• 0 Posts
  • 5 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 13th, 2023
  • skweetis@kbin.socialtoTechnology@lemmy.ml•Bluesky got 1 million new users
    26·
    9 months ago

    The only thing I care about is: Will this be enough to pull critical mass from Twitter? I don’t think I’ll ever join, because twitter life made me very unhappy, but the sooner journalists and high-volume celebs move off twitter, the sooner it can be relegated to Truth Social 2 and that, I think, will make the world a slightly better place.

  • skweetis@kbin.socialtoRisa@startrek.website•Proudly served at all Quark's Bar locations (price and participation may vary)
    6·
    11 months ago

    Ok, so a million years ago me and a friend of mine were in Vegas and checked out Quark’s Bar at the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. And it was great! I drank a dry-ice-powered “warp core” drink. A guy in a Klingon costume messed with me in a cringey but completely perfect “interactive theater” bit. The video screens all had Star Trek visuals playing. Super fun.

    Anyway, a couple of years later we thought “Hey, let’s go back to Vegas and we’ll visit Quarks Bar again!” But we were big enough nerds that we didn’t realize when we booked it that it was superbowl weekend. So, all the pro sports gambler types were in town. The “free drinks as long as you are gambling” policy in the casino seemed to be suspended - all the servers ignored us. We had high hopes of escaping to the nerd refuge of Quark’s, but when we got there they had football on all of the screens, and a table of “Da Bears” style football dudes started fucking with us for, I don’t know, not being manly enough or something. It sucked, but it’s kind of funny in retrospect.

  • skweetis@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml•whyyyy, that doesn't make any sense...
    445·
    1 year ago

    Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows “capital” (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It’s not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren’t much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it’s hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:

    https://therealnews.com/biden-infrastructure-report-pushes-disastrous-water-privatization-schemes-watchdog-says

    And this doesn’t even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today’s capitalist society.

    If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.

  • skweetis@kbin.socialtoMemes@lemmy.ml•When I Hear Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People
    293·
    1 year ago

    No, this is not cool. Louis C.K. and South Park were wrong, actually. There are a couple of things wrong with it.

    If you’re yelling fag at a straight person, nobody thinks you’re yelling “Hey straight guy, you literally have sex with men!” because that wouldn’t make any sense. What you’re yelling is “You are something bad. You know, like gay people are bad.” That’s why you never hear anyone say, “Hey you cut me off, supermodel!” or “You spilled your drink on me, fireman!” because it’s not a random word after that comma, it’s an insult. So, yelling fag at people who aren’t (necessarily) gay is of course not being homophobic…to the straight person you’re yelling at. It’s being homophobic to the gay people who may or may not have heard it.

    Second, the whole premise that you can use slurs and it is up to the target of the slur to figure out if you mean it in the hateful way or the “fun” way is dumb. That’s not how the world works. You can’t go up to a guy in a bar and say, “Your girlfriend is ugly and your mom’s a slut” and then get mad when they take it as an insult. It is not other people’s job to look into your soul and realize that when you’re saying something insulting that you don’t mean it that way. I’m sure you think “it’s just words”, but you probably don’t know what it’s like to be on a public bus and hear murmuring of “faggot” from the seat behind you. Maybe you’re a tough guy and wouldn’t have worried about it, but I had a long thought about what my plan would be if this guy attacked me for being gay. He didn’t, but that fear was still real.

    If it makes you feel any better, this is not something that only straight people have to abide by. There’s a great Dead Milkmen song called “Instant Club Hit” that I love. It’s a funny song from the 80s that makes fun of goth culture, but there’s a part where it says “art fag” over and over again. Now I know those guys are cool. When I saw them live in Portland they asked people to donate to a group called Safe Pride PDX. One of the members is gay. Anyway, I scolded my husband once for putting that song on the jukebox at a bar. Not because I think the song is really homophobic, but because some gay guy who doesn’t know this band could be in the bar and all of sudden realize “Oh fuck, the song playing in this bar is saying fag over and over again!” and get nervous that they aren’t safe. So we don’t play that song on the jukebox anymore. And you can think of another thing to yell at people who cut you off in traffic.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGhHdRZJZc