(via Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15) by Yao Xiao
words to remember
*GASPS*
Are you goddamn kidding me???
I fucking hate the lack of infrastructure in my country. God.
Dude if I could take a train 400 miles anywhere I would pay 14 dollars just for a seat, never mind all those amenities. Jeez.
Reasons I remind myself I don’t like my country number who knows what
While this is super cool in and of itself, I’d also like to remind people that modern high speed rail (most of which is in China these days) operates at around 200 miles/hour (China’s fastest train actually operates at 370+ mph but that’s an absolute state of the art maglev, the 200 mph number is average rail speed). If we actually invested in these train systems, you wouldn’t even need an overnight ticket to make a 400 mile trip. To put that in an American context, it would allow you to get from New York to Los Angeles (the famous Cannonball Run taken by car enthusiasts for decades) in about 15 hours, which is 10 hours better than the current Cannonball Run record. With that kind of speed, you could take an evening train halfway across the country (Boston to Chicago would be ~5 hours) for a weekend trip.
Trains are not just more convenient (no driving!), but technologically superior to cars.
the weird thing is, when I view my job as some sort of background extra it becomes much more palatable. people go to a library and see me shelving a stack of books in my cardigan and glasses (now with glasses chain!) and they go “yeah, that’s exactly right. that’s how it’s supposed to be in a library.” and for some reason, that’s comforting? the work is whatever, and the customers are customers, but sometimes it feels like I’m being paid just to make sure this places looks right, and I find that very fun.
stop being funnier than me on my own posts
As a librarian, this is exactly how it works
For me, it is 1972 all over again.
And that is why, on the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit. I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.
I fully understood that there could be legal consequences — but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.
i’m sure a lot of people don’t understand how abortion became accessible in canada. much of it is due to one guy, henry morgentaler, a holocaust survivor who came to specialize in family planning medicine in montreal. in 1967, there was a desire to update the 19th century laws on abortion, so morgentaler testified in favour of legalization. women saw this and started asking him for under the table abortions, and he was eventually moved by the sheer amount of horror stories he saw to start performing these in a private clinic. when the trudeau government updated the law in 1969, it failed to increase accessibility for all but the very wealthy, so morgentaler continued to practice in violation of the law.
eventually, the quebec government arrested and tried him. they set him up in front of a jury of working class montreal catholics, confident that they’d have success in villainizing a jewish abortionist. instead, swayed by the passionate testimony of women who’d received abortions, the jury nullified. shockingly, the judges on the quebec appeals court overruled the jury’s acquittal, something virtually unheard of in a common law system. the outcry was so great that the trudeau government was forced to change the law, vacating morgentaler’s conviction and letting him go free from prison. from the moment he was released, morgentaler continued his practice in violation of the law. he was also acquitted every time he was subsequently charged. he even went so far as to open up clinics in other provinces and train students to do the same. eventually, provinces had to stop prosecuting him because of the cost, and the supreme court ultimately struck the law down.
this sort of civil disobedience is the obvious route against the texas law. abortion rights groups in america are extremely well funded and could ensure a steady stream of clinics operating in that state. however, most donors to these groups are very rich. civil disobedience tends to make people realize that if one unjust law can be fought by ignoring it, so can all others. rich donors don’t want people to get used to this because the donors would probably be next in line, so they restrict the fight to the arena of the judicial system, where it’s bound to lose to a conservative majority.
What if we started actively disincentivizing landlords letting real estate stay empty rather than renting at reasonable prices? Like, give them a maximum of three months to get a new tenant in, and then they start accumulating fines for the unused space.
And some similar system to disincentivize the ridiculous airbnb market as well. Make it unprofitable to have homes sitting empty in a city where people with jobs find themselves living in tents. Hell, make it unprofitable to have homes sitting empty anywhere that has a homelessness problem.
The fine? The full rent amount they're asking for. You think $1700/month for a studio apartment is reasonable? Well, until you get someone into that apartment, you're going to be fined that same sum every month.
For Airbnb, a lower cost, but still based on how many nights/month the space is unused, and the fine will be based on the asking price per night.
This is... really, really sensible.
jigglypuffsvevo