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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: January 6th, 2025

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  • botched gender affirmation surgery that left him with a mangled useless sex organ

    I keep hearing this around here. Is there any actual reason to think it’s true?

    Even if the bit about the surgery is true, it’s a very reductive explanation of issues which clearly aren’t new in his life. He was brought up by far-right parents and his father apparently showed him no love. He has been poisonously insecure all his life, only now he has the power to inflict his psychological troubles on the world. Ever since he got financially lucky in the 1990s, he has had the money to buy influence and pay people to do what he wants, so he has never become equipped to deal with people as equals and has all kinds of issues and insecurities around power. He discovered early that, while he had trouble making friends, he could make an impression on people by being edgy and controversial, and has never managed to move beyond this into a more mature persona.

    I feel like saying “it’s all because of his wonky penis” trivializes how profoundly this man’s life has messed him up, and how many complex factors are at work in his psyche. It also implicitly insults anyone else who doesn’t have “normal” genitalia.




  • A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.”

    Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others.

    So they’re not allowed to talk about reality, or how to make anything better. And the fascists in charge must know this is what they’re doing, but they don’t care.

    I keep thinking of how the Buddha recognized three poisons of the mind: greed, hatred and ignorance. Right-wing politics is pure poison.




  • And when the police arrived they started questioning him about whether he agreed with Trump on deportations and Gaza. The police questioning people on their political views seems to be becoming standard in the USA.

    “Why are they saying you pushed a priest?”

    “They were trying to pull me away from the pulpit. I grabbed the pulpit and just held on. I didn’t push anyone. They had four guys grabbing me and dragging me off there.”

    “What made you want to preach today?” “I’m worried about human beings, our brothers and sisters who live within our midst and are being targeted by the government.”

    “What do you consider to be targeted by the government? What class of people are you …”

    “Undocumented immigrants.”

    “So you don’t agree with deportations and things like that?”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Did you say anything like that?”

    “I didn’t even get there.”

    Looking at a copy of Gillcrist’s prepared remarks, the officer said, “So I see you mention Gaza and Ukraine in here. What’s your message with that?”

    “They’re our brothers and sisters. When we stop seeing people that way it’s so easy to start making laws or enacting policies that harm them.”