random

works in progress

[unusual-suspects]

x

[depsidase]

[mcmcgreevy]

My god I wish more people understood this.

[guerrillatech]

[depsidase]

[the-purple-flower]

145k.

The American government thinks that if you dissappear literally anyone at this point people who might be immigrants, you deserve 145 thousand fucking dollars for a year of labour

But educating the future generations is worth so little to them they won't even toss in the cost of office supplies.

[melanchol1e-deactivated20250809]

[starlightandtears]

Finding out that Frances Dana Barker Gage, a white woman, rewrote Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to be more stereotypically “Southern slave” (complete with slurs and misspellings like dat, dere, dey) when Sojourner Truth was actually from New York and spoke only Dutch until she was almost ten and wouldn’t have actually sounded that way linguistically and decidedly did not use the phrase “Ain’t I A Woman?” at all is…whew. And on top of everything, she embellished details about Sojourner Truth’s life (like the number of children she had/how many of them were sold into slavery), wrote that ST said that she could take beatings like a man, and the reception of the speech in the room (she claims ST was called a n*gg*r, earlier accounts say the room was welcoming).

Lmaooo peak white feminist antics.

[deermouth]

You can read the most accurate transcript here, alongside the racist edited one.

[unthrifty--loveliness-deactivat]

I was already disgusted just reading about this but looking at the side-by-side comparison of the real speech and the rewrite really brought it home.

See the two versions of her first line below:

[ai-yo]

Yeah I remember a few years ago when I found this out through Feminista Jones and was mad but not that surprised because white woman so….

[enchantedpencilcomics]

This sent me down a bit of a research rabbit hole and I found a cool thing where afro Dutch women read Sojourner’s speech aloud in their contemporary Dutch dialects in hope of offering a more truthful rendition of her authentic Dutch voice.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

Image Description.

Facebook post from Matt Norris.

Post reads like a conversation between 2 people:

Prison labor is a problem we need to address soon.

Convicts in prison should have to work like the rest of us.

You mean like slavery?

No, we’re giving them 3 meals and a bed, at our expense, while they just sit around and watch TV. They should have to work!

Right. Like slavery.

It’s not like slavery!

Can they leave?

No.

Can they refuse work?

No.

So how exactly isn’t this slavery?

We DO pay them!

Do we pay in accordance with labor laws?

No. We pay them between 33 cents and $1.41/hour with a maximum daily wage below $5, then take up to half of that as room&board fees and victim compensation.

Right. So like slavery.

BUT.

No.

Image then links to this url.

How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?

Prison wages come up again and again in the context of prison conditions and policies. So, we found the most up-to-date information for each

Below URL image reads “fun bonus fact: enough of our labor market currently relies on labor at these depressed rates, that it has a substantial downward pressure on both wages and job availability in low-skilled sectors. Immigrants aren’t taking your jobs. Slavery is.

End description.

I’d also like to add it’s not just private prisons. It’s also private detention centers where ICE keeps the immigrants.

-fae

[regicide1997]

The constitution even acknowledges that it’s still slavery

[brunhiddensmusings]

a hefty chunk of items with that ‘made in america’ sticker are in fact made by prison labor at the very least anything that is a product of prison labor should be required to have a similar sticker to inform consumers they are taking part of this system, which is difficult to track because prison made manufactured goods include almost the entire uniform of a US soldier, road construction in most southern states, and agricultural goods sold in most stores

this…. looks familliar

[mushimononoke]

Prison is just covert slavery and that’s why they wanna keep so many black people in there for the smallest offences.

This is insane

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

(Just to clarify, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just giving you more information because you’re right, and I like your blog, and I want you to have sources in case you need them.)

It’s not even covert. It’s blatant and overt. It’s even called slavery in the constitution.

“Slavery is illegal except as punishment for a crime.”

The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

SECTION. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, sh

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

People just don’t care because they think it’s all murderers and rapists, despite the fact that the number of violent criminals in jail is so small it might as well be negligible.

Incarceration in the United States - Wikipedia

As of September 30, 2009 in federal prisons, 7.9% of sentenced prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes,[39] while at year end 2008 of sentenced prisoners in state prisons, 52.4% had been jailed for violent crimes.[39] In 2002 (latest available data by type of offense), 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails were in prison for violent crimes. Among unconvicted inmates in jails in 2002, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates in 2002 had a current or prior violent offense; 46% were nonviolent recidivists.[46]

It’s literally slavery, just dumbass racists and capitalists don’t care enough to figure out why we’re calling it that.

-fae

[hinekoakahi]

Actually, no, I got something to add and it’s this video by Knowing Better on Youtube:

Slavery is baked into the US American system so much more firmly than anyone ever really acknowledges.

[amuseoffyre]

There’s a very good and very hard-hitting documentary about it on Netflix

[rainstormdragon]

Also… even if someone has committed a violent crime, enslaving them is… ya know… still a fucked up thing to do? How is that even in question?

The whole discourse of “well they’re not even all violent offenders” has this weird undertone of ‘if they’re good people they shouldn’t have to be slaves’ that horrifies me. Even if 100% of them were violent, Slavery. Is. Wrong. All humans have rights.

[the-lemonaut]

Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant

Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there 🌸

You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out this digital library full of Creative Commons Solarpunk art (neither of these are sponsored).

🦗Somewhat shameful plug🦗

I would highly appreciate if you threw me a couple bucks on Buy Me a Coffee or bought a commission, my money number is only getting smaller these days 😔🤙

[saja-star]

a phrase that kinda bothers me when talking about women's historical roles in europe is "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear it so often, those exact words in the same order even. and once you learn a little more you realize that the massive gaping hole in that list is fiberwork. im not an expert and have no hard numbers, but i wouldnt be surprised if fiberwork took up nearly as much time as the other three tasks combined, so it's not a trivial omission.

it's not a hot take to say that the mass amnesia about fiberwork is linked to the belittlement of women's work in geneal, but i do think there's a special kind of illusion that is cast by "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear that and think "well i cook and clean and take care of children (or i know someone who does) and i have a sense of how much work that is" and you know of course that cooking and cleaning were more laborious before modern technology, but still, you have a ballpark estimate you think, when in fact you are drastically underestimating the work load.

i also think that this just micharacterizes the role of women's work in livelihoods? cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children are all sisyphean tasks that have to be repeated the next day. these are important, but not the whole picture. when we include all kinds of fiberwork—and other things, such as making candles or soap—women's work looks much more like manufacturing, a sphere we now associate more with men's work. i feel like women's connection to making and craftsmanship is often elided.

[craftochism]

Nah pop off queen you hit it.

[godesssiri]

Not just manufacturing stuff like soap and candles. Things like mattresses (the filling of which would need to be changed at least yearly), rugs and drapes. Beer and/or ale, back when people drank that more than water, brewing was the lady of the house's task. Milking, then making cheese and butter. Caring for the poultry. Making all the household medicines - which you would have to grow all the herbs to make - you couldn't just pop down to the pharmacy. Speaking of growing, the kitchen garden was the women's domain and considering that vegetables would be the second largest food group consumed after grain, you had to grow a shit tonne of veges or your family could starve. Women did all the food preservation and the bulk of the butchery. Plus women had to be willing and able to do any job that their husband did because otherwise how could the the farm or the forge or the mill keep running if her husband was called away to war or died and/or left her a widow?

[depsidase]

[donnainnominata]

Some pages from my book of pressed flowers

[unusual-suspects]

[thelocalmuffin]

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

[yeahwrite]

Writers: It's asking to read your Google Docs and be able to 'summarize' things from them and such things. I just turned all mine off.

[last-starry-sky]

Because this isn't mentioned above, also go to google.com/drive/settings and turn off all the annoying bits that interface directly with docs there.

This is all in the "privacy" tab of your settings. How fun that everything is hidden two layers deep. 🙄 This DOESN'T get rid of the stupid little star constantly asking you to use it, unfortunately, but that's what the picker in ublock is for. 😉

[buf309]

More detail instructions for OP's post for those who are confused. This is done from the browser on my laptop, I don't know what they look like on phones.

When you click the first link gemini.google.com/extensions, you need to click on the setting icon at the bottom, then choose "Extension", like this:

Scroll down a bit, you will see the options, turn them all off.

Then, you click on the second link myactivity.google.com/product/gemini, you'll see it tells you that it's already "turn off". NO! IT'S NOT! You have to click on that "Turn off" option, it'll drop down a menu like this:

Turn that thing off. Until that button shows you have to click to turn it back on like this:

And then, click on the delete button down there too, even if it says there's nothing to delete, just do it as a caution.

After you's done with those two. You go to your Drive, find the Setting button.

Click on the "Privacy" tab, choose the button "Manage Workspace smart feature setting"

Tick both of those off, then click Save. Or if you still want to use Google AI assistant for some reasons, please read the fine lines very very carefully.

Only then, you can feel safe enough with this force AI assistant bullshit. FOR NOW 🤡 All these steps still can't get rid of that Gemini blinkblink icon though >:(((((

Repeat for every one of your google accounts 💀

[guerrillatech]

[politijohn]

Source

[katisconfused]

Please note: this was a midterm ballot question. This only passed because people showed up to vote for something other than president. Please don't ignore local races.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

Reminder of the importance of midterms.

And if your reps aren't putting these measures on the ballot? The importance of primaries and locals.

[fullyarmoredbattlesturgeon]

[xxspronkus420xx]

I need this study

[unrequirede]

It looks like it's Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement. It was published in 2004

[writefinch]

It's worth pointing out that cops in the US adapted to these problems through using grand juries to cast wide nets and do punitive fishing expeditions in the wake of any serious suspected left-wing actions.

Here's how it works:

Someone starts a fire at an army draft office.

The cops look through their files for anyone who might be in the political orbit of someone who'd want to do that. People picked up at protests, for drug charges, vandalism, anyone who is already on their radar. They look into their known associates, anyone they live with, anyone they drink with.

Then they start subpoenaing these people for a grand jury summons. They give you immunity (but only for the matter of the grand jury!) so that you can't exercise the fifth amendment against self incrimination. If you say nothing, they can imprison you almost indefinitely for contempt of court. If they catch you in a lie, that's criminal perjury.

They'll ask you for information on everyone you know. Obviously they'll ask about their involvement in any crimes, but they're casting a wide net. Who knows who, where do they hang out, who talked to who about what and when. They'll ask you to spill interpersonal stuff, whether anyone is cheating on someone, whether people have substance abuse problems or embarrassing personal issues, if anyone is closeted, anything they consider dirt. Anyone you name is gonna get subpoenaed and they'll be asked for all this information on everyone they know, including you, and although you have immunity from your own testimony, you don't get immunity from each others.

Assuming you didn't personally do anything they can prosecute you for in the matter of the grand jury, they'll go after you based on what they know. The cops will arrest you on any little thing they have suspicion of, even if they know they can't prosecute you, just so that they can keep you in jail for a few days while you miss two shifts at work and your friends have to scramble to raise bail. They'll leak any embarrassing info that comes out, to your boss or your family or even the local press. Whatever they can do to make your life a little harder.

They will lean fucking hard on anyone who is involved in the scene but had second thoughts or felt like they were dragged into something they never wanted to do in the first place by their friends. The cops will say 'do you want to get your life ruined by people who did something stupid over something you barely even believe in' and sometimes that's a very compelling argument! If people have dependents or kids who they think won't be looked after if they go to prison, there's a lot of pressure to cooperate.

It's important to note two things:

1) Based on the ratio of actual prison sentences to maximum possible sentences for the charges, it's better for people not to cooperate with the jury both individually and as a group. People who talk still get sentenced, with the information they helped provide.

2) These aren't surgical strikes, they're an artillery barrage designed to destroy infrastructure and send people running for cover. Cops don't want you to have friends, they don't want you to hang out and have fun, they don't want you getting or providing food or shelter through anything you can't get fired from. They don't want committed direct-action people swimming freely through a sea of friendly people. They're not scared of the flower, they're scared of the soil that grows it.

[noneedtofearorhope]

Surviving a Grand Jury

Narratives from three people who successfully stood up to grand jury indictments: one who served jail time for resisting, one who went on th

[lalulutres]

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter.