look man im a native english speaker and i’ve been mispronouncing a crap ton of words because i never looked up the pronunciation for any of them but if you make fun of how a foreigner pronounces an english word either because of their accent or having never heard that word before i will fucking fight you because english has shitty pronunciation rules and none of them make sense fuck off
Tag: pretty much
Really, the galling thing about the golf industry is that it doesn’t need to be nearly as environmentally destructive as it is. In most parts of the world you can construct a totally acceptable golf course using native grasses, trees and shrubs, leaving the only the greens – which are a tiny portion of the course’s overall land area – as the high-maintenance bits. The only reason we insist on importing non-native grasses to climates for which they’re wildly unsuited and blowing a million gallons of water per course per week keeping them alive is because somebody decided that all golf courses everywhere need to look exactly the same.
It’s also as a display of status and power. Golf courses are a weird garden where you hit a ball with a stick into 18 holes and admire the architects grand plan on how they made this place beautiful. So some golf course architects show off their skill as masters over nature and completely ignore local grasses, sticking to what they’re comfortable with.
Can we dispell with the notion that there are people who don’t want health insurance?
One of the big arguments against the individual mandate (the now-overturned clause of the Affordable Care Act that required everybody to purchase insurance) is that we shouldn’t force people who don’t want health insurance to buy it.
Who doesn’t want health insurance? That is, if you polled the general public and asked them, “In the event of an illness or injury, would you like to pay your medical bills out of pocket, or would you like to have them covered?” is there any human who is going to say that they’d prefer to pay their own way?
Are there people who need to spend their money on more immediately pressing concerns than a safety net that protects them in the event of an illness or injury that hasn’t happened yet? Of course. But to characterize a young, healthy, poor person as someone who “doesn’t want health insurance” is disingenuous. If that health insurance were made available to them for free or very cheap – as it would be in a single-payer system funded by a graduated tax – they would not turn it down. The issue is that the price tag is currently too high.
And removing the individual mandate has only accomplished making it even higher.
Well, I think there are people who say they don’t want health insurance.
There are people who will respond to
“In the event of an illness or injury, would you like to pay your
medical bills out of pocket, or would you like to have them covered?”with “I would like to pay them out of pocket”.
These are not the people you think they are!
They are not “healthy, young, poor people”. They are very likely not poor at all. Poor people generally get the concept of not being able to afford a thing they need.
The people who don’t want health insurance are not poor. They are middle class, even upper middle class. These are people who are pretty well-employed, often self-employed in some capacity – consultants, freelance, that kind of thing. They professionals who are making pretty good money. They are used to the idea that if they need a thing, they buy the thing. If their car gets totaled or dies, it’s annoying and it means they’ll have to change plans and juggle the budget, but they know they can just go and buy a new car.
And they imagine their medical expenses will be like that. They imagine that if they get cancer or have a heart attack, they’ll have to do budgeting and finances and stuff, but they’ll be able to “find” the money. Because that’s how it has always worked for them before.
This is like saying “I’ve always been able to handle stuff falling from the sky before, and an umbrella has been fine, so I can totally handle a meteor strike.”
The people who don’t want health insurance have no concept of the scale of the problem they could have to face. It’s not on a level they’ve ever had to conceptualize.
Unfortunately, there’s no good solution here. Many people are giving bad answers based on false information. And I’d love to just say “Well, those people are full of shit and don’t know what’s good for them” but that’s not right at all. And the issue is so politicized in the US, there are plenty of people who would absolutely say no to any and all health insurance, facts be damned (right up until they, personally, are facing a $1.5 million bill and then it’s “Save me! But nobody else!”).
But the first thing is to assure that these people are aware of and understand the scale of the topic. To get it across that at some point they almost certainly will face a bill which is completely beyond their means. And truthfully, I don’t know if there’s a way to get that idea across to people who have no experience with facing such bills.
It’s not poor people who are opposing these things. It’s self-interested middle-class people who can’t imagine needing help.
Plenty of people have outlined what’s fucked up about that “white male atheism is fundamentally different from Marginalized Atheism” post, but I just hit on the main reason it bothers me:
It positions religion as the human default, from which you are excused only if you’re sufficiently damaged. Like “I guess it’s okay if you’re shipping to cope” – if it’s just a consolation prize for being broken and pitiable, it’s not really okay at all. It’s okay if you can’t be religious because of trauma, but always remember that this is a personal flaw, a result of your damage, and that *healthy people* are religious.
Under this schematic, atheism isn’t simply another way to be human and think human thoughts. It’s a deviation from the “natural”, i.e. religious, state, and you’d better have a damn good reason for going against the grain. You think you can defect from normal society just because you *want* to? That’s just your white male privilege talking. Marginalized people have suffered enough to earn the right to defect, but you’re gonna shut up and praise God like a normal person.
This is exactly it! I’m not an atheist because I’m damaged, or because I don’t have numinous experiences, or because I haven’t enjoyed them.
I’m an atheist because when I think about the question of whether gods are beings or stories, my answer is consistently that I think they’re most likely cool stories.
Like, I try to tell myself “think they’re not stories for an hour or two, just to understand people better!” And my brain goes “but I’m pretty sure they’re stories…?”
I know people find this insulting, and I think I get why, but honestly… I’m in fandoms, and those fandoms have literally saved my life. “Megatron is fictional” and “Megatron is unimportant” have different truth values to me. So me thinking your god is probably a story too actually isn’t me thinking “your god shouldn’t matter to you.”
I get that it’s something you still might not like! And that’s okay!
But calling religion made up and calling religion stupid are actually different things.
And if this is referring to the post we think, it also is kind of insulting to religious people too? Like the ways it links trauma in is weird like it’s the same thing where trauma determines too much of how you think so it can end up invalidating. Plus it really flattens down religion to Christianity or even only certain kinds of Protestant Christianity while claiming to speak for a wide swathe of people. And tbh, the whole “only the default because you haven’t examined enough” thing is just meh.
Can only have sympathy for how it must sound to you as an atheist. : /
You mean implying that religious people only believe because they’re naive from not experiencing trauma? Yeah.
People believe the things they do for reasons.
You can think someone is incorrect about something while still respecting *why* whatever it is matters to them, ffs.
FUCKING THIS
now, lemme say a thing:
unlike a lot of angry folks, i have no real problem with people who have cultivated their assets over a few generations and have a million or two in property and investments. that’s something you can actually do with hard work, time, and enough luck that medical surprises or other misfortune doesn’t take it from you. i know actually quite a few families that could pool that much across three generations or a handful of siblings and cousins. that’s the kind of wealth that gave rise to the story of wealth being the result of hard work and intelligence – because if there are a couple doctors or lawyers in the family, or someone bought IBM stock in the 70′s, some attention and elbow grease can give you seven figure results.
which is NOT to say ‘everyone can do it, if you’re poor you’re just not trying’. there are a lot of factors that go into that, and a lucky start is the biggest one. in america, abled whites get that lucky start a lot more than everyone else, and yadda yadda you know the rest.
but the point is, people with like 1.5 million, or 4 million, can end up there by taking advantage of their luck and applying work to it over decades. if that’s what their priority is, of course. so i don’t look at someone with a lake house and an investment portfolio and instantly think EVIL BAD. i think: i don’t really agree with their priorities and we probably wouldn’t get along socially, but the instinct to grow your family’s prosperity is universal, and i’m not going to condemn them without evidence of wrongdoing.
ok, that said?
the ultra-rich?
the billionaires? the hundreds-of-billions-aires?
monstrous.
you cannot cultivate money like that. you cannot grow it as a family project. it starts with an absurd windfall, and then you grow it through crimes compounding upon crimes. crimes against humanity, if not crimes by the law. you acquire billions by making money your god, and flushing your soul down the toilet.
@ this entire website did u know it’s possible to make an informative post about a tragedy and/or national disaster without guilting and/or blaming your entire reader base for not posting about it when they PROBABLY simply haven’t heard about it?
honestly, this makes me so mad. that’s why i NEVER reblog any post that tries to guilt people into reblogging (or guilt people in general for that matter). even if i otherwise 100% agree with a post and am really passionate about its issue. you don’t need to ask me to reblog sth, i obviously will if i care about it. but these passive aggressive comments (e.g. [x people] can reblog this btw, i don’t care about your blog theme, this is too important not to reblog, etc.) or the outright aggressive ones á la “if you don’t reblog this you have no heart” make me mad at you instead of the issue you talk about. you’re being cruel, not helpful.
also, sometimes: everybody is talking about this, but not on the specific tumblrs you follow
or: everyone is talking about this, but guilt trips get more notes.
The main reason I don’t reblog a ‘why is nobody talking about this’ post, is because it appears on my dash between two other posts talking about ‘this’, but neither of the others are calling me a callous shithead for not reblogging their post, or spreading dramatised misinformation.
lol, you know that sj line about how you can’t be friends with anyone who has bigoted beliefs? imagine if that was supposed to apply to beliefs about disabled people! just imagine everyone trying to not be friends with anyone who believed in guardianship, or forced treatment, or institutions, and still ever talk to anyone ever! i am sure we would solve a lot of problems through NO ONE HAVING ANY FRIENDS
One thing that a lot of transmasc people struggle with before they fully realize they’re trans is the question of “do I hate being treated like a woman because women are treated like shit, or do I hate being treated like a woman because I’m not a woman?”
and one method (though not entirely foolproof) to figuring that out is asking “would I be upset if another girl was treated like this?”
like, I’d be just as mad if some dude said “you can’t do math because you’re a girl” to a female classmate as I would if he said it to me
however, I never got uncomfortable at waiters calling my female friends “m’am”, I was only uncomfortable when they called *me* that
and obviously everyone’s feelings are different and there’s tons of variables at play, but if you find that there’s a lot of the second scenario going on with you, there’s a good chance you’re not entirely cis
Where was this post 18 god damn months ago.
I think this is important and can be helpful for many people, and I don’t want this reply to come off as In Conflict but rather complicating/adding to:
I think some people who have deep set trauma around womanhood and misogyny do start to have very visceral and upsetting reactions & dysphoria(s) in reaction to being called “ma’am” or treated like a woman even in “normal” non-misogynistic ways, because being a woman itself has become deeply entrenched with the trauma and discomfort. there are also gnc women who dislike being called “ma’am” and some other “typical woman things” but who do not end up coming to the conclusion that they are not a woman.
this is in no way to say it is less good or “correct” to figure out you are not a woman/don’t want to be a woman, or that people should identify as a woman over other things- I think transmasc experiences are beyond “valid” (to be cliche) and that for many people being transmasculine is right and healthy and healing (and the final verdict on how “right” and healthy and accurate that is ultimately up to no one but the person themself). I just think that for many of us who have struggled between (often gnc) womanhood and transmasculinity and some of the very blurred experiences in between, it’s not as simple as discomfort with overtly misogynistic treatment versus discomfort with “normal women treatment” because for a lot of people across this whole span of identifications and experiences who’ve had traumatic experiences with assigned womanhood, “normal woman treatment” can feel equally out of place, painful and hard to separate.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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