Formerly known as @field-notes-on-feminism. NOTE: This is one of many sideblogs I have, so it isn't managed regularly. If something isnât tagged, or youâd like something specific tagged, please let me know.
âHaha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.â
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
âY2K came to nothing amirite?â
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
âRemember the hole in the ozone layer?â
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those âitâs gonna be an apocalypseâ disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think thatâs going to happen. I donât know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope wonât help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
dude it's just politics, it doesn't matter. all it does is shape every single aspect of the society you live in from the second you are born until forever
Britainâs black power movement is at risk of being forgotten, say historians
The Cambridge academic Robin Bunce said: âThere is a fundamental danger of erasing the very notion of a struggle at all. Iâve been researching this for four and a half years and there have been so many occasions when people have said to me: âThere was no black struggle in Britain. Youâre thinking of South Africa or America.ââ
The narrative that feeds it is the one that Britain is the utopia of fair play. We have such a commitment to individual rights, we have such a commitment to common sense and decency that there is no systematic racism in Britain.ââŠ
Bunce said it was not just politicians, but wider British society that would rather not dwell on the less palatable.
The deadly ethno-supremacy inherent to Israeli society runs deeper than Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich. It must be confronted at its root
This denazification process must begin now, and it starts with refusal. Refusal not only to take an active part in Gazaâs destruction, but to put on the uniform at all â regardless of rank or role. Refusal to remain ignorant. Refusal to be blind. Refusal to be silent. For parents, it is a duty necessary to protect the next generation from becoming perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Denazification must also include the recognition that what was cannot remain. It will not be enough to simply replace the current government. We must abandon the myth of Israelâs âJewish and democraticâ character â a paradox whose iron grip helped pave the way to the catastrophe we are now immersed in.Â
This deception must end with the clear recognition that only two paths remain: either a Jewish, messianic, genocidal state, or a truly democratic state for all its citizens.
The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.Â
The reason AI programs like Gemini are programmed to encourage you to let it make basic life choices for you like what restaurant you should eat at is because they intend to monetize your patronage.
It's just a matter of time before the AI stops offering you the most highly rated option in the area or whatever aligns most closely to what you requested (If it's even doing that now) and instead only recommends restaurants that have paid the company for that privilege.
Restaurants that won't pay Google to recommend them to AI users are going to become functionally invisible, whereas those who are willing to purchase what amounts to targeted advertisements laundered through an AI "friend" will get new customers regardless of their quality.
Basic rule: If you aren't paying for something, that means you're the product.
Google Maps already does this, preferring more distant sponsored results over closer non-sponsored ones. All the claims that these algorithms make the same choices you would make if you just had the time and energy to research them are totally false. They make the choices that lead to profitable results for the companies that program them, with a user interface that gaslights you into thinking it was your idea all along.
You can see this at work already in Google Play store-- you search for an app, and the only time the app you're looking for is the top result is when the company behind the app has paid for the privilege-- in which case you'll see it twice.
You can also see this at work on Amazon, when searching by exact product name can sometimes put your result on the second or third page, while you scroll through alternatives that Amazon wants to sell you.
we love Luigi Mangione, not because he alledgedly killed a ceo, because he didnt. he's an innocent man being framed for a crime by incompetent and corrupt law enforcement.
but we do not love Tyler Robinson. not because he alledgedly shot Charlie Kirk, but because he is more of a nazi than Kirk was. he shot the man because he thought kirks ideals were not conservative enough, and the memes he put on to his bullets were dogwhistles to his fringe neo nazi group, despite seeming anti-fascist on the surface. you can feel catharsis about kirks death because he was a bigot and a scumbag but we DO NOT venerate Robinson because he is WORSE than kirk was. they can both rot
I have seen a bunch of people repeating the word "groyper" endlessly without any supporting evidence beyond the fact the dude played video games, that his parents were Republicans and Mormons, and that he could shoot. None of which are specific to Nazis. I could be persuaded with anything more convincing, but I think a lot of people want to paint him as being part of a niche right-entryist faction who use lefty memes as a "disguise" instead of a straightforward antifascist, either because they disagree with shooting fascists as praxis, or they think it's bad optics to "claim" a relatively dumb white dude. (Not that that stopped anyone with Luigi, whose politics are in fact incoherent.)
the evidence is the memes he put on to his bullets
and obviously it's not definitive proof. but the fact that he used several of these memes that are common in this neo nazi subculture says a lot, imo.
and it's not supposed to be obvious. remember that the purpose of a dogwhistle is that only some can hear it and recognize what it means. he chose these memes and jokes specifically to fly over the heads of almost everyone; and they might even seem to almost everyone to be an antifascist statement. but to his own group, they will be able to hear the dogwhistle and know what it means, and give him the attention and veneration that he craves.
Leejah Miller â one of my favorite political commentators â did a surface level breakdown of the memes engraved on the bullets and what they actually mean within the right wing nazi subculture that Robinson was a part of. I highly recommend it as a primer for understanding all of this [ YouTube link ].
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
please also consider taking a look at dahnoun mutual aid (instagram link), another ghazzawi-run initiative doing great work using very little funds! they're currently distributing winter clothes for young children, as well as food and water, infant formula, tents, and cash. they've also got a chuffed
This is how any corporation functions. First, increasing profits is done by attracting more customers. Then, once they have all the customers they're going to get, increasing profits is done by increasing prices or cutting costs.
This is how any corporation functions. First, increasing profits is done by attracting more customers. Then, once they have all the customers they're going to get, increasing profits is done by increasing prices or cutting costs.
I think itâs important to understand how groups like TERFs use dogwhistles AND our response to dogwhistles as part of their recruitment. Iâll try to explain how that works.
Remember that a dogwhistle is designed to sound reasonable to someone uninformed on the topic, and absolutely infuriating to someone who recognized its function as a dogwhistle. âqueer is a slurâ for example, seems perfectly reasonable if you are unfamiliar with the way the phrase is being utilized to push back inclusivity in LGBTIA+ and queer spaces by about 30 years.
So letâs say 10 people unfamiliar with that, start copying âqueer is a slurâ because it sounds reasonable and they feel genuine concern for lgbt people who get called slurs. These could be young people, but they could just as easily be middle aged. They could be in any axis of privilege or oppression. Familiarity with dogwhistles isnât that widespread.
Some of those people may encounter someone who points them in the direction of a good explanation of why queer has been reclaimed decades ago and how vile the hidden agenda of âqueer is a slurâ is and theyâre learn. Some others of those people will meet a queer person who is tired and out of spoons and understandably hurt because they see TERF dogwhistles everywhere, and that person will shout at them. If this takes place on twitter, 50 people will reblog the shouting for performativity points.
Ideally, the person who got shouted at will learn, but thatâs rarely how humans work. When someone shouts at us in front of a crowd, most of us just get upset. Theyâre post something like âAll I said was âqueer is a slurâ and everybody started shouting at me, this is so upsetting.â And THATâS when the TERF will swoop in. Still not identifying themselves as a TERF, some sweet comforting âgender criticalâ blogger will tell the upset person that itâs not their fault, that some people are just bullies who want to silence all criticism, that itâs important to be critical of this kind of gender ideology, blah blah blah.
Someone who is upset is very likely to be open-minded towards the point of view of the comforter, so our uninformed person will pick up a few more nuggets of TERF ideology and start parroting them. The already upset queer people will see more confirmation that this is a TERF and get more angry. A cycle will emerge where the increasingly isolated person consistently experiences one side as attackers and TERFs as comforting and supporting. And thatâs the perfect setting for a brainwashing.
Now I donât know what to do about it. It isnât fair to expect all of us to always politely explain TERF dogwhistles to everyone. Weâre allowed to be out of spoons and angry at this constant unsafety. TERFs also create fake accounts that throw dogwhistles everywhere just to push and exhaust us. But like, this process seems important to pick up on because it happens again and again.
Absolutely fantastic post, but I think itâs worth pointing out that this cycle doesnât just come from people with no spoons lashing out.
I have absolutely lashed out at people who parrot âqueer is a slurâ rhetoric. Iâve also attempted to reach out and politely educate people on the subject. Thing is, Iâm often met with the exact same results. Some people will perceive any correction no matter how kindly phrased as an attack, and some people are more motivated to engage in performative behavior that makes them look âwokeâ than to actually help marginalized people (ie, just because the person isnât a TERF doesnât mean their motives are pure). Thereâs also the way TERFs/exclus will pretend to be totally innocent in their use of dogwhistles, to the point where you really canât tell whoâs acting in good faith or not.
Point being, I donât know what to do about it either, but I think itâs worth explicitly warning people that âjust being niceâ isnât going to cut it. You can be a Perfect Advocate who says everything right and never loses their temper and it wonât stop this cycle, so donât beat yourself up when it happens to you.
True. Iâve noticed itâs how antivaxxers work too. There are very valid questions people can ask about vaccines. We should be critical of the mega-corporations that produce our medications. But those that ask critical questions about vaccines are often immediately attacked by a bunch of passionate anti-antivaxxers and that drives when right into the arms of the antivax movement.
I have also noticed that some people respond to polite attempts to educate them with more anger. From my experience, that can be for a lot of different reasons, like:
Theyâre TERFs pretending to be naive users, throwing dogwhistles around to invite attacks and then play the victim.
Theyâre performative social media users who see every correction as an attack on their reputation.
Theyâre someone who is deeply insecure or anxious, in many cases traumatized in some way or struggling with mental illness, and will fall into a full-blown panic attack at the suggestion that they might have done a bad thing because surely that means theyâre worthless and all their friends hate them, etc.
Theyâre simultaneously being viciously attacked by people, possibly in private messages, and they perceive the friendly responses as part of that attack and respond with the same hostility to everyone.
A combination of things.
I wanted to list that variety of reasons to highlight that yes, friendly education doesnât always work, but there are a lot of reasons why it doesnât.
And in the cases when it does work, itâs often slow and happens out of sight. The way social media often demands that learning works (someone offers education, the educated person immediately learns, says sorry & thank you and changes their behavior) is very rarely how learning processes actually work.
I should maybe mention that there are also cases where being very harsh, angry and direct with someone can serve as a wake up call and create a change in behavior but that almost always happens offline, in a face to face situation between people who have a longer relationship and can come back to that moment to talk it over. And itâs generally about structural behavior, not an accidental one time copying of a terf dogwhistle.
There is no conclusion to this. I certainly wouldnât say that you should always be nice. Shitâs complex. âSocial media is very bad at creating growth and change for the better, call out culture makes that bad place even worse and actively helps people like terfs, fashos and antivaxxers recruit peopleâ might be the closest I can come to a conclusion.
Yeah, thatâs kinda similar, though not quite the same. In those cases someone is already a member of the group (so already identifies themselves as a Mormon, radfem, whatever) and is deliberately encouraged to go spread the message of the group in a way that doesnât work well and will invite hostility.
This way, group loyalty is encouraged as they experience again and again that the outside world is hostile and the only support comes from their own community. Itâs paired with isolation in other respects, like encouraging people to cut off friends who disagree with them.
Bonus points: groups with generally good opinions can also do this! Social justice twitter and facebook groups actually do this A LOT.
There are sooooo many online (and some offline) social justice communities where you are encouraged to call out people who disagree with you in ways that just never work. Not in a âI shout because Iâm out of spoons and you really hurt meâ way, but in a âI shout because loud aggressive call outs are met with social rewards from my community and being more patient as I help people overcome their prejudices is seen as being a traitor to the cause.â
This creates a dynamic where people consistently experience everyone not in the in-group as hostile and everyone in the in-group as supportive, as long as they loyally reproduce the dogma of the group.
