[nyctibiius]

she has been pickled for her crimes

[guooey]

[sandmanalone]

The spirit of Mouse compelled me:

[coyotette]

[official-ornithology-posts]

Official ornithology post

[thewitchoftheweed]

We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.

[charonsferry]

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, radio broadcasts would refer to upcoming marches as "parties" and use other such euphemisms to sneak calls to organize past censors. For example, the Birmingham marches of 1963 were called "a field trip in the park with a luncheon".

This is, frankly, a timeless strategy, just done online.

[gleerant]

if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.

[gleerant]

this one took off quickly - are you guys ok

[wizard-of-interesting-failure]

WIZARD PSA: Chronomancy might be weird and confusing, but one of the few solid rules of the discipline is keep your promises. Time is a library, and you don't want to meet the librarian.

[molombo]

Where's the African mythology?

The Kickstarter is live now!

[probablybadrpgideas]

a good idea!

[what-even-is-thiss]

Don’t join the army to get free college. First two years of community college is free. Peace corps and Americorps have scholarships and student loan forgiveness programs for their volunteers. If you’re not rich you probably qualify for Pell grants. Go to a state college. They teach you the same things they do at fancy colleges. Sometimes there’s scholarships for people of a certain background. Ethnicity. Sexuality. Gender. Religion. Go to a grad school that’ll give you free tuition for working there as a teacher or assistant. Become a stripper or something. Just don’t join the army.

[what-even-is-thiss]

If you want to do something structured and physical for a few years and see the world like do a working holiday in Australia or something. Join the peace corps and do some agricultural work with them. Volunteer with some other overseas organization that’s setting up infrastructure in poor countries. Spend a summer in Alaska working in fishing or Arctic tourism. See if you qualify to be a United Nations volunteer. Work on a ranch. Become an apprentice to a welder or electrician. Train to become a ship captain. Just don’t join the army.

[dasenergi]

Mister Rogers

[therobotmonster]

Dang, I gotta start feelin’ better about myself.

[poetry-protest-pornography]

self compassion as resistance is such a powerful message

[robertreich]

Remember: If unions didn’t matter, powerful corporations wouldn’t spend millions of dollars every year to stop workers from organizing. Keep up the fight.

[depsidase]

[foreverlogical]

[deadendstyle]

[aquietwhyme]

And it's sickening because so much of the development of HIV medicine has been publicly funded. We fucking paid for this research dozens of times over; without that public funding there would be almost nothing new for pharmaceutical companies to ransom I mean sell in the first place.

[lxcke]

THE SWIMMING PIC HAS ME SOBBING 😭😭

[lxcke]

In case y'all were wondering what's going on over at Xiaohongshu 😭

[wizardarchetypes]

my mom's in a pokemon go battle right now in the other room saying a whole shonen protagonist speech

[wizardarchetypes]

apparently there are tricks to cheat during battles and you can sometimes tell when your opponent is cheating and i just heard her say to her phone, verbatim, "why do you cheat? does it make you feel good? do you lack such esteem that false victory is good enough for you? fuck you. i'll go down fighting."

[wizardarchetypes]

she just started saying "die raichu die. die die die die. with your big smile, die"

and I said "mom I don't know if I like what this game brings out in you"

and she said, "what, would you want your mother to be some sort of loser in the leagues???"

[dracaryswonder-deactivated20250]

"Your coverage of this event has been completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience"

Being able to see the part that the media cut out in the beginning makes a huge difference in understanding the context and message luigi mangione was trying to get across. Media manipulation at its finest.

[headspace-hotel]

Y'all

Im not on tiktok and never have been, but I downloaded RedNote just to see what is up, and I am witnessing something truly amazing

The Chinese user community is giving the American tiktok refugees an overwhelmingly warm welcome, meanwhile the American users seem to have collectively agreed that not only will they not let the app be taken over with English and they will provide Mandarin subtitles for everything, they are LEARNING MANDARIN. Ive scrolled through so many videos of Americans offering greetings in Mandarin to try to acclimate to the new environment and be respectful, and speakers of both languages are posting lots of tutorials on language basics and internet slang in Mandarin

My God, there is an AMAZING outpouring of curiosity and delight among everyone to learn about each others cultures and daily lives. People are posting videos of landscapes, cities, towns, and natural areas in USA and China, posting recipes and traditional foods, vlogs of everyday life, and reaching out to find people with similar hobbies.

And it's not just young people! There are loads of videos from middle-aged American guys who have come to post about fishing or motorcycles and are now happily chatting with Chinese users sharing the same interests using Google translate

One American guy who was like. in his 60's had a comment on one of his videos that was like "Red Neck?" and he replied "Yes!" and I just about fucking lost it

Also the Chinese users love, and I mean LOVE, Luigi Mangione. He is apparently broadly adored in China. There is SO much fanart and SO many edits.

There are many threads initiating Chinese users to ask questions of American users about the USA, and vice versa, and everyone on both sides is clearing up a lot of misconceptions. Some of the questions I saw a lot from Chinese users were: "Is it true that American parents kick you out of the house as soon as you turn 18" (not often, but sometimes) "Do you all really wear shoes in bed" (NO!!! Apparently a lot of characters in American sitcoms are shown lying in bed with shoes on which I never noticed before!) and "are there really guns everywhere" (yes).

For the most part Chinese content creators seem just overwhelmed by the sudden influx of hundreds of followers that are super enthusiastic about what they're doing. A lot of them have made posts about how initially they thought the uptick in follower count was some kind of error, or that there was some kind of joke or prank, but then they realized the interest and enthusiasm was genuine and now they're welcoming all the newcomers.

I found several posts by Chinese users saying that this felt like a really profound historical moment, where these previously separated worlds are suddenly smashing together and suddenly there is freedom to learn about each other's cultures and connect. One of them said something along the lines of "This is a 21st century Tower of Babel and even though I'm an atheist I hope God lets this tower stand." OUGH MY HEART.

The app itself works a little bit like a video-based version of Pinterest. It's not really my thing so I probably won't be on there long term but it's been amazing to see what's happening.

[victusinveritas]