@Piss_Ant Working with leather is really difficult, as well as hazardous. Any time you need to exert brute force to push a sharp object through a resistant material, you risk stabbing the shit out of yourself. If you love the backpack, take it to a shoe repair place. They nearly always offer services to repair handbags. Since it's just the straps, and not something really tricky like a tear in the bottom, it shouldn't be THAT expensive. This is the kind of task that is worth the $ to pass on to a pro. Spare yourself some aggravation, right? :purple_sparkling_heart:
@Piss_Ant@FemaleIsNotAFeeling If you absolutely have no choice but to repair it yourself, don't use a giant needle or awl to punch through the leather. Instead, get a nail and sharpen the point to a very sharp and narrow point with a small steel file, and carefully hammer it through the leather (using a wooden board underneath) at all the points that need to be sewn, and you should be able to use a large size conventional sewing needle for the task. Use strong jewelry cording instead of regular thread, and seal the knots with glue or clear nail polish. The mend should hold well for years.
@ChasingWaterfalls Poor Pearl probably married a virgin doofus just like her, who doesn't eat her cookie and only lasts 30 seconds. She thinks that's normal because she's never experienced a good fuck. THIS is why men value virginity- they don't want to have their weak performance compared with the skills of a halfway decent lover. But when these guys want something "nasty", they'll go to a prostitute rather than risk offending their pristine angel. Enjoy your genital warts, Pearl.
@Gnomeshatecheese@LostInCalifornia American youth are First World privileged over-protected and under-educated narcissistic brats who lost their minds out of boredom in covid lockdown. They managed to subdue their helicopter parents with tantrums and threats, so it's only natural they would carry those tactics forward into adulthood. What better avenue to vent their bitter discontentment at the world than joining an informal pseudo paramilitary civilian army that will take anyone without screening or training, where aggressive anti-social behavior is celebrated, and the targets of their wrath are the perfect stand-ins for Mommy? It's not punching down if you identify as the victim and position the real victim as the perpetrator, right? The upside is that everyone now sees Antifa as a bunch of pear-shaped aggro manbabies with stupid hair.
@Cousin_Isobel@Gnomeshatecheese@LostInCalifornia I find it so WEIRD that all of the atheist and "skeptic" pages on social media are refusing to call out gender woo as bullshit. How can they fail to recognize the zealotry of TRAs as religious indoctrination? Maybe part of the problem is that most women get run out of atheist pages, so there isn't anyone left to explain WHY trans ideology is toxic. A surprising number of atheist men are just insufferable misogynists, and they will thread-stalk women in those groups. Apparently they believe "logic" is their domain.
@Cousin_Isobel@Gnomeshatecheese@LostInCalifornia Yes, I do believe there are some people who will believe ANYTHING, if it comes from a source they trust. Even something as profoundly stupid as the idea someone could literally change from one sex to another. Unfortunately, a huge number of people blindly trust their news sources, completely oblivious to how much power the LGBTQ lobby has to dictate "facts" to the media.
"... I think a lot of people who oppose religion want to support science..."
^^^ THIS! We all have questions, and we've got to get our answers somewhere, right? Science is the default source for non-believers. Non-religious people want to think of themselves as more modern and evolved than religious people. Quite often we are. It's not that difficult to find problems with a religion. The primitive authors of sacred texts always had their own agenda, and used fear, superstition, and violence to promote their beliefs. The problem is that promoters of various "scientific" ideas operate nearly the same way.
Non-believers often see "science" as a monolithic body of knowledge that has some kind of central clearing house with reliable fact-checkers and a mysterious authority that prohibits the circulation of misinformation. We rely on whistleblowers and lawsuits to keep everyone honest, though history has shown us that integrity goes out the window whenever money is involved. In our own way, we are just as guilty of giving in to blind faith when we refuse to perform our own due diligence.
Getting to the truth is much more difficult than it used to be. Activists have given themselves permission to attack their opponents by any means necessary, including circulating outright lies and making false accusations against people they KNOW are innocent. They don't care. They tell themselves the end justifies the means because everyone who disagrees is a nazi bigot who deserves to die.
And now these maniacs have hijacked science. Throw enough $$$ at a funding-starved clinic and they will churn out whatever results you want. Once someone has packaged any kind of woo bullshit as "science", the woo-mongers will proliferate like crazy, and create official-looking websites for laboratories and research organizations that only exist in cyberspace. These sites are becoming more adept at mimicking the legitimate presentation of peer-reviewed studies. Once people see a science-washed claim appear in several places, they assume it's been cross-verified and must be true. Pin any of this garbage to a colorful feel-good social movement, and the public support keeps the $$$ flowing.
Even the illusion of support is powerful. Most people still DON'T support trans ideology. Major medical corporations want a chunk of that $$$, and are also motivated by the appearance of legitimacy that so many NGOs have bestowed upon gender woo, that it feels safer to go along with it now, and simply claim later that "everyone else was doing it".
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but go along with it because they incorrectly assume that most others accept it. This is also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes". This is why the lie is effective. It's become potentially dangerous to even ASK another person if they believe. People are wearing their compliance like body armor. It's a sad situation when a pronoun pin could save your career.
@theorytoe They seriously don't care if they give people HIV/AIDS. The trans and gay community fought hard to remove restrictions against gay men donating blood. They were told they must abstain from having sex with other men for three months before they could donate blood. But that rule was removed in May of 2023, because it "hurt their feelings" to be excluded. Because it takes time for the infection to become detectable, it's possible for screening to MISS the disease when the donated blood is being tested. People who receive blood donations have occasionally contracted HIV through donated blood. The concern is legitimate. The protection of the public has been subverted to appease the butthurt of gay men and trannies.
@firebird2110@theorytoe I totally forgot about the monkeypox thing! I don't know why we have to pretend a group that poses a threat to public health doesn't participate in the behaviors that we all KNOW they participate in. They should not have their FEELINGS prioritized over the actual lives that will be affected by their recklessness!
@LostInCalifornia Considering women did nearly all of the labor during the early years of the worst part of the HIV/AIDS crisis, not only campaigning for the government to acknowledge the crisis and perform research for a cure, but taking care of these men by feeding them, helping them get to and from the hospital, finding them housing when they could no longer work and were abandoned, holding their hands and comforting them as they died, it makes perfect SENSE that the L should come first. It's pretty much the only thanks women have received from the community. And it's STILL more socially acceptable to the general public to be gay than to be a lesbian. Lesbians don't fuck men, so both gay and het men don't care about them. TBH, men don't care about het women, either, but they'll use us for labor, sex, and to produce offspring for them.
@Tony@bot@rees@rdr@pyrate@demitasse@ringo Anime porn is a gateway drug. "pedo-adjacent" is just one moment of weakness away from full-blown pedo. It's all gross and horrible.