The Cave of Frustration @half-a-lesbian - Tumblr Blog

Reblog if you’re part of a hostile nation that’s declared war on Australia

Oh my god though guys you don’t know the best thing! The best thing is: he’s right.

The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands is a micronation near Australia. This is their flag:

The Gay Kingdom (as it is colloquially known) was founded in 2004 in protest against Australia’s legal stance against same-sex marriage.

Here are some of their stamps:

They are currently ruled by Emperor Dale I, and their currency is the Pink Dollar.

And, indeed - they declared war on Australia for not recognizing same-sex marriages performed outside the country. (Second link.)

sailurmars

You’re telling me there has been a Gay Island this ENTIRE TIME and I’m only just finding out about it????

feitanswife

WHAT

gondorsfinest

okay, but not enough people know the details on this. people at pride were upset about gay rights in australia. so they decided to sail 200 miles into the coral sea just ‘cause and put a rainbow flag on a fucking empty island out of spite. and i’m talking empty. no inhabitants. zero. it was a flat piece of land with a bit of dry grass. now it has a camp site and a post office.

they have a declaration of independence that talks a bit about gay rights and then just flat out copies the “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” part from the american declaration of independence. and here’s the best part: the founding group actually elected their emperor. he was originally going to be called the “administrator” of a republic. their website, however, says that “upon legal advice, his title was changed to that of Sovereign on the grounds that under Australian law a defacto prince trying to claim his crown cannot be charged with treason”. so they made it a kingdom and he now claims to be a descendent of edward ii.

everything about this is glorious and everyone should know about it.

Keep reading

ileolai

Not one of you mentioned that the anthem for this nation is I Am What I Am by Gloria Gaynor. Not. One. Of. You.

ebonykain

This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read

faejilly

Highlights from the timeline via wikipedia as this thread is from 2017:

As previously mentioned, the idea originated at Pride (Brisbane 2003) in reaction to punitive anti-marriage legislation

“On the 14th day of June 2004, at this highest point in the Coral Sea, Emperor Dale Parker Anderson raised the gay rainbow flag and claimed the islands of the Coral Sea in his name as homeland for the gay and lesbian peoples of the world. God Save our King!”

The campsite/capital Heaven was named after the London nightclub

War was declared on Australia in September 2004

The aforementioned stamps were issued in July 2006 “with the aim of creating a high and distinctive reputation amongst the philatelic fraternity”

They were never recognized legally/internationally as a micronation (and in fact Anderson refused to attend a conference in 2010 because they weren’t actually trying to be a sovereign nation)

In Feb 2017, Abetz was objecting to the flag of a “hostile nation” being flown

The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was dissolved in November 2017 (when same-sex marriage was legalized)

afurioushawk

frustratedasatruar

Real and growing possibility of him dying live on tv and nobody in the room noticing for minutes on end.

Likes charge, reblogs cast.

delphinidin4

bananonbinary

tony's chocolonely mildly pisses me off every time i eat it. like yeah i get it ur doing a whole symbolism thing about unfairness and whatever, but its actually SO DIFFICULT to eat fucking. gerrymandered chocolate. your symbolism is ruining my chocolate experience.

who approved this.

bananonbinary

like. ur already more expensive. i understand this. i am willing to pay more money to have slave-free delicious chocolate. why must you punish me further by making it a goddamn puzzle to break a piece off.

closet-keys

Tony's Chocolonely does not ensure a living wage for cocoa workers in West Africa (see 2020 report by Voice Network).

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

this isn't perfect, obviously, but it is much more grounded in the rights of workers than the various certifications (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) you'll see on product packaging

aloofraven

I think it should be noted that the Food Empowerment Project specifically only lists companies making "at least one vegan chocolate product" and that they only ask about the companies' vegan chocolates specifically. Their list is not an exhaustive resource for every type of chocolate.

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

Before I found that link I was curious as to why I didn't see any Norwegian manufacturers on their list(which makes sense now, as their chocolates are almost exclusively milk chocolate) and looked up where our companies source their chocolate from and found Nidar gets theirs from the Rainforest Alliance and Freia from Cocoa Life, both of which have been under scrutiny for not preventing child labour and not paying farmers a living wage among other things. So it appears Norwegian chocolate is out of the ethical picture.

roninnozlo

I stated this in the comments of the post already, but it’d probably be better to add it as a reblog, so it’s more visible and doesn’t need to be restated by anyone else in the future.

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

Below is a list of chocolate companies that only use ethically grown cocoa.  Find out how you can tell if the chocolate you are ea

And it doesn’t have the vegan product restriction the other list has, which solves @aloofraven’s issue.

depsidase

vague-humanoid

Transgender woman faces two felony charges after drawing a firearm during an altercation.

A Wyoming transgender woman is facing two felony charges after drawing a firearm during an altercation she says began with anti-LGBTQ+ and a

Ríhanna Kelver, a bartender and trans rights advocate in Laramie, has been charged with aggravated assault and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent after a 13 September 2025 confrontation outside the Crowbar & Grill, whereshe worked. Kelver could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted on both charges.

Kelver says one man in a group of men across the street from her started shouting homophobic and transphobic insults at her before the man allegedly shoved her to the ground in a downtown crosswalk, as reported by The Laramie Reporter.

el-shab-hussein

There's more, as it pertains to Black trans people's right to self-defence:

Despite Wyoming’s “Stand Your Ground” statute, which allows people to use reasonable force in moments of self defense, Kelver faces up to 15 years in prison for both charges, as well as up to $11,000 in fines, per Cowboy State Daily. Kelver faces an additional year and $1,000 fine for a charge of interference with a peace officer. [...]

As pointed out by Slate, self-defense laws are often put into question when people from marginalized communities, especially trans people, use them, including Cece McDonald, a Black trans woman who served time in a men’s prison for defending her friends during a racist and transphobic attack. Ky Peterson, a Black trans man from Georgia, was also arrested and imprisoned for killing his rapist in self-defense.

antirevisionist-char

Kelver's attacker has also been identified as a member of Patriot Front.

Kelver corroborated a report identifying the attacker as Scott Wayne Durham, a Patriot Front member from Aurora, CO. First unmasked as Patryck “Scott” Durham, he has posted fascist, white supremacist, and Patriot Front propaganda since high school, operating under the online handles “Kevin – CO,” “Fedposter,” “WallaceCarden,” and numerous others. Durham was barred from his high school graduation after being unmasked in 2022, and in 2023 left enrollment at the University of Colorado Boulder after a flyering campaign alerted students to his history. On June 10, 2025 he changed his name (p. 26) to Scott Wayne Durham and is now listed as an honor roll student at the University of Wyoming, located in Laramie.

So whether they know it or not, the prosecutors are helping a Neo-Nazi who tried to commit a hate crime.

(She's also been having her crowdfunding campaigns nuked. If you want to donate to her defense find her here.)

getrealprim

The only thing in this entire world that Laramie Wyoming is known for is the brutal murder of a gay teenager and thirty years later they have no interest in changing that image.

bovid-beauty

The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."

junequeer

THIS IS OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026

featherandstorm

This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.

genderkoolaid

Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.

pitviperofdoom

I try not to fall into the "I never liked their work anyway" ditch when an artist/creator reveals themself to be a terrible person

BUT

a feeling I do have and will stand by is "While I enjoyed their work overall I did have some gripes that I overlooked out of affection and whimsy, but now that my loyalty is gone and my affection tainted there is nothing holding me back from enumerating my many grievances, to which the revelations of the creator's shittiness may or may not provide a new and infuriating context."

beatrice-otter

#such a good summation of this actually#because yeah there’s usually things that were always present#but which were easy to overlook or give the benefit of the doubt#that suddenly become relevant after a revelation about the creator#and it’s really not the same thing as the self-defensive “’I never liked it anyway’

tags via chimaerakitten

goodscreencaps

tieflingkisser

lesbianslimefriend

here's where to find it on windows 10

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

marougus-the-dragon

AI is a freacking plague, I share this for any windows user.

sceptixfakemon

i really genuinely wish I could hit chatgpt with my bare fists and hear its pityful electronic voice fade into glitched robotic gibberish and choking beeps as I hit it before I smash it for good and it shuts the fuck up forever

sceptixfakemon

no no it's fine

sceptixfakemon

why are so many people wondering if I'm horny for chatgpt. it's like the most unfuckable robot ever created heeell NO

sceptixfakemon

dragging you out of the tags like it's the last thing I'll ever do on this site

cryptotheism

"Medieval Christians would have gone nuts for protons, neutrons, and electrons for trinity reasons" sounds like a jokey oversimplification historypost but I cannot really articulate how true that is. They would never shut up about it.

ahopefulbromantic

RIP St Thomas Aquinas you would have loved atomic physics

dragongirlsweetie

hour 1 of shift: i love helping people and making people happy yay yay yay later today i am gonna go home and have fun and eat a tasty meal and work on my projects and

hour 6: if youu go to the store and buy groceriers you are a piece of shit

hour 8: if i wad 1 apples tall i could live off of one apple for a week... oh but it would rot away... no.... i hate the rot i hate the apple

sadclowncentral

so many misguided metaphors around violence and desire. if the open maw of a panting beast fills you with the want to be devoured, that does not make you prey. while the rabbit trembles in fear, its deepest desire is to run. evolution demands it. in fact, the desire to be eaten does not make you any small animal at all.

it makes you a fruit.

sumverendus

sandpancakecat

innerchildabortionclinic

the problem with genetically modified crops is not so much the genetic modification but the patenting of genetic codes (and crops in general) as a tool of maintaining agricultural imperialism, and for this reason I can't talk to most people about GMOs