Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

I... I think I just adjudicated a feline political dispute.

Shadow was making horrible noises, so I went to have a look. She was outside staring down a black cat 2x her size—I think this is the mysterious "Skittykitty" Peg has referred to.

After several minutes, neither of them had budged, so I walked up to them and Skitty bolted. Shadow just stood there bewildered for a few minutes, pawed off a few feet after her, then gave up and came back.

I think I might have undermined her authority...

I see that this is one of those days where I'm gonna set as many queer leftists on fire as I do Trump cultists.

"At least there is balance."</zathras>

(It's... it's a long story. She-Ra "discourse." Some jerkass is demanding 100% ideological purity from every single plot point of queer-friendly TV and going on a crusade against what should be his own allies over it, because the perfect must always triumph at all costs over the merely very good.

But it's OK, because now he's got the Space Rabies real real bad and I give him about 48 hours before he starts beeping and spitting up circuitry. =(^).(^)= )

AAÂAAAAÃÃAAAÅÀAAAAAÁÀÁÀAAAAAAAĀAAAAAÄÃÄAAAAAAAAA

​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​​🙀​

@Leucrotta ok, i could kinda actually use some validation after my last idiotic attempt to engage the news... <3

🖼

BWAAHAAHAA. What a fine way to start the morning.

Some "fine American patriot" on Twitter tried to get into an argument with me about Iran, and I asked him my favorite question du jour: "Where were Dubya's WMDs, eh?"

He tried to turn it around on me with some bullshit about having been a US soldier, and how dare I—because he'd seen the chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds and "helped treat their blisters" or some such nonsense, and shame on me for questioning him.

And then I calmly pointed out that the only major chemical attack on the Kurds was in 1988. Long before we kicked Hans Blix out of Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq War. Where we didn't have any infantry serving. And that the GOP was COMPLICIT in that attack...

Shut him up real good. Always do your research, kids. It's magical, and most of these ignorant fucks have no idea how to defend against it.

Thank you, Bean Gallery, for conducting this experiment to answer a long-standing scientific question: "How many consecutive Cure songs is too many for me?"

Six. Six is too many.

@dodec Honestly, I blew it but I think it's pretty solid. I was SO CLOSE, just let myself get discouraged when the word lengths didn't quite match up with the numbers. I also failed to notice the extra gems, so this is DEFINITELY a failure of my own follow-through and not of the puzzle. I think it's just about right, well-hinted and follows a relatively common puzzle style. Being off by one felt like a bit big of a monkey wrench for novice puzzlers, but for engineers... yeah, feels just about right. I look forward to seeing more of these.

=== KITTY ALERT (SPECIAL CROSSTOWN EDITION) ===

This is a local cat from the Esplanade, just posted to NOLA. I do not know this cat... but the moment I saw her, a new item popped up in my quest journal: "PET A PERFECT CAT (500 XP)."

Long walk, sunny day in freakin' January, and a raspberry truffle king cake. Best antidepressant cocktail I've had in... well, about seven months. And we're still working on that other one. *smirk*

Still, exercise and cake and dragon: pretty good.

@joshua

🐯: ​Hey, that's my cousin Barsha! I'm so glad she found work! =^__^= I could tell you some stories, but what happens on Phobos...

@chimerror My stepdaughter [the Tarot of the Silicon] Dawn agrees with your sentiment.

Yup. I am definitely getting that "maybe I did not live my best life" vibe. Still, pretty though. And I did pull a respectable tour of duty as a rubberjackal—just merely in text.

And there is that night at the Catgirl Goth Rave. That was pretty good. But that's a story for another time, and it's tragically PG-13 at worst. =(^)___(^);=

If you have the opportunity to hurt somebody who's a member of kiwifarms, you should take it.

(If you don't know who they are, don't go looking. Internet trollfarm prone to crusading against harmless weirdos.)

I swear to god anybody I see getting militant over the difference between "transwomen" and "trans women" is getting the boot, immediately. Getting uptight over the supposed semiotic content of a space is just a bridge too far for me. You can ask for it. You can explain why it's important. You can even debate it with me. But if you flatly insist, I'm gonna insist right back, and I'll be pointing at the door, because I don't think that's a cultural authority you have—or need.

And yes, this is really a thing. And I have friends who are eagerly retweeting it. And they're already digging in and trying to tar anybody who gets it wrong as a transphobe.

And I just won't. I'm so fucking tired of armchair activists trying to dictate usage like this. It's so fucking prim and normative, and it feels so much like repainting the goddamn barn for the 5,000th time so you don't have to do your other chores.

And if your first reaction was an impulse to lecture me about why this space is really, really important and we need this and this group uses it in this context and blah blah blah, that's exactly the problem. This distinction means NOTHING to most people.

You're trying to quiz people on a 300-level class when they haven't even got their Trans Politics GED yet. If _I_ don't even give a shit, someone who's struggled with gender issues for approximately 36 years (if wanting very badly to be a pink plastic cyborg ponygirl at age 8 counts), all this is gonna do is help the 4channer types tar us as a bunch of insane prudes who want to remake culture in our own image.

We do, of course. But don't TELL them that. O:)

I understand the urge to be militant, I really do. But if there's one thing I learned from my stint as a Christian, it's that the best way to convert is to make your movement look FRIENDLY. Save the spite for actual TERFs and reactionaries, not for people who didn't learn Trans Prescriptivist Etiquette Du Jour before they had the unmitigated nerve to address you.

"I know this may sound pedantic but..." Yeah. It sounds pedantic. And I should have stood up to you instead of venting on Masto, but there is nothing more TEDIOUS to me than talking to someone that concerned about the purity of their semiotic environment. You are going to accomplish NOTHING against the TERFs this way.

@frameacloud WOW. I compared the article with its condition before you started working with it and... _damn_. This is an extraordinary work of scholarship. Thank you yet again for taking this on. 😻​

@Austin_Dern I have never beared! (Have never borne?)

*red plastic raccoon sitting behind a desk recapitulating the Spider-Man meme, except their sex drive is so low they're not even masturbating*

I can't really complain, I have kitties and Europa Universalis 4 and an amazing artist/dragon for partner and a comic and I'm spending the afternoon in a cafe named for a terrible sci-fi comedy.

It's a good life, just right for a bitey exile who needed to be shipped off to the Fake Wildlife Refuge. It just ain't exactly Burning Man and it ain't exactly Plan A, and those feelings that I've missed the last train to Ecstatic Cosmic Love-Pulse-Matrix Synergy with a community of like-minded animal types.

I'll be OK. I'm always OK.

@Phorm YOU HAVE NO IDEA