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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Conspiracies that require absolute lock tight secrecy to function at a basic level aren’t generally tenable to be sustained for longer than a handful of years at a time at most. Somebody always fucks up or basically was just lucky nobody checked for awhile. The nessesity of any large scale collaboration creates inefficiencies and potential error points in the system. Even the best of the best spy agencies fuck up and get caught rather routinely, particularly when operating on their home soil. A lot of investigative journalists accidentally trip over stuff all the time but have good faith arrangements (or in some places laws) to not disclose the active manoeuvres of the state to the public.

    It’s just really hard for humans in general to accept that events that effected them or things they care about very deeply personally weren’t somehow also grand in design. Grocking sometimes it really is just random chance or stupid mishandling is not something we’re well wired to handle. Stories of all powerful conspiracies masterminding the world scratch that itch… But logistically speaking the conspiracy aspect is completely unnecessary. If someone is trying to blame a nebulous bogeymen who exists as nameless, numberless ultimately wealthy but also totally off the books super spies… chances are they are just trying to capitalize on making you feel flattered, smart and empowered by something “only you are smart enough to believe” - while feeding you bullshit they can personally profit from in some way with you none the wiser.






  • It’s bonkers that you have to actively sign up for it. Canada had conscription on the books as an available tool but like… you never actively signed on or were penalized for not doing that paperwork. In 2021 they ended all mandatory military service and two months ago they removed conscription entirely. Not that it’s possible for conscription to not come back as technically it’s not actively banned, but if it did it would have to be written and implemented as law entirely from scratch and be re subject to the full process of new constitutional challenge and could now be subject to gender discriminations to strictly men as required by current civil rights .

    There’s something about coercing someone to sign their name to paper to register for conscription that feels wrong to me that just accepting a call to conscription doesn’t. Like they want to reduce your resistance to it by making it “voluntary”.




  • Democrats are bad at marketing because a lot of them come from the school of political jousting. It’s easy to lose touch with what the regular person believes politics is rather than the reality of the system where you can’t make solid promises because things can go very wrong and playing the game means setting up long term strategy where best case scenario you have to suck short term losses. They are mostly invested in long term preservation of the system so over promising and under delivering is a held fear. In vulgar terms it is shitting where ideologically eat.

    Republicans however basically promise the moon the sun and the stars and then when it doesn’t happen they just rile up their base with anti-federal sentiments to make them rabid. There’s no brakes on the anger machine which means there isn’t a cohesive long term strategy. It’s whatever does the job right here and now so they can as a group benefit off the short term gains. It’s why so many of them are individually crashing and burning. No exit strategy - just commitment to scalp what you can out of the system and ditch before you get consequences. They know they can basically say anything and get what they want.

    It’s a major FUBAR situation and Democrats are only now learning how to publicly perform a sense of political urgency.






  • While some of the posters are tackling the loss of constitutional rights through judicial limitations of those rights… Which is part of the design of those rights… I would like to highlight that you are correct in pointing out some unique flaws in the American system. Utilizing non-violent drug convictions to deny voting rights targets vulnerable populations and make your voting base generally comprised of wealthier individuals and exaggerates the power of racialized police targeting. Both the US and the UK have this… But not all democracies practice this. Many countries have zero restrictions based on felony conviction or imprisonment. The intersection of drug use, rights and the churches involvement in 12 step programs are also not living up to a lot of modern discussions of ethics or the separation of church and state implied in the design of the US.

    Practice and design are two different things. Canada does not have a specific division of Church and state anywhere in the body of law. On paper its got an official religion. In practice however it is incredibly secular and most of the citizens believe whole heartedly that religion has no business in government which is backed by a constitutional freedom of religion. The use of 12 step programs is being challenged and dismantled as a breech of these rights. ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5391650 )

    The 2A rights particularly are more difficult to engage with using international comparison because there are only four democratic countries that have a specific constitutional right to bear arms and two impose further restrictions and deference to law inside the body of right itself. The only countries with so broad a written constitutional right to bear arms is the US and Guatemala. Other countries that guarantee those rights do so inside their body of regular law which means that right is not elevated. It can be more easily ammended and changed by sitting bodies and it interacts with criminal law and licencing programs more fluidly.

    This structural difference is important. It is supposed to provide additional protections. However the cultural nature of guns is under public challenge. The US isn’t nessisarily playing by it’s intended design because in part from a written standpoint the 2A is a mess. The issue with old democracies is that they were kind of in Beta and the wording of those laws do not match the modern standardized code that comprises the body of active civil and criminal law and that leaves more than normal room for personal interpretation. The cultural nature to hold the constitution as a holy document that cannot be updated for function sake for mostly sentimental reasons means that you basically don’t get the last word on these things or a solid grasp of whether something is constitutional until a Supreme Court majority interprets the archaic document in basically whichever way they please. There are logistical issues with treating law like a precious artwork instead of a practical tool.



  • And that’s fine. I do what I do because I have a mentality of non-fungibility. There aren’t simply more fish in the sea, this is my person. There’s not another one out there for me.

    There isn’t anything ethically wrong with someone with a more flexible approach to romance or someone who has a hard boundry. Not everyone is down for a sacrifice at that level for another person - and that is okay, not everyone is deserving of being the recipient of that kind of sacrifice just as everyone isn’t nessisarily capable of making that kind of sacrifice. If you are only kind of happy with your relationship then that’s not enough it has to be deep. It isn’t nessisarily easy, it doesn’t get easier and it might require daily conviction. It is a vulnerable space too. If you don’t have absolute trust it’s not going to work and absolute trust comes with intense emotional risk.

    But on the other hand of things if your partner is dead set on doing this, you love them in a holistic way, you’re in a stable environment and you are at any level unsure of your ability to be attracted to them… you could probably afford to try. You might actually surprise yourself with be how you are okay then you thought you would be - and you can set the expectation at the beginning of the process that you are unsure of yourself and don’t know if it’s something you can do so they know and weigh the risks as part of their transition. Not all transitions are 100%. Trans people are often very calculated about what they choose to pursue based on what they personally value out of life in a more general sense. Not everyone goes for every option and the reasons behind them are intensely personal value judgements that involve way more than just the dysphoria/euphoria hits. I think way too many people peace out of things in general before they try or fully understand something and miss out because they built molehills into mountains. The process of transition isn’t lightning fast. You have time to think, to adjust, to compromise and if it really isn’t working for you then you will be absolutely sure that it’s not for you.

    It all depends on your personal estimation of the value of the relationship you have going and how open you are to the process of self exploration to test your hypothesis about yourself against an actual real life situation. Because none of us know ourselves half so well as we think we do.


  • As a trans masculine non-binary person it’s more of personal conversation. My partner isn’t into masculine body types so my transition ended up being purely social because my partner does more on a daily basis to contribute to my happiness then the comfort of being in a body that doesn’t make me feel like shit daily. It’s a bit like having a pet allergy but deciding that you can live with feeling like someone poured sand into your sinuses every day rather than giving up your furry best friend. For all purposes though our relationship is coded and treated as though I am my specified gender. We are effectively culturally a same sex couple. Neither of us use female terms for my junk and he doesn’t claim to be straight. We do joke he is “queer by association” however.

    But what I am doing counts as a full transition.

    In regards to the what you give up situation it’s all rather dependant on how adverse you are and whether someone in your relationship is able to give a little and how much you value and ultimately how non-fungible the relationship is to you… Because - just putting it out there - strap-ons do exist.