This is why “rainbow capitalism” is fine with me. Not just because I grew up and lived in a time period when this kind of gesture would have been unthinkable; not just because it shows that companies (whose attention is always on their bottom line) see the way society is moving and choose which is the more bigger and profitable side to be on (although both of those are also good reasons!)
Because I want bigots to be uncomfortable. I want them to be reminded daily that they are losing. I want them to not be able to buy beer or go to a movie or eat a burger without it being RUBBED IN THEIR FACE that they are sad and pathetic and no one likes them. I want them to have things they love gradually stripped away from them until they are reduced to only buying weird bible-themed chips that taste like sawdust. I want them to realize how much they are losing out on by holding on to their bigoted beliefs, and how much it costs them, and have that knowledge eat them up inside while they drink their off-brand Discount Joe’s Root Beer because they haven’t heard anything about Discount Joe supporting The Gays yet, so it’s fine.
This this this.
Rainbow capitalism does not mean that international mega-corporations are on our side. They very much are not; they are on the money side.
It’s not that they have decided “oh hey, the queers have money.” The queers have always had money. The communities of outcasts and freaks and oppressed minorities have always been willing to focus their resources on their active supporters.
But until recently, “put queer labeling on your products” has meant “the mainstream will avoid you.” Sure, there were queer dollars to chase, but it wasn’t worth losing straight dollars to get them.
They didn’t dip their labels in the rainbow glitter pool until it was profitable. Until most of their customers - who are most definitely straight and oblivious to queer issues entirely - would not care if they have a month of rainbow-themed merchandise. Would either ignore it or find it entertaining.
Which means: Every MAGAt you see yelling about “never gonna buy this crap again! Gonna boycott everything with a rainbow on the label! Gonna boycott every company I can find that has a DEI tab on their website!”… is part of the loud-but-insignificant minority.
If Budweiser and Coors thought that most Republicans would actually stop drinking them, they wouldn’t have rainbows on the bottles.
You can’t trust beer companies to be allies. They are absolutely not our friends, not our supporters. But you can damn well trust their marketing departments to go after profits.
”getting thicker skin” is great in theory but I think for some people “get better at handling your thin skin” is gonna be way more helpful advice. I have strong emotional reactions to criticism and they might never go away, but i can continue to try and handle each situation maturely and that’s the important part. Sometimes irrational feelings are chronic and living with them is better than trying to beat yourself up into not having them.
Here is a link to the US Restrict Act (commonly known as the TikTok ban) as it is currently written.
Please read the actual bill and share even if you do not live in the United States. The precedents this piece of legislation would set would have far reaching impacts on how the internet is used for everyone in the future.
We’ve got a problem here. I know most people here probably hate tiktok, and for some good reasons, but believe it or not there’s actually a good amount of good on tiktok too.
But this isn’t about banning tiktok. That’s just a cover for this, given power thanks to Meta (Facebook) lobbyists pretty much paying the United States Government.
For the tldr: This act, while saying it’s to insure American’s personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.
It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem “a security risk” while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement.
It allows them the power to gather American’s data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.
It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.
It prevents you from using a VPN as it’s seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you.
Failure to abide by these “guidelines” can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.
And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.
And that’s not even everything it does. This isn’t about banning tiktok. It’s about control, taking away our freedom of speech, censorship, and selfish monetary gain. This doesn’t just affect tiktok users. This affects ALL Americans, small businesses, communities, and even those that use American online products, like Tumblr.
The US is turning into a fascist regime, where they are slowly but surely stripping away our rights and freedoms even more than they already have. And it terrifies me.
If you’re not an American, please share this. We already have a hard enough time knowing what goes on with those in other countries. This could make it all the more difficult.
And if you are an American, share this, then contact your state representative and your state senators. Email, phone, even mailing a physical letter for crying out loud. You can search “who is my representative and senators?” on Google, bing, duck-duck-go, or whatever, and it’ll take you to where you can find that out and even how to contact them.
Calmly and professionally tell them that not only do you NOT support the TikTok ban(since that is the cover they are using), but you DO NOT support the Restrict Act.
And let them know that if this bill is to pass, you will be spending all your time and energy supporting their opponents in the PRIMARIES. They do not expect Americans to contact them about this, so not only will they see us going out of our way to contact them, but by saying you’ll be supporting their OPPONENTS, they’ll have to either listen or have to spend thousands of not millions of dollars in campaigning so they don’t lose their nice day paychecks, and to them this is all about money so it’ll hit them where it hurts.
It doesn’t matter what political party you’re on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.
And while we’re at it? Review bomb anything related to meta it Facebook. Meta started all this because they couldn’t compete with tiktok or buy it, so they paid lobbyists to convince congress to ban tiktok so they didn’t HAVE to compete.
And here’s the kicker… Many people of congress actually bought stock in Meta RIGHT BEFORE this all started. They are LITERALLY trying to manipulate the market for themselves. So let them burn.
It won’t even necessarily ban TikTok, it just gives the govt power to do stuff like that.
this is the place to post about your knowledge and i’m thinking about my little royal sunangel (from the coquette hummingbird family) google deep-dive and i wanted to show you guys these rare little bastards!
this is a male (left) and female (right) sunangel, they’re sexually dichromatic (different colors indicate different sexes) and so, so teensy! they’re roughly 4.3-4.7 inches/10-12 cm long from their beak to their tail!
they’re as little in number as they are little in size, too. they are exclusively found in the bordering andes area ecuador and peru share, where there are subtropical elven forests (because everything about them deserves a pretty name). there are only 8 known sunangel habitats within this area. when documentation started, around the start of the 2010s, there were 12. the estimated population of this endangered bird is anywhere from 3-7 thousand. the royal sunangel population has been steadily — and scarily — declining since their discovery in 2009, and this is largely attributed to the deforestation due to frequent forest fires and the conversion of their habitats into agricultural fields.
it feels like the royal sunangel JUST got discovered, and the scientific community has only JUST started noting down how unique they are among their hummingbird family and birds at large, and now their delicate little frames and stubborn commitment to their habitat range might lead them to death’s door before i reach middle age and have the credentials or cause to observe them myself. ornithologists love these little guys because they feed in these little circuits so no two (super territorial) males may meet, and when they feed, they either stalk and eventually eat insects or take nectar from shrubs and flowers using the punctured feeding holes of some other animals’ labor. also, you know how hummingbirds famously hover while they feed? these hummingbirds are the only ones who don’t. they perch and relax (as is only sensible)!
If you find them as charming as I do, or if you have a heart, you’re probably asking yourself how we go about conserving these birds in the first place.
well, on the agricultural front (which is more heavily an ecuadorian obstacle for these habitats), the situation feels more complicated. ecuador’s market relies on agricultural exports and i don’t see how tumblr users could make the government prioritize sustainability over profits. There are already conservation groups trying to fight that good fight and buy properties on these fragile biodiverse lands before agricultural companies can (you can punch in neoprimate.org for a good one, my link function isn’t working on here) and if you can donate a little to these initiatives you’d be contributing to the protection of tons of endangered species in the local areas.
another way to prevent habitat loss is by funding efforts to prevent the forest fires that frequently wipe out habitats around this area, especially those in peru (the area with the majority of sunangel habitats). there are legal and activist groups putting energy towards that that’s linked above, but another subtle improvement is to provide local farmers and residents with fire weather forecast devices. this way, everyone will be on the same page, and know that if it’s an arid/risky day to light a fire, they should act conscientiously. these devices are being circulated and groups are educating about and encouraging them to the local communities and could use some help in these links. below, i have a screenshot from an organization that doesn’t have a clear donation link for me, but i heavily encourage supporting, because ultimately i think local, sustainable, community-based and indigenous-prioritizing efforts are the way to go.
thanks so much for listening to my little spiel about these cuties, and i hope this information brightens your day and motivates you to care about the beautiful things we can protect. 💙💜
Esther | she/her | 21 | questioning | Not NT or American | here to post about things I like (including cats and art) and important real world stuff. no TERFs or bigots of any kind allowed. I'll block you if I don't want you interacting with my blog.
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