the uncommon allergy haver to anticapitalist pipeline
in January 2023, companies became required to label sesame on all products it was present in, and undergo rigorous cleaning procedures to prevent sesame contamination, after it was declared the 9th “major” food allergen in the United States.
so, instead of considering this a mandate to give a single shit about people with sesame allergies, almost all American companies decided to just add sesame flour to all their relevant products. because apparently that was cheaper.
it’s almost impossible for me to find hot dog and hamburger buns without sesame now. and I am one of the lucky ones. I’m someone who just so happened to notice the label updates, not get caught unawares and have a severe allergic reaction. I’m someone lucky enough to be surrounded by multiple choices of supermarkets, and someone with the incredible privilege to have parents who’ll help me search the shelves, and cover those costs that my allergies rack up. not everyone with allergies/other intolerances has all or any of those privileges to begin with.
most food allergies will never be prevalent enough that under capitalism, it will be profitable to give them the level of accommodation that they deserve. I speak from experience with a wide portfolio of hypersensitivity quirks when I say that the rarer the food allergy, the worse it gets.
and here’s the thing: I can live without hamburger buns, with only superficial decreases in my quality of life. but sesame isn’t my only rare allergy, and ever since this legislation hit, I’ve been lying awake at night, afraid of what I might lose access to next.
I’ve been lying awake at night wondering what I’ll have to do to live, to obtain enough safe food to survive, if any of my other allergies get this same treatment. and I reiterate. I am one of the privlidged ones.
what these companies have done is completely legal. what these companies did has also cut off up to over a million people from what were previously safe, affordable staples of their diets. a system that has any incentive not to accommodate the dietary needs of any population is not a system that can be allowed to exist. this is the uncommon allergy haver to angry, fuming anticapitalist pipeline.
[Image description: two screenshots of tumblr tags, reading:
“also pea protein. mcdicks just added pea protein without any proper warning so if you got a legume allergy, don’t eat their buns.”
“did you know pea protein and pea flour is a thing. i didn’t. but i sure found out quick after i ate frozen nuggets and when i got gravy from a restaurant. now i have to check fucking everything because i’ve also found pea protein in ice cream of all things.” End description.]
thank you @butchwelddone and @insidejupiter respectively for these psas. signal boosting here for all my fellow legume-allergic folks, stay safe (and stay away from McDonalds buns)
My dad has a cow milk allergy, my sibling has a coconut allergy, one of our close friends is allergic to most spices, wheat, and soy. If we’re lucky, we can find a product that any two of them can eat. Almost anything that calls itself “allergy free” is loaded with coconut.
Also! Fifteen years or so ago, all the whipped toppings went from being dairy free to advertising how they were “made with real cream!” Not to mention various other foods that followed the trend, and really screwed everyone over for having cow’s milk and whatever original milk alternative they used to cut costs both in everything.
So, yeah. For-profit food my belothed.
USAmerican corn-allergy-haver here l love you all and I think we should burn it all down.
By the way the practical [miserable] advice is to cook most things from scratch for yourself and to eat out rarely and only at restaurants you’ve completely vetted.
The advice that fucking nobody ever tells you about and that is why I literally went back to school to get a degree in nutrition is
If you suffer from a food allergy that cuts you off from bread and cereal products in the US you probably need to supplement your diet with vitamins because the primary source of folate in the American diet is fortified cereals and a severe folate deficiency is basically a form of anemia.
You can supplement this with vitamins but :) if you have :) grain allergies :) make sure :) that your allergens :) aren’t used :) as fillers in :) the vitamins :) :) :) :)
Either you can take folate/folic acid on its own or you can take half a daily prenatal vitamin to meet the RDA for folate.
I have wheat, corn, and sesame allergies. I eat out about once a month and have to bring my own food to weddings, conferences, and anything else that will take me away from my own kitchen. I don’t go to theme parks because there’s nothing I can eat there. Backpacking and camping are difficult because pre-made camping foods contain my allergens and it’s hard to carry foods that I know I can eat. If I go out to eat with friends no I don’t I go out to have a cup of coffee - oh, is artificial creamer all you’ve got? nah it’s got cornstarch in it, that’s fine, I’ll just drink it black that’s okay oh wait all you’ve got is decaf that’s fine I’ll just have water OH you are using eco-friendly corn plastic cups well that’s okay I am at least here being with people I’ll eat when I get home. I am not on at least three medications my doctor recommended because corn is part of the product and I can’t afford to have the meds made at a compounding pharmacy. Corn is in all of these things because it is RIDICULOUSLY cheap which is at least partially as a result of subsidies and is also at least partially as a result of the scaling economics of monocrops for agribusiness.
It is ten dollars cheaper to get 21 ounces more mac and cheese *shipped from canada* than it is to buy one of the pre-made foods that I can actually eat.
You may say “oh, well that’s because that’s the weenie organic brand that uses artisinal cheddar, of course it’s more expensive than kraft” and I would have to say:
THE WEENIE ORGANIC BRAND ALSO DOESN’T PUT FUCKING CORN IN EVERYTHING.
Anyway. This has done extremely normal things to my ability to feed myself, maintain my health, and socialize as well as my desire to do arson.
And right on schedule, Mitch McConnell has returned to block the now-deadlocked Judicial committee from selecting a replacement for the ailing Feinstein. So Democrats are now successfully blocked from appointing any of Biden’s judicial nominees to the bench. Feinstein stepping down and allowing California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to name her replacement is one easy way to end this Republican farce, but she won’t do what’s best for her constituents. (source)
Feinstein has been missing in action for months now. Her absence is materially harming the nomination and appointment of judges—judges who could counter the radical zealots that Trump seated. If she cannot do the job any longer (and there is a lot more to be said on that front), then she needs to make room for someone else who can.
this is really important so i’m posting it here because it’ll probably get removed and the original poster may be banned, but this is literal documentation and proof that terfs and transphobes are directly connected to the far-right and have roots in racism, homophobia, misogyny, and antisemitism. it really is all part of the same oppressive system, so there is no disconnecting transphobia from conservatism. there is no such thing as a progressive transphobe as much as they may want you to believe. it has nothing to do with biology or protecting women or children, none of it is founded in science or logic, it is purely hatred and and attempt to justify bigotry.
[Transcription:
I got radicalized into the far-right on TikTok. Well, technically I didn’t, but an account that I made did, and this is a graph of what that looked like. I just published this study, and I’ll link it in the comments, but I’ll also break it down right now, here.
So I wanted to examine whether or not transphobia is a gateway prejudice that leads to like, broader far-right radicalization. It’s been pretty clear for a while now that the far-right is transphobic, but we wanted to see whether being transphobic alone was enough to lead you to the far right.
So I made a brand new TikTok account and followed 14 creators known to post transphobic content. Then I started scrolling my ‘For You’ page, and I started exclusively engaging with transphobic content, and I documented the main narratives of the more than 400 videos recommended to me. We also double-blind coded this, meaning that another researcher also watched every video and coded the narratives, and then if we ever disagreed, more researchers would come in and perform a tie-breaker. Once we removed sponsored videos and videos that had been taken down before they could be double-coded, we were left with 360 videos.
Of the 360 total videos, 103 were homophobic or anti-trans, 42 were misogynistic, 29 contained racist narratives or white supremacist messaging, and 14 endorsed violence. Obviously, TikTok didn’t just like give us neo-nazi content immediately. I actually didn’t get my first Nazi symbol until video 141. But the more I interacted with transphobic content, the more I was fed not only more transphobic content, but also homophobia and misogyny and racism and antisemitism. So I didn’t actually have to interact with racist content to be fed white supremacist content, I just had to engage with transphobic content.
What you see in this graph is the TikTok algorithm starting off with a normal feed — memes, recipes, whatever — and then going “OHH, you’re transphobic! Have you tried hating the gays? What about women?”
So, it appears that transphobia can radicalize a TikTokker.
Around video 400, you’ll notice an interesting spike in far-right figures, hate symbols, antisemitism and calls to violence. That’s when I reached fascist TikTok and set my phone on fire. 400 videos might sound like a lot, but if a user watches each video for an average of 20 seconds, they would end up watching 400 videos in just over 2 hours. So, a user could basically download the app at breakfast and be fed the overtly white supremacist, neo-nazi content before lunch.
Following instructions isn’t a skill, grilling meat is.
People really will work the most dead end, low effort jobs anyone can do and act like they’re “skilled labor” huh
“Unskilled labor” does not mean, “This job requires no skill to perform”. “Unskilled labor” means, “This job does not require any special schooling to perform”.
ALT
I just want to poke them in their brains to see what they think “special schooling” is.
It might be late, but you can get into literally every single craftsman union without a college degree and I’m pretty damn sure they’d consider “carpenter” or “stramfitter” to be skilled work.
There’s quite some overlap between the “higher education is indoctrination” People and the “you need special education before I will give your labor any respect” people.
If anyone still labors under the impression that Donald Trump invented the shitshow that is the modern Republican Party, Tuesday’s performance on Capitol Hill will have disabused them of that notion. It was déjà vu all over again, just like in 2015 when Kevin McCarthy was humiliated by far right bomb-throwers simply because he was so easy to humiliate, thus giving them leverage and pleasure in equal measure. Poor McCarthy spent the next seven years groveling and genuflecting to these extremists under the foolish impression that they would reward him for his fealty. As Salon’sRae Hodgelays out in detail, on Tuesday afternoon they simply laughed in his face and humiliated him again.
Back in 2015, the newly formed Freedom Caucus, born out of the Tea Party class that came into Congress five years before in the 2010 “shellacking,” managed to force then-Speaker John Boehner to resign for having the temerity to make deals with the Democrats in the Senate and the White House in order to keep the government functioning. They were a rump caucus that didn’t have the power to stop bipartisan legislation, but they had the leverage to both force Boehner out and prevent the ascension of McCarthy, his anointed successor.
At the time, McCarthy made it easier for them by telling the press that the congressional Benghazi hearings were a set-up to destroy Hillary Clinton (which was obviously true, and wouldn’t even raise eyebrows in today’s political environment). He also saw the whip count and knew he didn’t have the votes of all those Freedom Caucus kooks, and abruptly decided to bow out. After all, the superstar GOP dreamboat and former vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan was waiting in the wings and McCarthy knew he couldn’t compete with those baby blues. Ryan took the job for four years but decided not to run for re-election in 2018, largely because those same people made his life as miserable as they’d made his predecessor’s.
So this behavior was going on in the Republican Party before Donald Trump had ever uttered the words “Make America Great Again.” He didn’t invent this lunacy — he just watched it unfold and saw the opportunity to use it. After all, Trump had already done a test run with his birther nonsense, and liked the vibe. In effect, the GOP has been heading down this anarchic path for decades. Trump undoubtedly made it worse, but he didn’t create it. Right now, in fact, he seems almost irrelevant to its descent into further madness.
Trump supposedly whipped votes for McCarthy and it did no good with the diehards. It remains to be seen if he still has the loyalty of the 30% to 40% ofRepublicanvoters he will need to remain viable in the presidential race, but he clearly has no pull in Congress. In truth, he didn’t have much when he was President — his personal attacks on the late Sen. John McCain cost Republicans their most cherished policy objective, repealing the Affordable Care Act.
McCarthy’s catering to the far-rightfaction hasn’t done him a damn good either. In fact, the only people who anyone thinks might have some sway with this group are the real leaders of the Republican Party:
ALT
Tuesday night on Fox News, Sean Hannityevoked Ronald Reagan saying something about being loyal to the party, which will have zero effect on people who think of Reagan with the same reverence they have for Grover Cleveland or Calvin Coolidge. They are more likely to pay attention to Tucker Carlson, who had this to say:
ALT
That’s paranoid nonsense that even the Republican House majority thinks is nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the crazies end up extracting this promise from whoever finally wins the gavel. Carlson is their intellectual guru, after all. And I think we know how this new “Church Committee” (as well as the “Laptop From Hell” committee and the “Lock Up Dr. Fauci” committee and all the rest) will actually unfold. These are not serious people dedicated to good-faith oversight. They’re a nihilistic carnival act run by folks who are desperate for attention. We’re in for a gruesome train wreck of a congressional session.
The problem with having insurrectionists within your own caucus is that they care nothing for the party, much less the country. They looked at the last three losing elections and now feel liberated to do their worst. All the anti-McCarthy members come from deep-red districts that voted for Trump by double digits. They have nothing personally to lose by acting out their darkest political fantasies. They didn’t come to Congress to do anything but wreck the place and if that means taking their own party down with it, they couldn’t care less.
As CNN’s Ron Brownsteinpoints out, Republicansconsolidated their hold on red states in the last few elections. In 2022 they nailed down places like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Tennessee for the foreseeable future. But they also won 18 seats in districts that voted for Joe Biden, half of which are in New York and California, blue states which will see much higher turnout in a presidential-election year. They can’t afford to lose any of those, but this Housecircus is going to put every one of those members on the chopping block.
If the last three elections have shown anything, it’s that swing-state voters are decisively rejecting the far-right crusade that has so many people in red states spellbound. According to Brownstein, a new analysis of the midterms shows that “in the key House, Senate and gubernatorial races across the 15 states with the most competitive statewide contests involving candidates clearly identified with a Trump-style agenda, Democrats largely matched or even exceeded their 2020 margins — a remarkable showing during the first midterm electionfor the party holding the White House.”
It’s not hard to see why. In the last few years we’ve had one “historic” political crisis after another. Just since 2019 there have been two impeachments, a president refusing to honor election results, a violent insurrection and now, on the very first day of the new Congress, clear evidence that the most radical “Trump-style” officials in the GOP are pulling the strings and the larger majority in the party is helpless to stop them.
Let’s hope that all those swing-state voters who came out in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022 will now understand that this isn’t just about stopping Donald Trump, as worthy as that is. They need to make sure that Republicans are kept out of power until they demobilize this destructive faction and reinvent themselves as responsible, patriotic participants in the political process. They certainly aren’t there yet, and maybe it’s just a lost cause.
THIS IS WHITE CULTURE. if this didn’t resonate with white people, it wouldn’t be on the air nightly, getting huge rating and spurring white ppl to go vote for those are also spew this hateful nonsense.
had no idea this happened BUT i’m not surprised. america’s racism and white racial hatred knew/knows no bounds. this is the type of shit white people now want to hide with all that anti-crt bullshit. smfh.
