vagalume

shitposts, mostly political | he/him | langblr: @randomaj-aferoj

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[dxppercxdxver]

the devil on my shoulder is telling me to Post a Take. i am gently ignoring them. let us all consider the humble indigo bunting instead

[transsexual-feminism]

Today I wanted to talk about Kyle Bassinga. Kyle was a 21 year old man from Georgia, whose family described him as "a kind, thoughtful, and smart young man who loved nature, music, and the people around him". Kyle Bassinga was killed on February 18th 2026, just ten days after his birthday. He was found hanging from a tree in a park.

The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.

I know this website it too white for this to really go anywhere, but an understanding of the present reality of white supremacy in the United States is just so important to transfeminism here. Lynchings never stopped, white supremacy never went away, you just stopped looking.

[storyweavingspider]

Juliana Nzita, A 16 year old Black girl, was just found hanging from a tree on church grounds in Charlotte, NC. Police have ruled it a suicide, despite hanging ourselves from trees being like the one communally agreed way Black folks ain’t killing ourselves.

Every time I go on Twitter or Facebook I learn about another recent lynching or missing Black person going mostly unreported. Half the reason I keep an active account on either of those sites is because they’re the only place I can find out about the violence happening to Black and Trans people reasonably quickly.

But I do need y’all to know that Black folks are currently, actively, being disappeared and lynched—if they even find our bodies. Black girls are and have been more often stolen into human trafficking, especially if they’re immigrants, but I’ve been seeing new news of probable lynchings every other day. Shit is worse than you think it is right now, tumblr just too white of a site to care lol

[thewinter22]

People argue "I've seen a case like this every few months and it's always been a suicide"

Been a suicide or been ruled a suicide?

[storyweavingspider]

Usually it’s ruled a suicide because cops or people affiliated with cops/prisons/legal system like lawyers or prosecutors did it then buried the body on land belonging to one of those organizations, such as I noted here: in this thread, where over 200 bodies were found buried behind a jail since 2016:

Reblog by @aetherograph · 1 link

💬 41  🔁 9104  ❤️ 7352 · Green Book Global - Black Travel Made Easy - Tips for Travel · The Greenbook was a travel guide for Black people; it

Non-Black and/or non-US based people often wonder why so many left-leaning Black folks in the US try to operate alternate justice systems within smaller community such as restorative justice, transformative justice, etc. when “all over the world, activists and their ancestors have fought for access to legal systems like this” and this is why.

Our legal system is explicitly designed to kill and enslave Black people. Our legal system from the cops to the lawyers and courts (one of the few times we got justice) to the prisons is legalized slavery where prisons are privatized and corporations are encouraged to maximize their profit by incentivizing every part of this system to hold as many people as possible.

Black folks can be proven innocent after years of time in prison or on death row and still killed by the state or dying in prison because the goal was never justice, it was to keep culling and controlling the Black population.

And outside of the system, we are lynched, raped, abused, trafficked, and robbed by those involved in our legal system, lives often irreparably destroyed, entire lives disappeared with no justice because that is the point, not a flaw. It’s almost always those in the legal system or their families and friends doing this, so that it can be ruled a suicide or a runaway or intracommunity issues and swept away.

So when we look to justice systems that do not throw away a life of any human, it is because we do not wish to see them enslaved, murdered, raped, abused, etc. at the hands of the state, because that is what WILL happen here in the US. We become abolitionists because we see that the alternative option is to allow others to become enslaved. Because it’s a minimum we can do when 95% of the time there will be no justice for us no matter what.

[ymutate]

Bridie O'Brien

The Gardens Glow

Oil on stretched canvas

76cm x 100cm

[depsidase]

[chirasul]

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

[chirasul]

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

[fishmech]

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

[chirasul]

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’m blindsided by authors using ai in their works. how can readers and writers tell if the writing is ai generated?

I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.

but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.

I’ve already talked more about this here, here, here. and more on my other blog @writingdose here and here.

[littlepagodatree]

You can notice certain telltale signs in some of the writing, such as short sentence stacking and usage of "not x not y but z" structures. But you have to be familiar with AI writing styles to be able to notice that.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’ve been writing “not x, not y, but z” way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve read works that have “not x, not y, but z” in them, and I’ve read those works way before gen ai became a thing. I’ve also been using em dash way before gen ai became a thing, and I’ve seen em dash used in so many written works way before gen ai became a thing. I know for a fact some human writers actually prefer short sentence stacking too.

every “ai telltale” is something humans write before, otherwise ai wouldn’t have been able to mimic it in the first place. because it needs human-made works to mimic on.

when I say ai witch hunt, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more, “not x, not y, but z” and em dash are one of the main things I’m talking about.

[seananmcguire]

As I saw someone say recently, when you start declaring "obvious tells," from punctuation to sentence styles, to be proof of AI, what you're actually spotting is trace amounts of the original source material.

[jennelikejennay]

Very often, all you can really say is, either this is AI or not very well written.

AI cannot pass for good writing at any length; you may not know what's wrong with it but you can see it's short on meaning and completely uniform in tone and emphasis. But it can pass for amateur writing, and amateurs need to be encouraged and not accused.

So that's why, even though I am pretty good at detecting AI, I don't throw out accusations. Because maybe they're just starting out and they haven't yet learned their individual voice, how to pack writing with meaning, how to vary the tone and emphasize the important parts.

You do not ever need to change your writing to "sound less AI." As you pass "competent" and move on to "inspired," your writing will distinguish itself easily.

[razielim]

i think too many fans have become disconnected from just how truly terrible plenty of fic is NATURALLY. Idk if it's bc they:

sort their Ao3 queries by popularity and only read stuff that enough other people have approved of,

click away from bad stuff too fast to really appreciate how bad it is and how much worse it could have gotten,

have in the past few years mentally shifted to attributing ALL bad fic writing to AI, thus creating a feedback loop for themselves where bad=AI always, with no chance to correct this perspective, or

have benefited from Ao3's, let's say, reputation as a site for "good writing only," (not true, but many believe this) which has resulted in many beginner, young, self-aware, or self-critical writers sequestering themselves to wattpad or other platforms. this is purely anecdotal, but despite still only ever sorting by date, i believe i'm encountering far less "bad" writing in any given fandom than i used to back on fanfiction.net, which didn't have the potentially intimidating reputation for "high quality" writing that Ao3 enjoys. this might give someone who hasn't been in fandom for literal decades the impression that most fic is average at worst, so that when they do see the "outlier" bad fics, they feel there must be some explanation for why those exist. "since they don't fit in with the rest, must be AI"

meanwhile, the fics they're reading:

anyway, bad writing is good and should be left alone.

it might be bad for you, but it may be plenty fine for the author's friends and they're having fun together so don't be sour and go read something else

it might be bad for you, but it's actually doing a bit, and you didn't understand, aren't privy to the joke, or are too young/old to "get it"

it might be bad for you, but the author is fighting for their LIFE trying to write in a language that isn't their native one, and they know. they KNOW it's not the best thing you've read. just shut up and let them express themselves, learn a language, and have fun

it might be bad for you, but the author is 14 and has literally never written fiction before in their life outside of a prompted school assignment short story. they may or may not be aware of the "quality" of their writing. doesn't matter. leave them alone. i can't even imagine the damage being accused of sounding like AI would do to someone at that stage, before getting even half a chance to develop their own voice, perspective, style. you could leave them questioning whether they have anything worth saying or are capable of doing anything uniquely so bad they'll never write fiction again til the very day they die.

it might be bad for you, but it belongs on Ao3. full stop

it might be bad for you, but Ao3 isn't a writing pageant or a "good fiction" vending machine; it's an archive. think of it specifically as a historical archive if you have trouble with the idea

it might be bad for you, but this person hasn't tried writing anything since graduating high school five decades ago and a) needs practice just as much as the hypothetical 14yo above bc skills can't just be plucked off a tree on a whim b) this person is doing something for fun in their limited time and they can either get the chance to grow into a unique voice in the community or you can chase them off with your prickly standards c) doesn't "get" all your ideas of "good" writing that may actually just be a collection of fads, tropes, and styles that enjoy popularity at the moment, and they are actually just doing things their own way that might be way more interesting and good than your narrow taste can recognize

it might be bad for you, but it's actually good for you. seeing your own mistakes in someone else's writing, where those same mistakes are finally revealed to you by being laid bare without the fig leaf of a brain working hard to supplement what you wrote with what you had intended to write, is a great way to grow as a writer. seeing something that makes you cringe and swearing to never do that yourself is a great way to find your voice and style. read some bad fic once in a while; enjoy it; learn something

bad writing is a good and natural byproduct of humans writing. many different kinds of people (with different levels of language proficiency, different experiences, different tastes) sitting down and writing results in a huge variety of content, aesthetics, and quality. such high natural variability means no one here is a big enough expert to reliably sort the failure of inexperienced humans (to form something ~like what they have read before) from the failure of AI (to form something ~like what it has been fed and given value data for).

the cost of accusing bad writers of using ai is too high for the questionable benefit of playing whack-a-mole with "potentially" ai fics

it would be really nice if we could somehow reliably separate "generated by ai" (boo) from "cooked up by a gremlin" (yay) but, for reasons previous replies have detailed, we can't so leave it be.

many fans are excessively worried about the number of kudos and comments they get over just having fun, but no one more so than people who are using ai to "post content" and "generate engagement," so simply clicking away and not leaving any feedback is the least harmful thing you can do to an author whose writing you don't want to read while still having the effect you were going for of denying someone your positive feedback.

[letatlin]

towers so nice they hit them twice

[schoolhater]

please help her

her gofundme

saving al-genina

sudan solidarity collective

[barishal]

This is absolutely horrific. PLEASE pay attention to Sudan. We are 1 year and 5 months into the genocide. There is little to no support from the West! Many of the families and grassroots organizations depend on us to help them. So please donate and share!

[withbriefthanksgiving]

As of 25 May 2026, the gofundme is still up and taking donations

[yourreddancer]

The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.

The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.

Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.

Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.

[beardedmrbean]

[voiceofaboud]

NONSTOP BOMBING IN GAZA. MEDIA SILENCE. FEAR EVERYWHERE.

[voiceofaboud]

[voiceofaboud]

These should have been joyful Eid days, but my little siblings are terrified.

Please leave a small Eid gift for them… maybe your kindness will help us survive.

Chuffed - PayPal - Verified

[the-quasar-hero]

Can’t go a day without seething in rage about how “Woke” was coined to discuss the pervasive nature of antiblack racism throughout all societies and got so fucking mangled by the white masses across all political spectrums that it practically doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s almost a joke of itself.

[the-quasar-hero]

During the height of the Ferguson protests, you’d see posts about how the system is designed to oppress the Black community and being unaware of how it operates is akin to being asleep, so you must stay Woke. (Woke as a term in the Black community actually has a long standing history but we’ll focus on this period of time for now). You have to keep your eyes open to the truth, that’s what it was about.

And now it’s used to discuss whether or not it’s woke for a brunette to wear jeans, or if using your turn signal is woke. It honestly makes me want to puke

[ot3]

Man it's kinda crazy how you're very open to the idea that AI generated imagery and music etc is art but get super pressed at the insinuation that advertisements are/can be art lmao. Kind of a double standard and I think most people can agree one is definitely more close to art than the other 🤷

read the words i have said on the subject in the order i have put them in instead of making things up

[phaeton-flier]

Squidward's whole deal is that he was a scion of Old Money who got really into Marxism in college and decided he couldn't live with himself as a beneficiary of the Bourgeoisie. He cut ties with his parents and went to live as a proletariat for a few years to better his music.

Of course, what was supposed to be a short term service industry job before he lived for his art has bloomed into just being his life, and life as a poor artist is never as romantic as one imagines. While the cost of living of Bikini Bottom is low enough that even a frycook can be a homeowner, it's not quite so low that he can afford the luxuries he was used to growing up.

His view of the Working Class as the downtrodden masses were rather tattered by years of living between SpongeBob and Patrick, who were not so much temporarily oppressed intellectuals as they were, well, SpongeBob and Patrick.

Still, through thick and thin he's never gone back on his decision to leave the money behind. The great irony is that he is ignorant of his greatest achievement—his superiority to Squilliam isn't turning a bunch of randos into a functioning Marching Band or turning a burger joint into a fine dining establishment, it's having the strength of character to look at all the advantages Squilliam had and choose to leave it behind.

He will never be a master Clarinet player, but he will always have that

[klapollo]

documentary about four girls being raped and executed btw

[hagiomoto]

If you are very active on X, you would notice the increasing prevalence of Muslims being lynched in India right in front of the camera, with the perpetrators themselves recording it. Just so you know, when we talk about Islamophobia becoming normalized and legalized, we are referring to this kind of thing not criticism of the UAE or Dubai.

[huzni]

And this is so, among other reasons, why so many Indian Muslims (along with many non-Hindu Indians targeted by caste segregation policies) end up trapped in indentured labour across the Gulf monarchic economies where so many from global north bourgeoisies go to evade taxes they'd otherwise have to pay in their home countries: since the national and regional Hindutva-compliant governments ruling the former at home in India don't do jackshit to protect them from this, there are no support networks to uphold any workers' rights to either keep them safe within their own communities nor (subsequently) from resorting to seek "opportunities" offered by exploitative Salafī rulers and entrepreneurs across the Arabian Sea.

You can't claim to have and exert Taqua if you don't engage in class struggle.

[hagiomoto]

I just wanted to add that non-Indian bigots have been using the same videos of Muslims being lynched to spread the false narrative that the lynchings were carried out by Muslims.