[literally-black-jesus]

I hate how it's always "stop letting your teenagers drink energy drinks!!!" And never "stop letting energy drink companies put dangerous amounts of caffeine into their drinks and stop letting them market to teenagers" or "stop forcing teenagers to be at constant sleep deficits because of early wake ups and absurd homework and stress loads" but hey who cares why not blame the literal child for trying to stay awake enough to match the absurd expectations y'all have for us now

[asharaks]

lets address my favourite topic: dev bias in writing. "i don't like sera because she's annoying" the guy who wrote sera also wrote jacob taylor. can we take the marginalised romances away from this guy. he hates black people and he hates lesbians. there's a certain impulse in some of these devs to take...i guess schadenfreude?? in writing romances that "punish" the player - from gaider's "alistair is a manchild and terrible partner" to whatever weekes says about solas - there is something in particular in these devs' loathing for women (or people playing women) that makes them willing to weaponise unimaginable bigotry in punishment.

kristjanson writes a lesbian, and gives you absolutely no opportunity to extend her kindness or empathy: sera is marginalised across several dimensions, both in- and out of-of-universe, as an elf, as neurodivergent, as a lesbian, and her romance is marked by scenes you are intended to read as hysterical, irrational, unreasonable. your reward for being interested in a neurodivergent lesbian is getting shouted at, having a bow pointed at you, don't you regret this? and again, in mass effect - you romanced Black man and he leaves you without a word, he takes up with another woman and starts a family behind your back, what did you expect?

kristjanson's writing is so full of racist, homophobic, bigoted tropes that are levelled against the player and the romance in a way that feels like punishment, like he wants to make sure no-one (no woman) can have a joyful, fulfilling relationship with a marginalised person, like you don't deserve to be successful in these relationships without conditions. and i love a difficult, unconventional, even tragic romance in games, but in contrast to the treatment the other romances get it is notable to me that kristjanson singles out the lesbian and the Black man for treatment that not only punishes the characters involved but leans heavily on stereotypes particular to those groups.

if you are a woman, or playing a woman, devs feel all too comfortable belittling and insulting you for pursuing the romances they choose to make available in their games, to the point of self-sabotage, and that is a significant factor that needs to be taken into account in any analysis of how these storylines play out.

[kamogryadeshi]

‼️Footage of burning phosphorus rain over Kostyantynivka .

The Russians are simply burning everything alive in the Donetsk region.

White phosphorus ignites spontaneously and burns at temperatures above 800°C. When it hits a person, it causes deep chemical and thermal burns. Phosphorus is practically impossible to extinguish with ordinary water, its combustion is accompanied by the release of thick poisonous smoke, which instantly burns out the respiratory tract, and large-scale fires and prolonged chemical contamination of the soil make this weapon devastating for all living things around the impact.

[dustbunniees]

tbh my biggest problem with go3 is that aziraphale and crowley do stuff that affects the plot and actually makes a difference in the story #notmygoodomens. my ineffables do NOT save the world, they are there while the world is saved

you’ve taken the two most useless beings in existence and you made them make a decision. look at them. they’re suicidal now

[nyokoko]

Does anyone have any good Indigenous American literature on two-spirit and the role it plays in the culture? Also any fiction featuring two-spirit characters?

[outerspacekake]

The Two-Spirit Library

The site above has a great starting list with books I've been meaning to read, as well as videos and articles.

2S roles vary by Tribe/Nation, as I understand it.

@moniquill @tepkunset Any other Native followers please feel free to add!

[tepkunset]

^^^ Great resource above, co-signing!

Some fictional book recs with 2S rep:

"Love Beyond Body, Space & Time" A collection of Indigenous sci-fi and urban fantasy short stories focusing on Indigiqueer and 2S characters by various authors.

"Between Earth and Sky" Series by Rebecca Roanhorse An an epic fantasy series inspired by pre-Columbian Americas. It's a great mixture of clashing politics, prophecy, and fantastic characters. There is a large cast with different genders and sexualities, including characters within cultures outside of a binary gender system. (The first novel is Black Sun)

And here is one that I haven't personally red (yet) but have heard positive things about: "Jonny Appleseed" by Joshua Whitehead

[acti-veg]

please can I ask why you are anti eugenics?

as in, why would altering someone’s genes so they don’t have a disposition to develop cancer be bad?

as someone who is pretty sure their genes are responsible for their horrible mental health, if the genes responsible for my disposition towards ocd and depression could have been removed, I don’t see why that would have been bad

wouldn’t it be good if we could alter people’s genes so no one is violent and everyone has a kind & loving nature

I don’t see how that’s a bad thing

I can see how eugenics could potentially be harmful too but I don’t think any of the above would be bad

(just to be very clear, i am NOT advocating for anything horrible like “euthanising the disabled”)

Eugenics is not just gene editing, it is a set of deeply racist, ableist beliefs about human ‘improvement’ on the basis of so-called ‘desirable racial characteristics.’ Eugenics as a concept is inherently wrapped up in white supremacy, homophobia and ableism. It was extremely popular in the west as an idea, it took the Nazis putting it into practice to show us what eugenics in practice actually looks like.

Gene editing sounds good on the basis of curing or preventing human disease, but that is precisely how all controversial science is framed. It is hard to object to editing genes to prevent cancer, but what happens when we start selecting for other traits we deem to be ‘desirable,’ and who gets to decide? The state? Medical professionals? The industrial military complex? Scientists? All of whom have the same biases we all have from being socialised in a deeply prejudiced society?

You say you don’t support anything horrible, but we don’t all agree on what is horrible - what should be kept and what should be lost. Many hearing people would see deafness as uncomplicatedly a medical issue, and assume all deaf people would want a cure. But Deaf culture is vibrant, and many in the community don’t see themselves as in any way needing to be ‘cured.’ Imagine the possibility that someone could edit the potential for anyone else to be part of your group out of the human genome entirely, that we could potentially see cultural genocide of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent communities done on a systematic scale.

Take depression as an example. Taking away any genetic disposition towards depression is tempting, but then what is to stop us from expanding this same line of reasoning to genetically select for positive dispositions? Is that actually desirable? Taking away the propensity for a natural range of emotions? What would be the an actual impact of that human society? Could we end up ‘curing’ the symptom of a sick society by just editing out the resulting depression, rather than addressing what is actually causing the mental health crisis, beyond just genetics? Could we end up in the dystopia that Huxley envisioned in a Brave New World, but with gene editing instead of soma?

You mention violence, but violence is an evolved response to stressors that is sometimes necessary. I shouldn’t have to spell out why genetically editing a population to be non-violent and good humoured regardless of what is being done to them is bad, and what you’re essentially saying here isn’t very far away from ‘why can’t we edit everyone to be the perfect, passive citizen and consumer?’ Fight or flight is part of our very being, and aggression when it is called for in defence of our loved ones or our own interests is a part of the human condition. Do we really want to lose that? Do we want to cull the propensity for violent resistance from our DNA?

It doesn’t stop at physical traits and overtly negative dispositions, either. We have been able to genetically engineer voles to be monogomous. That is not a joke. Can you imagine what the implications could be for being able to select for behaviours and desires? The state being able to mandate gene editing to avoid disease, slowly turning into gene editing for ‘super soldiers’, then to select for desirable traits in their citizens? Even if democracies wouldn’t do it, history tells us that if the technology is there, someone will.

Before it even gets to the human stages though, animals will bear the brunt of our curiosity. In the famous case of Alba, we created a glowing rabbit for the sake of an ‘art’ project. We have grown an ear on the back of a mouse. We have already selectively bred farmed animals to the point where they suffer constantly, imagine just how horrific it could get if we can edit their genetic sequence cheaply and at scale? Imagine what we would do to them?

These technologies being developed under capitalism brings up even more issues. The wealthy classes have always argued that they are somehow superior, better ‘breeding,’ more intelligent, less lazy. They’ve always been kidding themselves, but genetic editing available only to those who can afford it would make them right. At least initially this technology would be wildly expensive, and before those prices were bought down we’d likely end up with a society that is biologically hierarchical as well as economically and socially. Capitalists would very likely fight to keep it that way, just as they fight to keep themselves economically superior now.

This isn’t just a class issue either, the chances that this technology would be offered to the global population and not just rich western nations are minimal. Environmental racism and cultural ideals could become genetically baked in. We wouldn’t be improving the human race, we’d be ‘improving’ very narrow sections of it, according to a narrow and context dependent definition of what a ‘good’ human looks like. Wealth and social hierarchy could become biologically embedded, with only rich westerners benefiting from these advances. I mean, people in the global south are still dying of malaria, despite us wiping it out in the west in 1950s.

You may dismiss some of this as alarmism, but I think people who are not at least a little bit concerned at these possibilities haven’t thought about the implications of gene editing very much. We’re essentially in the cusp of creating an entirely new species, without really considering what that means. If history tells us anything, it’s that we’re likely to leap into the technology for commercial reasons long before we’ve given proper consideration to the ethical and social implications. That should worry you.

[makingqueerhistory]

New Research Reveals How the Nazis Targeted Transgender People

Last year, a German court acknowledged the possibility that trans people were persecuted by the Nazis

[arcadianambivalence]

Further Reading

Transgender Life and Persecution under the Nazi State: Gutachten on the Vollbrecht Case | Central European History | Cambridge Core

Transgender Life and Persecution under the Nazi State: Gutachten on the Vollbrecht Case - Volume 56 Issue 4

Learn | Pink Triangle Legacies Project

Resources on the history and lived experiences of queer people in Nazi Germany.

The Pink Triangle Legacies Project is a grassroots initiative dedicated to researching the experiences of queer and trans people in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

KHC: Centering LGBTQIA+ Voices

This series features conversations about the Nazis’ persecution of LGBTQI+ people, how this legacy reverberates in our contemporary society,

A YouTube playlist of lectures from the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Queensborough Community College.

Trans Liminality and the Nazi State

Abstract. Weimar Berlin is considered a past haven of queer possibility, but for trans people its permissiveness had clear limits. A close r

Historians are learning more about how the Nazis targeted trans people

Only in the past few years have the stories and experiences of trans people in Nazi Germany come to light.

On the Institute for Sexual Research

The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic

The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin would be a century old if it hadn’t fallen victim to Nazi ideology

6 May 1933: Looting of the Institute of Sexology - Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

The institute was initially occupied by The German Student Union, who were a collective of Nazi-supporting youth. Several days later, on 10

and

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dmd.8

The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture

[epochryphal]

Forever recommending How Sex Changed as a nonfiction reference book, which goes over Hirschfeld, Lili Elbe, Harry Benjamin, Christine Jorgenson, Lou Sullivan, WPATH, and more:

How Sex Changed A History Of Transsexuality In The US Joanne Meyerowitz : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

'How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States' by Joanne Meyerowitz

Also important context to the services Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science provided: testosterone was first isolated as a compound in 1927, and first synthesized in 1935. The looting and shutdown of the institute happened in 1933.

[hope-for-the-planet]

New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials

Desalination is the process of generating freshwater from brackish or saltwater, usually through the process of reverse osmosis. While this can be a very useful tool in water shortages, it also has some pretty huge drawbacks--reverse osmosis requires a lot of energy, requires chemical treatment of the water, and produces concentrated brine as a waste product which can be harmful to aquatic ecosystems.

Researchers have recently discovered a new way to perform desalination using solar energy, which doesn't require chemical inputs and collects waste salt instead of producing brine. Concentrating the waste salt in a solid form instead of brine means that it can later be processed to extract valuable minerals like lithium.

[politijohn]

Source

Happy Pride Month!

[reasonsforhope]

Holy shit!!!!!!! HUNGARY DID IT!!!!

-via the Los Angeles Blade, June 1, 2026

[anarchist-rat-swarm]

In case you don't know, churches in the US are required to remain non-political in order to keep their tax exempt status. You can fill out a Form 13909 with the IRS to file a complaint about a church or other tax exempt organization that violates these kinds of rules.

Ya know, if you ever wanted to send the IRS after Christofascist churches. It's safer than arson.

[a-book-dragon]

You don't have a male or female brain – the more brains scientists study, the weaker the evidence for sex differences

Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.

rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

[liminalweirdo]

“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”

[mckitterick]

the notes on this are toxic - to help clear up any misunderstanding, here’s the actual science paper:

Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size

With the explosion of neuroimaging, differences between male and female brains have been exhaustively analyzed. Here we synthesize three dec

in short: brains are brains

[dostoyevsky-official]

for over a decade, i've seen posts warning against tearing down stickers because of razor blades behind the sticker. i've torn down hundreds of stickers, and i've never encountered this—i think the razor blade myth makes people less likely to tear down stickers

[dostoyevsky-official]

ok maybe take precautions and use a key to do it (which makes it easier anyway)

[kropotkindersurprise]

yeah, noone got hurt by this because if youve ever taken down a sticker it's extremely obvious if there's anything weird glued under the edges of the sticker, and even if you didnt notice it would be hard to hurt yourself. It's more dangerous with like A4 posters that you might try to rip down in one motion by hand. and then if you do it cautiously there is zero danger again.

[kropotkindersurprise]

I personally just tear down stickers (and save them for my fascist sticker collection!) and then cover the spot up with an antifa sticker. I have done this hundreds of times without ever finding a razor. I have torn down pro-israel stickers in those mentioned months and never found a razor.

I agree that people scaring others about possible razors are more effective at keeping nazi propaganda up than anything else, and that worrying about that is stupid UNLESSS youve heard a specific warning in your city in that month. So. ideally, if you havent heard anyone mentioning personally finding razors under stickers in your city this month, you should shut the hell up warning people about them, because its basically never an issue.

[3liza]

i also havent found any razor blades despite doing hundreds of sticker actions but i suppose it's always possible.

since i dont see sticker posts much i will take this opportunity to add that a good way to piss off the other side if youre engaged in a sticker war is to remove their sticker carefully, clean the surface (alcohol wipes work great for this) so its maximally sticky, and after you apply your sticker, cover it in a layer of any kind of grease. chapstick, baby oil, vaseline, doesnt matter. it will make your sticker impossible to put another sticker on top of, and extremely difficult to grab and pull off the surface without being physically injurious to anyone (including janitorial staff if applicable). im in favor of physically injuring fascists, but razorblades seem like a high risk for collateral damage. an optional step is using industrial adhesives or wood glue to glue stickers down but this is time-intensive. still, the "wheatpastes" i put up on capital hill with wood glue instead of actual wheat paste lasted like three years. all i had to do was dilute basic elmer's wood glue with water and apply with a spray bottle and brush if i was being fancy

[acti-veg]

Antibiotics use in livestock could rise by a third in next 15 years, UN report warns

Governments urged to act to prevent potentially disastrous impacts on human resistance to medicines

Animal husbandry accounts for close to three-quarters of global use of antimicrobial medications and in many countries their use is poorly monitored. Some herds are routinely dosed and in many countries antimicrobials are used to increase the growth of animals bred for meat.

This is one of the leading causes of the rise of superbugs, which are threatening to render antibiotics useless against increasingly resistant diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) already costs an estimated €11bn (£9.5bn) a year within Europe alone and is predicted to cost $1tn globally by 2050. AMR is forecast to kill tens of millions of people unless there is concerted action, and to make what are currently routine surgeries such as hip replacements life-threatening.

[feriowind]

trying to figure out how to draw characters but also immediately wanting to ignore the photo references once i have a basic grasp

[veganseverywhere]

lmaooo people know they're wrong when they post vegan hate and turn off replies/comments

[acti-veg]

Vegans as a whole forgot one very important detail: I have never even casually researched this topic in my life and have no interest in learning anything about it from someone who has.

#reblogs off because vegans may genuinely share any one of the hundreds of peer reviewed papers proving that I am wrong

[marisatomay]

Happy Pride

[assignedmale]