cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7780189

I will try not to reveal much personal information in order to maintain privacy.

Anyway, I've known Alex for most of my life, they were pretty good for most of it.

In recent years, they've gone down the MAGA pipeline, and it's gotten worse and worse over the years.

At this point: about every day they talk about illegal immigrants and Trump, often even making jokes about it.

They talked about it so much, and I tried to tell them the truth (such as that most undocumented aren't criminals, they can't migrate legally, etc.) and even encouraged them to do research about it, but they refused.

Here's where things start to get crazy:

In recent times, anything they see that goes against their worldview is called "fake news" while they literally unironically called Fox News a reliable source. (Another family member made fun of them for "only looking at Fox News," not knowing how right they were.)

They sta

But like, what's use if grammar if you don't also know spelling and vocabulary? Are there British kids who just go around saying "period, exclamation point, ellipses!"

And I will refuse to learn to code

See the previous post for more info.

Things I'll be sending up:

printed small FALGSC flag

hexbear logo, possibly physical

mack the knife poem by Bertolt Brecht

images: Belly_Beanis's spacebeanis, AstroStelar's "Someday I'll Go To Space", and Deinonychus's curry-space emoji, incremental_anarchist's photo of Gerard way and an image of David Bowie/Wheatley

usernames: oscardejarjayes, cosecantphi, isame, Coolkidbozzy, MikeyChaz, WellTheresYourCobbler

Link to Pitbull - Give Me Everything ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, Nayer

If anyone else has something they want me to send up, reply with it.

The launch got pushed back a little, so I've got a fair amount of time to add what you want (the "real" payloads basically done already). Launches are basically never on time, lol.

If anyone wants proof, I'm perfectly willing to DM some Blue Origin stuff that shouldn't be public (it probably shouldn't dox me). I'll be responsive for the next d

It seems that as life becomes more expensive, the amount of financial aid available gets drastically reduced. The latest thing to go is Macmillan cancer charity. They used to give struggling cancer patients a grant every 2 years. It had lately gone up to £300 a year. I myself received one of these grants in November 2023, I was due to become eligible for another this November coming and was relying on it. Now I won't get it because Macmillan have decided to save money by no longer giving grants and no longer giving benefit advice to cancer patients (so they can cut staff numbers). Meanwhile there are news reports that they are hiring more managers on inflated salaries.

My local council used to give a £150 cost of living grant to low-income people twice a year. It was a lifeline. Then they cut it down to £100. Now they've scrapped it altogether. Why? Because:

The government decided to cut winter fuel allowance. They used to give all Old Age Pensioners the winter fuel al

It’s an arraignment for a 4 year old misdemeanor warrant out of a neighboring county (criminal trespassing). It’s a good sign that they let me out and gave me a court date, when they could have just held onto me, but idk. I’m scared.

I hate that some racist Karen is going to become a millionaire for being racist on camera. And this has happened many times before. Meanwhile I am sitting in a fast food place after spending $13 for some deep-fried slop served to me by people who are probably making $12/hr.

I've been unemployed for a while, using Wall Street to keep bills paid, but honestly I have no interest in working for anyone else at this point. This whole life is a huge scam! How is any of this fair?!? The evil people are celebrated, the worst companies get the highest valuations, the bad guys not only win, but they get ahead of us honest folks. I feel like I woke up in opposite land.

I do a lot of housework, work on my own projects, and am constantly working on self improvement. But those don't have a paycheck attached so I guess I'm a useless, lazy bum according to society.

I'm tired of all this.

fall in

fall in love

fall in love again

fall in love again and again

fall in love again and again

fall in love again and again

My sister recently married into a Central American family and my mother-in-law gave me a bunch of tamales, but I accidentally left them at my Dad's place. I got them today and he admitted he ate one but said the "outer layer was really stringy and tough".

Thing is I'm 90% sure I've had tamales with this man before.

Bitch if I wanted the robot, I’d ask it myself (well, I’d ask the Chinese one)! I’m asking you!

If a creepy British lady forced me to remember my ex from when I lived in an artist loft, that would be the darkest shit ever.

Washington State, Amerikkka

We moved into a unit that was unfinished with only being told that it wasn't renovated. When we moved in, we didn't have function light bulbs in many places, pantry was broken, not cleaned, and had a huge gaping hole at the base of the roof. Also, the carpet had been peed all over by the previous tenant's cat and it smelled awful. I even offered to lay down hard flooring for free if they removed the carpet because I didn't want my baby crawling around on cat pee. Instead they just cleaned it and I'm sure you cat lovers here know, you can't get that out.

Now, we just thought we could push through it bc my wife didn't want to move again after just giving birth a few weeks after we moved. It's been 8 months and if the fixes took longer than 5 minutes they never did them. Our electrical was so poor we kept tripping breakers running more than one small AC because our entire upstairs was tied to a single 20 amp for EVERYTHING (yikes)! Thats 3 rooms and a bathroo

I'm kinda looking forward to liberals busting out the "Miss me yet?" bumper stickers but with Biden

Seriously it's often the tiniest little thing, like the margins are 2mm too small or a spreadsheet was filled in a certain method. I've had convos with teachers where I ask them "hey do you mind if I do it slightly differently", they go "OK", and then 10 minutes later a manager comes and asks me to do it the original way. Like fine, but why the fuck didn't the original teacher just ask me. I'm the most gentle and flexible person I know, I literally haven't had an loud argument at work since I before 2000. I'm not gonna have it out over this issue with you.

How the fuck is telling the manager not considered snitching with some people?

It was an art forum but super edgy and toxic. They would be horrible to any new artist and if they didn't improve quickly, they would continue to bully. They would even do the lolcow thing with some people. They hated deviantart because they felt it was too soft.

It was also populated with professional artists from the games/movies industry. So you would have these industry leads shitting on literal children for drawing poorly.

I know a few of them splintered and started conceptart.org, which tried to be more professional about it. But the owner and his friends used it to grift. Eventually the owner (who started a production art company an used the site for recruiting) got accused of being a creep. I just remember their attitudes and the way they would present themselves like rockstars.

Anyways, I saw someone mention SomethingAwful and it got me thinking about all the old forums from the 00s that, in retrospect, were fucking horrible.

Also LUElinks. That was more like right on

Update from a old post: https://hexbear.net/post/2164701 & https://hexbear.net/post/2374926

So, we fucking won. Like there is no way on paper to conceive of it in anyway but a fucking WIN. Particularly for those we fought hardest for. I don't want to list the things we got, because it's specific, but we got several things we didn't expect and a bit more.

I'm so proud of all the people who agitated and negotiated fucking HARD, and all the amazing people on the strike line. I met people the buildings architecture literally prevents me from meeting, and the more of us this met, the stronger the solidarity on the line. Of course we saw far less of those who are paid well, and they resented the strike, but fuck them, the building closed because of us.

Now, the backlash. Many of us have lost our jobs or face even stricter management. The local exec is compromised from above, and it was purged of anyone good. The workers still there are being squeezed hard, as the higher ups continue to