Before the Morning Star

the perfect time to throw off every stitch of gender and go skinny dipping

[only-tiktoks]

[britney-j-christ]

[softservecanine]

You’re completely correct. Out of my way, able-bodied losers. Fuck you.

[samueldelany]

Afrofuturism & Radical Imagination

Thursday, August 27 | 7:00pm

Join the Museum of Science in Boston to explore how Black cultural traditions and visionary speculation offer a powerful toolkit for building more inclusive technologies and reimagining the world we inhabit.

What if imagination itself is a technology?  

Join the Museum of Science for a dynamic discussion at the intersection of art, science, and community — exploring how Afrofuturism offers not just a vision of the future, but a revolutionary framework for building it. Rooted in Black cultural traditions and fueled by visionary speculation, Afrofuturism has long challenged the boundaries of what science, technology, and society can look like.  

Brought to life through the lens of artist and creative director Steven Baboun, this discussion will probe the questions that sit at the heart of both art and science: How do we envision technologies that serve all people? What role does cultural memory play in shaping innovation? And how can speculative thinking — long dismissed as mere fantasy — become one of our most powerful tools for social and scientific progress?

[fractangle]

Pride month vest project, a patch a day #14: All Pride is Kink to Bigots

[dizzy-jizzy]

All pride is kink to bigots

[samueldelany]

The Ignyte Awards consider only works, entities, and persons within the realm of speculative literature, to include fantasy, science-fiction, horror, magical realism, and their associated subgenres. Works are considered eligible if published and made available originating or translated into the English language (at least 70%) within a given calendar year. Works which are produced in whole or in part by LLMs (large language models) or generative “AI” services or products are ineligible in all categories.

Above: the 2026 nominees for Outstanding Anthology/Collected Works. You can vote and choose the award winner!

A brief history of the Ignyte Awards.

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

where to upgrade social battery. where to buy larger social battery. how to attach multiple social batteries. how to hang out with all your friends without getting tired. how to hang out with everyone you wanna hang out with without burning out. infinite social energy hack. nap tips

[ripley-owo]

Connect social batteries in series or in parallel. Social battery chemical composition. Social battery minimum voltage. Social capacitor.

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

SOCIAL CAPACITOR FOR SALE NEAR ME

[huffy-the-bicycle-slayer]

If you mess up a social interaction you can say "Failed Experiment" and move on

[huffy-the-bicycle-slayer]

Cannot stress enough that you say this in your head

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

Thanks for clarifying, I was going to start saying out loud. I will start saying "skill check failed" instead.

[the-uss-premise]

S1E21: Court Martial ⋆.˚ ✧ · ˚⊹

[databent]

hi. i really, really need everyone to see this gif of someones frog i just saw on reddit

[riverfortune]

I just finished listening to a book the other day. It's called Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold. It is listed as the first in her Vorkosigan series but the recommended reading order is to start at book 2, so I initially skipped it. The rest of the series is basically a bunch of action/space opera books following a particular family in their adventures in a sci-fi future involving a planet that does feudalism in space and a boy who is born with a fragile body into a warrior-based society. They're really fun and I recommend them.

But.

Falling Free is about a man whose company sends him to a space station to teach a bunch of people with extra arms where their legs should be how to do space welding. When I first read the summary, I thought it was really weird and figured I wouldn't get around to reading it. I'm so glad I read it after all.

It's not just about a bunch of four-armed freaks learning space welding. It's about recognizing the exploitation of those around you. It's about the dehumanizing nature of bureaucracy. It's about the danger of outsourcing your morality to what's legal. It's about how offloading responsibility onto the next guy results in disaster. It's about learning what kind of labor is needed to make a society. It's about how sometimes you can weaponize bureaucracy against itself for good. It's about how others can weaponize it for evil. It's about understanding the value of women's labor. It's about the value of free will. It's about the importance of taking responsibility for the consequences of your own actions. It's about the dangers of eugenics and it's about the dangers of coorporations and it's about the dangers of personal ambition. It's about standing up for what's right even if it goes against what you always thought was right. It was published in 1988 and it's about four-armed people welding in space.

[vetchtibbles]

my silly little jester costume for the play I’m in is so fire you all wish you were me

[vetchtibbles]

no one has ever jingle jangled like I’m jingle jangling now

[vetchtibbles]

post cancelled they de-belled my costume for sound design reasons

[teaboot]

Neutered

[soap-is-an-artist]

[teaboot]

[genderqueerpositivity]

Minnesota’s Giant Rainbow and Leather Pride Flags

June 28, 1998. Both flags measured approximately 50 feet wide and 75 feet long.

[ryuutchi]

Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters

[nightmarechamillian]

In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.

[glamourweaver]

Three years after that last comment and the corporate backers are fleeing as the moment the political tide turned - the kinksters aren’t.

[ratbastarddotfuck]

you have to forgive the printer because it's one of the most machine-ass machines we interact with on a day to day basis. that thing says kerchunk. hardly anything says kerchunk these days. you can't get mad at her when she kerchunks up a little.

[digitalsymbiote]

Crazy that tech has gotten so bad that we're doing printer forgiveness now

[rainia]

this speaking as a cis person. Nothing brings me more joy seeing people find gender euphoria in becoming a mediocre representation of humanity. And I mean that so genuinely. Local boy finds joy and fulfillment wearing a cargo shorts and t-shirt combo. Local girl has transitioned to look like someone's disheveled aunt, has never been happier. Local person experiences gender euphoria rocking the world's worst bowl-cut. Without a scap of irony, this shit makes me see the wonder and whimsy in just, being a human. An average, person going through their day-to-day, is a wondrous thing? That's amazing. And heteronormativity has stripped these experiences of their joy. Like you're right, wearing a basic girlypop skirt should make my heart sing. Why not? Why are these expressions lesser because they're normal? All this to say. Shoutout to all the basic bitches out there. Yes that polo shirt does make you look like a divorced golfer dad. Yes, that too is kind of a slay, now that I think of it.

[only-cat-memes]

[raptorific]

Look don't test me I'll block and turn off reblogs with a hair trigger if you all can't be normal about this but I do feel like it needs to be said that "do you think abortion should be allowed if the mother's reason for wanting it is—" the only acceptable answer to that question is Yes no matter what the end of that sentence is going to be. I do not care if someone wants an abortion for selfish reasons or bigoted reasons or cruel reasons or any other hypothetical strawman you can think of, there is no circumstance where someone should be denied the right to opt out of a forced pregnancy and birth. First of all, who's in charge of interrogating everyone seeking an abortion to make sure they're doing it for reasons Pure Of Heart? Second, why do you think Forced Birth is an appropriate punishment to inflict on anyone? If your answer to "should abortion be allowed when the motivation is—" is anything but an unequivocal "yes, and I don't care about the motivation" then you are not pro-choice

[demonprincex]

Yep, as a disability justice person I sometimes encounter resistance to this principle from people who are concerned about abortion being used for ableist reasons.

"Do you really think a pregnant person should be able to abort a fetus just for having Down's Syndrome?" people ask. Or just for having some genetic markers for Autism?

And my answer to that, always, is I don't think a child should be forced to be born to a parent that does not want them. And I don't believe a parent should be forced to give birth to a child they are not prepared for and do not want.

Is it ableist for a pregnant person to not want a disabled child? Sure, but I find myself far less interested in the purity or impurity of the pregnant person's morals than I am in the fact that disabled people and their families are provided almost no resources in society and are excluded for nearly every area of public life. There are many reasons why a parent might not want to give birth to a disabled child, or feel unprepared to raise them, that go far beyond that parent's own personal prejudices. And even those prejudices are informed by economic, legal, and social structures that make it very difficult, expensive, and isolating to raise a disabled child.

Furthermore, I don't care if any person gets an abortion for the right or wrong reasons because I do not think there should be some outside body that decides what a legitimate reason for seeking an abortion is. Who is going to determine whether a pregnant person is seeking abortion for the "right" reasons? Will it be the government? Which government, state or local? Will it be a social worker? A doctor? An ethics board? I don't trust any institution to determine whether someone is seeking an abortion for the right reasons or not, and I don't think it would ever be possible to institute laws that would prevent "unjust" or "immoral" abortions alone. Even if it were possible to magically only prevent abortions among people with horrifically bigoted views, I would oppose it, because as OP said, I do not believe in forced birth.

It really is that simple. And the same principles apply to a panoply of political issues that are needlessly concerned with an individual person's mental state or motives. Who cares why one individual person is doing what they do. Look to the economic forces, the demands, the resources, the needs not being met, and you will see the logic behind people's behavior. There's no need to legislate away a person thinking the wrong thoughts.

[kactusnz]

you don't fix eugenics by legislating away bodily autonomy. You fix it by encouraging people to think of everyone who is different to them as valuable human beings.

[oliviawhen]

Just swimming by to say hello. 🦭

[dogposts]

Enjoying the open window breeze