Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

If I'm subtooting anybody here, it's the left at large. But the lyrics are just too perfect, and I can't pretend some of these don't apply to some of you some of the time.

It's really OK. They apply to me some of the time too. I'm trying my damnedest to reduce that proportion. But the alt--right didn't get where they are by throwing up their hands and saying "Those vile dashing clever leftists have bested us, let's just capitulate" (not even in the face of poll numbers that STILL show broad US support for liberal social policies *ahem*) so how the fuck is it gonna help us?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Zsyt_UvzA

I hate to see your broken face
This world would give you anything
As long as you will want to
As long as you will want to

I hate your state of hopelessness
And that vain articulateness
Your loser type wreck want to be
Not a pretty sight really
In another world it'd be funny

I hate to see your broken face
A lazy life of fatal waste
Of fashionable cynicism
The poison they want you to drink

Oh no man that's too easy
Oh no man that's too easy

We weren't talking bout happiness
Apply your leading potential
To be useful to this planet
The world would give you anything

As long as you will want to
As long as you will want to
Ba da ba

@Balinares Nope, but it's also not a recipe for Utter Doom, which is the line I feel like my rivals on the Mastodon Left are holding at the moment. Did our Boomer progenitors not essentially end military conscription in America?

We too will get through this with a mix of wins and losses; I don't think we're going to be crushed under anyone's heel, especially not if we put up the same fuss the 60s counterculture did, nor are we at Orwell's "boot on a human face forever" endgame.

Queer Jeff Winger's point will not, for a long time, be that everything is fine. It is that things are the winnable, defeatable kind of bad as long as we don't curl up and take refuge in cozy inert pessimism.

MUSICAL SELECTION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Zsyt_UvzA

Pliocene Epoch: 5,300,000 to 2,600,000 BP*
* early hominids, diversification of grazing mammals

Pleistocene Epoch: 2,600,000 to 11,700 BP
* mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers thrive until mass extinctions from possible impact event/human intervention

Holocene Epoch: 11,700 BP to 240 BP
* rise of human agricultural society, major shifts in animal distribution, mass domestication

Anthropocene Epoch: 240 BP to 50 AP*
* industrial revolution, mass extinctions, general dimfuckery

Misanthropocene Epoch: 50 AP to 350 AP
* genetic uplift, dashing and heroic space tigers, solar colonization/diversification, development of really _good_ marinades for humans, who's got saberteeth now motherfuckers

*(years Before/After Present)

Queer Jeff Winger welcomes your criticisms. Sooner or later, Queer Jeff Winger has to learn the patience and grace in the face of dissent that eluded them for so long during their insecure youth.

And by Queer Jeff Winger, I mean Salty Martian Tigress. =n.n;= These conversations have been really healthy for me as an outlet, and if I ever get too clawsy in my responses, please let me know. I am always hoping deep down to de-escalate and find a good point of compromise, modulo bad tiger moods. n.n;

But I'm not giving up on the hope thing (for more than a couple of days at a time) under any circumstances. That's more of a Queer Pierce Hawthorne thing, and fuck that guy.

(I *am* however, a Level 9 Laser Lotus)

@Aradia That's a fair point, but in this context I mean *for being gay per se*. The very fact they have to work at it still represents a pervasive and systemic bigotry, but I think it's indisputably an improvement over "your same-sex relationship is grounds for a prison sentence."

Respectfully, it's like the difference between current police prejudices against young black men—which is appalling, bigoted, oppressive, and unacceptable—and the Fugitive Slave Act. The xenophobia behind it still exists and is a huge concern for me, but the power structure behind it has been rattled substantially enough that they have to do it under cover. That's not ENOUGH progress, but it's progress, and a reason for hope.

More Very Enthusiastic Young Entrepreneurs treating Monkey Monkey as if it's their personal office space, loud enough that I can still hear them over any non-deafening headphone level, and my spooky Martian psychic tumor-inducing abilities are being tested to their maximum. *waggles spacecat antenna fronds*

(Don't worry, I've got the DNA Manglers set to Benign... for now. I like makin' 'em look like cold sores so they can't get laid for a while. 🐯​)

You're not the first people who have had to fight racism, reactionary pseudo-patriotism, and human rights violations on an urgent national scale.

This time 50 years ago, the same thing was happening. The main difference this time around is, your young friends aren't being sent en masse to die overseas, and the scumbags responsible for the abuse at least have the decency to lie to us right into the open instead of hiding behind a sympathetic national press.

Oh, and also, now you can't get thrown in jail for being gay now. And a fair number of you can smoke weed right out in the open, for whatever that's worth.

Er, also, it's outright evil white nationalists who are doing the abusing, not hand-wringing centrist Democrats. That's... um... that's a real problem and a whole other topic, but it's not without its moral advantages. Sure makes it easier to pick our targets.

And the reactionary rhetoric, the power politics, the propaganda, the out-and-out lies, the screaming xenophobia, the police batons coming down on heads... Yeah, we've BEEN THERE BEFORE. Yeah, it really was that bad.

You, too, shall live long enough to sell out, compromise your ideals for a cozy existence, and become the next demographic problem. ;) But you know what? I think you might not. Compromise, that is. You had better fucking stay alive for me.

Dug up from the vault. Was in Liquid Television, Way Back When. Makes me cry, apparently. That is all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwsaAPk77jw

@Balinares I mean, I work with Google Translate on a daily basis, so I at least tend to have good hunches about when it's full of shit, and I translate EVERYTHING back and forth several times.

O my kingdom for a real Babel Fish...

Also: gogo boots, wigs, mascara, and sparkly miniskirts will be mandatory for all male inmates. Needless to say. And NO WHISKEY FOR MEN, only mimosas.

I want to forcibly remake the entire world in the image of this French cafe pop playlist. Put the Proud Boys in Glorious People's Revolutionary Discotheques, at gunpoint, and make them dance and drink until they realize what utter shitheads they've been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juMCWEGqi-k

(Apologies to balinares, among others, if I my grade-school French was not up to the occasion, but you understand the importance of making the attempt, I'm sure ;) )

Tonight on the Martian Broadcasting Service's *second* most popular show, "Her Majesty Graciously Declines To Eat That Guy..."

#MarvelAtMyMajesticMurderMitten

@LexYeen@snouts.online I mean, you ain't wrong in the least—how many stories are out there of people being detained for spending "counterfeit" $2 bills, because everybody knows there's no such thing?

@hystericempress Also, counterpoint: the moon still lacks the letters "TRU" :p

@hystericempress Wait, RIGHT now? Happy birthday, sis? <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfVqM-QYch8

@LexYeen@snouts.online Well, more importantly, it would totally prohibit the practice of "ass pennies" totally, and of course, this is so central to modern business that it is simply unthinkable.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/zpuyqq/upright-citizens-brigade-ass-pennies (cw: I mean... "ass pennies.")

@LexYeen@snouts.online Sorry to 'well actually," but well actually, those "defacement" laws generally only apply when there's intent to defraud. It's like the old urban legend about the "do not remove under penalty of law." There's an element of truth to it, but it applies under much more limited circumstances.

See https://www.stampstampede.org/faq/yes-its-legal/

https://vimeo.com/347943301

cw: deeply, wonderfully weird and disturbing

No gore or anything, but there is some facial distortion and massive Uncanny Valley stuff—it's about 0.6 Cyriaks.

@hyperlink@snouts.online Cutting and pasting from a reply to Thaminga, For The Cause...

"But I could see something like this totally working with some kind of white sauce, oil base, or fuck, maybe even Filipino "banana ketchup"...

Honey would work, too, or something similar. Maybe a thick soy-ginger or balsamic glaze? One of the best Pizza-Like Objects I ever had was at a modernist Mediterranean restaurant, and it was something like tahini, honey, walnuts, some neutral melty white cheese I could not identify, VERY hot pepper flakes, and grapes."