I have a Substack and a Ghost (an alternative that’s better in some ways and worse in others). The benefit to Substack is that growth on there is very possible with little participation in the social media like aspect they have, Notes. Ghost, meanwhile, has made growth incredibly difficult since they don’t have that social media feature and you need people to actually sign up for your site instead of just clicking subscribe. It’s kinda frustrating because I genuinely don’t want to support Substack in any way but I write about videogames for almost 150 subscribers with continued and consistent growth and leaving that would be…annoying. What I’ve ended up doing is simply refusing to do any paid subscriptions through Substack so they don’t get any money from me and instead have made a buy me a coffee and will eventually make a patreon.

There’s also just the reality right now that most of these types of places have some Nazis on them since Nazis are now just chilling out in the open as opposed to hiding in their basements like they used to. There’s only so much you can do if you want to be on the internet as a creator.

Interesting how, if the OP’s text is indictive of the original version of the article, The Guardian had to change their first sentence from saying Trump placed his hand on the bible to saying just him taking his oath of office since he didnt place his hand on a bible.

Especially since “later” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here given that it was literally within days.

In fall 2022, ahead of the midterm elections, Garland opted to freeze both the classified documents and election investigations because of what some officials believed was his overly cautious reading of a DOJ policy not to take any public action close to an election.

So fucking fun how this always applies to investigations into Republicans but never into Democrats. We couldn’t possibly be investigating a Republican who isn’t even on the ballot within 60 days of an election but we absolutely can send a letter to congressional Republicans about new emails being discovered in the Hilary Clinton investigation a mere 2 weeks before the election despite willfully knowing it would be leaked.

I genuinely believe that Garland, a known Republican, voted for Trump in 2020 and was upset he didn’t win and knew he was going to be the candidate again so didn’t want to put the fucker in prison. Then went and voted for Trump in 2024.

Fucker should have been fired.

So what they accused Obama of doing in 2010, got it.

Ive been on hrt since 2016, so same. I’ve been stocking up on my estrogen (also switching to injections and lowering my spiro dose, which the higher dose turned out to be needless since my lower dose keeps my T down super low) so that I can at least have that for a year or more. Then there’s DIY. Such lovely conversations to have about losing care because the government doesn’t want us to exist.

I dunno about that, they’ve gotten rid of several anti-trans riders in the past couple of bills, including removing them from the BBB. The Dems in the Senate have almost always unanimously voted against anti trans stuff. Occasionally you’ll get a couple of defectors but usually not.

I imagine one of her stipulations would be to ban all trans healthcare.

Since noone is posting it, here’s a list of the states:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming

So almost entirely red states that went for trump. I live in one of these states right next to an Air Force base. It’ll be terrifying if I go to some places this or next weekend and happen to see National Guard. Fucking nuts.

A lot of the increase in defense spending seems to have been in response to America being ruled by Trump and Europe realizing they can’t rely on us for protection anymore. Trump has talked about leaving NATO. When your strongest ally seems to be backing down from defending you, you’re gonna increase defense spending to make sure you can still defend yourself.

It’s so fucking annoying they use this “vote as a household” thing as some kind of way to say that they aren’t saying that only men should be able to vote. But if you make one single connection to another belief they have, that men are the head of the household and decide how it is run and what happens inside it, you can see their real beliefs.

Republican women, and especially evangelical christian republican women, are openly advocating for giving up their right to vote even if they don’t realize it (they usually do).

He was at the RNC last year and ripped off his shirt to reveal a MAGA or Trump shirt (I think it was one of those but it was definitely pro Trump even if it wasn’t directly MAGA or Trump text). So he was definitely an asshole. Even for more reasons than just being MAGA.

“let’s divide the LGBTQ community by making the T kill themselves or be forcefully detransitioned so then we can go after the ones that are left afterwards”

They want people like me and those I love to kill ourselves because it’s cheaper for them than sticking us in camps then they can get to going after the gays. The depressing reality is that there is going to be a sharp rise in trans suicides soon, especially if the ban on Medicaid hrt coverage goes through. Many say death before detransition and they fucking mean it.

And it’s hard to exist in this country as a trans person right now and not just be terrified and feel like taking the easy way out. Even if it’s what they want.

I think the biggest problem with your point is that these specific religions have core tenants that center around converting people and “saving” them. Because of that people will always be able to use whatever rationale they want to justify how they’re trying to save people when they’re bigoted towards them.

You might say that religion and faith isn’t the problem, and you’re right that it shouldn’t be the problem. But right now, it is the problem. Right now religion is used around the world to purely spread bigotry under the guise of “saving” the people they’re being bigoted towards.

In order for religion to not be used this way they would require massive reforms that would help push them towards a more genuinely accepting existence. But that won’t happen. At least not in any of our lifetimes. These religions are so old that they get to move as slow as they fucking want to when it comes to modernization.

Religion is being used constantly as justification for being horrible people and allows followers to think they have the literal creator of the Universe behind them. There is no world that exists in the next hundred or several hundred years that does not continue to have religion be used for horrible horrible things.

So fuck it. Are there some good people in there who just happen to believe in God? Absolutely. But religion as an organized structure is really fucking over modern society.

I got so fucking excited seeing this that I went to see if I could buy tickets only to find out that no, in fact, it is not the 10th anniversary this year. That it was the 10th anniversary and in theaters almost 2 years ago. I am now very disappointed.

Ah yes, very smart, let’s use a nuke to blow up a nuclear facility. There couldn’t possibly be a much larger explosion and spread of radiation because of that.

“Hey, listen, we love you,” he said of the message he thinks should be sent to young trans athletes. “We want you to be part of our community, but this is just the one place you can’t play, and let’s find other activities for you to be involved.”

We love you, but only so much. Sometimes you have to understand that you’re less than others, that they’re more important than you, inherently.

I write on Substack about Videogames and I would fucking hate to have my articles, that I spend a lot of time on, be in the Washington Post. I hate that place. Even the article series I wrote that is significantly research based and took me a couple months to put together and release and that has led to me writing a book to go into more detail I wouldn’t want to have in that trash piece.

On fucking point. My mom, who has seen me deal with my MS and all it’s myriad of symptoms has still told me time and again I should try yoga to help with things that are just how my brain is damaged. I fucking hate cherry picked evidence and wish education was more accessible so more people with disabilities could more easily become doctors.

I think one of the biggest issues standing in the way of widespread acceptance of trans people is generally not understanding what we actually do or are like.

So like, most people completely misunderstand how hrt works. They think that you do it and only really get a better mental space. But that’s not true at all. Everyone I have known on hormones get so many changes. Our hairlines can change, our bone density decreases or increases to match the gender your hormones match with, our bodies redistribute fat, our skin changes, even our body smells change, we lose or gain muscle mass to again come in line with whatever our hormones match. Our body chemicals change. Estrogen can decrease the size of your feet by a size and can literally make your hips grow and change how your weight is distributed. Testosterone can make you grow a full bushy as fuck beard and a such a deep voice you’ll never know the person ever had a higher pitched one. Everything changes on hormones and cis people just don’t seem to understand that at all. I’ve known many trans people who transition so well that other trans people don’t believe they’re trans and think they’re cis.

Add on that they don’t understand bottom surgery and it just gets annoying as fuck. The fact that cutting dicks off is still how so many cis people think femme bottom surgery works is so fucking infuriating and it happens when leftists reference it too.

I think if more cis people simply knew trans people and were willing to discuss with them about what being trans is like then there would be more general acceptance.