Happy Pride Month everyone! Remember 4 months ago when the CEO of this platform harassed and chased a trans woman off this website just for posting her transition timeline, then chased her to other social media platforms to continue harassing her, and threatened to call the FBI if she continued disputing the multiple dubious terminations of her blogs that did not violate tumblr's terms of service in any way? And despite tumblr staff insisting that the CEO was acting against their interests, the broad transmisogyny evident in the site's culture and moderation policy has still not been adequately addressed?
Remember that staff is continuing to nuke the blogs of trans women even after all of this. Remember this post when they call this site the queerest place on the internet again this month
we're overdue for a reactive wave of anti-cozy games. animal crossing but office workers. restaurant management but applebee's. farming sim but all spreadsheets. never see an ear of corn the whole game
"A man would shelter, if he could, in the nook behind this new plywood. The building, abandoned, the man is too. How I wish you'd imagined that it were you"
Seen on an abandoned thearter in Rochester, New York
American democrats who are credulous that this bombing will lead to meaningful democratic reform in Iran are so funny. Yeah mate how many elementary schools in your home town would you be comfortable with china bombing if it meant they also did in trump? how many of your family members would you enjoy burying the loose bits and pieces of if it meant Hegseth caught one too?
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The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”
What went wrong? The Post continues: “Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.” The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison.
The massive review raises questions about the veracity of not just expert hair testimony, but also the bite-mark and other forensic testimony offered as objective, scientific evidence to jurors who, not unreasonably, believed that scientists in white coats knew what they were talking about. As Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, put it, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”
This study was launched after the Post reported that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to possibly hundreds of wrongful convictions for rape, murder, and other violent crimes, dating back at least to the 1970s. In 90 percent of the cases reviewed so far, forensic examiners evidently made statements beyond the bounds of proper science. There were no scientifically accepted standards for forensic testing, yet FBI experts routinely and almost unvaryingly testified, according to the Post, “to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work.”
NACDL executive director Norman Reimer said in an interview with Associations Now that the flaws in the system had been known for years now. “What we were finding was that the examiners … wouldn’t just simply say that there was a microscopic similarity [between the two hairs], but they would go beyond that and say it was a 100 percent match, essentially misleading the jury into concluding that the evidence had a certain value that it didn’t actually have,” Reimer said.
This is a hegemony of American prudishness, applied globally, incoherently, unevenly, and unseriously. Anybody responsible for these decisions would be vaporized in seconds by a Pinku movie from the 1970s, and if a single person in this chain of command has an arts degree they are pretending they don’t for the sake of an ill-defined idea of business. Horses cannot be the ceiling for what is artistically and commercially possible in games, because otherwise we are in deep horseshit.
Horses, the indie game that is too scandalous for either Valve or Epic, is only beyond the pale if you're not familiar with any other art fo
The problem isn't the over designed twinks or the silly horse girls or the goofy cookies it's the gambling. You guys know it's the gambling right? I need to you all to know the problem with gatcha games is that they're just normalizing gambling addictions to younger generations.
yes! this!!! the big grift of gacha games is that they've convinced people they aren't gambling or contributing to the machine of gambling! its a free world and we all have our vices I am not going to blow you up for playing poker at a casino or smashing your yuri cookies together but you absolutely need to treat both the same way
For context: the reason metal sounds the way it does is because Tony Iommi, guitarist of Black Sabbath, lost his fingertips in a factory accident. Doctors told him he would never be able to play again, so he spent months burning down plastic and covering it with leather to essentially create new fingertips. Of course, he still couldn't play in the same way, so he downtuned his guitars and found new ways to play parts that made them sound even bigger and heavier than before, and that's how the sound of heavy metal was created!
Not to use him as inspiration porn but it really is incredible that an entire huge genre exists not in spite of but specifically BECAUSE of a disability
Also worth mentioning he was inspired by Django Reinhardt!
"My friend said, "Listen to this guy play", and I went, "No way! Listening to someone play the guitar is the very last thing I want to do right now!" But he kept insisting and he ended up playing the record for me. I told him I thought it was really good and then he said, "You know, the guy's only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire." I was totally knocked back by this revelation and was so impressed by what I had just heard that I suddenly became inspired to start trying to play again."
As more and more people are being forced to switch to Windows 11, Microsoft's most AI-malware-ridden OS yet, I've been putting together articles and links for how to undo the damage and save your battery, your RAM, your disk space, your privacy, and your sanity from this bullshit.
FIRST:
The easiest way to get rid of the majority of the bullshit that Windows is forcing on us, as of October 2025, is this one-stop-one-click debloat solution from a modern day hero:
A simple, lightweight PowerShell script to remove pre-installed apps, disable telemetry, as well as perform various other changes to customi
It's very easy, even if you're not tech savvy or get scared of pop up windows saying "ARE YOU SURE?" Yes, you are sure, I promise. This program takes maybe two minutes and will save you SO MUCH pain, time, and money (and exploitation).
Now that you've done that, here's the cleanup, to catch the little shit that the debloat might have missed (most of this will already be done by debloat, but hey, it's good to double check).
Microsoft wants to put AI everywhere on your PC, but you can take back control.
Even just reading about some of these features makes me angry. Fucking Copilot and "Discover" AI scrapers are in Notepad. NOTEPAD. And then there's this uncanny valley garbage:
No uncanny valley video calls for me, thanks! (Also, what else is it doing while it scans your face and listens to your calls? What else, microsoft? Because there was a lot of memory being assigned to this program for a simple "smooths your skin" add on).
Tired of Microsoft pushing ads throughout Windows 11? Here are the settings you can tweak to turn them off and reclaim some privacy.
The truly insane number of places they have stuck ads on your own home computer is sickening. Become Unmarketable.
Bonus:
Some background programs you probably don't need that are taking up space and how to remove them (Microsoft forums, 2024)
Your Samsung Galaxy Phone comes with 22 apps you don't need (Android Police, 2025)
How to disable the AI in firefox (still the only browser that lets you do this permanently) (Windows Report, 2025)
When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “Peace” Has Lost Its Meaning. By: Michelle Ellner
From Codepink, by Michelle Ellner
(...)Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.
(...)Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace: the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the journalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the Flotilla sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and conviction.
But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That’s the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and every nation of the Global South deserves.
I've been illustrating the girls from House (1977) with limited palettes because the iconography in that film is very fun and it is spooky season after all. Enjoy some doomed teens and a very evil Auntie!
This seems like a good time to mention the Prisoners Literature Project and Inside Books Project. Both of these organizations send free books to incarcerated people, and are always looking for donations - both books and money -and volunteers! (Prisoners literature project sends books everywhere but Texas - Inside Books project is just Texas).
[ID: Joseph Hill (@ jaceyhill) tweeted: “Reading costs 5 cents a minute and the prisoners earn 30 cents an hour. Reading a 330 page book costs them about $20. Prisons are designed to destroy people’s humanity.”
Hill’s comments are a quote-retweet of Book Patrol (@ bookpatrol), who said: “The Cost of Reading in Prison: In West Virginia it’s 5 cents a minute bookpatrol.net/the-cost-of-re…” Attached is a photo of an incarcerated person sitting on the end of a bed leaning over an e-reader, with their head resting in their hand. In the background, one person sits on another of the many beds in the room, and another sleeps.
Donate books money time whatever you can to your local books to prisoners, anarchist black cross, or books through bars group. They’re trying their hardest to make it impossible to read books in prison the last few years
Fwiw you CANNOT donate 2nd hand books to US prisons! New books must be shipped directly from the publisher to the incarcerated recipient. Just give $$ to ur chosen group and they’ll buy books on request, you can also volunteer as a penpal to get requests & coordinate sending people titles they asked for and/or curating titles to send.
People who are good at making book recommendations, i.e. well-read in a certain topic or genre, are always really valuable at the ABC (anarchist black cross) so if thats a skill u have definitely link! Getting a well-chosen title you havent read before is a highly life-sustaining little pleasure.
Appalachian Prison Book Project sends books to incarcerated people in 6 states in the Appalachian region!! FOR FREE! They publish special requests weekly, mostly thru their Facebook page, and have guidelines for donating books on their site. They’re particularly relevant to the tweet in op as they are West Virginia founded & based and going strong for 20 some years now.
Don’t join the army to get free college. First two years of community college is free. Peace corps and Americorps have scholarships and student loan forgiveness programs for their volunteers. If you’re not rich you probably qualify for Pell grants. Go to a state college. They teach you the same things they do at fancy colleges. Sometimes there’s scholarships for people of a certain background. Ethnicity. Sexuality. Gender. Religion. Go to a grad school that’ll give you free tuition for working there as a teacher or assistant. Become a stripper or something. Just don’t join the army.
This is all GREAT. I turned 40 last week, so permit me to add what I learned in my 30s:
keep on not working for startups
sometimes there comes a point where the thing (fandom, hobby, friendship, romantic relationship) you loved no longer brings you joy. And that's okay. Try to mourn the loss, take joy in the memories, and don't burn any bridges in case ten years go by and you find yourself back in that fandom/hobby/relationship again
it turns out that (ugh) moderate regular exercise is (spit) good for you. The sooner you make it part of your life, the easier it'll be
related: if you throw yourself into a new exercise regime too hard and too fast, without stopping to rest or consider whether a particular move is good for you ... well, shoulder injuries are painful and consults with orthopedic surgeons are expensive
knees are bastards too
don't even get me started on ankles
there may come a time when your digestive system is too fragile for ibuprofin. I'm sorry
one day you're gonna wake up and realise you no longer give any fucks about some things that used to bother you
on the other hand, you might be alarmed to realise what you still give a fuck about
never get down on the floor without an exit strategy for getting back up
I turn 50 this year. what I have learned in my 40s:
"loving yourself" is less of a feeling and more of an action. you can start doing it any time and it will make your life better and better as you go on
this will happen incrementally - be patient
along those lines, if you haven't started making an active effort to quit shit-talking yourself, suck it up and do it
no, shut up. do it. "but it's haaaaard!" don't care. do it.
whether you like it or not, you are mortal and you need to go to the doctor for an annual checkup
stretch regularly - your future self will thank you
at some point you will encounter people much younger than you arguing passionately and incorrectly about history you personally remember and experienced
this will be infuriating and annoying
otoh, most other things just... will not matter to you as much
at some point you will shift from wanting to go out to being like "eh" and deciding to stay in. this is okay.
you will have absolutely no idea what The Youth are talking about and you will not care
but if you keep your mind open to new ideas you'll never be irrelevant
your company still doesn't love you - don't give them more than they pay you for
get a fucking hobby, especially a hobby that involves physically creating/handling something and/or moving your body in physical space. it will do you more good than you can imagine
I'm talking that massive, never-ending Discord chat with your bestie? The one that makes you giggle through the day? It's not a "waste of time," it's what time was made for
If that's fanfic for your favorite characters who never even met on screen celebrate that!
If that's building a tiny fleet of snake villagers for your snake town and they just cover your mantel hell yes!
If that's collecting pillows and making a fort of them every weekend I'll be right over
Because the military, an establishment that has historically been run for men, by men, while miles away from women for sometimes years at a time, has never allowed drag.
What the fuck
Do you think our forefathers
Would think of us
If they could see us now
Emasculating ourselves with makeup
Dressing like pansies
Making fools of ourselves
Absolutely mocking the very concept of masculinity
While they were giving their lives fighting the Nazis.
Yes, I know the last three photos are British, and you can kindly fuck off.
