I keep thinking about an article I read several years ago about how activists got a coal plant shut down when the corporation wanted it to have its license extended for another 20 years. No-one knew who should take credit for the win – the lawyers suing for health reasons, the lawyers suing for worker protections, the activists protesting politicians and corporate offices, the activists who chained themselves to the plant gates, the group who pressured banks to refuse loans for the plant, etc. A while later someone read the company’s annual report and it more or less said they’d cancelled the plant, not because of any single reason, but because all the difficulties across so many aspects of the project made it more trouble than it was worth. They could win on one or two problems, but not a dozen attacks at once, especially when they were all weary from fighting the last battle. I wish I could find the article again, it was much more interesting than I make it sound!
But in the same way that people here keep reminding us all that this is a marathon and not a sprint, I think it’s important to attack Trump and the Republicans on all fronts rather than try to find the one perfect sniper shot to take them down. There should not be a single aspect of their working life where they can escape protests and delays and being overruled by courts and new lawsuits and bad publicity and stupid jokes about them and investigations into their affairs. Washington? Investigators and lawsuits. Home town on recess? Angry locals. Media? Questions about what they knew and when. Internet? Demands for healthcare and video compilations of them saying daft things.
It’s not that one of those tactics is a silver bullet, it’s that this is a war of attrition and every little bit of hassle is worth it. Every individual Republican congressperson should be dreading the sound of a phone or notification because it will be yet another fire they have to put out. They shouldn’t have time to provide assistance to their colleagues or cover for Trump, or time out to refresh and regroup. There are more citizens than there are politicians – tag team until they break ranks.
This Metafilter comment is good and smart and makes me feel better about the work ahead of us.
Please reblog if you know anyone who might take party drugs.
this is so important
Also important information: A cop cannot arrest you for something you already took. You can tell a cop to his face that you just injected black tar heroin in your veins and as long as you don’t currently have any on you (including things like syringes or residue in a pipe), there’s fuck all he can do about it.
I take police reports for a living. The number of people who will happily tell someone “Well officer, this fight started because I smoked crack cocaine earlier,” is astounding and also not at all illegal. The criminal charge is for Possession of a Controlled Substance. If you don’t possess any at the time, there’s no crime. The only thing you can get dinged for is if you’re actively on a drug and driving, in which case – DUI.
Please, please, please tell EMTs what you took. They’re not going to rat you out to the cops and even if they did, you will still be okay.
Spreading the word, being honest with paramedics and doctors can save your life
this game is bullshit, you have to go through a tutorial until level 18, and your stats start to go down after level 30 not to mention the romance mini-game is hard as fuck
sadly the PVP is a lie. You get a debuff called jail
it also fails to mention that once you hit level 18 it actually does have a monthly fee and it’s really fucking steep. but at that point everyone’s too invested to quit playing so ugh yeah
I don’t even get to choose anything about the initial details of my character.
>_>
Pff the graphics really suck, I needed to get a third party program just to make everything focus.
If the character they give you isn’t the right gender, the patch is expensive as hell and takes forever to install
I thought I was really good at this game, but there are millions of people better at it than I am. ::::/
I died ONCE and they closed my fucking account what the hell
All the travel takes for fucking ever too. They desperately need to patch in some sort of teleport system.
Don’t even get me started on how boring the endgame is.
everyone in the game keeps arguing over whether or not there’s an admin or not and its really annoying
You have to grind in this game to get anywhere. It gets old fast.
you guys are all too hardcore. i just play the crafting minigames. it’s super relaxing. i know my character’s just riddled with debuffs and everything, but i don’t care, i’m skilling up knitting.
There is not one thing magical about this. She shouldn’t have to do this. Are y’all serious right now???? Like y’all should go read about how the father basically just shows up to sleep with her and she ends up pregnant again because she has a condition that makes her ovulate more than necessary and in turn her body rejects birth control and almost kills her. 😒 Quit calling black women that have to go through shit like this magical. Yes, she loves all her children, but the whole situation is stressful. Imagine the toll this takes on her body, and most of her kids hella young and can barely do for themselves. Stop calling these situations magical because she’s black and has no choice but to survive how she can with her kids, while the father does nothing.
^^^
I need a trustworthy gofundme for this woman. I’m going to look into this.
I need a way to support her MONETARILY, because using hand clap emojis to somehow applaud her for being hyper fertile and a man using her and leaving her isn’t cutting it. No.
She is only asking for 10k and so far she is at $1,000. I am definitely donating some money.
There are some heartless comments in the notes calling her irresponsible and careless. Those people have obviously not taken the few minutes to watch this heart wrenching video.
She [Mariam Nabatanzi] was married off at 12 years of age after surviving death; allegedly at her stepmother’s hands who apparently pounded glass and mixed it in the food she gave Nabatanzi and her four siblings. Her husband is an absentee father & husband so she supports her children by doing odd jobs.
At 39, Nabatanzi has 38 children whom she has delivered from home except the last born who is four months old. She was delivered by caesarean section. Among her children are six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruples and single births. Ten of these are girls and the rest are boys. The oldest is 23 years old while the youngest four months.
20841954_1496518771.2705_funddescription
Married off
Nabatanzi breaks down when she recalls what she went through upon getting married. In 1993, she was married off to a 40-year-old man.
“I did not know I was being married off. People came home and brought things for my father. When time came for them to leave, I thought I was escorting my aunt but when I got there, she gave me away to the man.”
Starting a family
Her father-in-law gave them a piece of land to start their family, a family for which she planned to have six children.
In 1994, when she was 13, Nabatanzi gave birth to twins. Two years later, she gave birth to triplets and a year and seven months after that added a set of quadruplets. This, she says was nothing strange to her because she had seen it before in her lineage. “My father gave birth to 45 children with different women and these all came in quintuplets, quadruples, twins and triplets,” she says.
Indeed, Dr Charles Kiggundu, a gynecologist at Mulago Hospital and President of gynaecologists and obstetricians, says it is very possible for Nabatanzi to have taken after her father. “Her case is genetic predisposition to hyper-ovulate (releasing multiple eggs in one cycle), which significantly increases the chance of having multiples; it is always genetic,” he explains.
By her sixth delivery, Nabatanzi had had 18 children and wanted to stop, so, she went to see a doctor at Namaliili Hospital.
The problem
The doctor told Nabatanzi that she could not be stopped then because she had a high ovary count which would eventually kill her if she stopped.
“Having these unfertilised eggs accumulate poses not only a threat to destroy the reproductive system but can also make the woman lose their lives,” Dr Ahmed Kikomeko from Kawempe General Hospital explains.
“I was advised to keep producing since putting this on hold would mean death. I tried using the Inter Uterine Device (IUD) but I got sick and vomited a lot, to the point of near death. I went into a coma for a month,” she explains.
At the age of 23 with now 25 children, she went back to hospital to try and stop. “I was checked in at Mulago Hospital and advised to continue producing since the ovary count was still high.”
No way to stop?
Kiggundu explains that women’s ovaries are at times suppressed and stopped from ovulating. “The suppressed eggs later pile up and are released at once and here, the higher the chances of fertilizing many eggs, the higher the chances of all of them dying, Nabatanzi was lucky,” he says. “She must have been super ovulating, releasing many eggs in a cycle.” He adds that Nabatanzi could have been helped if she had really wanted to stop producing, but some people are not well informed.
At the birth of her four-month-old child who was delivered by C-section in December last year, she says; “I asked the doctor to stop me from more births and he said he had ‘cut my uterus from inside’. This was my only Cesarean delivery because I was still weak from the sickness I suffered when I tried to use an IUD.”
Nabatanzi’s 25 years in marriage has been characterised by humiliation and torture. “I have been tortured countless times by my husband; he beats to the pulp when I try to reason with him over any issue, especially when he gets home drank. He does not provide for basic needs and welfare of the family; the children hardly know who he is since he is an absent father who gives his children names over the phone and not physically,” she says.
Charles Musisi, 23, her eldest son says their father disappeared and they have grown up only with their mother’s love.
“I can comfortably tell you that our siblings do not know what father looks like. I last saw him when I was 13 years old and only briefly in the night because he rushed off again,” he says, adding that they do not know the happiness of living with a father and they only rely on their mother as their both mother and father.
Nabatanzi says her husband spends close to a year without coming home and when he does, he just sneaks into the house late in the night and leaves very early in the morning.
“I carry these humiliations because my aunt advised me to always endure in marriage and have my children as the center of focus. She advised me not to produce children from different men.”
The education challenge
Nabatanzi is optimistic about seeing her children through school, something her father could not do for her. Despite being a Primary Two dropout, she has managed to educate her children.
One of her first born twins has a certificate in nursing and the other in building although they have not found jobs yet.
Nabatanzi’s five-year-old son who was diagnosed with a heart problem early this year worries her as she has to spend Shs120, 000 a week to buy him medicine. “In January, the doctors at Mulago Hospital advised me to raise Shs35m in nine months to have him taken to India for an operation. Since I do not have this money yet, I buy him medicine to help him cope in the meantime,” she says.
Nabatanzi finds solace in her children as the family she never had while growing up. “I wish I could get a helping hand to help me with my children’s schooling, which is my major concern. I stopped looking to my husband for anything. I’m only focusing on raising my children and I am determined to do,” she explains.
Home care
The older children help with their siblings and the general home administration. “I enjoy taking care of my children myself though. My children are my joy and I pride caring for them. I cook, wash and bathe them with ease. Children grow better under a mother’s love and care,” she says.
Health
Nabatanzi says she delivers her children naturally and she has always felt fine after each delivery until her recent C-section birth after which she started to develop backache after doing some home chores.
“My daughter who studied nursing used to take care of me during pregnancy. Eventually, I learnt how to do this, so I have not had any difficulties or complications with my pregnancies,” she explains.
wow
This poor woman, please don’t romanticize her situation
somebody: If you had a superpower, what would it be?
most people: *some comic book shit*
me:
“What’s your superpower?” “Bethesda glitch.”
Honestly, that’s probably the most overpowered superpower.
WHAT IS THIS
the best manga ever
Definitely an up-do. Maybe like a kind of messy bun. I’m thinking—and stop me if this doesn’t make any sense—but a kind of homesteader vibe? Like a kind of “Little House on the Prairie,” “I’m gonna stand my ground and don’t mess with me or my kin” kind of deal? But, like, sexy. Like, it basically says, “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do, like shuck corn, and muck out a barn, but I’ve still managed to retain a femininity that glints in the most attractive and unexpected ways.” Like, picture a lady standing in a field with her dress flapping nobly in the wind, and maybe she’s holding a basket of wheat and squinting into the distance, and she’s like, Oh man, when is he gonna return, because I’ve borne so much already? Except I don’t want to look all weathered, just, like, super pretty but also like I have a ton of inner reserves? Does that make any sense? No? O.K., let me put it this way. Have you ever had a watercolor teacher who is, like, a handsome older lady with all this effortless grace who always piles her gray hair on top of her head in the same way, with a few tendrils hanging down, because she just doesn’t have time for anything else? And she always wears a floppy denim shirt and you know her house has all this tasteful Southwestern stuff in it, and maybe she had an affair with a jazz musician and has seen a lot of sadness but she still has a playful spark in her eye and gives really frank hand jobs. Is this clarifying anything?
If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.
They’re asking you if they can play too.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.
They’re asking if they can watch it with you.
.
When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?”
What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.”
What they’re actually asking: “Can I join you?”
Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection.
What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]
What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.
.
This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.
IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.
I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.
But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.
So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.
Example: what are you reading?
True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book
Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.
Example: what are you doing?
True answer but not: drawing
Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?
And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”
Tldr: communication is wierd
HOLY
SHIT
that explains so fucking much thank you
(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)
Further annoying?
They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.
What’s messed up about this is that we are the ones that communicate explicitly and simply and are pathologized for it, while allistics literally expect us to READ THEIR FUCKING MINDS and that’s normal? How even is that reasonable? How is it we are the ones that society thinks are mentally ill?
Uhg.
Just so… for those of you who have to hide your autism, this is a great thing to keep in mind.
What…what the everloving fuck? Why?
Ok, the reason why NTs do this is a weird combination of wanting to save face for you and them. Asking for social time with someone else makes you vulnerable – so the topic is an excuse in case the person they’re asking doesn’t really want to. (Saving them face.) And it also gives the person being asked the space to turn them down without having to bluntly say “Dude. I don’t even Know you.” (Saving the other person face.)
Basically it’s all intended as social lubrication to allow either side the space to escape the interaction without creating a point of conflict for later interactions.
Cat, a lifeform specialized in detecting small prey animals and catching them:*sees a mouse, chases it, catches, eats it* Human: “Wow evolution has made such a great hunter, look at it! Amazing!”
Cat:*sees a laser pointer dot, frantically tries to catch it but cannot, as it is just light* Human: “lol too optimised for wanting to catch things am I right”
***
ACT II
Human, a lifeform specialized in using and making tools and seeing if tools are good for different tasks:*sees a knife* “Aha! Someone made this sharp tool to cut things. I see, it’s really good for that!”
Human:*looks at his own body* “Who made this?? What were they thinking? There’s some bigger hidden meaning behind this right? What am I made for… What is the purpose of my mortal life? Am I good? Am I bad? Is there a God? I keep looking for my destiny but alas, I can’t figure it out….”
If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.
They’re asking you if they can play too.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.
They’re asking if they can watch it with you.
.
When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?”
What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.”
What they’re actually asking: “Can I join you?”
Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection.
What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]
What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.
.
This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.
IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.
I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.
But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.
So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.
Example: what are you reading?
True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book
Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.
Example: what are you doing?
True answer but not: drawing
Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?
And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”
Tldr: communication is wierd
HOLY
SHIT
that explains so fucking much thank you
(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)
Further annoying?
They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.
I read somewhere that people acroos the world, even though they hate him, think Trump is much smarter than he is because translators can’t come close to translating his gibberish, so subtitles only show a lucid and coherent version of the general gist. If anyone here soeaks another kanguage, I defy you to translate this: “There is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself, and the Russians, zero,” You can’t even translate that to English.
shit i’ve never even thought about this… do you remember the source/where you heard about it?
This is one I’ve heard; also found this and this. A lot of news orgs have talked about this because translators are having a legit crisis over this problem.
just moving along like everyone else 