Leftist Ideas and Resources

This was a fanblog but I couldn't figure out how to make another sideblog so here we are. Sometimes this side log gets stuff meant for the main bc I'm human.

[donjuaninhell]

I swear, some of you people somehow manage to possess all of the three most unfortunate character traits someone can have: a) kinda stupid, b) obnoxiously contrarian, c) deeply annoying.

[tockthewatchdog]

stuff you say when you don’t give a fuck about women quite frankly

[cardassiangoodreads]

Hence the not-uncommon adage that the washing machine did even more for women's liberation than the birth control pill

[wiltking]

you really can reach a point with transgender enlightenment wherein you can attribute any bodily feature silhouette and detail to any gender regardless of typical cisgender aesthetic connotations. anything can be a man's body if the person in it is a man. anything can be a woman's body if the person in it is a woman. anything can be a genderless body if the person in it is genderless. and so on. the only thing that matters is the personhood within and whether you are willing to look and know and see it. open your eyes. keep trying until you no longer flinch or turn away in shame or anger or confusion.

[imoanurparentsnames]

thought this post was appropriate

[b-side-takes]

not to be like that but misgendering is still misgendering even if you think you know someone’s gender better than they do. because that’s the basis of literally all misgendering you don’t get a special pass because you’re Transing Them

[rylandsgrace]

[benkaben]

This tags are so important

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[santhipoma]

[glasshomewrecker]

Everyone should be aware of nitter.net

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.

Similarly, imginn.com works for most Instagram addresses. I still haven’t found one for Facebook.

[bebsi-cola]

disabled people are often in permacrisis

[bebsi-cola]

there's never enough money each month. there's always an unexpected illness. new symptoms pop up or old symptoms flare up. meds have to be managed always and refilled constantly and any refill has the opportunity to go wrong. any regular care has the opportunity to go wrong. any mistake can send your health spiralling. it's always "i just need to get through this bad patch" but as soon as one ends another begins. another crisis begins in the middle of the last crisis. managing one thing leaves another thing to be neglected until that becomes a major issue and has to be managed asap and the cycle starts anew over and over and over

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

via prev

[passengerpigeons]

do u ever think about corn sweat; and the fact that a large percent of corn grown in Illinois, iowa, etc is grown for ethanol and biofuel; and how solar power would be so many times more effective per acre than this; and how like 90+% of so many rare ecosystems in those states was drained for farm and suburbs (in many cases previously farms).

[passengerpigeons]

AND you could still have native plants around and even under the solar panels.

[passengerpigeons]

When you see what they did to the Midwest you'll want to fucking kill the corn lobbyists with your bare hands

[liberalsarecool]

She called it.

Unqualified Republican appointments and GOP 3pstein capitalism have abysmal consequences.

[captain-price-returns]

oh no they’re going to start calling democrats the same thing they’ve been calling democrats for 20 years now

[hotvampireadjacent]

[thewellofastarael]

"Here’s a trick I learned during the Obama presidency for handling certain types of political labels. Take, as an example, the Tea Party claim that Obama is a Communist. Don’t take the word of the person making the claim (Tea Partiers). Don’t rely on the rebuttal of the target (Obama), because that will just be dismissed. Go to the group itself (Communists) and ask them. Ask an actual Communist if Obama is a comrade and see how they answer. Watch as they laugh at you, then explain in great detail how they wish there was a Communist in the White House, but here’s a long and exhaustive list of why that just isn’t so. Now apply this logic to the claim that Hillary is pretty much the same as a Republican. Ask an actual Republican if they think Hillary Clinton is one of them. Watch them laugh, and then explain in the same exhausting detail why that just isn’t so. Some of them might concede that she’s better than Trump, but that’s not the same thing. Finally, go ask a White Supremacist if Trump is one of them. As they excitedly explain how Trump is the guy they’ve been waiting for all these years, and how he’s really empowered their movement, use this to guide how you will be voting in November."

Source: a 2016 facebook posts by Craig Enan, since then deleted (OG link here)

[captain-price-returns]

oh no they’re going to start calling democrats the same thing they’ve been calling democrats for 20 years now

[hotvampireadjacent]

[thewellofastarael]

"Here’s a trick I learned during the Obama presidency for handling certain types of political labels. Take, as an example, the Tea Party claim that Obama is a Communist. Don’t take the word of the person making the claim (Tea Partiers). Don’t rely on the rebuttal of the target (Obama), because that will just be dismissed. Go to the group itself (Communists) and ask them. Ask an actual Communist if Obama is a comrade and see how they answer. Watch as they laugh at you, then explain in great detail how they wish there was a Communist in the White House, but here’s a long and exhaustive list of why that just isn’t so. Now apply this logic to the claim that Hillary is pretty much the same as a Republican. Ask an actual Republican if they think Hillary Clinton is one of them. Watch them laugh, and then explain in the same exhausting detail why that just isn’t so. Some of them might concede that she’s better than Trump, but that’s not the same thing. Finally, go ask a White Supremacist if Trump is one of them. As they excitedly explain how Trump is the guy they’ve been waiting for all these years, and how he’s really empowered their movement, use this to guide how you will be voting in November."

Source: a 2016 facebook posts by Craig Enan, since then deleted (OG link here)

[storyweavingspider]

The idea that non-police lynchings ever stopped in the US instead of whites just becoming craftier (evil) about it is so weird to me like

Sure they ain’t picnicking at a public hanging anymore but you seen how many more missing posters there’s been the past few years in particular right? How so many Black and Brown children are just fuckin disappearing too and never making anything more than a Facebook missing post?

We just only hear about them when someone cares about them enough to set fire to everything until it gets noticed.

[storyweavingspider]

Yes. Mainly by law enforcement or people working with them. We watch us disappear into human trafficking and mass graves and we can do literally nothing about it besides hope one of our loved ones wasnt one of them when we get news they’ve disappeared.

The law doesn’t exist to protect Black people, it exists to kill us.

215 people have been buried behind a Mississippi jail since 2016, attorney says

The issue became national news when families said they waited months for word about missing loved ones — only to learn their relative had be

[schrodingers-slut]

“If these so called ‘sundown towns’ still exist–”

Sundown Town Map | History and Social Justice, inspired by James W. Loewen

A database contributed by people across the nation underlies these maps and the tables you can generate.

[aetherograph]

The Greenbook was a travel guide for Black people; it still exists, there's even an app!

Green Book Global - Black Travel Made Easy - Tips for Travel

Green Book Global is the first Black travel review site. Black Travelers, write/read destination reviews, book trips AND earn cash

[aetherograph]

Hey! Are you looking at the map above and thinking "there's some places missing that I know about"? Then please ADD INFORMATION TO THE MAP. It is an ACTIVE map that you can contribute to!!! If you are a BIPOC person who travels, please make use of and contribute to Greenbook Global's city review information! These are not static, these are active maps that don't work if people don't contribute!

[sulkyskywalker]

Everyone should read that article about the graves. A woman filed a missing persons report on her son, who was missing for MONTHS.

Turns out, an off duty cop stuck and hit the son with an SUV. Was ruled "an accident"*, yet took months for them to notify her. She was in contact with them, offering leads, checking progress. *They didn't test the cop for drugs or alcohol, and deny he broke any traffic laws. He HAD HIS WALLET on him, with a state ID. A prescription bottle with HIS NAME ON IT. The coroners office was able to confirm his ID in a matter of days and shared that info with police.

When they exhumed his body, the wallet was still in his jeans, found by an independent examiner. The mayor claims there was no ID.

This isn't incompetence, this is malice.

Crump is a civil rights lawyer

Oh, and then she had to PAY 250$ TO CLAIM HIS BODY. She had to give these fuckers money, a lot of money, to claim a body they shouldn't have had in the first place.

[red-garden]

MAGA boomers SHOCKED by 20y/o commie speaking fluent hog

[red-garden]

Hog 201 for anyone interested in trying this:

Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”

Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”

Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”

Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”

State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”

The vast majority of conservatives think of themselves as underdogs being repressed by the government/the elite, and they value personal freedom (specifically their personal freedom, they don’t care about other people). The will almost always agree with leftist points if you can find a way to blame the problem on their vague enemies (useful, since rich people are the root of most problems), and tie it back to their ability to say fuck everyone else. NEVER appeal to science, theory, logic, or human goodness. Make it seem as if you are a paranoid lunatic who trusts no one. They love it.

[dinosaurjam]

#you need to tailor your arguments to people's existing values and priorities if you want to convince them #the flip side is that it's every bit as easy to tailor conservative arguments to convince a leftist audience #so don't get smug #you're not immune to this either <- prev extremely true

[theknightlywolfe]

Reminder:

Police are using sonic weapons against protesters that can cause permanent hearing loss

LRADs, a sound-producing device used to control crowds, can inflict permanent damage on subjects

[probablyasocialecologist]

What If We Called It the ‘Flax Age’ Instead of the ‘Iron Age’?

Correcting the Historical Bias Against Domestic Materials

Archaeology has traditionally had a fundamental bias against fabric. Fabrics are after all highly perishable, withering away within months or years, and only rarely leaving traces behind for those coming millennia later to find. Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like “Iron” and “Bronze,” rather than “Pottery” or “Flax.” This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times, when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants. Technologies using perishable materials, such as wood and textiles, may well have been more pivotal in the daily lives of the people who lived through them, but evidence of their existence has, for the most part, been absorbed back into the earth.

There are exceptions, of course, and traces can and do survive, usually thanks to an unusual climate: freezing, damp anaerobic conditions or extremely dry ones. The climate in Egypt, for example, is ideal for preserving all manner of usually perishable things and we subsequently know far more about ancient Egyptian textiles than those from most other regions. As archaeology has matured and diversified, scholars have increasingly looked for—and found—evidence of fine, complex textiles stretching farther back than anyone would have guessed. Their beauty and the skill needed to make them suggest a very different image of our earliest forebears than the club-wielding, simpleminded thugs of popular imagination.

[reasonsforhope]

“The first cultural device was probably a recipient… . Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier. So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody with in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard all about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news. And yet old. Before—once you think about it, surely long before—the weapon, a late, luxurious, superfluous tool; long before the useful knife and ax; right along with the indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger—for what’s the use of digging up a lot of potatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in—with or before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution. This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it. (“What Freud mistook for her lack of civilization is woman’s lack of loyalty to civilization,” Lillian Smith observed.) The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreticians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all… . If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.“

—Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” (1986)

[thedorkdionysia]

i think it would do a lot of people good to remember that Mormons are white supremacists, no nuance, no debate, no arguing how they've gotten "more diverse", their whole belief system is fundamentally rooted in white supremacist ideals

[ftmtftm]

Maybe this is just me, but I'm really proud to share and be impacted by the activist histories of so many different demographics of people.

I'm very proud that generations of activists before me are the reason why I can freely access menstrual products and condoms in the places I frequent, they have saved my skin multiple times. I'm very proud that generations of activists before me are the reason why my parents could have an interracial marriage, I wouldn't have my step family or my sisters without them. I'm very proud that generations of activists before me are the reason why my little brother wasn't taken from my family and institutionalized or beaten for being semi-verbal and high support needs, I wouldn't have my baby brother in my life without them. I'm very proud that generations of activists before me are the reason why my aunt was able to have both a medically necessary surgery for an ectopic pregnancy and a medically necessary abortion for a late term miscarriage, those activists saved her life and kept her in mine. I'm very proud that generations of activists before me are the reason why I can safely go to the gay bar and loudly and proudly exist as a faggot with my friends, they have brought me immeasurable joy with so much sacrifice and loss of their own.

It's such a complicated history filled with loss and we're by no means at any kind of stopping point. There are so many things that still need to be done, but look at the progress we've made that has not only enabled my own life to be richer, but I'm sure the lives of you all too. That's important. We're carrying their torches now, and that's also important. For ourselves and the next generation of lives that we'll be able to enrich even further, who will then pick up the torches from us for themselves and next generation after them.

[ftmtftm]

Activism and progress is a relay race. There are ongoing movements that I have not experienced the beginnings of, nor will I probably experience the ends of them - just like the middle runner in a relay, who must both take the baton and pass it on. But I will still run my part of the race.

Our part might just be the part that secures our lead and eventual success, even if we don't cross the finish lines ourselves. Our part might be an endurance challenge, just keeping a steady pace in the face of rough terrain so the next runner can sprint ahead. The race isn't over just because we barely made it through. Our part might have major setbacks. We might get completely fucked over by someone trying to trip us up, but we can still get back up. In that case, we frankly have to still get back up. We can't win every sprint but we can do what we can to reduce the time regardless.

You still do what you can, look back at where you came from, and keep moving forward so the next person can go even farther.

[cheerfulomelette]

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it — Rabbi Tarfon

[cutecipher]

like. people dont get it. this is from over a decade ago from the fbi itself.

Contacts:.The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Innocence Project, and the National

[cutecipher]

forensic science being fucked is not a conspiracy theory. forensic science isnt just basically regular science.

[daughter-of-sapph0]

in real life research, you create a hypothesis, then experiment to prove or disprove your hypothesis, then draw a conclusion from the results. accurate science is that which is repelicable, aka repeatable under the same conditions. and as a given rule, science must be unbiased by default. researchers must disclose where they got funding. if anyone is found lying about results, they're stripped of their status and barred from research for life. "scientists" trying to prove an agenda by skewing the results are not considered scientists. it's not a perfect system, but it's decent at catching most of the bad actors.

forensic science on the other hand is completely fake. there is no adherence to the regular scientific process. they're so deadset on the belief that their evidence is irrefutable proof of crime, but the reason for gathering evidence in the first place is incredibly biased by its conception. forensics science falls more under a conspiracy theory than actual science. rather than doing research and experiments and drawing a conclusion afterwards, forensics already has a conclusion in mind and will look for any data that aligns with that conclusion and ignore any data that doesn't. if you submitted that to a journal, you'd piss off every scientist in that field to the point where they'd wish to beat you to death with hammers for making a mockery of their profession. but because forensic science is backed by the police and prisons and is used for wrongful mass incarceration, its totally fine apparently. gotta make sure that the united states has the biggest prison population and the highest amount of prisoners per capita out of any country on earth. gotta make sure we maintain our popular of slaves because of that loophole in the 13th amendment. best country on earth, guys. trust. 🙃