Art and Sleep are Important

Rachel - 29 - Pisces - Fantasy Artist This is my personal blog!! I have a separate art blog , so check it out if you want more of my art!! My Art | Art Refs | Fashion Refs

[seven-winged-liar]

now more than ever, it is imperative that you spend time with people you love and doing things that you love. be prepared but please please please don't dwell on things that have yet to happen. you have to have hope for a better future in order to build one. it's gonna be okay. we're gonna make it. i love you.

[pageturner001]

With Trump looking on track to win, I just want to give some hope for people right now.

The Senate is Republican, but two years in the future a third of the Senate will be reelected, meaning Trump has at most 2 years to work with an agreeable Senate

Whether or not Trump goes through with project 2025 or not, this will most definitely be our last term with him

If he doesn't do what he promised, his voter base will get mad they didn't get what they voted for

If he does do what he promised, his voter base will get mad when they realise tariffs=higher costs and when their taxes don't decrease

People WILL protest in their states and nationally and either a) Trump listens or b) Trump ignores it and people become more disillusioned with him

There is no way Trump will do something that can't be reversible or managed by the later President

If Trump supporters do become disillusioned, we could see a blue midterm

1/2 of Congress is needed to pass a bill

Just take a breath. It isn't going to be great, but we can and will survive.

[onlytiktoks]

[thenaiads]

THIS!!! REBLOG IT EVERYONE, IT COULD SAVE LIFES ☝️☝️☝️☝️

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶Squatters' rights are your rights! Fight the power!🎵

[kestrelsandcentipedes]

Not socialist in a “I won’t have to work” type of way but socialist in a “I’ll still be working but I won’t be worried I won’t make the rent” type of way. In a “billions won’t be hoarded by one person” type of way. In a “janitors, fast-food workers, child care workers, preschool teachers, hotel clerks, personal care and home health aides, and grocery store cashiers, will live comfortably” type of way. In a “the sick and elderly will be cared for” type of way. In a “no child should work” type of way.

[saga-stuff]

In the "my illness won't condemn me to an early, ignominious death" kind of way.

[marzipanandminutiae]

in a "everyone who wants to have children will be able to afford that" type of way

[gingerautie]

Why activism is a terrible hobby

I recently saw a post where someone commented that the incredibly charged issue they were arguing about followed them home, and they couldn’t escape it. And it reminded me why this pattern I see of people (especially young people) where the majority of their downtime is spent on tumblr, and their tumblr is mostly some form of activism, from thought out long posts to clicking reblog on a petition, is so worrying to me.

Various forms of oppression are background noise to a lot of people’s lives. Fixing that is not likely to occur within your generation. It might get better, but the chances of it completely vanishing are minuscule. Some activists go home after dealing with bigotry all day at work, and talk about oppression on tumblr. And if they sit down and watch a TV show, they think about how it’s bigoted. If they have a musician they love, they feel obliged to think about how they’re problematic.

This is awful for you, your metal health, and the people around you. You burn out, you start blowing up at people for tiny things because you’re so tired of it. It makes you miserable and unpersuasive, it’s emotionally exhausting.

And this isn’t just me saying this. When my grandpa was training to do work with the labour party, he was told that you had to have a hobby to be good at it. Because otherwise it destroys you. You have to have something in your life that is totally disconnected from the horrific things you are seeing everyday.

If you can’t find TV shows to watch because you can’t switch off the social justice analysis part of your brain, do something else your activism can’t creep into. Take up knitting. Build shit out of cans. Play the recorder. Lock yourself in your bedroom and play minecraft. Whatever you do, please, please don’t let activism and fighting oppression take over every aspect of your life.

Have a separate activism tumblr and a cat pics/memes tumblr. Or blacklist activist things on your tumblr. Set aside some time where you don’t think about how shit the world is.

You have a right and an obligation to look after yourself. Please don’t drive yourself into the ground for the sake of social justice. You can’t fight all the time, and you’ll be no good at it if you can’t take a break.

[lizardtitties]

This pretty much perfectly describes my tumblr SJ obsession when I was younger and how much it fucked me up.

[luulapants]

I rambled about this in tags on another post but I can’t emphasize enough how only focusing on large-scale issues WILL lead to hopelessness & burnout. Activism must include small-scale, achievable works. If you don’t have something you can get your hands around and look at directly, despair will eat you alive.

[luulapants]

I want to elaborate here for people who don’t think they’re capable of practical activism due to disability: what a LOT of volunteer groups need most is clerical and logistical support. Maybe you can’t get down to the river to pick up trash, but how about working the sign-up table? Or sending out email reminders or creating promotional graphics? How about making calls to the city to get funds for supplies?

Many volunteer groups rely on retired people to run their day-to-day functions, so as the economy worsens and retirement ages go up, charities are feeling the squeeze as their aging participants aren’t replaced. If you’re unable to work full-time due to disability but have the means to attend a zoom meeting once a month and take minutes, there’s an activist group that needs you. If you don’t have the financial means to donate to charities you care about, there’s a local advocacy group that needs help deciding how to allocate donation funds.

If you’re not sure how you or your disability can fit into a group, call and ask. My prison book group works from a basement that isn’t wheelchair accessible, so when I was unable to do stairs last year, I built them a database.

You can help and you are needed.

[the-habitat-ring]

At one place where we used to live there were some great older ladies who scoured Facebook and Craigslist for free furniture and other home items. When they saw something, they’d contact their list of people with larger vehicles and trucks to see who would be able to go get it first and deliver it to someone who needed it.

They helped so many people who lost items due to fire and storms, housing instability, etc. If there wasn’t someone on the list but it was something that was often needed (like baby items), then they contacted people who had a bit of extra room in a garage or a shed and could store it until it was needed.

There are tons of items being given away for free but they tend to get picked up quickly and if someone is working, taking care of kids, doesn’t speak English, doesn’t have reliable internet access, or doesn’t have a truck, it can be difficult to take advantage of that. Someone who can’t leave home much due to a disability but can keep an eye on Facebook and text and coordinate group chats can help a huge number of people.

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

Our first victory against trump!

Time to start celebrating ALL the small wins, because EVERY win means a lot, and every win helps us fight for the next one!

[virgo-disaster]

I think it’s important to note that this bill only failed because it needed 2/3rds majority - if it had needed only a simple majority, it would have passed.

I urge you to look up your MoC and see how they voted, then reach out to their office to either praise them or express your disgust with their vote. Part of the reason that MoCs start catering to more conservative voices is because those voices actually give them feedback. The left needs to start doing that too.

[twitchystitchwitch]

Where do you look to see the way members of congress voted on specific bills?

[virgo-disaster]

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives

You can search the bill number and then search for your rep or other reps you’re interested in seeing. The bill in the article above is HR 9495.

[twitchystitchwitch]

Thank you very much. I always try to find stuff like this but lately my brain has been too fried

[virgo-disaster]

HI SO. This bill is going back on the docket on MONDAY 11/18 and this time will only need a simple majority to pass. That’s 220 votes. It got 245 this week. If there is any time to reach out to your MoC’s office, it’s now. I emailed my rep yesterday and plan on calling her office as well.

I work for a nonprofit and while this bill likely won’t affect my job, being that it’s a small hyper-regional organization, it WILL affect organizations like the ACLU and the SPLC. It could defund Planned Parenthood. That’s a Big Fucking Deal and not a power that we want to let Trump have.

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

Yes, this is an important update!

These are the Democratic Representatives who voted for the bill originally. If your Rep is on this list, PLEASE CALL THEIR OFFICE THIS WEEKEND.

Capital Switchboard: 202-224-3121

[embervoices]

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.

[snailchimera]

This is actually the most hopeful thing I've read since the election. It's hard to believe we'll all be okay just because we're full of spite or we're on the right side of history. It's easy to believe Trump and his administration is a pile of venomous bucket crabs in clownshoes.

Take that part about grifters and amateur analysts on the left seriously. Scam artists take advantage of panic and desperation, and a lot of us are feeling panicked and desperate. Also, when people are panicked and desperate, their critical thinking skills suck and they don't necessarily come to logical conclusions even when doing their best. God knows I've fallen for scams and dramatic worst case scenarios. The most important thing is to check your sources and be suspicious of dramatic appeals to emotion (though dramatic appeals to emotion don't mean something is false, either).

Isolation fries your brain. I know there are lots of ways to wind up trapped in an isolating situation, but reach out to other people- preferably multiple groups of other people- any way you can. Volunteering is a good way to do this.

[rosavaya]

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

[anarchistmemedistro]

[mentalhealthmemesofficial]

[notthegrouch]

“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.” 

- Vincent van Gogh

[exeggcute]

at some point we gotta acknowledge that getting the majority of your news and takes and general opinions from tumblr is not meaningfully different than getting it from tiktok even though on here it's in textual form. understanding the world through the lens of viral videos vs understanding it through breathless unsourced text posts written by dykeastarion69

[astudyinimagination]

#this is what made me switch to actually reading news sites regularly some years ago#(and when something's controversial or doesn't seem quite right I look up multiple news sources to try to get a fuller picture) (@thirddoctor)

A quick reminder that the Associated Press is totally free, and also often covers the news stories that Tumblr users say no one is covering. NPR is also free. So is ProPublica.

Also, here's a chart that might be helpful, in terms of determining bias and reliability: Interactive Media Bias Chart

[zetabrarian]

All this + SIFT

[radicalgraff]

“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

Spotted in Clackamas, Oregon

[adragonsoulart-blog]

Hey, the ACLU is getting people to send letters to your Reps to have Congress pass the No Kings Act.

This act would make constitutional amendments to ensure that even sitting presidents are held liable for their actions. That NOBODY is above the law.

Their goal is 150k messages sent and at the time of writing this they're about 2.1k off from that goal!

ACLU gives you a prefilled message that you can edit to send to make the process easier, and will send it out for you.

Tell Congress: America Elects Presidents, Not Kings

The Supreme Court declared that criminal law doesn’t apply when you’re Donald Trump or any other president using the powers of the office. D

This only takes a few minutes!

[grey-sides]

Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.

But listen to me. LISTEN.

You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.

Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.

[creepyscritches]

Banging on the walls chanting "OPEN ENROLLMENT FOR ACA THRU JAN 15" like some deranged town crier. Election results aside, you have options to access healthcare as a RIGHT through the ACA. NO one can dismantle the Affordable Care Act in less than 4 years, so SIGN UP! GET YOUR CARE! USE THE SYSTEM!

You have options RIGHT NOW that will be stable thru the next year, the one after that, and I'd be shocked to see them shrink even the year after that. That means RIGHT NOW you can get signed up for next year to gain 100% covered preventative care (your annual check ups, pap smears, dental cleaning, vision check). You have the option to get checked and screened as you need, do NOT be dissuaded from exploring ACA choices. They are SOLID, LEGISLATED, and WORK BEST WHEN PEOPLE USE THEM.

I can't change most things around me, BUT I CAN tell everyone I know that THEY CAN GET LIFE SAVING CARE. THEY CAN GET PRESCRIPTIONS. THEY CAN GET PREGNANCY CARE. THEY CAN GET CANCER CARE. AND THEY WILL GET THAT CARE!!!!!!

SIGN UP BY DECEMBER 15, 2024 FOR COVERAGE TO BEGIN ON JANUARY 1, 2025. ENROLLMENT AFTER 12/15/24 WILL HAVE COVERAGE BEGINNING FEBRUARY 1, 2025.

Welcome to the Health Insurance Marketplace®

Welcome to the Health Insurance Marketplace®. Official government website.

[fablepaint]

My fellow Americans

Take advantage of what our civil servants have built for you and spread the word.

[bump-inthe-night-deactivated202]

If it makes any of you feel better, Donald Trump will have an uphill battle to change the constitution. He will need:

-2/3 of Senators (60)

-2/3 of the House of Representatives (290)

-3/4 of the states (38)

In 2026, 33 senate seats will be up for grabs, and we’ll be able to vote for people who are against Trump and his ideals.

Breathe and remain hopeful because it’s not over. We can still fight and make Trump’s last four years hell.

[iamnmbr3]

This is so important. Also pay attention to local elections. Now more than ever it's important to have staunch anti Trump democrats at every level of government - from school boards to senate seats. Apathy and not voting helped Trump win. Now is the time to wake up and get serious and hold on to the freedoms we have left. We have got to fight for every inch of territory. Do not give up. Do not give him any more power than he already has.

[azspot]

“Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.”

— Everyone Into The Grinder

[1five1two]