I Love That There’s Three Puns In Batten Rouge’s Name. One, It Sounds Like Baton Rouge, A City Built

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

This election was never about anything more to you than your moral purity, was it?

All y'all fuckers when you say you ain't gonna vote

alizalichtxo

I hope everyone will read this and share it. I posted the full piece. Hamza Howidy is a Palestinian from Gaza City. He is an accountant and a peace advocate. I follow Hamza on X and his tweets are very important. Unfortunately, he is being blocked. In his words, “But the protesters aren’t interested in peace. Some of the groups have been blocking Palestinian peace activists like me—and I am from Gaza, the very place they claim to care about! Instead of blocking peace activists, they should be inviting us to join these protests and guide them in the right direction—a place without hatred with a focus on calling for the release of the hostages who have been held captive by Hamas for more than 210 days.”

this panel haunts me. He has no right looking this peaceful. He has no right looking this comforting. And that fucking line. You don’t get to say that Walter. Especially since it’s fucking true

The post in the picture was right after this one on my dash and it fit so well lol

stay the fuck away i'm about to activate my covid vaccine

Children of Gaza who are exposed to a genocidal war from the occupation army without treatment as a result of the siege and closure of the crossings.

أطفال غزة الذين يتعرضون لحرب إبادة جماعية من جيش الاحتلال دون وجود العلاج نتيجة الحصار واغلاق المعابر.

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Donate to Please Help Evacuate Fadi's Family from Gaza, organized by Fadi Sharif

With a heavy heart and a plea for urgent assistance, I am reaching out to you… Fadi Sharif needs your support for Please Help Evacuate Fadi'

Like genuinely. It’s always ideal of course if you can know who you are and what you’re after at a younger age, but if you’re not going to figure that all out in high school, which you probably won’t, your twenties are the PERFECT time to be truly beginning your life. Who the hell is calling people who might have just moved out of their parents’ house a couple years ago “old”?

legitimately the deluge of messaging women/girls are subjected to all their lives about how their teens and twenties are their "best years" is heinous psychic terrorism on a mass scale. not a coincidence that women are primed to believe that they're going to be "past their prime" and deteriorating like fucking spoiled milk right at a point in their lives at which they're likely to be only just beginning to truly come into their own

How did you get out?

Sorry for going missing without a trace guys, I got eaten by a frox on my last delivery run. It was not a pleasant experience.

Glory to Master Kohga.

you know i'm something of a civil engineer myself