Travels with Stormcrow into the Internet

"For no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray; and that is how I got to where I find myself today." (She/her, born in the 80s, mostly straight and mostly chill) Find me on AO3

[azspot]

“When I speak of Indigenous peoples surviving an apocalypse, I’m not speaking metaphorically. The colonization of the Americas represents the largest genocide in human history. Indigenous populations declined by an estimated 90% in the century following European contact, which was about 1/5 of the world’s population at the time. This over just a one-hundred-year period. Entire civilizations vanished. Languages died. Sacred sites were destroyed. After that culturally genocidal policies were enacted like banning religious ceremonies and children being stolen and forced into boarding schools designed to “kill the Indian, save the child.””

— Randy Woodley

[athanza]

From Veronica Tucker via Pinterest

[cheaphalloweencostume]

“be gay do crime! but sex is yucky and crime is wrong!” ass website

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i appreciate this, but in a world where your gay brothers and sisters are being actively punished if not outright killed for having sex—in a fascist society that is trying to make gay sex a crime and has successfully done so in the past, in ways that still harm us today—we have GOT to be there for gay sex and the people having it. it doesn’t make you any less gay not to have sex, but that’s not something bigots are going to take into account, and if they do, it only stands to make you “one of the good ones” and pit you against your siblings and loved ones. whether someone personally wants sex or not, i think we have a responsibility to defend the people who do just as much as the people who don’t.

[nothing-an-iratze-cant-fix]

Sure, but it’s not been long since this entire website was virulently anti-asexuals so that’s probably worth keeping in mind too. We actually don’t defend people who don’t have sex very much at all. And trust me, the bigots don’t love it either so.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i dont disagree that asexual people have faced hostility, including on this website.

“don't stigmatize gay sex" and "don't stigmatize asexuality" are compatible positions. we can and should defend both. what im pushing back against is a strain of rhetoric that treats consensual sex as inherently suspect, gross, or morally dubious. that line of thinking is not in defense of asexual people; its a judgment of people who have (gay) sex

[the-big-mood]

It became impossible to lose them on the evening walk. 😂

[sins-sanctuary]

Awe ☺️

[autizm-bluat]

Some sketches...

[orofeaiel]

La Promenade du Clair de Lune | Dinard, France

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[xphaiea]

Mexican wooden mask

[mornington-the-crescent]

June 1st

[breelandwalker]

Listen, marketing-as-exploitation discussions aside, Rainbow Capitalism is, has been, and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of social acceptance for the queer community.

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

Sincerely, An Elder Queer

[captaindibbzy]

In the UK so many pride events are going bust because corporate sponsorship has stopped after Trump took office in America. And with the rise of things like Reform it’s getting much harder to be ort and open in public. JKRowling is actively paying people to be anti-Trans and lobbying government and corporation’s alike.

I don’t expect to see anything in my local supermarket this summer. My council will not be flying the pride flag this year. Neither will my library, which a few years ago had six different pride flags outside its building including trans, ace, and intersex.

Thankfully for my own safety I’m not clockable. Not everyone is so lucky.

I’d rather have the stupid Pride Vodka Bottles.

[aweekerfuffle]

You're a doctor. You've been taught the phrase "first, do no harm."

A patient comes in with a flesh eating bacteria that is rapidly spreading up their leg. The only way to save their life is to remove their leg.

So what do you do? To help the patient is to accept that you must also harm them.

You're a good doctor. Of course you remove the leg and save the patient's life, because trying to exercise a choice that will result in no harm is impossible where there are only two bad outcomes, but one is unquestionably worse.

This post is for for leftists in the US who still think either not voting or going with a protest vote in the next two major election cycles is an acceptable choice, when you know full well the Republican will cause more harm.

[scottguy]

A LESSER evil is better than GREATER evil. No evil is not a choice.

Your "protest" actively harms people. You are putting your ego over real people's lives. How many people are dead now due to ICE and the end of USAID because Kamela Harris wasn't "liberal enough"?

Your protest made everything worse.

[teathattast]

[slushyseals]

Friendly reminder that ahb ahb ahb ahb ahb...

[dailycatsblog]

[makesomenoise]

🌈

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[spinningprincess]

What if we were allowed to strive for "enough"

For background, I'm a shop owner. I own a small brick and mortar (ok, plywood and LVL and weird fake brick, but whatever) yarn store in a suburban town. 

I keep getting emails from review sites, my point of sale system, random cold calls: "increase your sales!" "advertise in more markets!" "unchecked growth!" "people always need more!"

Okay, those last two were paraphrases, but the first two aren't.

And like. We're a small shop. I have a relatively large staff and it's still under ten people. Only two or three of us can actually get a package in the mail. Mostly we have to have a whole conversation with a customer who comes in. I don't want unchecked growth, I don't even want a ton of checked growth. I want steady sales with a stable number of regular customers who buy yarn when they have a new project, and a medium number (maybe 25%?) of new customers who are themselves a mix of people who will become regulars and one-off tourists who will think of us fondly when they go back home. I want a medium number of online sales, again a mix of regulars who know and like us (maybe some of those tourists!) and people who are frantically looking for one last skein to finish a project. 

Unchecked growth is BAD. It's unsustainable for us, the humans who actually package and sell the yarn, and it's unsustainable for the customers, who will soon be drowning in yarn that they don't have time to work with because they're too busy buying yarn, and it's unsustainable for the YARN MARKET since there are people who have a finite number of people hours each. Slow, small, steady growth that doesn't balloon out and create a problem for us later is my ideal.

I do understand that the many many MANY people who are trying to sell me advertising don't really care about this, they have been told that their job needs unchecked growth and that they need to keep making their sales numbers increase, despite the fact that that's wildly unsustainable for them, but.

Guys.

What if there was enough. Not too much, not too little, but enough. What would the world look like if we strove for "enough" rather than "more all the time"? Wouldn't that be nice?

I know that Tumblr doesn't think this is weird and radical, but maybe MAYBE one of the people who's got a horrible sales job at an unnamed review site will happen across this post and think "hmm, maybe it's not me, maybe she just really doesn't want any advertising."

I live in hope, I guess. Hope and a constant state of "no thank you we've got plenty."

This post brought to you by my point of sale system trying to get me to advertise in more markets.

[imagine-darksiders]

Oooh mon dieu!!! Cinderella!! Mademoiselle, ta pantoufle!!!!!

[thebelchers]