My old post has really stagnated over the past year so I’m making a new one;
Hi, I’m Ash, and I’m trying to save up for top surgery!! The situation for trans people in the UK at the moment is very concerning and rapidly worsening, with the government restricting our rights and medical care more and more. The sooner than I can get this sorted, the better!
If you can’t donate, please please please reblog! And share in other ways if you can! Any support would mean the world to me :)
Just caught up on RE:Dracula! was that fucking Alasdair Stuart? First Karim then Jonny Sims now Alasdair Stuart this podcast jump scares me with a familiar voice actor every 5 minutes
Log of the Demeter is by far my favourite arc in the book. The weight of these people trapped in a boat with a most horrifying monster killing them one by one and them being none the wiser to it, only knowing that their fellow crew keeps disappearing. It’s such a tragedy.
To clarify, Elon musk has had years where his net worth increased by around $121B (such as 2020 and 2021, a time when a lot of people were suffering) but he did not pay income on this increase because an overwhelming majority of it was not reported as income.
If Elon Musk were paying regular income tax on this increase in net worth, he would be in the top bracket paying 37%, which would be about $44.4 billion. Instead, he’s paying about ¼th that. Why? Because he’s able to benefit from loopholes and legal tax avoidance schemes, such as borrowing at a very low rate against unrealized capital gains, that most taxpayers are not able to benefit from.
A large part of why there is such a massive disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in our society is that we allow people who already have a ton of wealth to concentrate wealth very easily while avoiding tax, like this. Closing these loopholes is important to ensuring equality of opportunity and also avoiding the extreme concentration of power in the hands of a tiny number of people.
And we see the negative effect on the world of allowing Elon Musk to have such wealth and thus power.
Please, support closing these tax loopholes. At a bare minimum I want him to pay some sort of base level of tax on the increase in his net worth. But I also would prefer that the top tax bracket was much higher. 37% is much lower than it was historically. Not that long ago it was even as high as 90%. Having it that high is a strong disincentive or deterrent to people getting the sort of compensation that leads to people becoming super wealthy. But it’s probably more important to fix the loopholes because if you just raise the rate but still allow legal tax avoidance, people will just avoid paying tax.
Unless I’m mistaken it was Eisenhower in the 50s who raised the top bracket to 90%; that’s why we have interstates. Idk about you, but I think they’re a nice piece of infrastructure. Imagine what we could do with that kind of money today…public transit, high speed rail, etc.
you know what. i’ve always been hesitant to describe my anaphylactic food allergies as a disability because “it’s just allergies” but if you look at the numerous ways this has affected my life as an adult (because everybody only talks about kids having anaphylactic allergies):
no restaurants or fast food
no store-bought food from small companies (less accountability/resources to prevent cross-contamination)
no candy or desserts (unless they are 100% homemade, which takes a lot of time and energy if you have other disabilities like i do)
no hand-washing dishes (every place i live in has to have a well-functioning dishwasher)
no kissing people on the mouth/lower half of the face
other people cannot kiss me/put their mouth on me
no allergens in the house (really difficult to enforce with non- immediate family members!!)
always having to cook my own meals/bake my own treats/desserts
no sharing drinks/food with other people
no food cooked in other people’s houses/kitchens
always having to bring my own “lunchbox” to family events, work or school, all-day events, or any other situation in which i could THEORETICALLY need to eat or drink something other than bottled water
calling food manufacturers to verify label information on new/changed foods
and none of this is counting the avoidance behaviors i developed with obsessive-compulsive disorder around age 13 in response to the panic attacks i’d have remembering about the anaphylactic shock i experienced at age 10.
i was taught to read labels at age 5. i was taught how to use my own epi-pen at age 6. my parents and i have always been careful and responsible about my allergies. it’s not “i just don’t like this food”, it’s “if i eat this my throat will swell up and block my trachea AND i’ll go into shock from low blood pressure.” as inconvenient as it might be for YOU, you can learn these things too and save a life. happy disability pride month; stop being a dickhead
i don’t usually talk about my allergies because it gives me a LOT of anxiety but i felt this was important to share, because most people have no idea what being an adult with allergies is like. life went from “everyone at the birthday party gets a cupcake but me and i’m sad” to to “if i want to kiss someone i like, i have to make sure she hasn’t eaten anything i’m allergic to in the past few days” (which is like. hugely awkward to ask of someone holy shit) or “i have to turn down the meal from my friend’s mom even though she has the best of intentions and now she thinks i’m an asshole”
At first Netflix said, come write for us. We’ll save your cancelled shows and write about whatever niche story you want. Our algorithm says people will watch it!
Then a few years later they said, regardless of our promises or contract obligations we are cancelling shows after two seasons without telling anyone. Turns out no matter how loved a show is, we get less subscriptions after the second season.
How many subscriptions did we bring you? Netflix won’t say.
So writers started writing two season shows. Just give us two seasons, Netflix. Like you promised.
Then Netflix said, oops sorry! Turns out your show didn’t premiere at #1 and the views in the first day weren’t what we wanted so we’re cancelling your second season.
What were the numbers? How many people watched our show? Netflix doesn’t say.
Then, they did something extra special. They started taking shows and splitting their first season into two halves. Inside Job was not two seasons. It was one season split in half.
Oops! Sorry! The second half of your first season didn’t do as well as the first half, so now your show is cancelled!
Why? How many people? How much money? These companies are making cash hand over fist and they refuse to tell people the truth: people loved your show. Loved it. But some corpo exec wanted an infinite money making machine. Do you know how long shows are in production for before you watch them? Years. Like, 5+, even 10+ years. And Netflix gives it less than a week before they decide whether you’re getting cancelled.
