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@georgetakei@universeodon.com Reporter: "JD Vance just said in an interview that he thinks you are going to be the leading Democratic candidate for president in 2028. What’s your response to that?" AOC: "I mean, you know, I hope he is. That's what I'll say." "That he's the Republican nominee?" "Yeah."

@DerLogiker@troet.cafe @georgetakei@universeodon.com Trump is worse, actually. Letter to congressional leaders from psychiatrists: 'President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.' They describe the evidence that he's dangerously unstable, that his "judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised" and that "he is a constitutional emergency." "Top psychiatrists issue urgent letter to Congress about Trump's mental instability" https://www.alternet.org/psychiatrists-trump/ #Trump #DarkTriad #narcissism #narcissist #Machiavellian #Machiavellianism #psychopath #psychopathy #unstable #25thAmendment #2547th #25th

@MisterMadge @brie One spouse -> five spice :)

@Milnoc @georgetakei In contrast to your not-so-civilized neighbours to the south, where the US Supreme Court ruled that "conversion therapy" is "free speech" despite being actual harm inflicted by a licensed health professional. A bill in California advances another way to fight that deadly quackery: extending the statute of limitations for medical malpractice in those cases, similar to extended statutes of limitations for sexual assault of minors. https://calmatters.org/health/2026/04/weiner-lgbtq-youth-conversion-therapy/ (via JoeMyGod: https://www.joemygod.com/2026/04/california-bill-would-extend-statue-of-limitations-for-medical-malpractice-claims-due-to-ex-gay-torture/ )

@georgetakei (Judge Williams continued) I know that because I've had the privilege of serving on the board of directors for a tremendous organization called Safe Horizon, and we have a whole program, you know what it's called, Michael? It's called street work. Because we provide services and resources to young men and women and nonbinary individuals, just like you, who are members of a community that our society at large has deemed to be marginalized. And they end up on the streets. So I just want to be very clear with you that this was not you misreading a situation there with your father. There are young LGBTQ+ boys and girls, men and women and nonbinary individuals every day that really do end up on the streets. So I can very much see and understand why you took that threat extremely seriously." 2/2

@tml @technothrasher @georgetakei Not unlike dictatorships that cloak themselves in names like "The People's Democratic Republic of" wherever, or conservative far-right-wing groups that coopt terms like "Family", "Liberty", and "Freedom" to mean anything but, if you don't fit within their straight-and-narrow definitions.

@technothrasher @tml @georgetakei America is a weird place! My understanding is that participants in "court TV" shows indeed had real small claims cases, and agree to have them dismissed and arbitrated in the TV "courtroom" instead. So yes, that miserable excuse for a parent had sued his son. According to Wikipedia, dramatized cases (fictional or real) used to dominate court shows, but since the late 1990s they're reality shows, as a rule, with people who had actually sued each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_show

@nutriamix @georgetakei The haters find support in the Bible, as do the loving, live-and-let-live folks who embody the best of the teachings attributed to Jesus. Someone pointed out that we don't actually know for sure just what the proscribed behavior is in that verse about "don't lie down with a male the lyings-down-with of a woman" -- scholars have suggested dozens of plausible interpretations, including not having sex on the bed of a woman who's having her period -- and that anti-gay translators were just making shit up. My favorite interpretation of that "clobber passage" is one I heard from a liberal rabbi: if you're having sex with a man, don't think of it as "just like having sex with a woman". Acknowledge him for who and what he is! Then again, why should a nearly-two-millennia-old compilation have any authority over our lives?

@dan@mastodon.durrans.com @georgetakei@universeodon.com It's the 21st fracking century. Never mind the flying cars, where's the post-scarcity paradise we were promised, with all of us getting what we need and want, without having to work? Automation and other technology were supposed to let us comfortably "retire", not turn us into tracked, manipulated commodities to be squeezed for labor and money!

@georgetakei Unlike what happens in real courtrooms, Judge Williams made no attempt to put aside her own experience: "Our community in Memphis is very church-centered, it's very conservative, so I did take it very seriously that I could end up on the streets if I did not 'fix' [with air quotes] my situation. I felt as if, if I did not do this, I would be kicked out and live on the streets." "Let me tell you why, let me tell you why that is not in any way, young man, an overreaction on your part, and I don't want you to feel an ounce of shame as to believing what your father directly told you. Because in this country, every day, there is a youth who identifies with some aspect of the LGBTQ+ community, that is living on the streets. 1/2

@dshan Wouldn't be surprised!

@georgetakei TL;DR: a father sued his son after he quit conversion therapy, for the $6000 cost of the program. The dad threatened to kick out his son, then 17, if he continued living "a homosexual lifestyle", so the son, desperate to not become homeless and not lose his relationship with his parents, found a religious conversion therapy program -- but ultimately dropped out of the program whose clients, er, victims were called "cursed" and "monsters". The judge (arbitrator) wasn't having it. “Young man, you are not cursed. 'You are as loved and as worthy, Michael, as your father, your mother, and everyone else who gets the privilege to reside on this earth, young man.”

@Clutha@mastodon.scot @georgetakei@universeodon.com His gravesite will need to be YUGE, for separate dancing and pissing sections.

@georgetakei@universeodon.com As a reply from "Kate" says: "I don't go to Olive Garden because I want Italian. I go because I want Olive Garden. It's an entirely separate cuisine."

@georgetakei@universeodon.com "...there’s a piece of Trump that would like to say, ‘I’m the only one who could do it. The Republican Party’s nothing without me.’" If only the Republican Party (a crime syndicate and cruelty cabal masquerading as a legitimate institution) becomes nothing without Trump -- or with him. Time for it to join the Whigs and others in the dustbin of history.