I have autism and the word is deeply offensive to me. For all of my young life, it was used as a cudgel to single me out and beat me into social submission. It was used to remind me of my place in the social hierarchy (lower than non-retards, obviously) and as a reason for excluding me or treating me differently from everyone else. It’s just as anecdotal as anything else, but I have many neurodivergent friends and family members with similar histories with the word.

Not seeing the problem with something does not mean there isn’t a problem. In this case, it just means that the problem is not particularly relevant to your own life.

And I don’t know why “idiot” doesn’t have the same sting or modern context around it, but despite its historical use, it simply doesn’t hit the same. I guess it could be that it’s not used so explicitly to identify neurodivegence, so much as it is a way of saying someone didn’t/doesn’t think things through, whereas using “retard” is more like insulting someone’s genetic pull. One label can be unlearned, while the other is a life-sentence. Once retarded; forever a retard.

If the n-word was used to describe people acting stupid would you feel comfortable with that? What if no black people complained about it? Would that make it okay? The degree of severity is clearly different because of the historical context, but it is basically the same thing for a different community. A community that, oftentimes, has far less ability to advocate for themselves and far less ability to mobilize en masse. It’s a word that inherently punches down, and using it does shape the perception of our community as well as just hurt our feelings because we are people that can feel and understand when we are being treated differently.

My b for that rant. It’s just fucked up that people act like getting punched in the kidney doesn’t hurt just because they’ve never been punched in the kidney before. That’s not how it works, and if there was a specific word for denigrating you (“you” as in whoever is reading this tbc) I’m sure many people like you would not like being reminded of what negative bullshit the world at large assumes about them based on something they had no control over. Shit fucking sucks, fullstop.

cut to Alex Jones, imperial march playing in the background, quoting Star Wars villains in a rant about what he imagines doing to anybody he disagrees with

Where are the start and select buttons tho?

This is such a fun and clever way to strengthen inter-generational community. I would love to see something like this where I live!

Judging by how things work in our irl 20XX, I’m gonna guess that he has mad stacks if he can produce sentient fighting robots at the scale and speed he does. People with money like that don’t go to jail. They’re not the poors, duh. That would just be silly!

Given his deep interest in sparking a race war and his prolific lying/endless nonsense jabbering, I’m gonna guess that’s something he has said, but that wouldn’t necessarily make it true. He has said a lot of things, many of which are just as garbage as everything else we know to be in his heart.

Buy, hey! Every cloud has its silver lining! He might be a racist, cult leading, serial killer by proxy, but did you know that he was also almost a Beach Boy? They even recorded some of his songs and I am100% not joking. Rely meks u thenk 🤔

Edit: it only occurred to me you may have been talking about Brand after commenting. And I-oops!

I was not aware of this projected timeline, so thank you for sharing. Still, Canada and Greenland each have a lush of natural resources, and the promise of more down the line (even if it is a good ways down that line), making them desirable assets for people who seek and wish to maintain power.

I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure it’s because, in spite of publicly denying its existence, they are very aware that climate change will make once difficult to tame lands very highly valuable in the near future. A good deal of all that ice and snow to the north will become much less of an issue within many of our lifetimes.

Not particularly relevant, but as a Magic the Gathering player, I really wish I had legal precedent to force her to change her initials. This lady is such utter trash and I hate that, not just my country is associated with her, but also one of my favorite hobbies. Ugh!