IF YOU’RE A PRO ISRAELI BLOCK ME IMMEDIATELY I DON’T WANT ANY STUPID EXCUSES THERE ARE FAMILIES DYING OUT, PREGNANT WOMEN WITHOUT HEALTH CARE, AUTISTIC CHILDREN WHO HAVE TO HEAR THE BOMBING EVERY DAY AND WE HAVE THE POWER TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT DO NOT IGNORE THIS
While it is true that Congress does return from recess Feb. 26th, that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll immediately jump into voting.
The bill only has enough support to pass the Senate—it’ll most likely stall at the House; both due to it having much less support there & how disorganized the House currently is. Even if it does pass—God forbid, the President would have to sign it for it to be official and even then, it’ll likely take several months before it goes into effect.
…That being said, please continue to call both your Senators & especially your House representative; We still don’t even have a concrete date for a vote—You can visit the website pictured to even see for yourself.
Please spread this around. Don’t panic, We still have time!!!
I’ve spent hours trying to play instruments and this guy just whittles up a carrot and kills it
The notes are so full of extremely salty clarinet players and I love it
I still stand by this statement, dude just drills up a carrot and knocks everyone flat off their socks while simultaneously ensuring that every single clarinet player who hears this is foaming at the mouth and out for his blood. Absolute legend.
my brother asked why my voice was so deep and I said I’d give him 3 guesses, and he said “You doin the little flip-flop? The little switcheroo?” and it took me like 10 seconds to realize that was his Polite Way of asking if i was transitioning
transing your gender has two new names now and your brother is an icon
my brother asked why my voice was so deep and I said I’d give him 3 guesses, and he said “You doin the little flip-flop? The little switcheroo?” and it took me like 10 seconds to realize that was his Polite Way of asking if i was transitioning
transing your gender has two new names now and your brother is an icon
I could really use some help right now as my bank account is in the negative and I have no way of paying it back soon and it’s a $6 a day overdraft fee
not to be rude but some of y'all need to look on the bright side sometimes. like, yeah sure the world is fucked and people suck and we all die whatever, sure, but like. go outside.
ok i phrased this poorly, hang on.
i’m not saying the cure for depression is touching grass. however, if you surround yourself with sad things and talk about how terrible life is and how much you’re suffering and never take a breath and remember it’s not all bad, you’ll end up making yourself worse.
like, i’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression, and anxiety, and insomnia, and chronic pain, and a million other things that get in the way of me having a simple fucking good day, but you know what?
i watch videos that make me happy and wear pretty clothes and cut my hair in fun styles and do my makeup and drink strawberry tea and take two showers a day and i look on the bright side because goddamnit if god is trying to break me down, he’ll have to try harder.
i see so many people talk about how sad they are, who make their depression their first priority, and i get it, i really do, but you know that is actively harming your mental state, right? please, just do something nice for yourself, think positively for one day. i promise things get better when you step back and breathe.
In regards to Nex’s death do NOT erase the fact that they were Native American. Do NOT. They’re native identity is just as integral to this as their trans one, I ASSURE you. The Oklahoma Governor has been rallying against native people since he got elected.
“Mozart was autistic because he was a child prodigy who wrote whole pieces in a day” no Mozart was autistic because he used echolalia and always spoke the truth even though it got him violently ejected from his workplace and had no interest in marriage and had a childish personality and sense of humor and was routine-oriented and had a low frustration tolerance. the prodigy thing has almost nothing to do with it. I would like to see one scholar within my lifetime consider the posthumous diagnosis for ANY reason other than “little boy played music well.” I take personal offense to the fact that despite his utter genius he’s been considered immature by academics because of his mannerisms. where have I heard THAT one before?
A quote from his father:
“He was so extremely fond of me - I, of course, fairly doting upon him - that he would repeatedly enquire whether I truly loved him; and when in jest I would occasionally say ‘No,’ his little eyes would fill with tears, so sensitive and loving was his heart.”
From his sister:
“He loved our parents, especially our father, so much that he composed a little tune which he would sing every night before going to bed - for which purpose purpose father would stand him on a chair. Father was invariably required to sing the second part, and when this little ritual, which was never overlooked, was finished, Wolfgang would kiss our father very sweetly and go to sleep peaceful and contented. And this went on, every night, except when he was ill and already in bed, until he was in his tenth year.”
“Until he was almost ten years old, he had an insurmountable horror of the trumpet when it was sounded alone, without other instruments; merely holding a trumpet toward him terrified him as much as if it had been a loaded pistol. His father wished to overcome this childish alarm, and ordered me once, in spite of the boy’s pathetic pleading, to blow towards him; but, oh God! How I wish that I had not been induced to do it. Wolfgang no sooner heard the blaring sound than he turned deathly pale, began to collapse, and would certainly have fallen into convulsions, had I not immediately let off.”
But yeah let’s focus on his skill set like everyone else around him did
“Men should put the seat down when they’re done peeing so that I don’t fall into the toilet when I sit down to pee”
“Actually women should be putting the seat back up when they’re done peeing as a courtesy so that I don’t have to touch it and put the seat up before I pee”
Actually, both the seat AND lid should be down when no one is actively using the toilet, because this prevents things from accidentally falling into / accidentally being dropped into the toilet. Also having the lid down when you’re flushing is important because it prevents the toilet from spraying out bacteria.
So, y'all know what’s happening with Photomatt now, right?
He’s being lovebombed by transphobes, overloaded with supportive messages, and sent links to anti-trans articles and podcasts and videos and newspaper columns. He’s being told about the toxic TRAs and cancel culture censorship and the violent trans activists who “eat their own”.
Sympathic lips are telling him all about “children being sterilised”, about “unfairness in women’s sports”, about autogynephilia, about Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, about “gay conversion therapy”.
And because he’s angry, bitter, and has had his ego bruised, he is listening.
He’s been in the rare position of a CEO actually subjected to a similar treatment as the people using his service, and he did not care for it. He feels uniquely hounded, he feels alone, he feels deeply wronged. He was an Ally, he did and said all the Right Things. And even still, he was Cancelled, labelled a transphobe.
I don’t want to predict the future or guess to Matt Mullenweg’s character. I genuinely, deeply hope I’m wrong here. However, if within the next few months, he starts expressing some “legitimate concerns” with trans rights, I will not be the least bit surprised.
I’m repeating myself a lot here with other posts, but this is why its important to acknowledge that he’s not a frothing at the mouth, wrong speak transphobe. He’s a complacent person with power and biases that is too engrained to change them. And again, that is not a sympathetic viewpoint. He’s a hateful idiot who thinks that acceptance only goes as far as checking the boxes.
Here’s the video version of my discussion of the leaked emails that prove the Hugo Awards removed finalists (me, RF Kuang, Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman & Ep 6 of Sandman) for political reasons, despite us having the required votes. Because too many of you are making assumptions without bothering to read the full exposé.
There’s a lot of nuance in this case that I hope people can acknowledge. No, it is not “sinophobic” to criticize the Chinese government’s severe censorship policies when anyone who’s spent more than ten minutes on the Chinese internet knows how bad it is, and there IS evidence of pressure in this case. There’s nothing to accomplish by pretending like it’s not a thing. You’re not furthering the world proletarian revolution by speaking over the lived experiences of Chinese comrades and denying factually shitty aspects of your favorite AES.
Yes, the Western and presumably white members of the Hugo admin team DID circle back to racism by trying so hard to appease the Chinese government that they preemptively censored Chinese diaspora ~ to be safe ~ on extremely flimsy reasons without even reading our books. And of course, confusing Nepal for Tibet.
It’s really not one or the other.
Remember, if someone asks you to censor something, you can say no. If they ask you to compile dossiers on problematic individuals, you can say no. You are allowed to not do the censors work for them. You can tell them to go [censored] themselves.
Also like this can’t be explained away by “it’s hard to moderate so many blogs”
Versus
Like it’s pretty obvious who’s welcome here and who’s not. An actual hate group is more welcome than the victims of their harassment.
Wait, if staff wants to ban a group, terfs for example, can’t they just identify all the tags that group uses (like “#terf safe”) and then just go through every blog that posted to that tag, taking action on any that are a part of that group?
Like, why are reports the only way they can find out about a rule breaker??
I was reading something about Whitestown, Indiana and my eyes nearly popped out of my head thinking it was one of THOSE comically racist towns. Nice to know, at least the name, wasn’t that.
Racisttown, named after the abolitionist Stopbeing Racist,
That’s nothing. Check THIS shit out
WHAT THE HELL
George Washington Hitler and his son Dr. Gay Hitler,
when you call your reps to ask them to pretty please stop taking away your rights, remember:
In deep red areas you’re a republican who is thinking of voting for someone else if they don’t vote what you want on this specific bill because it impacts your republican ideals so very much
In swing states you’re an undecided voter who’s gonna go blue if they don’t vote how you like
remember to call because that way their phone is going off and their peers can hear it because their offices are close together (emails and letters don’t work like that), so it can rattle them if they get high volumes. remember that you gotta make them feel like they’re losing something.
Talking points I’ve been using in my blood red state:
“I’m a small business owner and [example: anti-drag bill] is making me lose money!” OR “[Anti-drag bill] is going to cost us millions in taxable sales” - If you talk about how it’s making you personally lose money and absolutely need to bullshit, you run a bar or do freelance photography. The intern they have on the other line does not have the resources or the know-how to check that.
“I’m concerned that [anti abortion bill] is the government infringing on my personal rights.” - Self explanatory.
“[Anti-gay bill] goes against family values in my church.” - They aren’t going to call your local Pentecostal chapter to fact check this. You don’t even need to be Pentecost, you just need to assert that you’re part of a community and a major voting bloc.
Remember: In smaller towns, literally every vote counts. And voters generally don’t call in, so your call can carry quite the advantage.
when you call your reps to ask them to pretty please stop taking away your rights, remember:
In deep red areas you’re a republican who is thinking of voting for someone else if they don’t vote what you want on this specific bill because it impacts your republican ideals so very much
In swing states you’re an undecided voter who’s gonna go blue if they don’t vote how you like
remember to call because that way their phone is going off and their peers can hear it because their offices are close together (emails and letters don’t work like that), so it can rattle them if they get high volumes. remember that you gotta make them feel like they’re losing something.
Talking points I’ve been using in my blood red state:
“I’m a small business owner and [example: anti-drag bill] is making me lose money!” OR “[Anti-drag bill] is going to cost us millions in taxable sales” - If you talk about how it’s making you personally lose money and absolutely need to bullshit, you run a bar or do freelance photography. The intern they have on the other line does not have the resources or the know-how to check that.
“I’m concerned that [anti abortion bill] is the government infringing on my personal rights.” - Self explanatory.
“[Anti-gay bill] goes against family values in my church.” - They aren’t going to call your local Pentecostal chapter to fact check this. You don’t even need to be Pentecost, you just need to assert that you’re part of a community and a major voting bloc.
Remember: In smaller towns, literally every vote counts. And voters generally don’t call in, so your call can carry quite the advantage.
Hey bro/ster I’m super sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but uh sometimes being a socialist means, you know, putting your dreams of terrorism down for a minute and talking about public policy and how your proposed form of government would like, uhhhhh……………. work.
The part after the revolution is what truly decides whether you’re successful or not.
Hey bro/ster I’m super sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but uh sometimes being a socialist means, you know, putting your dreams of terrorism down for a minute and talking about public policy and how your proposed form of government would like, uhhhhh……………. work.
people vaguely saying ‘the horrors’ as shorthand for 'life problems, don’t worry about it’ in conversations where the problems are not going to be delved into has got to be one of my favorite new Ways Of Speaking that has emerged. like it’s polite and vague and succinct enough for impersonal conversation but also extremely honest. it’s very funny. The Horrors. we all know of them.
God I hate these fucking floating monoliths. They always go, like, 10mph below the speed limit and if you try to pass them they just fucking distort reality around them until you’re back behind them again. One of them cut me off on the highway once and when I honked it banished me to a hoary netherworld where I wandered, lost and alone, for untold centuries, trapped in the liminal space between what could have been and what never was, black stars dotting the bright infinity yawning out around me as I drove out of thought and time, through endless ruined cities and blighted lands unmarked by the sun’s cold rays, and when I finally got out I was more than 20m late for my dentist appointment and they had to reschedule me.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt’s response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen’s suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the “mature” and “sexual themes” community labels were erroneously applied to some users’ posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
Full damage control mode has been entered, a bit too late I would say. We’ll see.
too many of you describe yourself as fail women or loser women when you are in fact cool and smart women who do cool things and have interesting things 2 say and who have valuable contributions to not just society but my life… MAKES U THINK
Every time I hear about Nex I get choked up. That was almost me. I’m nonbinary but I always use the bathroom that corresponds to my AGAB and I’ve almost been attacked multiple times because of it.
When will we ever be safe? It feels like we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we go to the bathroom of our AGAB but we’re GNC, we risk getting attacked. If we go to the bathroom opposite of our AGAB but we don’t pass, we risk getting attacked. And neutral bathrooms are often just not an option. So what are we supposed to do? (Not directing the question at you, just kinda screaming into the void at this point)
im so lucky i live in a blue state and we have gender neutral bathrooms, but i’m also white and fairly well off economically. so many factors led to nex getting killed, probably somewhere between exorsexism/transphobia and anti native racism, but is terrifying how often things like these are happening and being dismissed as “sadly passed away” or “died”.
nex was brutally beaten to death and only barely hung on for another day and the school suspended them rather than their attackers. i hope we all fucking learn from this and it never happens again, but that would be naive, wouldnt it?
hey, don’t cry. one half flour one half yogurt knead into dough and fry for easy flatbread and dip in balsamic vinegar, okay?
After three batches, my findings so far:
I use full fat Greek yoghurt and self-rising flour
Ratio by weight
Add a pinch of salt
Knead until no longer sticky, adding more flour if necessary
Roll them with olive oil instead of flour and fry in an otherwise unoiled, preheated pan (medium heat) (trust in the lord; it will seem like it’s going to stick to the pan at first but they’ll unstick in about 15 seconds)
Roll them thin but not too thin; mine take about 45 seconds on either side
Serving with garlic butter is also a very good option
I’m gonna be eating these for a month
This actually works?? Two-ingredient bread??
I gotta try it.
That’s…naan.
That’s naan?
*runs to Google*
HOLY SHIT THAT IS NAAN! HOW DID I NOT KNOW NAAN WAS THAT EASY TO MAKE?
hi do y'all mind if i misuse this blog entirely for a second. idk why i’m asking i don’t actually care they found a new snake it’s a New Snake we didn’t know about this snake before!!!!
NEW SNAKE HELL YEAH!!!!
hot damn this is so fucking great but the mild perturbation that snake expresses is deeply fucking funny
like you’re moisturized, flourishing, in your lane, and this bastard noodly creature from Beyond shows up to flail it’s many extraneous appendages around in sheer joy that you exist. and this is a little bit weird so you go to the next aisle over in the grocery store.
Pardon me for speculating wildly in your general direction, but we all need to be out there, catching and stuffing small birds into our mouths for science.
I refuse to reblog callout posts because I’m a prison abolitionist
In all my years in this website, and I’ve been here a long time, I can’t recall a single instance of a callout post leading to actual restitution for the victims of the alleged harm the person was accused of. Even in cases where the accusations were true. Even in cases where there was legitimate harm done to another person.
Remember the sixpencee child slave thing? What happened there, exactly? Was the kid freed? No? They were just run off the website? OK so what good exactly did that do?
Remember the bone stealing witch? What exactly did that witchhunt accomplish? The person got arrested, oh that’s great, the american justice system surely rectified the situation
And again, those are instances where the accusations were true and involved real substantive harm to another person. We used to joke on here how callout posts were shit like “receipts below: [several paragraphs of petty fandom drama] [three paragraphs of petty interpersonal drama involving cheating on partners or stealing food out of the fridge or something] [fabricated evidence that the person is responsible for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey]”
And that was back in the 2010s. The meta has changed. Callouts used to be a tool people used to point out actual harm a person had done, rarely, and more commonly were used as a means of bullying somebody over petty drama. Nowadays they’re used to manufacture outrage and harassment against marginalized populations. They are a weapon bigots use to turn us against each other. A few manufactured accusations here, some out of context or clipped screenshots there, and people who should be standing in solidarity with each other against white supremacy, patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, are instead devouring each other.
It’s sinister as shit, dude, and people will still share these accusations without a second thought. So, why? What is the point? What’s the best case scenario here? Raising “awareness?” what the fuck is that supposed to accomplish? Will we get the oh-so-trustworthy authorities involved? Are we hoping for an arrest? A conviction? Throwing a queer or poc person in prison so they can be abused and assaulted and humiliated behind bars? Is that who we are?
Callouts and the like don’t serve any real good in the world. At a macro scale they divide us when we should be standing together, and at a micro scale they result in deeply traumatic never-ending harassment and threats and doxxing and worse to a person who almost definitely does not deserve it. And again, for what? A sense of “justice?” this is not justice. This is retribution. It is punishment.
It’s fucking cop behavior, and I’m not gonna participate in it.
KOSA has been delayed! It’s not for too long, just until January. But this gives us more time to continue sending emails and calling. ITS WORKING! KEEP CALLING! KEEP EMAILING!
(I was alerted of this because I’m on Fight for the Future’s email list)
Why do you think she’s trying to fix it now? Probably because she’s gotten a lot of pressure and phone calls on the subject.
This is great! It’s progress in the right direction. Next step: continue the phone calls and letters, pointing out that the bill as written does nothing to protect kids, and there is no way to make a bill like it that doesn’t harm LGBTQ+ folks (because the bill’s sponsors have admitted that the whole POINT of it is to let them censor LGBTQ+ people) and also no way to make a bill like it that doesn’t invade peoples’ privacy.
So yeah. Call your senators, or write them. The EFF has resources and talking points, and if you can put them in your own words that makes you more likely to be listened to.
This is unspeakably important. Don’t sleep on this.
One of the letters to Sen. Cantwell came from me, since I’m one of her constituents.
But please, contact your own senators, United Statesians!
Coffee should still be 50 cents a cup. It should be something you pay for with silver coins. And for another quarter you should get a cigarette with it
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