Longtime readers may be aware of how much I relish an excuse to bully a company, so I'm sharing the wealth;
Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.
To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.
So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.
I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile.
Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.
They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.
In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.
Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'
The Centurion Project's voter surveillance tool was built by US political operatives with direct ties to the Trump regime
The data on 2.9 million Albertans was loaded onto an app built with US funding, shaped by US political strategists, and deployed by a Canadian separatist organizer who spent nearly two years cultivating US partners before launching the Centurion Project. The question is not whether there is a US connection to what lawyers have called potentially the most significant privacy breach in Canadian history. The question is how deep the operation goes, who in the Trump orbit knew about it, and how far are they willing to take it.
On the night of 29 April 2026, David Parker stood in front of supporters at the Edmonton Oilfield Technical Society and unveiled the Centurion Project app, describing the technology as the same tool that "helped Trump win Michigan." Minutes after Parker finished speaking, an Elections Alberta investigator arrived with Edmonton police officers to inform organisers they were under investigation for improperly accessing and using the province's list of electors. Parker had already loaded the names, addresses, and voter identification numbers of every judge, every lawyer, every politician, every domestic abuse victim, every First Nations chief, every journalist, every senator, and every elections investigator in the province onto that app. Former premier Jason Kenney, on learning his home address had been shown to meeting participants, retained legal counsel and said he had previously received threats from people involved with the separatist, anti-vaccine, and far-right movements in Alberta. The database was accessible to anyone with the link, with no identity verification required.
There is something sooo deeply American going on with Seattle Children’s Hospital that I think would brick the minds of everyone outside of the United States.
The CHILDRENS hospital has to restrict helipad landings because of noise complaints from the wealthy home owners living next to it. Only the most urgent patients can land directly at the hospital. While the other kids have to land a mile away and are taken to the hospital via ambulance. Which is an unnecessary risk to the child’s life and also makes the families pay for the helicopter AND ambulance.
Even if you don’t live there, if you still live somewhere in the states, please, listen up.
“The MA legislature and governor just proposed dangerous social media surveillance legislation that would require everyone in the state, including adults, to upload a government ID or submit to a face scan to create a social media account. If something like this passes here, it will spread to other states faster than activists can fight back.
I have an op-ed out in today's Boston Globe explaining why this legislation would hurt kids and help Trump attack LGBTQ youth and undocumented folks. You can read it here (no paywall) https://archive.ph/rAK4P
If you're in MA, please send this to your state senators and the governor! They need to read it! You can also use this tool to easily call the key lawmakers who will be making decisions about this: https://www.stoponlineidchecks.org/ma “
- Fight For the Future Signal chat
I encourage reading EFF’s article linked below as it goes into the greater details of the legislation aside from this, but key notes:
• Forces everyone (not just kids) to upload a government ID or submit to a facial recognition scan to create a social media account or post online, even on educational sites like Wikipedia
• Force parents to send even more sensitive information to Big Tech companies to “verify” custody in order for a minor to create an account (think: sending a birth certificate to Mark Zuckerberg to let your teen create an account)
• Allow unsupportive parents to lock queer and trans youth off the Internet, restricting access to life-saving community and information with zero recourse
• Expand the Trump admin’s surveillance capabilities, making it easier for them to persecute people organizing protests, monitoring ICE, and criticizing the administration
• Cost Massachusetts tax payers enormously, as the legislation is clearly unconstitutional and would face legal challenges.
• Specifically harm undocumented folks who use social media to warn communities about ICE activity and raise money for family members
• Fine smaller and non-profit tech platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky out of business, further expanding the monopolies of Big Tech platforms
It is one of many of the worst pieces of digital surveillance legislation right now in the states.
If you’re in MA, please call and write to your state senators and governor through EFF’s article below, and if you’re not, either spread the word or call them too, but, don’t give them your ZIP code so they don’t know where you are.
The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed.
“More than fifty research and development facilities across thirty-one states. Gone. Consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. And ‘consolidated’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because what it actually means is that decades of place-based, long-term ecological research—the kind that literally cannot exist anywhere else because it depends on specific forests, specific watersheds, specific ecosystems studied over generations—will be snuffed out.
You cannot move a thirty-year watershed study. You cannot relocate a decades-long old-growth monitoring program. You cannot box up a forest and ship it to Colorado. When these facilities close, the experiments die. The datasets end. The partnerships with universities that took generations to build collapse. And the institutional knowledge of the scientists who ran those programs walks out the door, because the administration damn well knows most of them won’t follow a forced relocation to a single consolidated office that has nothing to do with the ecosystems they’ve spent their careers studying.”
To clarify, the entire USFS is not being dismantled (yet...). It will still exist. But two big things ARE happening:
They are moving the headquarters to Salt Lake City, rather than DC, and moving to a state based management model rather than a regional model. Which...mixed feelings on this one, honestly. Time shall tell how it plays out. It's one of those things that falls into the category of "if any other administration did it, it coulda been good, but these idiots are probably going to fuck it up so damn bad."
Yes, they are destroying basically all research stations as stated above. This is BAD BAD BAD. Right now our best hope is to delay things until the midterms and vote in better representatives that can put a full stop to this. Call your current reps now and in the midterms throw your support behind the ones that are against this bullshit.
And here's a THIRD thing that isn't being talked about, but probably should be.
The government recently consolidated all Department of Interior wildland fire people (so the BLM, USFWS, BOI, etc. wildland fire people) into one new department called the US Wildland Fire Service. (Which I have many other thoughts on, but I'll save that for another post.) They want to also eventually bring all Forest Service wildland fire people into this department as well, thus having all government wildland fire functions under one department. Right now they haven't been able to do this yet because Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Interior like everything else was, so it requires more congressional approvals and shit. But they're trying.
And if they succeed and manage to move all wildland fire functions out of the Forest Service AND kill all Forest Service research functions then...ah...there's not a lot left. Like. Those two are a pretty damn big chunk of the Forest Service right there. So they'd be left a much smaller department with much fewer resources, likely struggling to get funding even more than they do now. So. Killing the research is just one facet of a much bigger plan to kill the Forest Service piece by piece, honestly.
Really wish we'd, on the left, stop laughing and assuming this is ACTUALLY about strippers. I'd be willing to bet this ISN'T about some one with the actual job of stripper being somehow hired and sent to a school, that indeed DOESN'T happen - instead it will be used to target any female teacher who, like, wears a bikini on social media one time. She'll be called a "danger" to children and fired, as a cover for the fact that she's pro-queer or too far left or doesn't support ICE enough on that same social media. The bikini pic will just be the legal tool used to ruin her life
A friend helped me out by looking up the actual bill and YUP, it's to target queer people and sex education. NOT. STRIPPERS. STOP MAKING IT ABOUT THE FUCKING "STRIPPERS".
Anyone who thinks ladyshinga might be off track, here's the breakdown.
Actual bill name: Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.
Purported purpose: "to protect children from being exposed to explicit material in the classroom".
How it's sold in the press: "Ban strippers and porn from classrooms!"
Actual text of the bill: Expands the meaning of "sexually explicit content" to include the words "or involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism".
Not and. Or. Meaning "involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism" is in and of itself enough to be classified as sexually explicit.
Actual result: Illegal to mention the existence of trans people or admit to being trans in a classroom under threat of being prosecuted as a child sex offender.
please consider writing to Prarieland defendants Autumn Hill and Meagan Morris, they are both trans lesbians incarcerated in men's prisons for protesting an ICE facility
prosecution established affiliation by way of defendants having fucking anarchist zines, the kind of shit you see in a punk house. this is what they want and are willing to pursue for all of us who aren't willing to lay down and die, imprisonment and torture and the absolute stripping of our dignity (the govt gleefully included their deadnames in a press release yesterday; Morris' public defender has consistently deadnamed and misgendered her despite her legal name change)
there is no one who will protect us except us, and if our sisters are lost to us and forgotten as soon as they are grabbed by the prison system (ie if the system is allowed to work as intended) then we are failing, and we are woefully unprepared for a world where they start taking more of us
Autumn is a loving wife and is interested in religious history and mythology. Write to her at FMC Fort Worth.
Meagan Elizabeth Morris is loved by her wife housemates, and dogs. Her name was legally changed in 2007, but the federal complaint used her
In France if you suffer from hair loss as a teenage girl and cannot afford a real hair wig the school will try and force you to go to class bald. The school will make you buy a chemotherapy turban, you will buy two different so that the school can choose which one they prefer and you will prove that they are chemotherapy turban and not hijab but once you wear it they will change their mind and say it looks too much like a hijab and insist on you going bald or buying a real hair wig that you cannot afford.
If your doctor makes multiple documents confirming that you suffer from alopecia because of stress and the medicine you have to take for your epilepsy and that wearing a bonnet or something is recommended for your mental health as you’re not ready to go out bald in high school as a teenage girl, instead of admitting they are wrong the school will accuse the doctor of lying and report him to the Ordre des Médecins (equivalent of the General Medical council). Your doctor will find himself asking you for a document stating that you are not Muslim in order to defend himself and prove that no he wasn’t colluding with you so you could wear a substitute for hijab.
Source
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In France if you are a North African nurse at a public hospital and wear a fabric surgical cap they will try to make you remove it because apparently it’s a hidden hijab. They will accuse you of going against secularism and when you’ll argue that they are discriminating you by assuming you’re Muslim for a surgical cap on your head they will change their angle and claim that you should wear nothing on your hair because you wear the same surgical cap in multiple bedroom which is unhygienic apparently (which is a bullshit argument cause you wear the same scrub/uniform in different bedrooms as well). They will go as far as claiming that disposable scrub caps (you know the thin papery ones?) are not okay to wear in a hospital even if you change it regularly. And then they will fire you for a lack of hygiene because you wear a surgical cap.
Source
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All of that will be done in the name of secularism and women’s right despite having nothing do with either quite the opposite.
The teenage girl’s story is also not just about racism and Islamophobia it’s also about ableism as the girl is convinced that the real reason the school is trying to push her out is because she had an epilepsy crisis in class and nobody knew what to do and the school nurse was absent. It could have ended badly had her best friend not known what to do to help. Apparently it was bad enough to cancel class for the rest of the day and the teacher was shocked to the point of ending on sick leave.
hello. this message is for trans people in kansas who are looking to leave asap. I live in colorado, in a relatively cheap rural area. the hospital I work at is hiring a multitude of positions; the job is fine and the wages are adequate at worst and good at best. this is a trans-friendly community in a trans-friendly state. I am happy to act as a reference for you and am happy to connect you to housing resources. please hit up my ask box or email me. feel free to share this post with people who may need this information. thank you, good luck.
There's also a nonprofit organization based in Colorado called Trans Continental Pipeline dedicated to helping trans people relocate. If you need to relocate or wanna help others who are affected by this, here's a good way to do it. Stay safe everyone <3
Did you see the news about National Parks removing signage and information about the mistreatment of Native Americans by settlers, as well as about climate change and environmental protection? Read the article by Reuters for more information.
This is clear Native Erasure. We have a survey open to collect your observations:
https://forms.gle/SLoyCjLH4BBvx1rT6
Share photos, locations, and comments about signage you see that includes information about Native Americans and Tribal ancestral lands, or signs that do not. Documenting good examples is also a good idea as signs may be potentially removed. We continue to invite your observations that also highlight where signage is lacking this information on public lands. This info can be shared by the Tribe with staff from National Parks, National Forests, and other public land managers.
The Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement promotes education and awareness regarding the integration of land acknowledgment and respect for the Snoqualmie Tribe within recreational activities. Our initiative also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the ancestral lands of other Tribes when visiting public spaces.
Do you know whose ancestral lands you are visiting?
(Source: Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement facebook page)
BLM has published a plan to maximize logging in Oregon forests, including old growth forests, without due regard to wildlife (including endangered species) and waterways. They're claiming it will help prevent forest fires, though that seems to be contrary to current science, including that published by the forest service (you can find a list of sources here). This is in response to Trump's executive orders 14223, Addressing the Threat to National Security From Imports of Timber, Lumber, and Their Derivative Products and 14225, Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.
We have 30 days to submit comments if we want to prevent this. This article has suggestions for what you can say, and how:
One billion board feet per year... 30 days to make your voice heard.
You can read more about it here:
Conservationists say proposal to “maximize” logging across nearly 2 million acres of Western Oregon BLM lands would devastate fish, wildlife
If you live in Oregon and you love our forests, please submit a comment before March 23rd.
If you don't live here, it would be super helpful if you could reblog to spread the word.
They just—took away an entire population’s valid IDs. With a stroke of a pen. No grace period. No chance for anyone to get their IDs “fixed” in time, not that they should have had to in the first place. They even made it illegal for people to drive themselves to the DMV to get a new ID. That’s insane y’all. That is dystopian level madness. It is petty and cruel and literally dehumanizing.
They have also invalidated their birth certificates, thus jeopardizing their ability to prove citizenship and vote. It’s voter suppression on top of everything else.
They wanted to make an entire population into criminals with a stroke of a pen and that’s what they did.
And the rest of the country just… hasn’t noticed. No one cares. There’s no headlines. Nothing on the news. Because it’s Kansas. Because it’s trans people.
But if it can happen somewhere in this country, it can happen anywhere. And if it can happen to trans people, it can happen to you.
A photographer for Getty isn't even a journalist so much as an archivist. ICE violently disrupted the apolitical documentation of what they were doing, violating any and all rights that might flimsily stand in their way. It would have been just as wrong had they done this to an MSNBC reporter hellbent on a spin, but now Abernathy's neutral action as a photographer has been rendered necessarily political by ICE's violence.
They know what they're doing is objectively evil. They have no intention of stopping.
they got way more on camera too. lookit this shit. source
they knock him down from behind, they're kneeling on him, and they've set off tear gas. his arms are pinned under him and he can't breathe. look at this photo of his face.
I'm gagging and literally thought I’m going to pass out. I couldn’t breathe. I was thinking I only have a couple of breaths left and I don’t know what’s going to happen after that. I had taken that last shot and I threw my camera. I lifted my head up and saw one photographer taking photos. I threw my camera and then I threw my phone.
this last picture is his camera on top of his citation.
but the insane thing? yk how he said
I had taken that last shot and I threw my camera.
THIS IS THE LAST SHOT
THIS is the photo he took before he threw his camera. how poignant.
check out the article source too, it's a really good read.
Now that Mamdani's preliminary NYC budget dropped and he's starting to implement policies like this, you're going to see a lot of articles like this on mainstream media. Friendly reminder to always look deeper:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has resumed the practice of clearing out homeless encampments, saying he has retooled the process.
But the Democrat on Wednesday said his new approach — led by the city’s homeless services department, rather than police, and involving days of sustained outreach — will be more successful.
“We will meet them looking to connect them with shelter, looking to them with services, looking to connect them with a city that wants them to be sheltered and indoors and warm and safe. And that is something that I believe will yield far better results,” he said at an unrelated news conference.
The decision came as at least 19 people have died outside over several days of brutal cold in the city, prompting concerns about the city’s response. There is no evidence that anyone who died had been living in encampments, according to the mayor’s office, which has conducted an aggressive campaign to coax homeless people into new shelters, heated buses and warming centers.
53MB of source code leaked from a government endpoint. 269 verification checks. biometric face databases. SAR filings to FinCEN. and the sam
they told us the future would be convenient. sign up, verify your identity, talk to the machine. easy. frictionless. the brochure said “trust and safety.” the source code said SelfieSuspiciousEntityDetection.
funny how that works. you hand over your passport to use a chatbot and somewhere in a datacenter in iowa, a facial recognition algorithm is checking whether you look like a politically exposed person. your selfie gets a similarity score. your name hits a watchlist. a cron job re-screens you every few weeks just to make sure you haven’t become a terrorist since the last time you asked GPT to write a cover letter.
so what do you do? well, we looked. found source code on a government endpoint with the door wide open. facial recognition, watchlists, SAR filings, intelligence codenames, and much more.
oh, and we revealed the names of every single person responsible for this!!
(Source)
The Department of Homeland Security is tapping Google and other tech companies / platforms (Meta, Reddit, Discord) to hand over the personal information of people criticizing ICE.
The DHS subpoenas include "legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency."
In one case, Google has been ordered to convey timestamps of a man's online history, including: "every known IP and physical address, his credit card, driver’s license, and Social Security numbers", etc.
They’re not required by law to comply: they are choosing to.
Big Tech companies have long pledged compliance to MAGA’s agenda—but the breadth and invasiveness of this DHS operation is significant.
As the scope of state suppression grows, so do the surveillance methods. (Basically, we're watching technofascism accelerate in real time.)
(Source)
So, if you haven't already, protect your content and identity by moving to more secure spaces—ideally with servers outside the US and backed by robust privacy legislation (e.g., GDPR).
The ACLU is offering legal rep to anyone affected by this. Please stay safe and protect others.
- the Ellipsus Team
Fuck Fascism In All Its Forms @smash-the-system - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
