crime scene!!”

as opposed to, like

“this guy in prison sent us his cool golf fanart but we didn’t want to promo a serial killer, so we looked into his case and thought it looked pretty flimsy and probably racially motivated”

(here’s the first article from 2012 and the followup)

“The case is complicated, but on the surface it involves shoddy police work, zero physical evidence linking Dixon, conflicting testimony of unreliable witnesses, the videotaped confession to the crime by another man, a public defender who didn’t call a witness at trial, and perjury charges against those who said Dixon didn’t do it. All together, a fairly clear instance of local officials hastily railroading a young black man with a prior criminal record into jail. Dixon’s past wasn’t spotless, he had sold some cocaine, but that didn’t make him a murderer.”-Golf Digest

Dear Bitches, my credit score is 386 and I have $27,000 in debt that I haven’t been able to put a dent in. Part of it is student loans, and part of it was hospital bills from an accident I had last summer. I’ve finally gotten a decent job and can live somewhat comfortably. Is my credit irreparable if it’s this low and my debt is more than I make in a year?

bitchesgetriches:

Oh my sweet. Hope is not lost while the fellowship remains true! Your credit is NOT irreparable. Your shall be a glorious redemption. It will be long and hard and painful, but it WILL happen and I’ll tell you how.

First, educate yourself on credit and student loans:

Dafuq Is Credit and How Do You Bend It to Your Will? 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Student Loans 

Let’s End This Damaging Misconception About Credit Cards 

Next, take the steps to make an immediate dent in the debt. You will need to ultimately make lifestyle changes to completely kill the debt, at least for a while. But here’s the step-by-step:

1. Consolidate your student loans if possible. Programs like SoFi make this easy, but remember that they are there to make a profit, so research the shit out of them or a competitor before you consolidate. The goal is to lower your interest rate, or, if you’re having trouble making your monthly payments, lower the amount of your monthly payment. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/5-banks-to-refinance-your-student-loans/

2. Apply for income based repayment (IBR) of your student loans. Again, this is an option if it’s hard for you to make your payments because you’re not making ends meet. Your credit score depends a lot on paying your bills on time and in full, so IBR might help with that. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/income-based-repayment-plan/

3. Call the hospital and ask them to audit your bill. It’s actually pretty fucking common for them to find errors in billing that will end up lowering the overall amount in your favor. http://www.medicalclaimshelp.org/medical_bill_auditing0.aspx

4. Find out if the hospital where you received medical care has financial aid. This is literally a thing, but it’s obviously not widely publicized. https://www.onesmartdollar.com/how-to-get-financial-aid-for-hospital-bills/ 

5. Set up automatic payments for your bills. Again, your credit score depends a lot on how consistent you are in paying your bills. Setting up automatic payments can help with this. Schedule these payments either for the day they’re due or the day you receive your paycheck every billing cycle, whichever works better for you. 

6. Pay more than the minimum by rounding up to the nearest $10… or more! Paying more than the minimum every billing cycle will help you get ahead on your debt. And the faster you pay down your debt, the faster your credit score will improve.

7. Use the snowball or avalanche method to eliminate debts. We explain these methods here. 

8. Once you’ve paid off your debt, make yourself an emergency fund. This will help you avoid falling into debt again later. We explain emergency funds here.

Lastly, I just want to remind you that your medical bills are NOT your fault. People get sick and injured. It’s normal. But if you’re living in the U.S. (and something tells me you are, given the size of your medical bills womp womp), then you’re living under a broken system in which we’re over-charged by hospitals for medical care because insurance providers have driven up the prices by ludicrous amounts. You had nothing to do with creating that system, but you still need to survive it. And you shall. 

If you need some motivation where that’s concerned, we got you:

Financial Lessons Learned from a Night in the ER 

I Think I Need to Go the Emergency Room? 

YOU CAN FUCKING DO THIS. AND YOU WILL. We believe in you.