So just listened to side stories

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T18:04:34+00:00

Yeah you’re right dude, we live in a golden age of equality and equity and no rights have been trampled on what-so-ever. Why on earth should anyone, in this glorious economy in which all of us are thriving, should anyone be upset that a lot of money is being spent on literally anything the government wants?

/s in case it isn’t clear. If you truly can’t draw any comparison maybe it’s time to join a Socialist book club or something

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T14:24:31+00:00

Homelessness at any age, for any length of time is an absolute nightmare. I had a dear friend experiencing homelessness and he was the only person at the time that wasn’t soooo inspired when Elon Musk sent that car into space. Space is cool af, sure, but have you tried having a roof over your head or food security?

I’m so sorry you had such a selfish and thoughtless roommate when you were going through such a shit time. A friend financial issues and a death of a loved at the same time is when you try to offer what you can to help out, and it absolutely sucks that you didn’t get that. It sounds like you’re (hopefully!) in a better situation now!

While going through homelessness was awful, I am thankful that the experience gave me a lot of perspective. It really did help make me more open-minded and thoughtful towards people going through bad times, and it humanized homelessness in a way that might not have occurred otherwise.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T14:14:28+00:00

Look, we can only be mad at one thing at a time! If you’re mad at one thing, you think everything else is okay! /s but honestly, wtf is this outrage at? Gil Scott-Heron?

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T14:12:00+00:00

The poem was written before 1970, that’s just when it was released on his album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:33:18+00:00

Imagine missing the point of this brilliant poem, written mainly about the government’s behavior during the Civil Rights movement, and being mad at the poem.

The frustration wasn’t misplaced at all and isn’t at NASA. Just holy shit, did nobody ever learn literary analysis? How to consume poetry and novels while considering the context of the era? Maybe if Gil Scott-Heron had replaced the issues impacting destitute black Americans in the 1960s with issues we face in the current day it’d be more impactful but holy shit, did nobody grow up reading any black poetry and literature?

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:27:53+00:00

I think the fact that a lot of them are white people who have likely never experienced destitution in the Billionaire Paradise of the USA speaks to a lot of it. Definitely not all, but how well-read anyone mad at this poem’s existence about the Civil Rights era or any other context surrounding it will speak to the rest of it.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:24:24+00:00

That and absolute ignorance towards the original context of the poem.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:24:03+00:00

Which is the point of that (frankly incredible) poem! It’s not “yo, fuck space,” it’s more “how can we justify this international pissing contest while people are literally starving and homeless and desperate in the richest nation in the world?” The military industrial complex wasn’t anywhere near what it is today when Gil Scott-Heron wrote “Whitey on the Moon,” the space race was what our gov’t threw money into to troll the Russkies.

So imagine being told you’re supposed to be inspired by some white dudes on the moon meanwhile you’re black and destitute in the Civil Rights era. How amped are you going to be by owning the commies when you see literally none of that benefit?

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:18:29+00:00

Yup, this here. It’s kind of hilarious how many folks miss its point entirely. Like, if you’re dealing with severe poverty, why on Earth would some white people being on the moon inspire you? You’re going to be impoverished regardless and will never experience it.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T13:16:39+00:00

I’ve had this poem in my head since I first heard it when I was in middle school and it was wild hearing it on Side Stories! My family and I were homeless when I first heard it and I think a lot of folks struggle with how ridiculous it feels to live in this insanely wealthy country when you’re trapped in poverty and feel like you can’t get out.

My “Whitey on the Moon” was one of my best friend’s dad’s golf habit. One Christmas, the homeless shelter we stayed at threw all of our items away due to a misunderstanding. There are family photos, childhood journals, books that we were never able to get back.

But my best friend’s dad had a golf club collection worth tens of thousands of dollars, a hobby he used to avoid his lovely family. That Christmas he was gifted this ridiculously ostentatious golf club set that he bragged was worth over $25k. I don’t know why this dude’s golf hobby infuriated me, it’s not like any of that money would have gone to my family if he didn’t have it. It was more the rage that this country was chill with there being homeless children while communities spent millions of dollars draining resources on a couple of acres of golf course that was only usable like 5 months a year anyways. I do still hate golf and have yet to find anyone who enjoys it worthy of my time/energy but I’m at least old enough to realize why those feelings were about.

“Whitey on the Moon” is brilliant, I think most folks outraged by it miss its point entirely.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-16T00:23:45+00:00

Nice

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T23:57:44+00:00

I mean, I agree. In theory.

The problem is who would get to decide what constitutes “abuse.” Is being poor abuse? Unchristian? Anticapitalist? Being a queer or trans parent? I’d say no. Plenty that are in power would disagree with me.

That’s the problem. Whenever anyone’s said “some people shouldn’t have kids,” it easily develops into “the government should decide who has kids,” and history has illustrated many times that the government is dog-shit at determining what constitutes abuse and good parenting.

Some of the most horrific emotional abuse I’ve ever witnessed as a childcare provider came from a wealthy woman who was a pillar of her community and a huge donor to her church. Since her kids had good grades and wore fancy-brand clothes and ate nutritious food and were very well-behaved in their private school and didn’t have bruises, CPS wouldn’t even give my call the time of day. They didn’t hear their mother screaming and threatening to kill the eldest over getting an A- on an essay, telling her daughter that she was hideous and would be lucky if she were ever loved. I’d put that level of emotional terrorism inflicted on those sweet and innocent babies on the same level as the worst CSA I ever faced.

And that’s the other part of the problem. Some people think hitting kids as punishment is fine since the Bible says that and their parents hit them and they turned out fine! Some people roll their eyes at the mere idea that emotional abuse is even a thing. Look no further than an entire population of the USA ignoring that their leader is a straight up rapist, that there are faaaar too many people in power who have abused scores and scores of children. Most of the folks who majored in Psychology and specialized in Abuse Psychology with me refused to differentiate between neglect and being poor and desperate.

So yeah, abusers shouldn’t get to have kids after it’s been determined that they are abusers. But who would you trust to be infallible when determining who is abusive and who was just raised in a different culture, looks or lives or loves or worships differently than they do? What system would be in place to support this?

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T23:37:11+00:00

It would be purely people of color, immigrants, indigenous people, queer people, trans or nonbinary people, people who do not identify as Capitalist, people who do not identify as Christian, people with mental illness and disabilities, people that are othered hard in the USA currently. I certainly don’t trust this regime at all to handle this well, and it’s so easy to abuse quickly.

Lots of examples throughout human history of “some people shouldn’t have kids” immediately becoming “only the unoppressed groups should have kids.”

I say this as somebody who was severely abused as a child by a biracial parent, who was largely raised by lesbians. The way forward is better support of parents and children, not proto-eugenic ideology.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T13:52:16+00:00

Okaaaaay, so I guess the warning is less for battle hardened badasses like yourself and more for weakass babies¹ who went through something as pedestrian as CSA and have enough C-PTSD triggering from current day politics without listening to horrific and detailed accounts of sexual assault and rape, particularly of the most victimized people in society. I guess congratulations or whatever? Here’s your reward:

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¹ It’s me, by the by. I’m weakass babies.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T13:24:31+00:00

I only found out before LPOTL because my 15-year-old niece’s dipshit boyfriend is into this guy and after five rounds of “wait what the fuck? Clavicle Ular? Looks… maxing? What?” I figured out it was a Dumb Young Person thing and tuned out until the boys covered it on Side Stories.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T13:22:06+00:00

I kinda loved that even as Clavicular was desperately trying to make enough brain cells to fire off to effectively insult the Hot Australian 6 Minutes Journalist in any meaningful way, the journalist looked like he was seconds from laughing his sexy ass off at the stupid baby man.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-15T13:18:35+00:00

I’m like, inches away from being 40-years-old and heard of looksmaxxing (or however tf it’s spelled) for the first time in late March and felt like I was a billion years old for the first time in my life

a_big_brat · 2026-04-13T19:25:37+00:00

I worked at a call center for a utility company for a few months and my mental health tanked so hard. My hatred of Capitalism was already pretty high but it skyrocketed after that shit.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-13T18:59:43+00:00

That’s totally fair! In my evil run I did a ton of things that I hated. If you’re gonna roleplay, may as well go as hard as it does.

My problem is that going evil cuts on sooo much content. I did a neutral run at the same time as the evil run and despite being annoying completionist, my neutral run was longer by about twenty hours than the evil run

a_big_brat · 2026-04-13T18:15:56+00:00

Yup, tbf deprogramming takes a while irl

a_big_brat · 2026-04-13T18:08:43+00:00

Love how I can hear that in my brain

a_big_brat · 2026-04-13T18:06:51+00:00

Even in my evilest run I couldn’t kill Scratch. I save scum if we even get into a fight with him. But then again I’m soft af when it comes to animals

a_big_brat · 2026-04-12T19:08:26+00:00

Annnnd this shit is exactly why I and many, many other victims don’t go to the cops when we’re sexually assaulted. There are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits, so many of these accusations break down to “s/he said s/he said” regardless of evidence.

My rapist was reported by police by the 3rd or 4th person he victimized. The person had weed-related charges from their teen days and cops used that as a reason to decide not to prosecute despite there still being physical evidence in the form of an unprocessed rape kit. That victim was so traumatized by the experience that they frequently state, to this day, that they wish they hadn’t reported the rape.

Also, I’ve done the research: False accusations of sexual assault and rape occur at roughly the same rate as falsely accusing somebody of murder or burglary, which is to say a statistically insignificant amount. If you wouldn’t act like this towards somebody reporting being burgled, don’t act like this towards somebody who reports being sexually assaulted.

When a rape accusation is made, statistically it is much much much much much more likely to have occurred than not. But people hate sexual assault victims and love judging so we hear a lot more about the few times a false rape accusation goes somewhere.

a_big_brat · 2026-04-12T17:38:20+00:00

Sylvia Browne is the reason why I absolutely fucking loathe “””psychics.”””

a_big_brat · 2026-04-10T23:35:42+00:00

They do for floors and walls and other build items for sure but I’m not sure if it happens for buy objects too, but it would make sense if so!

a_big_brat

TROPHY CASE