[divorcedfranklangdon]

just a reminder that it's fuck ICE forever

[willsthighsweat]

“Anatomy of a Hug" by artist - Luna Lu

[ancientsstudies]

Happiness is homemade.

[aronarchy]

https://twitter.com/deathpigeon/status/1630097242442047488

[image ID:

When people try to raise the age of majority they’re doing so because they understand that children lack power in society and they’re trying to increase how many lack power and increase the concentration of power.

If someone tells you that 25 is the start of adulthood they’re saying that they think that too many people have autonomy, choice, and freedom and they want to take that away from them.

If someone tells you that neurodivergence means you stay a child longer than neurotypicals they’re telling you that they think that more neurotypicals deserve autonomy, choice, and liberty than neurodivergents.

When someone says these things, listen to them and understand it as the horrifying statement that it is.

/end image ID]

[theunitofcaring]

saying “you are a burden on society” is just such a weird framing of priorities It’s like saying “wow, think how much better gas mileage your car would get if you weren’t sitting in it” or “think how dry that umbrella would be if you weren’t holding it in between you and the rainstorm”. the things we create? they’re for us. they are meant to carry us. they are meant to protect us. we are meant to hold them up to keep us dry. 

[queeranarchism]

why do we even have a society if not to take care of each other?

[aquarda]

““Have you ever seen God?” A symmetrical angel. Felt? Yes. Fucking. The Sun. Heard? Music. Voices. Touched? An animal. Your hand. Tasted? Rare meat, corn, water wine.”

— Jim Morrison, Tunnel Where Dreams Are Born

[noirissey]

if anyone ever asks me what my life goals are i’m just going to say “to negate space and time”

[voirlvmer]

“are you still happening there, in your body?”

— Joy Katz, from “December, Fever,” All You Do Is Perceive (via lifeinpoetry)

[anarchistcommunism]

Anarcho-communism is a contradiction, so why believe it? -_-

Don’t worry anon, we have lots of useful reading material and introductions to anarcho-communism if you’re unfamiliar with it!

Anarchist communism - an introduction (libcom)

Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles, by Pëtr Kropotkin

What is Anarchist Communism? by Wayne Price

What Is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman

The liberation of society from the state: What is communist anarchism? by Erich Mühsam

We hope that helps!

- J.

[lifeinpoetry]

Yes,

           there is a way            to define oneself            in this skin            without violence.

                                                  No,

           I have not            found said way,            yet. I know no metaphor            untethered to death.

— Hazem Fahmy, from “Hiding Skin” published in The Margins

[jockrivette]

Watch the Fire or Burn Inside It (2022), Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel

[raycastelo]

Ray Castelo 2022.

[lifeinpoetry]

I leave, I leave— At the end of this story, I walk into the sea and it chooses not to drown me.

— Jihyun Yun, from "The Leaving Season," Some Are Always Hungry

[trainthief]

Love local coffee shops. your “refugees are welcome here” sign goes really well with the one that says “bathrooms are for paying customers only”

[cerisefern]

You’ve clearly never had to deal with people doing hard drugs in the grocery store bathroom and it shows.

[trainthief]

Bro I literally manage a coffee shop with an open restroom policy, and I prioritize enforcing that policy and making sure everyone feels comfortable. I’ve dealt with everything from the easy end of the spectrum (people quietly doing hard drugs) to a lady ripping all her hair out and setting it on fire in the sink. I clean up after this stuff day after day and I still feel VERY strongly about the fact that human beings should be allowed the basic decency of a place to poop. Yes, I very frequently end up having to kick someone out of the bathroom for doing drugs, and when I do I always offer them a cup of water on their way out. Because they’re a person and I give a shit…

[cannabiscomrade]

It’s safer for people to do drugs in (clean) public restrooms than it is for them to do it on the street. It’s also ableist to deny someone the use of a bathroom. There are countless gastrointestinal disorders that cause bathroom urgency and potential incontinence. There are other conditions, like pregnancy, that necessitate quick and easy access to restrooms.

[rommunism-deactivated20201016]

also what makes you think a paying customer wouldnt misuse the toilets in some way, and a person using it without buying something would?

contrary to popular beliefs people with money do drugs, and homeless people need the toilet just like the rest of us

[prettyporcelainporcupine]

Having a sharps container “for medication injection” in our bathrooms has dropped the amount of needles I find in the bushes and planters down to a whole 2 in the past 4 years since we rolled them out. I used to find them so often I got in the habit of wearing cut resistance gloves in 90 degree weather in case I had to pluck napkins out of the landscaping.

[prettyporcelainporcupine]

I read a lot of the notes and I really can’t say enough how the “you couldn’t pay me to clean up other people’s shit” comments kinda piss me off. It is not that serious, it’s really not. You dump a bunch of Triade III on it, let it sit for 10 minutes, wipe it up.

If it’s watery you throw absorbent on it like you do throw up, we use a kitty-litter type clay based absorbent. You put a trash bag in the dust pan and sweep it all into the bag.

Takes me 15 minutes to clean an absolutely destroyed bathroom stall in a place that sees THOUSANDS of people daily. It’s a shopping and restaurant area that opens up into a nightlife location after 5pm, with some bars opening at 3pm and several restaurants becoming full nightclubs after 9pm. You pay for parking, but anyone can walk in off the sidewalk and not pay a dime and just hang out until 2am.

On a busy night I cover 3 location’s restrooms (2 venues have multiple rr) but on slow days I’m covering around 7. 7 buildings, thousands of drunks, I get a LOT of bio spills.

Our sharps containers are toolbox-looking things that hang on the wall with a flap that allows things to go in but not come out, ever (rip to like 5 phones that I know of), when full it gets closed, locked, and sent to be incinerated. I literally never touch a needle anymore. If I find one on the ground outside we have sharps shuttles which are long plastic tubes that look like giant tampons with a flip top, you put it on the ground, step on it to hold in place, and sweep the sharp into it. Takes like 20 seconds.

The answer to this entire issue is to TREAT SANITATION WORKERS BETTER not make going to the bathroom a fucking ordeal. Pay me I will clean your bathrooms, let homeless people piss with dignity!!!

[property-is-theft-deactivated20]

SAY IT WITH ME KIDS…

Capitalism cannot be reformed in any meaningful way. All the energy it would take to make this inherently odious system slightly more tolerable would be better spent on creating a much better world than anything reformist capital can offer us as concession for the living death and exploitation it malignately bestows upon us daily.

[headspace-hotel]

I *knew* that companies have been trying to shift blame for damage to the environment onto regular people's buying habits, but it has still somehow been a shock to research a topic and find the internet totally dominated by the narrative that "consumerism" and the desire to buy more stuff is entirely responsible for pollution and landfill waste, instead of factors such as planned obsolescence.

It's insidious—this widespread idea that average people are too greedy, and that's what fuels climate change and pollution. Not greedy companies.

"Consumers shop for clothes to stay on-trend and throw away perfectly good old clothes." "Consumers only wear clothes a few times before throwing them away." "A huge amount of landfill waste comes from clothing that consumers throw out." "Consumers replace their wardrobes arbitrarily to stay on-trend." "Consumer demand for 'fast fashion' is rising spite of the environmental impacts."

Statements like this make it sound like regular people want to buy and waste vast amounts of resources, and normal people's unchecked addiction to shopping is causing environmental devastation. It's horribly misleading when products are being deliberately designed to break or wear out within one or two years and to be impossible to repair.

Instead of "Americans are buying way more clothes than they did 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!"

Where are the articles entitled "Clothing brands are selling poorly-made clothes that have to be replaced much more often than 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!"

[elodieunderglass]

Then note that fast fashion is decoupled from the demand economy. What this means is that clothing items are generated based on algorithms determined by corporations. They’re not driven by current demand, or consumption, or consumer desire: they’re driven by prediction of how much the corporation can sell. Because the items are practically worthless, the corporation risks little by generating extra/unwanted items. So if they generate 10,000 unwanted tops, they can simply destroy them again and send them to landfill. They don’t have any motivation to recycle, donate, or give away these items. It does not matter if 15 more people swear to give up fast fashion and -15 items are purchased. The machine of fast fashion operates independently of consumer demand, because its settings are set to increasing profit, not what people claim to want or what’s good for their workers or what’s good for the earth.

If your goal is to live a better and more connected life - a life that will be resilient and joyful in the face of coming changes - you absolutely can, should and must avoid fast fashion. Do it for your soul. Do it for your ethics. Do it because an informed, caring person cannot do anything else. Do it because wearing these items would make you feel ill. That is what I, and my household, do. It is good for us, but does not liberate you. I do not call it activism, but a way of living in the world.

But if your goal is to break the machine, you cannot break a machine whose settings are “infinite profit” by pressing on levers marked “consumer demand.” Those levers aren’t even connected to the economic machine. It operates on separate principles. I’ve written about this before: there are plenty of ways to break the machine, but “declining to interact with it” is not activism and won’t kill it.

In science policy we do a lot of stakeholder mapping, which really shows where power lies, and here’s a proposed European strategy for forcing fast fashion into the circular economy. Interestingly, as with many circular economy things, the levers involved include end-of-life pressures: if you stop textile manufacturers from burning their surplus items for their own convenience, they’ll have to find other solutions. If the countries being used as dumping grounds for textile waste effectively organise and resist, it will be less economical to be wasteful. This is how you influence economies: cut down the current systems that insulate corporations and allow for infinite growth on a finite planet.

Consumers certainly have a role to play, but in my opinion, this role isn’t as easy and smug as buying/not-buying fast fashion. Instead, consumers must grapple with and influence material desire. Why is it so nice to buy new things, and how can we change that? Can you get those feelings from a community clothes swap, or would we actually be happier if our psychology just hated the whole concept of new clothes? For people who enjoy bullying: instead of bullying people for buying clothes, which is cruel and unkind, why not bully the entire concept of consumption? In the healed world, we won’t be entertained by watching a video of someone opening a large bag of new clothing; we can start living in that world today.

Further, consumer desires actually do influence investors. It’s less sexy but involves more money being moved around. Ideally the healed world won’t involve markets that float untethered on the power of random beliefs, but if you’re into it for now, you might as well look into how the complex network of investment keeps undesirable business practices afloat, how much that relies of delicate forces of confidence, and how quickly industry pivots to follow investors. Long story short, investors have more money than you do, but only because of psychology.

In conclusion, these machines are complex and don’t care much about your $5. This is neither a reason to despair, or to run out and buy Primark. It is a reason to become educated.

Alternatively, you could simply have a Revolution and break all of this down, which would be a fascinating change and would certainly be something new.

Textiles strategy

All documents - EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles

[elodieunderglass]

One of my points here, and in other places, has been that “when industries are no longer coupled to consumer demand, you have to use different leverage to affect them.” I’ve used examples of the American fishing industry (which is heavily subsidised by tax dollars, so that if you are American and stopped eating fish tomorrow to defund the fishing industry, the US government would simply take your tax money and give it straight to the fishing industry.) in this post I’ve continued the OP’s example of fast fashion, which is generated so cheaply and so independently of consumer demand that it cannot be destroyed by simply “clever consumers not buying it.” (Fast fashion is actually generated to CREATE ITS OWN DEMAND, which makes it impossible to fully combat by simply avoiding it; if you want it to die, you have to do active things to combat fast fashion.)

Two interesting things crossed my dash that relate to this. One was this article about what happens to items that you buy online and return.

The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants

What happens to the stuff you order online after you send it back?

Essentially, because it is not cost-effective (/hygienic/safe/easy) to examine returned items and return them to warehouses, untold numbers of pristine items sold online and then returned - for whatever reason - are simply destroyed. This is exemplified in fast fashion, where the goods themselves have almost-null value and the point is to flood the market instantly with new “trends” that sell themselves, and considerations like “how long does the clothing last” and “do people want this” are not even in the list of criteria. Given the parameters of the fast fashion machine, it makes sense to accept online returns (because it makes consumers buy more) but does not make sense to sell returned products: therefore, looking at how the Fast Fashion Machine is programmed and coded, it is MOST efficient for the “infinite profit” program to ACCEPT returns and DESTROY the items.

So you can look back with what I’ve talked about here, and look at how the “machines” work and the levers that actually change their behavior. Again, “what happens to the unbought thing” is a lever that most people don’t think about. They want their activism to begin and end with “not buying the thing” - and indeed that’s the spiritually best solution - but to actively break the machines that are killing us, we have to ask questions like “what happens when you return a laptop online? What do I WANT to happen? What damage have I caused, in all innocence, while I thought I was buying the right things? What happens to the unbought things?”

We need to be sophisticated in looking for the levers, in understanding the programming of the economic machines. Their designers are surely sophisticated in hiding them from us. It’s in the interest of the economic machines to pretend that they are innocent things that only serve what Greedy Consumers want. They want you to attack your neighbor for buying the wrong kind jeans. You cannot destroy these machines by not buying their output. But you can destroy them by removing their ability to generate infinite items, to shore up their profit by throwing away anything inconvenient, by enshrining human rights in overseas supply chains, and (on an achievable level) making the entire concept of fast fashion cringe and ushering in a new “trend” of it being much cooler to wear the same jeans for 15 years.

That’s why the “fake Eli Lilly tweet causes $20 billion losses” lever is so wonderfully appealing, hilarious, and genre-defining.

Were you expecting that lever? The one where a joke undermines investor faith so much that it crashes the insulin stock market? That’s the kind of chess-playing action that breaks machines.

[theconcealedweapon]

You can also stop pretending that capitalism is voluntarism.