My town's pride event was this weekend. Regrettably the heat and social anxiety in my family won out over heading down there but even so please know that I did remember this exchange. You are still seen and recognized and valid, at least in whatever small ways a stranger on Lemmy can offer.
Stay safe out there.
For anyone else who was curious about the religious context, Luke 15 is about how much God loves repentance, featuring most famously the parable of the Prodigal Son.
You know, some cities (at least one because I live here) delay their local pride celebration until July to avoid competing with larger cities in the local metro area. Don't get too comfortable if you want to avoid being seen and celebrated, is what I'm saying.
Also, I showed this to my wife since we're all going through it, and she points out that that burger looks like it knows what an Atari is.
This may be true in the general case, but if you consider that my depression and anxiety make me vaguely megalomaniacal you would understand that I am different and uniquely terrible for having literally any problems ever.
My wife keeps lamenting that we haven't found ways to help pet rats live as long as cats but I don't think this is what she had in mind.
Maybe my experiences are unusual, but I've seen more harassment and general shittiness from other commuters than I ever have from homeless people camping nearby. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I feel like we're back to the problem of harassment and violence already being illegal. Going back to the immediate question here, removing the benches doesn't make harassment or assholery any more difficult or more consequential.
I mean it seems like a lot of that could be avoided by, for example, keeping the goddamn bathrooms open (or making there be public bathrooms). Drugs are already illegal. The station is still a roof over your head, making it preferable to the street whether or not there are benches.
Ironically it seems like the most direct harm done by homeless people sleeping on the benches is that those benches aren't usable by commuters who may need to rest. And this certainly makes that problem go away, I guess. Wouldn't exactly call it solved.
Really needs to have the poison bar slowly filling to complete the FromSoft effect. It can't just be a normal non-poisoned swamp.
Don't get me wrong, if Erika Kirk wanted to make the world a better place she could start by hastening her trip to join Charlie in hell. I'll also happily agree that Charlie was less an innocent victim and more an enemy combatant in the ongoing conflict between fascism and humanity. Even so, I feel like the performative cruelty here isn't exactly a good look. I'm not criticizing anyone's feeling of catharsis or schadenfreude about Kirk's fate, but this was a public display. It took effort and planning. They made props. And as a piece of political theater, this is not what we ought to be about. The message shouldn't focus on Kirk's death, but on making sure his life is remembered accurately: as a fascist debate bro who took massive amounts of money from the Epstein class to make internet memes for letting them do whatever they want. A man who immediately abandoned any libertarian small-government principles he used to claim once it became clear that openly hating gays, immigrants, and nonwhite people was politically viable.
If they ever raise the price then the humble Costco hot dog is going to be one of those things that serves as a legendary "economic indicator" up there with the stockbrokers jumping out of windows on black Tuesday.
Secretly?