So a lot of Trump supporters want to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third term. How they advertised this idea?
Fanart of Trumps face on Julius Caesars head.
Oh and look what is coming up soon, what a coincidence :)
Thats so weird and odd and Do You Know What Would Be Really Funny?
My mom got phished in an EXTREMELY refined scam that pretty much anyone could fall for-- basically her account was already pre-hacked and they spoofed the bank's number exactly, called her pretending there was fraud, and read back legitimate and fake transactions and personal info so she wouldn't suspect they weren't the bank. Then discouraged her from logging in claiming the account was locked so they could investigate the fraud-- all so she wouldnt catch them making massive purchases using her stolen info.
We have the same boss and when she told him what happened he recommended she call the bank directly, so she did and they managed to catch it in time before $20k of transactions went through. Very scary
I guess the lesson here is never ever answer your phone, I love that fraud is so rampant an entire form of mass communication is now useless
ANYONE can fall for phishing scams- my mom is extremely smart and we discuss common scams that target her age demographic and she still fell for this. If it happened to me I may have fallen for it too. Always be careful!
that's EXACTLY what happened to me last spring. it's dire out there....
that’s EXACTLY what
happened to me last spring.
it’s dire out there….
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
If you EVER get ANY call from ANYONE claiming to be a bank or other important group asking you for anything, tell them you will call them back and call them yourself. Do not call a number they give you, look it up yourself.
Banks don't call people, IME. They send emails and texts and put notices on your online account. Credit cards sometimes do I believe, but in that case, just call the number on your card back.
Never take a call from anyone and assume they are who they say. Period. These people are skilled at social manipulation. They will always tell you there is a crisis.
And don't just google the number, use your bank's official site! A lot of search engines are now providing phone numbers of scams instead of legit ones. Also make sure the url of the site matches the one available on cards and other papers you've been given by your bank because fake sites can look VERY convincing.
FYI: the U.S. government will not call you. Is someone calls and says they're the IRS? They're lying. They say they're the sheriff? Lying. ICE? Lying.
The United States will mail you information. If the government needs to reach you, check your mailbox.
The IRS are generally pretty forgiving and will accept that humans make errors. They will never demand immediate payment for back taxes, ever. They know that's not feasible for most people, so they'll usually make a payment plan and help you out. (This is, of course, assuming you're an individual who fucked up their taxes, not someone running a massive tax fraud scheme.)
There’s also a scam going around right now for folks in the USA who use toll roads. NONE of the texts are real, the EZPass website has a huge banner on the site saying they’re all scams.
The alt-right's foothold into Gen-Z is frustrating and I can see from over here how they're doing it.
You've got a generation of young-adults who are learning to be adults for the first time and for so many of them it sucks. It sucks to be in your first shitty apartment where things break, and to have your first shitty car that needs maintenance, and to be working a low-paying service or retail job where you get berated all day and barely scrape by. And you go home and you have taxes to figure out and electric bills to figure out and a screen on your phone to rot into to destress.
And this is men and women, equally, in this spot. But the alt-right messaging gets to tailor their approach to gender.
And hey women, yes you working a shitty job for shitty pay, overwhelmed by financial responsibilities and car repairs, what if you actually didn't need to do ANY of that? You don't need to. And you don't need to feel guilty about it. (You're not quitting, you're not being lazy), you actually are just embracing the chance to be exactly who an ideal woman should be. You should actually be beautiful, and demure, and barefoot in a sunny kitchen, glowing, pregnant, hearing the joyful sounds of your children while you bake a roast for your wonderful husband (strong, protective, loves you, handles the finances, handles the jobs, handles all the things you hate). OUR ancestors (don't mind the dogwhistle) did this for GENERATIONS, and modern society has failed you instead!
It's offering to break women out of all the parts of their real life that suck, and do it in a way that promises they're actually being better, being more admirable, more moral, more respectable, more correct, can feel good about, can feel proud about, as a Woman as Feminine as Mother as Goddess.
And the thing being promised does not need to actually reflect reality. It's a fantasy. It is not real. For every "beautiful demure barefoot" day, you'd be having another one covered in shit changing diapers of screaming infants with screaming children while your husband ignores you because it's Women's Work (take pride!) But that doesn't matter. It just needs to sound better than the reality they're living.
Then the men are targeted too. And it's the same in that it's getting to them by appealing to pride in their gender, but the messaging is different. It's "those finances are hard but ACTUALLY you're leveling up, you're grinding, you're finance maxing." It's hard but it's the kind of hard that is a challenge you can WIN at, boast about, post about, prove your manliness. Knowing cars, knowing home repairs, knowing taxes, that's your MAN pride, and you are so elite, you are so sigma, you are the envy of everyone, you are a masculine man. Women love you. Women will defer to you. Strong, respected, moral, loyal, unshakeable. Unlike those pansy men (mind the homophobic dogwhistling) who will whimper and cry like girls. You are better.
The shitty retail job is actually humble beginnings because you're minmaxing your way to financial success (bitcoin, crypto, investments). You can sleep with any woman you want as long as you're confident, and then you'll find one who understands how smart and confident and strong and protective you are and she will defer to you as her man. She will birth your children and teach them good morals and you will make it. Our ancestors lived this way for generations (dogwhistle) and modern society took it from you.
And with that messaging it makes it clear who the enemy in all this is - modern society that has convinced women to torture themselves with high education and terrible jobs, turned them Ugly with Ugly opinions and bad hair and nasty attitudes, yelping about "rights" and "equality" (pitting them against men! TAKING things from men!) All the while, society has been trying to emasculate men--replace them with women, make them soft and emotional, make them gay, make them WEAK. We've been made WEAK.
The naive women hearing this go "I'm not ugly! I don't hate men! I DO hate my job and my finances. I've been tricked. I'm actually rebelling by declaring my goal is to get a Perfect (White) (Christian) moral husband who will make all our decisions and protect me and our children." (And when she's financially trapped in an abusive marriage...? When she's suicidal with PPD but her husband won't touch that because it's Woman Hysteria...? And when her husband leaves her for someone who was as hot as she was 20 years ago and now she's figuring out finances, health care, taxes, bank accounts for the first time in her life...?)
And the men go "They've been TAKING things from us for too long! It's time to be men again! It's time to take pride! I am strong and confident. I am in charge! I never show weakness!" (And when he's got a gun to his head due to the depression he's never been allowed to talk about as Women Feelings...? And when he's financially ruined from a crypto scheme that stroked his ego and robbed him blind...? And when he's dead from alcohol poisoning and none of his adult children notice because no one's spoken to 'Dad' in 15 years...?)
And it's so hard to fight because you're arguing against a fantasy. How do you disprove their fantasy? It's so hard to explain to them, hey you're working a shitty job where you have no future because the rich bastards took it all from you. And now you're doing their work for them. You hate society because of what they've done to it and now you're doing their work. Now you're targeting groups who've never done anything to harm you and the guys responsible are laughing to the bank. How do you explain? How do you disprove fantasy?
This. So much this. I'm tumblr-old (50s) and I was raised in a conservative Christian culture with rigid gender roles. It wasn't a fantasy! It was God's will for my life! All I had to do was be faithful and obedient, and God would provide.
No one could talk me out of it. And if you tried, you were the devil trying to destroy my faith. Gender roles used to be a religious thing. Now they're also secular (sort of - there's a mystical overlay of the divine feminine).
The only thing that breaks through the fantasy and the faith is real life experience. That's why it's important to tell the stories. My mother piously lived a life as a tradwife. I wanted the faithful fantasy, but I didn't want her marriage. I was in my mid-30s before I realized that I had her marriage. I filed for divorce. It took me that long to realize that fantasy and faith are both lies.
And here's the other challenge. I left behind all my conservative values, but I'm the only one. I have six siblings who are still deep in the faith, who are raising my 17 niblings in that same faith and fantasy. Sure, a lot of people leave, but even more stay. It works for some people. And that's something we have to acknowledge if we want to be trusted. It works for some people. The dialogue needs to be that people need choices - being single needs to be doable, getting divorced needs to be easy, men need to be supported in acknowledging their emotions, women need equal pay and equal rights.
Liberal ideas -- women's rights, equal education, equal pay, gay rights, therapyspeak, men expressing vulnerable emotions -- all of it can be couched in terms that conservatives value too. That's our bridge. Even when I was at my most conservative and faithful, I recognized the value in those talking points, in supporting liberal ideas that make conservative lifestyles better.
Abolish Tesla.
Elon uses his overvalued Tesla stock as collateral for all his loans.
If the stock price crashes, banks will ask for their money back.
The Twitter deal alone would break him - twitter has tanked in value, he couldn't sell it to pay off his loans.
Please, oh please. Not just well deserved karma, it would be so fucking funny.
ALT
Just wanted to share some shockingly good news in these difficult times. The full article is really worth reading. [Find it here]
ALTmemes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made
"No one ever tries to flee capitalism."
Well, that was a lie.
That last quote took me out lmao
Oh yeah, she deserved that Oscar bad
He wants to fuck her so bad it makes him look stupid
That's his fiancee.
urdnot wrex is the character of all time and i don’t think he’s appreciated enough.
he’s over 300 years old. he’s one of the most observant and honest characters in the game. he’s committed patricide/regicide. he painted flames on his bandana. he’s got a scar on his face from a turian general. he’s deeply prejudiced but willing to reconsider almost anything. he says to shepherd “should have known the void couldn’t keep you” when they meet in me2. he genuinely wants the best for his species. he’s killed a thresher maw solo. he’s the president.
While this is true, I feel like bad news should be paired with good whenever possible, so: some companies are not just defending, but expanding, their DEI initiatives.
One surprising company on this whitelist is Deutsche Bank. This is surprising because for many years they were Trump's bankers.That they're openly saying "nope, we're keeping those policies, thankyaverymuch" in open defiance of him says quite a lot.
Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Dollar Tree, Macys, and Tiffany and Co have all hired (or are in the process of seeking to hire) a DEI consultant since the beginning of 2025. The NFL has put out a statement saying they're continuing their DEI program "because it makes the NFL better" (direct quote from Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner). Ulta has opened a DEI program for the first time, and I know we all hate Adobe (I get it, I do, I also hate Adobe), they've actually donated to DEI initiatives this month. And Costco's shareholders voted by a 98%-to-2% margin to retain their DEI programs and practices.
The last thing I would say is this, and I'm addressing this to Gen Z and Gen Alpha: before you were adults (or in Alpha's case, before you were born), we had this thing called "affirmative action." What was affirmative action? It was literally just another name for DEI. It's the exact same thing. Conservatives used the phrase as a scare tactic for decades....and the sky didn't fall. And eventually people started going "psh. Yeah, yeah, affirmative action, what-the-fuck-ever, what's for dinner?" They couldn't scare people with it anymore. Companies also couldn't pretend it was still an up-and-coming thing, so they relabeled it. All by itself, that's not a bad thing (I, too, prefer that companies hire on the basis of skill rather than demographic!). It's just that it gave conservatives a new label to latch onto.
We already won this battle once. Yes, it's pretty bleak. But I promise, this isn't the end. I know because I saw the dying gasps of "oh no, affirmative action! [scary music]" in the early 2000s. In order to dismantle workplace equality initiatives, so much shit would have to be repealed, and much of it doesn't use the DEI buzzword, which means our current crop of fascist idiots will forget to look for it.
This is a bump in the road, not the end of the trail. Keep fighting. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
@prismatic-bell I really value your approach of "Okay yes that's shit but here's the good" and as I was doom scrolling through the original post I was even thinking "okay but what's the other side look like" and then I got to your addition - I think it's really important to not give in to the defeatism of "oh the bullies are winning" - because the only thing the bullies are is loud. Not to minimize that there are bad things moving, but there are very good people actively resisting. It's not over, not by a longshot.
Also - this line from costco actually gave me more hope than there rest of the post, and that's significant because the post was very positive overall:
And Costco's shareholders voted by a 98%-to-2% margin to retain their DEI programs and practices.
Because that's not... just the CEO being "woke" or leftist or just understanding that DEI benefits EVERYONE, that's the SHAREHOLDERS saying that. That's the people with the money and the power in the company, the ones who want to see the profits who are agreeing with a near-unanimous vote that yes this is important.
"The Shareholders" was not a group of people I expected to be voting that way, much less that hard.
Thank you. I think it's important to acknowledge, for precisely doomscrolling reasons. I've actually thought about starting a side blog for exactly this.
Every single Democratic Senator voted for Marco Rubio as Sec of State!
So ICE has effectively disappeared a student for protesting Israel's genocide.
THE WIGGLES JUST RELEASED A SONG CALLED “WE’RE FRIENDS OF DOROTHY”??????
okayyyyyyy
For context:
When the Wiggles first started touring the US, there was one question they were asked again and again.
“People were coming up and saying, ‘Oh, so you’re friends of Dorothy?’” veteran Wiggle Anthony Field says. “I didn’t even know the other meaning – I went, ‘Yeah, we are!’”
Field (the OG blue Wiggle) thought Americans were referring to Dorothy, the affable green and yellow dinosaur and longtime fixture of the Wiggles’ songs and live shows. They were, of course, really making a sly reference to the queer code slang term for a gay man. But when Field eventually figured this out, it gave him an idea for a song.
On Friday, when Australia’s best-known children’s entertainers release their 63rd album (yes, really), audiences will finally get to hear Friends of Dorothy. It’s a collaboration with Orville Peck, the modern country songwriter known for his face masks, cowboy hats – and being an out-and-proud gay man.
The Wiggles nervously took the idea for Friends of Dorothy to Peck on Zoom. To their delight, Peck, who has a young nephew who loves the band, jumped at the chance.
“Orville was so happy to do it,” Field says. “And he’s a friend of Dorothy’s as well!” (x)
Dolly Parton is also on the album doing a collaboration as well :)
A thing I did not expect to acquire in my 30s was a newfound and deep appreciation for The Wiggles
