If you are thinking about it on paper, the bus running every half hour doesn’t sound so bad, until you’re waiting at the stop and you miss a bus or it’s delayed. Then you’re waiting a very, very long time. To people who never take transit, that’s probably fine. Why do you care. To people who only take transit, they’re expecting it, it’s baked in their lives. But the important part, what really impacts our cities, is what happens to people for whom transit is an option.
The spiral goes like this. You go to take the bus instead of driving, thinking “I’m going to o have a couple drinks” or “I don’t want to worry about parking where I’m going.” So you take bus. First bus is right on time. But then you transfer from your neighborhood line to the line that takes you where you actually want to go. And your bus is delayed. And it only comes every 30 minutes. And then you’re waiting, 40 minutes later, wondering where your bus is, knowing you could have driven there in 20 minutes.
Why would you ever chose to take a bus again? The bus made you waste precious time on your day off just sitting there. So next time you drive. Ridership goes down. When the transit authority asks for more money for more buses and more drivers, people point to the ridership numbers and say “why should we pay for this instead of paying for our schools/police/baseball stadium/parks/police again (let’s be real that’s who’s taking all the money)?” If we want to increase ridership we need to actually design and fund functional transit networks. If we want people to actually ride the bus we need to make it a better option than driving, which means reliable service, which you don’t get with a bus every 30 minutes.
“Isn’t it weird that [thing humans commonly eat] is poisonous to literally every domesticated animal” I mean, there’s a pretty good chance that [thing humans commonly eat] is at least mildly poisonous to humans, too. One of our quirks as a species is that we think our food is bland if it doesn’t have enough poison in it.
Humans have a really weird mix of mundane superpowers.
We’re not fast and don’t have a lot of natural weaponry but we’re bizarrely tolerant to a broad range of toxins to the point that one toxin is considered a morning necessity for some to perform at work. Gotta love us.
“The average US president has been charged with 1.54 felonies” factoid isn’t true. The average US President has been charged with 0 felonies. Donald trump, who has been charged with 71, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted
Felonies Donld is now up to 79 felonies, for a statistical average of 1.71 felonies per president
If you’ve ever wanted to feel like you belong to a secret society, with the conspiratorial plans and the covert meetings and the knowing glances at the other people who part of it and all, consider trying to unionize your workplace.
You’ll see a flyer in the break room and go to a meeting at a union hall and you’ll be like, hm, I didn’t expect to see that person here, but there they are, and then you’ll see them at work the next day, and you won’t say anything, but you’ll both know. You’ll know.
And then comes the day when you throw off the veil of secrecy and wear the signs of your order openly! Let everyone heed the call! A new day is coming, and the old powers will be overthrown!
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Let me tell you a story.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a “master-planned community,” constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don’t exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
I just saw your aro video and in it you said you would like to be spared sympathy because it alienates aromatic people.
But when you described that in your video that's exactly the reaction I had and so I just needed to ask what's a way to process in solidarity when someone says they cannot feel that way?
That’s not… quite correct. What I was talking about there is the tendency of alloromantic people (i.e. people who do feel romantic attraction) to approach the aromantic experience from a place of pity.
So, I say “yeah I don’t feel romantic attraction,” and they respond with something along the lines of “oh that’s such a sad thing, I’m so sorry you are missing out on this.”
And that’s… rather grating, because it treats me as though I am defective in some way, or as though I live through a human experience which is lesser, rather than simply different.
People respond to the idea of not feeling romantic attraction with confusion, disbelief, and incredulity, because culture teaches us that to live without romantic love is to be embittered, lonely, deprived, sad and miserable. And so people pity us, and express their sympathy in the same way you might express sympathy for a bereavement.
Now, the truth of course is that I do feel some longing, some sadness, and an internalized desire to be “normal,” to have the same experience everyone else does. I absolutely do feel that I am missing out, that a part of what it means to be human is closed off to me.
But the source of those feelings is self-pity, the source of those feelings is self-hate and insecurity and a rejection of my own experience. When I feel those things, it’s because I have internalized the idea that my experience is not normal, that there’s something wrong with me which ought to be fixed.
It is miserable to feel that way. I hate feeling that way. Because the rational truth is that I am not broken, I am not abnormal, I am not deprived, I am simply living a different version of the human experience, and I get to have emotional connections and relationships that alloromantic people will never have access to, too.
It has taken me a lot of long, hard work to get to a point where I feel my aromantic nature in neutral terms, where it is not a good thing or a bad thing, but simply a thing. And every time people respond to me with pity, they cut at the foundations of all that work, and invalidate it.
But in answer to your question: All aromantic people are different, we all feel different ways about what it is like to be us. But when it comes to me at least, if you want to express your solidarity with my aromantic experience, treat it as though it is normal. If I tell you I am aromantic, react as though I’ve just commented on the weather, or told you what my favourite color is. Just accept it, and don’t make a thing out of it.
You’re more than welcome to ask questions, or be confused, and you have the right not to instantly understand things, but approach it from the presumptionthat even if you don’t understand it, this is just a normal part of what it means to be human. Because it is.
“we live in an uncaring universe” yeah dude and I live in an uncaring house. and I shit in an uncaring toilet. but do you touch an uncaring lover? do you comfort an uncaring child? do you guide to sleep each night a cold and uncaring self?
“In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don’t, then it doesn’t.” - Brennan Lee Mulligan, Fantasy High S1E17
