♓️🔫😡 @courtney@friend.camp

it's supposed to be 112 fucking degrees this weekend. this kinda horrifying anthropogenic climate change can only mean one thing -- one of you still hasn't switched to energy efficient LED bulbs yet!

fess up! the corporations have done all they can but it's up to you to fix it now!

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, among the US' most powerful #labor unions, announces a nation-wide plan to unionize #Amazon. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akg7pp/the-teamsters-announce-coordinated-nationwide-project-to-unionize-amazon

then you have gary gygax coming in and throwing all that out of the window in favour of charts showing exactly how many 'noncombatants' can be expected to be found in an orc village and a note saying its okay to genocide them because they're born evil (gygax was also catholic, but the problem of god having created something that can't choose good doesn't seem to have been as pressing to him). it's worth noting he does this to everything in d&d: in the ad&d monster manual even 'beaver, giant' (who are intelligent and capable of using language) has a note about how much their children can be sold for after you've killed the parents. nowhere does it say 'this is colonialism: the game' but that definitely seems to be how gygax expected it to be played

tolkien's orcs are built on a kernel of a good idea — 'this is what the military-industrial complex makes you into', more or less — on which the racist and islamophobic (the orcs being very much tolkien's version of the 'moors' and 'saracens' depicted in medieval epic poetry) elements are laid; and it's the former, not so much the latter, that make them work in lotr's narrative. tolkien never seems to be sure what to do with the orcs: he went back and forth on the questions of where they came from & if they have souls (being a thomist catholic, to tolkien anything with a soul should be capable of choosing good), and lotr oscillates between humanising them (like in the conversation between two orcs sam overhears) and having the heroes do war crimes on them

"Some 649,000 retail workers put in their notice in April, the industry’s largest one-month exodus since the Labor Department began tracking such data more than 20 years ago. Overall, nearly 3 percent of the U.S. workforce - or roughly 4 million workers - quit in April."
- San Diego Union-Tribune

coming soon as a new Twitter main character: a dunce that was super excited to go shopping in-person again as the pandemic slows, but sadly finds Nordstrom to be a bit messier than they recall.

@garbados mandatory best pupper

I've discovered the single greatest article opener of all time (from Gay Life, 1986)

bringing this back LOL

I've never read or watched Puzo's Godfather in full so I've placed a library hold on the ebook. I swear it's not just because I want to read the "Lucy's cavernous vagina" subplot https://the-toast.net/2014/10/09/please-dont-forget-american-classic-godfather-important-subplot-big-vagina/

on this day we celebrate St. Patrick driving the dads out of Ireland

Westley's commitment to service kink was so strong that he eventually became the Dread Pirate Roberts

please also consider that "good night Wesley, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning" is Extremely Ripe for Problematic Gay Interpretations

Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my love no more, no more with me!
We two together no more_!
8.

The aria sinking;
All else continuing—the stars shining,
The winds blowing—the notes of the bird continuous echoing,