hp

You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

lawyer fun fact! sometimes you need to sue someone before your insurance will pay for your medical bills (because your insurance would rather the other person pay for your medical bills so they don’t have to)! sometimes you need to sue because what you’d get from insurance isn’t enough to pay for all of your medical bills! sometimes you want to change a specific thing, like a dangerous practice or defective part, and that’s not going to happen if you just ask nicely!

most truly ridiculous lawsuits get screened before they’re even filed (because someone goes to an attorney and that attorney is like “yeah you don’t have a case here”) or very shortly after they’re filed (because judges can toss out cases that have zero merit). 99% of the time, if it sounds ridiculous but somehow it went all the way to someone suing and winning in a jury trial, it probably wasn’t actually as absurd as it sounds.

Yall do NOT hop on a cosmetic surgery hate train during an ongoing campaign against trans Healthcare I am fucking begging

My tits didn't smaller themselves, fuckos. Either you believe in bodily autonomy or you fucking don't.

The sacred bond between trans people who've had plastics and cis people who have had plastics is fucking sacred and I will not tolerate anybody in the queer community trash-talking plastics no matter what it is and who is getting them and for what reason!!!

I want there to not be a line between 'costmetic' and 'necessary'. If there's a line, then insurance companies and whoever-the-fuck-else will decide everything is 'cosmetic'. That happened to me with getting my jaw rebuilt when I was A CHILD. 'oh it's cosmetic' My insurance wrangler lady and the surgeon had to write SEVERAL LETTERS to the damn insurance company detailing out just how graphically I would DIE if I did not get my face rebuilt before I was 18! If 'we won't pay for cosmetic plastics only necessary ones' wasn't a thing, that wouldn't have had to fucking happen!

So you know what? I don't want to hear the word 'cosmetic' out of anyone's mouth. it's ALL just plastics. And all plastics are still 100% the person's choice to get, I don't care what the reason is, all reasons are your business and should be honoured and that's as it should be. As Sweaterkittens said, you either believe in bodily autonomy or you fucking don't.

Signed,

A Transman who has had exclusively plastics for all FOUR major surgeries throughout his life.

truly evil shit

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Cancel your HBO

Time to continue not paying for HBO

Ya'll, please don't boycott/cancel/etc. as a form of protest unless the union calls for it. I appreciate the urge to 'help,' but this is one time when you really gotta follow the union's lead. If you cancel/begin boycotting now and the union calls for a boycott later, it will be harder to tie you cancelling your Max/HBO to the union's call for a boycott.

As far as I can tell right now, the union has not called for a boycott as of 1:44AM Pacific Time, 5/9/23.

honestly it probably already exists but i would kill for more horror stories set in the arctic circle during winter where it's unclear if the threat is supernatural or if the darkness and isolation in the freezing polar night is just driving the characters slowly insane

Idk about this one boys, Cookie Monster always refers to Cookie Monster's self as "Cookie Monster".

no he doesn’t. he refers to himself as “me.” elmo’s the one that talks in third person. that’s the joke. elmo doesn’t use pronouns and cookie monster is blue. how dare you assume i made this post and didnt know my fucking sesame street history. christ

pesky-plumbers:
“world-heritage-posts:
“pesky-plumbers:
“ grawly:
“ pesky-plumbers:
“ tremendouslysizzlingsandwich:
“ pesky-plumbers:
“ unyielding–justice:
“ pesky-plumbers:
“ graffyn-guy:
“ pesky-plumbers:
“ treaclethetortoise:
“ pesky-plumbers:
“...

The funniest part of this, to me, is that they didn’t use the “G” in Super Mario Galaxy? 

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There is no war in Ba Sing Se

The Moon landing was faked

Major words in Mario games have never used a G

please stop bringing attention to my mistakes i already feel terrible

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What about the H in Super Mario Sunshine? @pesky-plumbers

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unyielding--justice

@pesky-plumbers what about the F from Mario Golf?

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tremendouslysizzlingsandwich

y in mario party

this one is actually justified so kiss my fucking ass ok the Y is from Mario Teaches Typing

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your ass tryina 1-up me like everyone else but you failed uwu

there was a g in this one too tho

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world heritage post

god dammit

tumblr is kind of like fortnite if you think about it

i dont think we should think about it

99 bloggers remain.

I believe in equality, which is why we need a mainstream yuri anime about a girl named Yaoi in order to also make the yaoi tag unusable

mcdonalds gave me a baby pancake 🥺 i love when small businesses send free gifts

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UPDATE: DO NOT GOOGLE "RONALD MCDONALD BREEDING"

how dare u ???? EVERYONE should be educated on ronald mcdonald breeding practices.

Actually, a lot of the research done on ronald mcdonald breeding was funded by rival diner chains as a slander campaign and is riddled with misinformation and pseudo science so the one that should educate themselves is YOU

so you hate women ???!!?!

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he looks so fertile and weak

who said that

get back here and face what youve done

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This whole post felt like getting slapped by a very wet piece of ham, one after another.

i know who I'd slap with a wet piece of ham

sex is fun but it isn't sacred which is part of why we even fight for bodily autonomy and privacy in the bedroom. one night stands and quickies and casual sex are all morally neutral. to mythologize sex as the ultimate intimacy through which people eternally connect is ridiculous and serves only to empower the christofascist regime which uses sex and intimacy as simultaneous weapons of oppression and beneficiary incentives for everyone to stay in line with the status quo.

sex is fun and it feels good and there is nothing wrong with having sex. at the same time sex is nothing particularly special or great either. It's just another thing humans are capable of. we give the concept of sex too much power tbqh.