Its August And Im Tired @merfoxfagboy - Tumblr Blog

Most of the “keep up the work after the protests have ended!”-type posts I’ve seen are mostly focused on like, reading Black authors and listening to Black voices and unlearning racism, and obviously all of that is absolutely vital - but no amount of individual self-reflection will be able to dismantle institutional systems of oppression. So I wanted to put together some resources for continuing to build a culture of noncompliance and resistance to the police and prison system even after things have calmed down

But first, be aware that the protests aren’t over. It’s June 29th and there are still events and actions being planned regularly across the nation, and they still need your participation and support. If you’re able, please keep your focus there; this list is for what can be done long-term outside of the protests

Know your rights. Giving the police any more information than you absolutely have to will never and can never benefit you or anyone else - positive evidence given to the police is regularly thrown out in court, whereas negative evidence will be used against you. Know what to say and what you have the right to refuse. You don’t have to answer any questions without a lawyer present, you don’t have to give the police access to your house or car unless they have a current warrant signed by a judge. They will try to intimidate you - learn your rights and don’t let up, don’t ever cooperate with the police

Don’t snitch. If you see someone breaking the law in a way that doesn’t hurt anybody, keep your mouth shut. If cops knock on your door asking you questions about your neighbors or anyone you know, don’t answer

Don’t call the cops. If you can solve the problem in a different way, do it. Cops have on multiple occasions murdered the people they were called to help (or bystanders) without provocation. Don’t be complicit in that. Learn how to handle situations as a community or with the help of qualified experts

When you see an interaction with the police happening, stop and observe. If necessary, film the interaction. Organize and work with groups such as Copwatch to observe the police and hold them accountable

Use proper opsec, especially if you’re involved with anything that might make you a target for the cops. Downloading Signal is a great simple place to start

Learn about jury nullification, and spread the word. When serving in a jury, you have the right to vote not guilty on a defendant that you believe did commit the crime but doesn’t deserve punishment for it. Don’t be complicit in unjust punishment

Refuse to do work for the police or prison system. Workers keep the world running and the state relies on our compliance to keep our neighbors under their thumb. We can shut it down

Continue to support bail funds, even for non-protesters. Cash bail is unjust, and people shouldn’t be in jail just because they can’t pay

Continue to support legal defense funds as well, such as that of the National Lawyers Guild

Write to prisoners, either by yourself or with groups such as the Anarchist Black Cross or Black And Pink, and organize/support books to prisons programs, commissary funds, reentry programs, and other forms of prisoner support

Organize and support community-run crisis response organizations like the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon or the Birmingham Peacemakers in my hometown

Here are some other organizations to join that are doing good work in this area:

Black Lives Matter is obviously a huge voice in racial justice right now. The list of “official” chapters on their website is very incomplete, though, so you may have better luck doing a web search for “[your area] black lives matter” (beware of fakes though)

Showing Up for Racial Justice is another very active and widespread racial justice network

Critical Resistance is a grassroots prison abolitionist organization founded by Angela Davis

The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is another active prison abolitionist organization

The IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee works with prisoners to organize strikes, phone zaps, and other actions combating injustice in prisons

Again, the Anarchist Black Cross does great work supporting political prisoners through letter-writing and more. The link I’ve been including is to an unofficial federation of ABC groups, though - there may be a group in your area that’s not part of that federation, so a web search for “[your area] black cross” may be better

Black And Pink is a prison abolitionist organization focused on queer people and people living with HIV/AIDS

Antifascism is of course an important aspect of racial justice and community safety. See @antifainternational‘s guide to getting connected to your local antifascists - though, again, beware of fakes (the “antifa checker” accounts on fedbook and twitter can help)

The police state and prison industrial complex rely on the complicity and cooperation of all of us to function and be effective. By building a culture of noncompliance and active resistance, we can drastically reduce the state’s ability to oppress communities of color. Don’t let the struggle be forgotten with the changing of the news cycle - keep up the struggle until all are free!

Boosts and additional resources are very much appreciated!

renthony

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately that tell dropouts "you can always go back!"

And that's not bad! It's true for a lot of people! You CAN go back later! You can apply to university, you can get your GED, you can pursue whatever level of education you want. It's not bad to share that message. If you dropped out and want to go back eventually, there is zero timeline. You can go back at any age, with any life experience. You do not have to graduate by a specific age.

But as someone who dropped out of college over a decade ago, sometimes "you can always go back!" starts to feel a little like an empty platitude. Sometimes it starts to feel grating instead of hopeful. Even when it might technically be true, sometimes it still feels like a hollow sentiment.

I just want to say, to anyone else out there who feels that way, who dropped out and CAN'T go back, potentially EVER, whether it's due to poverty or disability or any other reason:

It's okay to drop out and never go back. It might feel shitty, and you may even feel grief over it. That's real, and painful, and allowed. But you are not lesser. Even if you never go back, you are not a failure or a loser. Academics do not define your worth. You are not stupid. And it is almost certain that the system actually failed YOU.

With love,

A fellow burnout

renthony

A couple people have reblogged this with the comment that it's also okay to be totally confident in the decision to drop out, and to not grieve about it at all. And you know what? Yeah! They're right!

I personally still deal with a lot of grief about how my university career ended, but that's just one experience. I know other people with zero regrets, who talk openly about the ways that dropping out literally saved their lives. Life throws nasty curveballs sometimes.

So, to everyone who dropped out, for whatever reason, and however you feel about it: the educational system is a fucking minefield, but academics don't define your worth, and sometimes dropping out is the only option. Rock on.

twiststreet

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

cacophonila

[runs hands down face]

Okay this is the problem with sharing pop science stuff online and content aggregation accounts

The study is real, it's very easy to find by searching up the author's name + study. Give it a read yourself. It's written in a pretty accessible way imo.

Note that it does not put forward any explanations for why this effect happens, only that it does. In the conclusion it posits many possible reasons for why, and that it's most likely nothing to do with the specific action of walking, merely any semi automatic repetitive activity. They also acknowledge the study did not account for the social company the walkers were in, which is a pretty massive factor imo. Considering the conclusion brings up MANY alternative explanations and future experiment possibilities, it's decidedly not "killed every alternative explanation" like the tweet says. The actual paper ends like most scientific papers, listing alternative possible explanations, these are preliminary results, more research is needed, wider demographics of people need to be included, etc.

Another thing is the phrasing of these tweets are like red flags flapping in the wind to me. Any short form social media content that's 1. Pop science 2. Conveys absolute certainty 3. Ends with self improvement biohacking adjacent advice, should set off alarm bells.

Look at the implications that if the tweets were true, it would mean wheelchair users and people with mobility issues would be inherently worse at creative tasks.

So who is this person that's tweeting this, rephrasing this paper in a "helpful" way that is sure to get shares from people who really value being creative and are looking for any way to become more creative in their -

OFC ITS AN AI BRO

You wanna see what his recent articles look like?

CAN WE STOP GETTING BAITED INTO PLATFORMING GRIFTERS

keepingitreluctant

Thank you! There were so many red flags in the first post's language. The original paper straight up says that the mechanisms weren't isolated! Also there is no single part of the brain responsible for creative idea generation, it involves communication between multiple brain networks.

lastoneout

Glad I wasn't the only person who looked at this and thought that it was weird to say this study is SO perfect when the way it's framed here directly implies that people who can't walk are inherently less capable of being creative than people who can.

lastoneout

I can't leave a reply but to the disabled people in the notes who now genuinely seem to believe their mobility issues have robbed them of their ability to be creative pls don't think that! That's not what this study said! You're dealing with ableist misinformation from an AI bro, the study did not make these claims. I encourage everyone who's shared the version without the corrections to take them down, this misinfo is hurting already clearly hurting disabled people and should not be spread.

tlirsgender

They don't tell you this but besides the Beloved Mutual there's also the Longterm Follower who you don't follow back but they're always in your notes and you're kind of watching them. Checking on the longterm follower's bio every so often like turning over a log. She's trans now good for her

tlirsgender

Longterm followers I am putting fresh leaves and hrt in your enclosure

tlirsgender

Realizing I'm somebody's longterm follower who they don't follow back but check in on every so often. This is what's happening when you see the [Following] in your notes

elvensilk

stop making fun of bad people for being fat or having small dicks or being socially awkward or whatever else you seem to think is a fair target. none of that shit has anything to do with why theyre bad. i don’t care if a nazi has a stutter or a terf has thinning hair or whatever. at best youre missing the point, at worst your comments are gonna hurt vulnerable people more than they will ever affect the shitty person you’re mocking. why are you so attached to these bullshit standards anyway?

jiskblr

raginrayguns

OP is addressed to the people doing it, but im reblogging for the bystanders: reminder that these people aren’t on your side just because they say bad things about bad people, and disagreeing with them doesn’t mean you’re siding with bad people

fatphobiabusters

para-sike

There is a second part to bodyshaming that I feel also needs drawing attention to, so I made a slight addition to the picture:

the problem with body shaming isn’t just calling certain traits ugly. The problem is that you associate, or reinforce associations, of morality to these traits.

Making fun of a rich person for being fat isn’t just wrong because you shouldn’t be calling fat people ugly. It’s wrong because it’s reinforcing stereotypes about fat people being gluttonous, associating fatness with being exploitative and cruel.

This is coincidentally also why any body positivity movement focusing on broadening the category of “beautiful/normal” fails because being considered beautiful isn’t the fucking point, it’s that you should be treated with dignity regardless of your physical appearance, disability, etc. That these traits are morally neutral.

There’s a long tradition of associating “ugliness” with evil and we’re not gonna reach any kind of liberation as long as we participate in that.

butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway

If you’ve never heard of Ugly Laws, well now you have, so go learn about what they were and why they were implemented and what it took to challenge them

For nearly 100 years it was illegal to be “ugly.” How did we put an end to this?

In the nineteenth century, laws in many parts of the country prohibited "undeserving" disabled people from appearing in public.

Professor of English Susan Schweik's book, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public examines the "unsightly beggar," a common character in discou

prokopetz

You are an unreliable narrator because your coping mechanisms for your deep-seated trauma forbid you from acknowledging the reality of the situation. I am an unreliable narrator because I sincerely have no idea what the fuck is going on.

feytouched

cannot stop thinking abt the paris review’s essay series on the history of significance of certain colours, hue’s hue:

Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk

Eau de Nil, the Light-Green Color of Egypt-Obsessed Europe

Marian Blue, the Color of Angels, Virgins, and Other Untouchable Things

Incarnadine, the Bloody Red of Fashionable Cosmetics and Shakespearean Poetics

Jonquil, the Light Yellow of Early Flowers, Mad Painters, and Dust Bowl–Era Pottery

Scheele’s Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death

Lilac, the Color of Half Mourning, Doomed Hotels, and Fashionable Feelings

Hooker’s Green: The Color of Apple Trees and Envy

Blaze Orange, the Color of Fear, Warnings, and the Artificial

Chartreuse, the Color of Elixirs, Flappers, and Alternate Realities

Living Coral, the Brutal Hue of Climate Change and Brand New iPhones

Mustard, the Color of Millennial Candidates, Problematic Lattes, and Aboriginal Paintings

Russet, the Color of Peasants, Fox Fur, and Penance

Verdigris: The Color of Oxidation, Statues, and Impermanence

feytouched

But Wait, There’s More! as i found out after making the initial post, there are a few other colours katy kelleher also covered in other outlets: payne’s gray, haint blue, rose madder, falu red, glaucous, fuchsia, caput mortuum, prussian blue, gamboge, celadon, and puce.

also shoutout to her other series, the ugly history of beautiful things, which talks about: lockets, angora, perfume, pearls, mirrors, and orchids.

this-is-trans-joy

everyone loves to hate terfs until they realise that it actually entails rejecting bioessentialism entirely and then suddenly you’re “taking things too seriously” and you “don’t have a sense of humour” like i’m sorry but saying protect the dolls doesn’t make you immune to terfism it has seeped into every corner of mainstream feminism and unless you’re actively searching it out and checking your own biases you will always be at risk of sharing a space with terfs

this-is-trans-joy

“Only women can—” nope. “But all men—” nah. “The divine femininity of—” gonna stop you right there. “Everyone born ama—” if you finish that sentence I’ll kill you. “Men don’t experience—” you’re wrong. “Gender isn’t real but sex is imm—” *loud incorrect buzzer*

It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.

syzygynephile

Me, trying to impress my date with a display of my boundless humility: I would like to order one single, solitary crumb.

Waitress taking my order: Such arrogance! Not only do you presume to boast under the guise of being humble, but your order employs the most decadent of linguistic excesses - the tautology!

My date, who until recently thought "tautology" referred to the study of tensile strengths and upon learning her mistake compensated by reading through its Wikipedia article: That would be more correctly identified as a "pleonasm".

The editor I hired to curate my posts who styles himself as a sort of scheming court advisor: My liege, this one is getting away from us. The punchline loses much of its impact when the rest of the joke is derailed by this increasingly self-indulgent meta humour. Were it up to me, your Grace, which of course it is not, I would cut the others and leave myself as the only supporting character. You need noone else, Your Majesty...

My card: Declines

luulapants

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

naamahdarling

Finally, a good fucking take.

lifesgrandparade

I want you guys to all start making a bigger stink about Tumblr's Age Verification Horseshit.

lifesgrandparade

Like they tried to change Reblogs and people rightfully got up in arms, this is a LOT worse. In order to have access to any sort of thing dubbed mature, and We haveALL seen what they think is mature, Everything from a black and white photo of a black woman's arm, to posts about IUD recalls, to a nude painted by a 17th century artist, to anything involving the word Trans; you have to send your personal information to a third party site that WILL get hacked, and you will be doxxed. And they can say "Oh shit, well it wasn't us who sent your name address and gender identity to Moldovan teenagers, here's a couple extra minutes in the ball pit.

That's bad enough!!!!!!!! But the entire idea of needing permission from state authorities to access anything labeled mature by our friendly AI overlords is some fucking Boll shit. Die Gedenken Sind Frie baby. This is all a reaction to people getting uppity about their lowly lowly rights and is being propped up by the same bad actors tht have made life unlivable. Fuck that shit.

"Well it's only being rolled out in Brazil and UK" Yeah, to start. "Well they're being forced to do this by laws." YOu know it's always really funny when these tech giants (Or whatever you call owning tumblr dot com) get really antsy about laws considering they pick and choose which ones they abide by.

This is a breaking point and it's going to be very interesting to see how we proceed from here.

teh-nos

i get this now and it won't let me click through to any 'mature' blogs :(

changes

An update for users in Brazil and the United Kingdom

To continue our commitment to user safety and to comply with local laws, we will start using age groups to determine access to certain experiences.

People in Brazil or in the UK, who are 18 or older, will soon need to verify their age to change content label settings and view mature-labeled content. Until then, the settings will be locked to hide.

As a reminder, verification is handled by our age-assurance partner, k-ID. Tumblr won't have access to the information you submit, just the final age-verification result. Documents are deleted after confirmation, and facial scan data never leaves your device.

Questions? Contact Tumblr support or learn more about these changes here.

tigerator

all uk & brazilian citizens must forfeit their biometric information to third party overseas ai-driven for-profit corportions seeking to harvest and sell this data because, despite the fact we already banned porn, we need to stop you looking at your trans friend's blogs who we habitually mark as mature content because of deeply transphobic moderation that we refuse to address.

thanks.

yorickalas

max--phillips

AND YET!

Pope Leo is letting American bishops entirely ban trans healthcare for both minors and adults in all Catholic-owned hospitals and clinics, and stop coverage for trans healthcare through Catholic-affiliated health insurance plans!!

People are having surgeries, for which they were on waitlists for years, suddenly cancelled. Hormones no longer covered, their clinicians no longer able to prescribe them. Considering in some states Catholic-owned healthcare organizations make up to a third of the market, as it were, this is a HUGE issue.

Missing hormones. Canceled surgeries. Bureaucratic denials. Late last year the Catholic Church banned all trans healthcare across its sprawl

This has been happening since November of last year, when this vote took place, but no one is talking about it. The rehabilitation of the image of the papacy through Pope Leo is killing me, it’s still the goddamn Catholic Church. You do not gotta hand it to them.

ask-anything-polls

Your phone magically opens to a random fic on ao3!

Spin the wheel 3 times to find out what your fic is about! Put in the tags which fic tags you get!

Picker Wheel is a wheel spinner for a random picker. Various functions & customization. Enter choices or names, spin the wheel to decide a r

Do you read it?

I’ve read this already!

Hell yes this is literally meant for me!

Yes but out of morbid curiosity

Maybe

Absolutely not!

Why does this fucking exist?!?!

Voting ended onMay 4

#cat like behavior #overstimulation #baseball #hm #hmmmmmmmm

what-even-is-thiss

You shouldn’t date or become serious friends/partners with someone if you can’t stomach the thought of being stuck in a car or train with them for 16 hours.

what-even-is-thiss

Here’s my logic:

You should be able to work together to solve unexpected problems like fixing a flat tire or getting lost in an unfamiliar station

You should feel comfortable and safe enough around this person that you can sit in comfortable silence

You should be able to keep each other interested and deal with each others boredom in a healthy way

If you’re gonna form a long term partnership with someone you should probably be able to tolerate each other while locked in a small box for a few hours

what-even-is-thiss

These tags are hilarious even though I don’t think you intended them to be.

rosesforwildwitches

*pulls European closer* The most populous countries in the world are China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Brazil in that order, with these seven nations alone making up 48.16% of the world population. You may note with the aid of a map that many of these nations are quite large, and would take several days of travel to go across either in cars or on boats. Almost half of the world's population lives in places where you can travel in a cramped vehicle for days and still be within the country. Your worldview is limited and Europe is a tiny outlier in travel time and standards for international relations.

ammnontet

my nothing

soul-hammered

Hooray! Yay! Dykes!

headspace-hotel

I'm not seeing any naked adults in that screenshot...

...There's something deeply messed up about how breasts, which are used by our species to feed babies, are considered to be so perverse and obscene that a child should never see them.

alexseanchai

There aren't any naked people in the entire video clip. There's some people that you'd probably see less of their skin on a beach, but only because on a beach they'd probably be wearing a bikini top as well as whatever else they have on. And this is New York City, where toplessness is legal regardless of gender or assigned sex.

vergess

Toplessness for breasts is legal in most places in the US, unlegislated in almost all that remain, and only illegal in two states: Ohio and Tennessee.

This is because topless equality has been a basic push from feminists for literally decades, until Radfems and NeoCons bonded over wanting a trans genocide less than a decade ago.

It's literally why the "no tits on tumblr" and other lesser SESTA/FOSTA consequences* like it were so jarring. It set back FORTY. YEARS. OF PROGRESS in the rights of people with breasts or perceived as women to wear the same clothes as people without.

Do not let conservatives lie to you about this. The majority of people in the us and the VAST majority of States recognize the right of people to not wear a damn shirt. It isn't obscenity, it isn't even nudity, it's just something pericis men are allowed that everyone else isn't.

Y'know.

Basic sexual discrimination.

*Y'all aren't still on that "it was the Apple app store that caused the tit ban" shit, right? It was the literal US federal government. To be fucking clear.

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