Is the US a dystopia?

I went to wdw as a 10 y/o and it was fine but mainly remember intermittent joys and endless fascination of seeing how funny and odd the other visitors were to me. i especially recall how much i enjoyed seeing how my fancy grandmother and her dear friend tackled eating their ice cream cones, which was hilariously funny, and we ALL discussed the best and/or proper way one should eat an ice cream cone in the heat.

and so I cannot imagine going to such a place without the objective being to provide a 6-12 y/o absolute joy and otheriness. As an adult, we didn’t do too much amusement park stuff at all, we’re more outdoors-y. still, my visit to Legoland in San Diego with my then 8 and 10 y/os, and the accompanying photo captures, were/are a real source of delight. They are adult now. I have not asked them how they remember it.

i am very glad for those memories, but I am quite sure I would not advise others try for it. no guarantees, high expense. and without any kids along? for adult satisfaction? that is utterly mad. but I’m not everyone.

I don't even own a Disney

― Jedi, I've got your number (Ye Mad Puffin)

i think it's the other way around

kate for president 2024

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

can i be vice president instead? i've been feeling pretty subby for a while now

jfc this story is bleak:

A woman working for Wells Fargo in Arizona died at work and was found four days later, authorities have confirmed.

Denise Prudhomme, 60, last clocked in at the Wells Fargo in Tempe at 7 a.m. on Aug. 16, the Tempe Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY on Thursday. She was found at a third-floor desk in the office on Aug. 20, leading on-site security to call police.

Firefighters also responded and pronounced the woman dead at 4:55 p.m., police said.

Prudhomme's cause and manner of death were pending as of Thursday morning, according to the Office of Medical Examiner.

According to police, an initial investigation found no obvious signs of foul play. An investigation is ongoing and authorities are interviewing employees at the Wells Fargo location to get more information.

Wells Fargo workers reported smelling a foul odor but thought it was an issue with the plumbing, local television station KPNX reported citing an unnamed employee.

The outlet reported that Prudhomme's cubicle was on the third floor and wasn’t near the main aisle. Most Wells Fargo employees in the office work remotely but the building has 24/7 security, per KPNX.

I bolded the bleakest part

wow that is grim.. but also very sad

Yup, being the last one to leave the office, a mistake!

The real dystopia comes when Wells Fargo tries to determine her exact time of death to clock her out, gotta make sure that last paycheck doesn't overpay the heirs by a few hours.

but then we all learn our lesson when a24 releases a pitch-black comedy about it in 2027.

I get the UK magazine Fortean Times and they routinely have a roundup of deaths gone unnoticed, sometimes for months or even years.. with the utilities paid by auto-debit. Feel likes it happens a lot in Japan

xp - map, you forgot the part where it is later revealed that Wells Fargo funded the flick, but the heirs don't see a dime because of the release they shoved in the heirs' nose for signature in the immediate minutes after learning of their loved one's death

Damn -- there's a roundup of unnoticed deaths in a magazine? When we visited Paris, we went to the catacombs and I was already thinking about dead bodies while we waited in line when there was a hubbub under a tree. They pulled out the body of a dead woman and I started bawling :( All I could think about was the song "Poor Murdered Woman" ;_;

Imagine finding out that the smell was Denise.

And no one expected her at home or was looking for her :( i can't take it!

Happens quite a bit in the UK and in the West. A product of the callous, cruel societies we live in.

this is what i get for reading the dystopia thread. i thought i could take it but maybe it's 2 much dystopia 4 me

xp yeah, and the isolation that some people find themselves in after their working lives are over

Sorry to all, please don't read if its too much.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65055405

This is the case that killed me a bit.

And look at this detail:

"After Sheila died, her rent stopped being paid, so Peabody sent letters, emails and left voicemails. But in the following year, no-one visited to check up on her. This is despite her always paying her rent on time since she'd moved into the flat in 2014.

Instead, without having spoken to Sheila, Peabody applied for universal credit to be paid directly to it on her behalf. It did this via a government scheme called Alternative Payment Arrangements, which is intended for tenants struggling to pay their bills."

i clicked and then felt like i owed it to sheila to keep reading. i'm glad her unfortunate situation led to reducing the number of properties managers have to manage by 50%.

doesn't anyone clean the offices at night at Wells Fargo???

Denise used to

The one bright side of the story is that apparently Wells Fargo doesn't conduct surveillance on their workers at their desks...?

sweaty trump in an empty barn rambling incoherently is the very definition of dystopia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXqKtmU1ieM

I thought about this thread the other day when I saw a police SUV driving down a highway that was fully covered in a "Now Hiring!" advertisement

2 much dystopia 4 me

a discarded track from Newpower Soul, surely

if i died in my apartment i think it would be quite some time before my beautiful corpse was discovered. like, weeks. good chance to test the whole 'will a starving cat eat a dead human' concept tho

also my door opens outward (?!) and i'm pretty sure the landlady has lost the key, so it's gonna take a little extra effort to get in

just cause they're dead doesn't mean they don't have company

A Russian mother-of-four slept with the mummified corpse of her husband for nearly four years – and performed occult rituals inspired by an ancient Egyptian god, police said.

The woman, identified only as 50-year-old Svetlana, shared a bed with her husband Vladimir’s desiccated remains and had forbidden her children from telling anyone about him on pain of being shipped off to an orphanage or a mental health facility, according to reporting by the news site 78.ru.

The 49-year-old husband collapsed and died after a domestic dispute in December 2020, during which the wife reportedly yelled at the man and wished him death.

If I ever have another dog a doggy door is an absolute necessity for these situations.

Speaking of which.. a cautionary tale of an aging population and virtually no immigration

Nearly 40,000 people died home alone in Japan this year, report says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx6wwp5d5o

i used to be really afraid of dying alone. i'm less afraid now. the value of my life isn't determined by the manner and circumstances of my death. i stuck with my ex-wife for a long time because she was the person i wanted to grow old and die with. i left her because i couldn't think of anything else to do while i was with her but grow old and die. so maybe i grow old and die alone. i don't regret abandoning a stable, middle-class life, even though my life is now precarious, terrifying, and shitty.

my main memory of Disney is waiting in line for 45 minutes to take my two small kids on the tea cup ride, while in front of us was a guy in his 60s, on his own, who took up four tea cups and filmed himself the whole time on a i-Pad.

Nearly 40,000 people died home alone in Japan this year, report says

(We can be like they are) Come one, baby.

actually dying at home alone isn't what bothers me -- that seems inevitable. it's the 'nobody missed you and you rotted and maggots ate your corpse' part (RIP Sheila)

and Denise

my main memory of Disney is waiting in line for 45 minutes to take my two small kids on the tea cup ride, while in front of us was a guy in his 60s, on his own, who took up four tea cups and filmed himself the whole time on a i-Pad.

― fetter, Friday, August 30, 2024 5:11 PM

living his best life

Goodyear HOA fines homeowner for providing free water to neighbors

David Martin works out of his garage, making “one-of-a-kind” sneakers, but what he’s doing on his driveway is creating a bit of controversy in his Goodyear neighborhood.

“I don’t feel like I am doing anything wrong,” said Martin. “I think I am doing what we’re supposed to do, which is taking care of the people around us.”

Four years ago, during the COVID crisis, Martin and his wife set up a free water stand in front of their house as a goodwill gesture, inviting neighbors, kids, and delivery drivers to stop by daily to grab a cold one.

“I figured, what better way to be an asset to community than cold water,” said Martin.

The free water stand was such a hit that the Martins kept it going, stocking up on water while paying for most of it out of their own pocket.

Some neighbors have also stepped up to help out.

“Every year, I am sure I get about 30-40 flats of water,” said Martin. “Water sometimes appears at the front door, and there are two flats. I don’t know who dropped them off. It’s just a surprise, it’s fun.”

But the goodwill gesture appears to have hit a snag.

Back in May, the Martins received a notice from FS Residential, the management company that oversees the Canyon Trails Homeowners’ Association. They were cited for storing items in plain view and were fined $50.

The fines were increased to $100 monthly for non-compliance in June, July, and August.

“It’s absolutely asinine; I don’t understand,” said Martin. “I’m sorry. I don’t care that it’s blue and gray, and my house is tan and brown; it’s a water cooler with cold water for the community.”

attracting the wrong kind of people... water drinkers

watching a segment on the news about a nurse teaching kindergarten/1st/2nd graders how to stop a wound from bleeding out and how to use a tourniquet.

please say sike pic.twitter.com/uL6UgMrDVw

— sippin on that 🇵🇸 (@vivafalastin) September 8, 2024

TRIGGER warning for both of these articles. they are bleak. and i know there has always been evil in the world but both of these did fill me with a modern-day internet-era bleakness/sadness that seems specific to now. also, phones and computers obviously make it a lot easier to do a lot of evil shit anonymously for a long time. or just set up a vigilante crime-busting group in order to abuse people! ugh. at some point i did just stop reading these stories. its all so sad. also, these are just two stories. and there are so many more stories. that's the dystopian part. its all a blur now as far as bad shit goes a la school shootings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/09/09/social-media-bullied-teen-found-fame-among-child-predators-worldwide/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/09/us/tim-ballard-sound-of-freedom-sex-trafficking.html

Anyone who pays any attention at all to the discourse about "trafficking" knows that the so-called epidemic of sex trafficking as cast by movies like Taken and that asshole's documentary, is a white-supremacist, right-wing conspiracy theory. No one is kidnapping white women or girls at Walmart. Anyone who emphasizes and benefits from the narrative around "rescuing" women and girls is automatically suspect.

That guy has ties to the Mormon Church, whose more extreme adherents are FAMOUSLY sex trafficking young girls and labor trafficking boys all over the US. He could start a lot closer to home and do more good with way less money.

Sorry--I've been down this particular rabbit hole a lot!! And I've had a right-wing weirdo cry on my shoulder about "saving the children" while being anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ and moving to Texas so they could keep their guns when the "woke mob" tried to outlaw them.

Anyone who pays any attention at all to the discourse about "trafficking" knows that the so-called epidemic of sex trafficking as cast by movies like Taken and that asshole's documentary, is a white-supremacist, right-wing conspiracy theory. No one is kidnapping white women or girls at Walmart. Anyone who emphasizes and benefits from the narrative around "rescuing" women and girls is automatically suspect.

It just reminds me of the "white slavery" moral panics of the Victorian era and the early 20th century US.

Totally. There's a Tt creator whose specialty is gardening who at one point made a video debunking the trend among "suburban white mom" types of making videos about how a non-white man was "shadowing" them at the grocery store, or a flyer left on your windshield is a sign that you've been "marked" for "trafficking," and other similar content. She has been absolutely SLAMMED with hyperbolic screaming posts and death threats from people who were sicced on her account from rw sites.

Anyone who pays any attention at all to the discourse about "trafficking" knows that the so-called epidemic of sex trafficking as cast by movies like Taken and that asshole's documentary, is a white-supremacist, right-wing conspiracy theory. No one is kidnapping white women or girls at Walmart. Anyone who emphasizes and benefits from the narrative around "rescuing" women and girls is automatically suspect.

That guy has ties to the Mormon Church, whose more extreme adherents are FAMOUSLY sex trafficking young girls and labor trafficking boys all over the US. He could start a lot closer to home and do more good with way less money.

Sorry--I've been down this particular rabbit hole a lot!! And I've had a right-wing weirdo cry on my shoulder about "saving the children" while being anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ and moving to Texas so they could keep their guns when the "woke mob" tried to outlaw them.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit)

dead fucking right, this bullshit about "trafficking" is very tied to the bullshit about "grooming"... a couple years ago when i first saw trans people being accused of "grooming" i was livid, now i'm just resigned and determined. this is how it's gonna be, huh? this is how they gonna fuckin' play this. nothing new. they did the same shit with gay people back in the '70s and '80s and now they're just going back to the same playbook. and the people who are making these accusations are the real fucking abusers. the mormon church? one of the two biggest organized patriarchal organizations in the country. the other one is the roman catholic church. i still get pushback here when i talk about what the roman catholic church is doing, institutionally, the way its patriarchy promotes a culture of abuse. the mormons, the mormons aren't any fucking better. people focus on "magic underwear" or some shit and they don't talk about how women are systematically degraded and abused by that church. because, you know, they say that's _anti-christian_, _anti-religious_.

a whole fucking lot of us know what's really going on, what's the scope of the problem, who's doing it. but people don't want to believe it. they don't see it, because they're looking the other way, they've been taught their whole lives to look the other way, and they don't want to see it. i don't fucking want to see it either. it wrecks me, on a daily basis, fucks me up. i can barely talk about it, but i'll keep doing it as long as i can, no matter how fucking crazy it makes me.

yes, the us is a dystopia. it's driven by patriarchy, predominantly christian patriarchy, and patriarchy is dystopian, particularly for a little over half of the population.

pardon my ranting, i'm having a really shitty week.

and the people who are making these accusations are the real fucking abusers.

qft. one of those things i wished i'd known sooner was just how common projection as a deflection tactic is. how was i supposed to know that 'he who smelt it dealt it' was a profound truth about humanity when i first heard it at 11.

see also: "i know you are, but what i am i?"

rubber/glue

https://mmiwusa.org/

Laurel - THANK YOU. Agree with every single thing you said. These white ladies thinking they're going to get kidnapped and trafficked at their local Target drive me fucking insane. I saw someone on TT try to claim that 1 in 4 American woman will experience either an attempted kidnapping or be kidnapped. Um. What? Don't get me started on the sound of freedom movie/guy. My dad's wife buys into all this shit and it's so infuriating.

one of those things i wished i'd known sooner was just how common projection as a deflection tactic is.

My God, is it ever!

Reminder that it’s also these sex trafficking goons that have helped get anti-SWer legislation passed (including by Kamala Harris, natch) and further endangered the lives of SWers.

it's interesting to me because a lot of my ideas and beliefs early on were modeled on what i saw in the media, how i saw other women, particularly other white women, act. early on i was really worried that someone would kidnap and murder me off the street. that belief didn't serve me very well at all. i found that focusing on those risks got in the way of my ability to protect myself from the actual risks i face.

i also feel like focusing on things that i'm not really at risk for, and particularly acting like i _am_ at a high risk for those things, is kind of rude and disrespectful towards people who do are at significant risk of being hurt in those ways. it's kind of like me trying to overwrite the terrible things other people have actually experienced with my disproportionate fears for myself. it's even worse to see how much institutions with power and influence lean into that narrative, reinforce and bolster these irrational fears. like i said, i had those fears, i was taught those fears, and i needed to unlearn them, it was in my own best interest to unlearn them.

and yeah otm table, i do have friends who do SW and this legislation to "protect" them doesn't, it hurts them. if people want to protect sex workers, they should start actually listening to sex workers, that's my controversial opinion