i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”
no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.
you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.
people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.
the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.
the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.
when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.
and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.
i wasnt going to do this but ive seen people who arent in dndj say “i caused the ad war” and now i have to do this because i need people to know when im responsible for something, fuck you. all times in est
12:00: rad @raddical notices a completely empty ad slot on mspa. because of the way project wonderful works, although the minimum bid is $5/day, the absence of a preceding bid means the slot can be had for as little as 10 cents/day. rad, me, and robbie @kidgecko (but mostly rad) collaborate on an ad, and we buy the bottom slot within the hour. the top is still occupied by some yaoi webcomic. we want the top slot, but arent yet willing to shell out the cash to take it.
2:00: @official-spec buys an ad slot. in europe/canada/etc, the yaoi ad is outbid and pushed off the page entirely, so specs and our ad share the space. however, in the us, spec outbids dirkjohn but not the yaoi webcomic, so we are pushed off the page entirely. after some “is it worth it” debate we up our bid and put the dirkjohn ad back up. for some reason (i think one of us matched yaois bid?) the yaoi ad is pushed off. spec and dirkjohn share the page for a few hours, but its asshole time in the east coast (the only time zone that matters) so nobody really notices. ad price is $8.
6:00: we get a notification that dndj has been bumped off the page entirely by an ad for the r/homestuck discord server. normally we would just shrug this off and displace the cheaper ad – but r/homestuck is a bunch of scumsucking racist shitheads, and i want them to die, so we re-engineer our bid to ONLY occupy the top slot and buy them out. r/homestuck immediately retaliates. this begins a bidding war that lasts 2 hours. note that at this time, ONLY the top slot is switching hands – spec still occupies the bottom. r/homestuck finally backs off when we raise the ad price over $200. the bottom slot is still $8.
8:00: rad makes an executive decision to buy out specs slot. now we have both. top slot is still $200, the bottom slot is $10.
12:00 pm: r/homestuck comes back for $220. dirkjohn still occupies the bottom slot, but rad sets up a gofundme to keep it online.
1:00 pm: its now normal person time on the east coast, meaning people are awake and starting to take notice. i, however, am an asshole, so im asleep. im going off of discord timestamps for this so my account may be shaky: someone buys an ad slot for their fanventure, and @loadgaper buys an ad slot to let us know that nobody in homestuck is cis and terezi deserved better. the bottom slot rotates between these two and dirkjohn for a while. the top ad is still $220, the bottom ad is $38.
2:00 pm: “its less important for me right now that dirkjohn is displayed, than that [r/homestuck] is NOT displayed“ – me, on discord, 2:04 pm est. we buy out the top slot, but instead of getting knocked off the site entirely, r/homestuck gets pushed to the bottom. after some debate we decide to let it stay there, because at this point we still know the fear of god and dont want to drive the price up something crazy. additionally, somebody buys a leaderboard ad somewhere on the site for this at less than a dollar. i didnt monitor the leaderboards after this so im not sure if anything went on there. both slots are now over $220.
3:00 pm: r/homestuck rescinds their bids entirely. because of the way project wonderful works, prices are now WAY down – were paying only slightly more than the second-highest bidders (who i think at this point are still spec and the yaoi webcomic). both slots are around $7-8 each.
4:00 pm: @loadgapers ad returns in the bottom slot. we agree that it is a good ad and that, as long as it doesnt displace ours, it should stay. prices stay roughly the same.
6:00 pm: nell and robbie fight to the death. robbie places a textless image of ritsu kageyama for $40; nell retaliates with her original ad; ritsu comes back for over $50; nell comes back with a price so high she refuses to disclose it, which turns out to be $280 when robbie displaces it with this monstrosity for $300. dirkjohn is still in the top slot.
7:00 pm: nell rescinds her bids and robbie, an agent of chaos, places this ad for $80. it only stays online for a few minutes before nell places a new and improved version of her ad for $250. which is all well and good, except for the fact that r/homestuck comes back with a vengance, buying out the top slot for $500. this cannot be allowed to go on. they have to die. another back-and-forth bidding war ensues until dirkjohn drives the price up to $1100, and r/hiveswap finally retreats, because in addition to being bigots, theyre fucking cowards. bottom slot is still at $300.
9:00 pm: approximately, because i was in voicechat and theres no timestamps. @kanaya maintains control of the bottom ad slot, but exchanges it for a vriskan ad. dirkjohn and vriskan sharing the mspa homepage is a landmark pinnacle of gay and lesbian solidarity, and the ads remain on the page for the rest of the day. we finally take dirkjohn offline at midnight.
People in badly written fantasy stories will usually talk about the major historical events of their world and how magic has affected the lives of everyone, but ask a person in the real world to describe the effects of WWI and the invention of the combustion engine on modern life and they’d probably couldn’t tell you.
Broke: every character seems to know everything about the history and lore of the world
Woke: most characters can’t tell you much besides the basics but there are some that can tell you more complete but specific parts
H Y P E R W O K E: Every character tells you a wildly different version of the past and what effects it has on the present, ranging from the government is an imperialist, colonizing body obsessed with power to the one true ruler was sent by the gods and has smote down anyone who got in his way to “Oh you mean Jeff, the quote unquote tyrant of the west? I knew that guy! He was alright, never did anything wrong really just wanted some soup.” And there’s no way to tell what actually happened
Our capacity for love increases with each person we cross paths with throughout our lives, and with each moment we spend with those people. But, too often we neglect that part of ourselves in favor of others. And by the time we realize just how important it is, we find ourselves with fewer folks around to practice with. But the seven of you have something that nobody else ever had: time. All the time in the world. Time enough to grow indescribably close. Time enough to learn how to care for each other, how to allow yourselves to be cared for.
having been written by THIS guy:
[pictured: screenshot from Griffin’s amiibo Corner: The Final Tasting. Griffin is shoving a Splatoon figurine fully into his mouth, emotionless and dead-eyed as he stares into the camera.]
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