izzy's playlists!
shark vs the universe
Origami Around
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tumblr dot com
ojovivo
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Show & Tell
oozey mess
we're not kids anymore.
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
tannertan36
trying on a metaphor
roma★
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Today's Document
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
if i look back, i am lost
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@unalignments
worst part of being an adult is how often youre forced to nag. you Have to be annoying or youre never getting anything done. which is unfortunate considering how common it is to teach kids to never nag and be annoying ever
a professional i am paying money doesnt show up w zero communication and IM the one who has to feel guilty for having to call him and ask whats going on. because when i was a little kid i would get yelled at for nagging. joke world
[ID/ a print saying
There is no damage more irreversible than death
Let trans kids transition /end ID]
Happy international Asexual day 🙌🏽
A message from Yasmin Benoit and The Humans Right Campaign on IG
Once again yelling on my soap box about how you don’t GET to love my posts on the beauty and complexity of butch identity and queering masculinity if you don’t support trans men and transmasculine people.
Butch identity doesn’t just go hand in hand with trans manhood and transmasculinity: they are chosen family, they’re friends and comrades, lovers and beloved.
If you deny the lived experiences of trans men and transmasculine people you don’t get to pretend like you see the beauty in the complexity of butchness.
Fuck you, fuck off, you don’t get to claim you love me while you hate my closest kin.
Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life North American; United States, pub. 1994
White supremacy needs dumbasses.
"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.
Death by spreadsheet is an acceptable degree of separation for most in middle management. They can sleep at night without guilt for what they've done, because the system charitably setup twelve degrees of separation between their choices and the real-world harm. But do not be fooled, their choices set that harm into motion. Without their reckless disregard for human life, the harm would not be done.
I used to work at a TV station in Ohio. On weekends, we only had an 11pm news broadcast. Not much happened on weekends, ya know? I worked Monday-Friday 9-5, but someone on the weekend shift quit, so I also had to come in at 9pm on Sat/Sun to work the 11pm news. It was brutal. I worked seven days a week, even if two of them were ~3hrs.
This was a particularly bad winter. One Saturday, we had a level 2 snow emergency: That means you should only travel if you absolutely must. Like, it's not uncommon for cops to pull you over in level 2 emergencies to ask where you're going and why. It is genuinely dangerous to drive in that much snow.
I told my boss as much, how I almost crashed on the way home at 12:30am after a news broadcast. I told him I would need to call off if there were a snow emergency again during a night snow.
He told me, point blank, "If you ever call me about the goddamn snow, I will take it as a call of resignation."
And that was that! The very next Saturday, snow fell again. It was a level 2, but would become level 3 by sunup. Level 3 means driving is literally illegal except for ambulances and snow plows. I stared out the window, watching the snow, and I had to make a choice.
"Will I die for this? Will I kill myself to keep this job?" I made $11/hr.
Yes, managers work you to death. That's their job.
Every single labor protection is written in the blood of those who were literally worked to death, and business owners and profiteers would claw those protections back with glee if they could. They will squeeze every red cent from your body if they are allowed, and write off your death for an insurance payout that they'll try to pocket for themselves while hiring your replacement for half the pay they gave to you.
Someone said “The slow burn of becoming yourself” and I think that might be one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. It’s such a good reminder of how much it takes, how much character development, how much change, and beauty and courage it takes to reach your soul and I hope no one ever gives up on becoming themselves because it’s a never ending journey that only gets better.
we seriously need to stop conceding to the personhood trap when it comes to abortion rights. is a fetus a person? thats a spiritual question. i dont care about the answer. should another person dictate what someone can do with their body? simple answer: no.
like if a fetus isnt a person it has no right to my body and if a fetus IS a peson it also has no right to my body because there is no other context in which we are required to put ourselves at risk of physical harm to preserve another persons safety or even life.
you dont have to save someone from drowning even if youre a strong swimmer. even in death youre not required to donate organs and that could save several people. you can kill someone if you truly believe your safety is at risk. we dont mandate preservation of life over autonomy in any of these circumstances.
How to avoid sharing Social Media Scams in the Wake of a Disaster
The world is full of disasters. It is also full of people who have learned to profit off of disaster. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the modern social media/online environment that in order to avoid spreading scams, you have to make a continuous effort and you have to be cynical.
There are a lot of wonderful, well-meaning people in the world who want to help everyone who asks for it. Unfortunately, those people are easy to scam.
These are some rules to prevent you from either falling victim to scams or from passing scams along to other people.
These are not suggestions, these are not things to take into consideration, the rules listed here are RULES that you need to adopt in order to keep from spreading scams on social media.
Rules:
Never, ever share screenshots of fundraisers or resources that you haven’t verified yourself. If you see a screenshot of, say, the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds Instagram announcing that they will be accepting evacuees with RVs, you go find the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds website, you find the social media linked on their website, and you check that the post you’re seeing actually came from the entity it’s claiming to. Once you have proved that the post actually came from the entity it’s claiming to, double check that entity with a couple of verifiable sources. So, for instance, if I was checking on the Guitar Center Music Foundation I’d check Guitar Center’s website and maybe I’d look for news articles about donations from the foundation. If I was looking up the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds, I’d look for a local newspaper calendar of events that linked to the fairgrounds or would check the city websites in the area and search “fairgrounds” on them. I would not share a link to a social media page for an organization until I was 100% certain that it was actually associated with the organization. You shouldn’t either. If you see a post that claims to come from a specific group but all you have is the screenshot of the post, go find the group’s website and if it all checks out you may share it IF AND ONLY IF you add the link to the post. And if a post has a link already, click through it and STILL check that everything looks okay.
Never give money or information to someone with a free email address. This sucks. I know. But if the group you’re looking at only has a gmail address or a protonmail you have no way of knowing if they’re legitimately associated with the organization at a glance. And even if they ARE associated with the organization, the free email account demonstrates a lack of planning/commitment that has troubling implications for the handling of your money or data.
Do not share screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. I’m done with screenshots. Screenshots are easy to fake and almost always remove context from the discussion. A standalone screenshot isn’t information, it’s a trap to get you to share something without thinking. Do not *trust* screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. Always assume a screenshot is faked unless you have found the original post yourself. A screenshot isn’t a “resource” it is an un-source, it is intentionally removing information from the viewer and we are well past the time when people should have understood that sharing screenshots without a link to the original text in context is never, every trustworthy.
Do not give money or information to accounts without a history. This may mean individual social media accounts, or it may mean a shiny new mutual aid project that popped up near your house. It’s unfortunate that people have their accounts deleted, it’s unfortunate that new orgs have trouble finding support, but the likelihood that a new account is a scam is simply too high to trust your money or information with it. If someone is asking for money or offering help on an account that hasn’t posted for years, or that suddenly changed all its content, or that has only existed for a month with no links to other, older sites and socials, you shouldn’t trust that account.
Okay, those are the RULES. Those are the lines you draw in the sand. The TL;DR version is this:
Don’t share posts you haven’t personally verified
Don’t give money or information to accounts with generic email accounts like gmail
Don’t share or trust screenshots that have no links or further context
Don’t give info or money to brand new accounts
I absolve you of any guilt you have surrounding this. You want to share that post to help a stranger but they have only had an account for a week. You want to spread that resource, but unfortunately it is only available as screenshots of an anonymous instagram account. You think that perhaps that mutual aid group really can help people, but the only way contact them is to put your info into a google form and send an email to their gmail account. That post seems really helpful, but actually you can’t find anything that suggests that the Mt. Pacifico Aquatic Center exists outside of this twitter account. No more guilt! Guilt be gone! You do not have to feel bad for not sharing these things, or not reaching out, or not giving money because doing so would be irresponsible and would put other people at risk of being tricked by scammers or wasting what money they can donate on a potential fraud.
Now, some tips:
Always, always, always take at least ten minutes to think about giving someone money or your information online. Read the post that moved you, then re-read it, then go sit away from it for ten minutes and think about it. There’s a good chance you will still want to give, or sign up, but ten minutes away will give you a chance to consider if there are any red flags in the post that inspired you.
Independently search everything you’re going to share. Go outside of social platforms and check on search engines. Check Wikipedia. Look up the website and send a while clicking around. Go on a *different* social media platform and check their account.
Just straight up search “[SUBJECT] Scam” before you do anything. See if this thing you’re looking at is actually an old scam that’s revamped for a new disaster. See if you can find an explanation of how something might be a scam or risk in a way that you didn’t understand before.
Get used to getting away from social media. Go check websites.
Learn domain name syntax. “musicfoundationguit.arcenter.com” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenterfounditaon.org” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenter-foundation.org” is a bullshit scam. The actual domain is “guitarcenterfoundation.org” and the link to the correct page isn’t going to be “guitarcenter.foundationfires.org” it’s going to be “guitarcenterfoundation.org/fires”
Tips for Orgs:
If you do not want your org to look like a scam you are going to have to put some effort into it. Unfortunately this will probably also require at least a little bit of money; I know it’s hard to get money together at the beginning, but it will pay off in the long run.
Invest in a domain and hosted email. You can get relatively inexpensive hosted email through most domain registrars and even if you only get one email address for your domain you can forward it to all the free gmail and protonmail accounts you want. But buy a domain, set up a simple website, and get an info@[yourdomain].com email set up because you don’t want people emailing “[email protected]” because it’s super fucking easy for a 1337 hax0r like me to set up “[email protected]” and scam the people who want to reach out to you.
Make a blog on your actual website, not on a social media site. A blog means that you can make regular posts and establish a history to prove that you are real and you do real stuff; it will also help with SEO and help to ensure that when people search for your org YOU are what comes up. Keeping up calendars of previous activities with links to those activities is also good.
Set up social handles on all the sites you use, make a “socials” page on your website, and link to your handles so that people can verify if you’re the one posting something. If you don’t make it extremely easy to find your socials, that means it’s extremely easy to set up fake accounts claiming to be you. Then put the link to your website in the bio on your socials.
If you are offering something or holding a fundraiser or doing anything on your social media page, link it back to your website. If you have an IG post offering resources, you should include a url for your site in each image. If you share a photo on twitter with the info for a march, that should link back to your website with more info about the march. If you post a fundraiser on tumblr you need to link the fundraising page of your website on that post.
If you absolutely positively cannot set up a website and a real-ass email address, set up a linktree, choose a primary social media to post on that all the others refer back to, and very explicitly state what your email address is and that you do not have other email addresses somewhere that's difficult to miss. Build a history of posts and link to other orgs that you work with or any writeups or stories about your events or projects. The point of all of this is making yourself easy to verify. "[email protected]" sucks but it sucks a lot less if it's in the bio of "@northfulltertonfnb" and that page has a two year history of posting meal share schedules and menus.
In conclusion, don't share things that you haven't personally checked. When in doubt, it is always safer not to share.
A fantastic guide!
Magdi Jacobs
It is Holocaust Remembrance Day and I would like to post some thoughts. My first thought is that we do not remember anymore. My second thought is that we have never remembered well enough.
People have become quiet, perhaps fearing that remembering 6 million dead entails some other thought. It is a gruesome fact that this entailment has been created in so many minds. That good people stay silent out of fear. That there is this ugly cloud around remembrance itself. This should all be rejected. We should remember what happened because it happened.
Here is what I would like people to know: We never have truly remembered the Holocaust because we never truly knew the Holocaust. The depths of that evil are truly undiscoverable.
People say this insulting thing--that we place Holocaust remembrance above all else. I say we most certainly have not. We do not even know the Holocaust enough to remember it, much less elevate it. And once you learn it, it is a unique event in human history.
When the camps were liberated, there was little mention of Jews specifically. The Nazis were so depraved to so many. The world was an antisemitic place. The initial news reports were of the horrific treatment of POWs. People could not comprehend what had happened to these men in these camps. It broke the human mind.
General Patton vomited when he visited Ohrdruf. Eisenhower wrote that "the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick." Soldiers doubled over, throwing up. At Dachau, soldiers could smell death and decay five miles before they reached the camp. One liberator recalled seeing soldiers vomiting, crying, experiencing disbelief and rage. Nurses wrote of seeing "human wreckage, living skeletons, diseased, infested with lice and maggots."
That is what happened to the POWs; What happened to the Jews was worse.
And that greater suffering of the Jews? That is another part of this story many of us have never known well enough to properly "remember."
So many in Europe had suffered so horrifically that they resented the Jews for suffering worse. After liberation, Jews were forced into displaced persons camps alongside antisemites and individuals who had harmed Jews during the war--housed together with displaced Germans and Austrians, many of whom had been Nazi collaborators, until Earl Harrison's 1945 report led to separate Jewish camps. Harrison wrote that "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them."
When Jews returned to their homes after liberation, much of the rest of Europe turned on them. Stealing their clothes and their homes. Beating them to death. Telling them the Germans should have made soap from their bodies. These are things we do not remember because we never knew them in the first place.
Another thing we never knew: the safest place in Europe for European Jews after the war was Germany, where Allied Forces could protect them. These Jewish survivors lived in worse conditions than any other group of survivors. They were not recognized as special. They were recognized as lesser. Their pain was held against them. Their lack of statehood, too. The horror of these conditions led the Americans to eventually pressure the British to open greater immigration gates to British Mandated Palestine. Millions of displaced people; the Jews were treated as the least among them. That is the aftermath of the Holocaust. A history we do not know enough to remember.
We have never truly held this history in our popular imagination. The sardine packing used by the Einsatzgruppen in Lithuania and other Soviet territories; the death camps in Poland. Everyone calls everything else "The Holocaust" these days, but few things are like the Holocaust. Josef Mengele conducted experiments on twins, sewing children together to create conjoined twins. Prisoners were subjected to bone grafting experiments without anesthesia. Mengele injected dye into the eyes of children attempting to change their eye color. Prisoners were deliberately infected with typhus, malaria, and other diseases to test treatments. Limbs were amputated and doctors watched them attempt to heal, or transplanted bones to observe nerve regeneration.
Women were subjected to sterilization experiments. They did the sardine packing—forcing naked people to lie facedown in rows in deep pits, then shooting them, with the next group ordered to lie on top of the bodies and then shot, layer upon layer. They kept a list of every Jew in Europe, including the youngest children, and hunted them all down across the entire continent until 6 million were murdered. They became more and more psychopathic as time went on. Augmenting each other in their lust for Jewish death and suffering.
When you actually learn about the Holocaust, it is a human horror story unlike many others, at least in our direct domain of experience in this Western world. Jews were ignored at best after the Holocaust; at worst, murdered by their neighbors. Formal Holocaust remembrance days weren't established until the late 1970s in the United States. Even then, this word, "Holocaust," was opposed by many survivors. "Holo" means "whole." "Caust" is from the Greek kaustós, meaning "burnt." "To burn in whole."
Many Jews, including survivors, fought against the term; it felt sacrificial. It was only in the late 1980s and 1990s that "Holocaust" remembrance itself became a "thing." Schindler's List was, at the time, revolutionary; yet people treat this all now as if it had been forced upon them. Now, with this history we do not remember and/or malign, we march around the world and say, "Oh, this is like the Holocaust."
Were children hunted down across a continent? Were people injected with disease? Were limbs amputated to watch them heal? Were they packed into "sardines" to be executed—generations upon generations removed from this earth? When one method of mass murder--shooting--proved insufficient for the scale of murder desired--were more "efficient" mechanisms adopted? Are the names of millions still missing because literally no one was left to remember they ever existed at all?
I do not think we remember well now. I do not think we have ever remembered well at all. Because I do not think we have ever really understood what happened there, in Europe, to Jews. It is a very sad thing, I believe, if we turn back time so far that we bring ourselves to 1945, when the rest of Europe said to the Jews who survived: "I hate your survival. I hate your suffering, too." We should do better, for the sake of history, if nothing else.
HEY.
HEY YALL.
USAMERICAN DEMOCRATS SUCCESSFULLY REMOVED EVERY ANTITRANS RIDER FROM EVERY FUNDING BILL
Spread the fucking word because LORD knows democrats fucking suck at spreading it themselves and will fail once again to inform their base
But just in case you’re sitting there going “the Dems aren’t doing anything,” THEY ARE
IT IS JUST SLOW
AND MOSTLY INVISIBLE
BUT THEY ARE
Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:
1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.
Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."
2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.
3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.
But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.
But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.
The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.
As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:
"Fuck you. Make me."
I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.
Trying not to do a disservice to the tragedy that happened today but seeing the counter protesters surround the ICE agents and scream "You can't kill us all, nazis!" while fucking daring them to shoot, well this sums it up quite nicely:
ICE agents stopped by protesters after the shooting an observer in Minneapolis, according to witnesse. ICE deployed pepper spray and tear ga
She was a queer mother shot in front of her wife while trying to flee. They were on the way to pick up their son from school. Their dog was in the car.
May that agent never know another moments peace for the rest of his disgusting wasted life.
Just for a source, but please if you are in a delicate headspace I would suggest skipping this for now, it's genuinely devastating.
“They killed my wife,” the distraught woman says, adding, “They shot her in the head.”
I live in Minneapolis a short walk (.7 miles, as Nextdoor so helpfully informed me by emailing me an alert of the murder as I was already getting ready to walk down) from where this happened. The neighborhood there is just to the north of where George Floyd was murdered. Renee was new to the Twin Cities but many people on that block likely lived there during 2020, the TC metro area is small and most people do not move away.
The immediate radius of the crime scene becomes a gathering and rallying point. The outer radius becomes a site for increased surveillance and, yes, brutality.
In 2020 protests formed spontaneously, for weeks. People forget that Chauvin was arrested and charged only after the 3rd Precinct burned. What you are seeing in that video is people who have been here before.
Two blocks from my home at about 12:20PM yesterday, ICE was using a parking lot for staging. I and about 30 others stood on the icy sidewalk and on snowbanks and blew our whistles to alert neighbors to their presence and drive them away. I was about 10 feet away from a CBP officer - again, this was the early afternoon, AFTER they murdered Renee Good - when he drew his weapon and pointed it at a Latina woman in her car, trying to get away after being pinned by ICE using their vehicles exactly as they accuse others of using them.
I blew my whistle and flipped him and his buddies off. My whistle gets up to 120db. They fucking hated it. They can barely communicate. My ears are still ringing today and I hope theirs are too.
The point of this is to say: get out there. Police brutality was already bad, this is a meaningful escalation that I fear could be a point of no return. Either federal agents with no legal authority over you can execute you at point blank range, with multiple witnesses and videos showing what happened, or they can't. There is no more egregious restriction of your rights. There is no clearer indication that fascism is here.
Trump's administration called Renee Good a domestic terrorist. One of his agents shot her point blank in the face. Stiff armed, clear eyed.
I can't tell other people what to do but I can describe what I am doing. ICE comes to town in large rentals, mostly with out of state plates. They drive like fucking psychopaths because they are trying to provoke confrontation. If you follow them on the sidewalk with your whistle, they smile like little bitches and drive away.
So.
Whistle patrols: I'm trying to link up with other locals and have been since October but I suspect the usual small coordinating groups are swamped, so I'm also just freelancing. Patrol the neighborhood on foot. If you see a fed, blow the whistle. Three short bursts for seeing them, long burst if they're out of the car.
Flyering: someone has already flyered near me. I'm going to flyer in the other direction. Simple stuff, information on what happened and a QR code and link for where to help.
Whistle distribution: bought some whistles online to hang from my fence with a packet about what to do with them.
Mutual aid: bought 2 cameras and SD cards for Nick Benson's dashcam distribution efforts (Bluesky post; Amazon wishlist); signed up for a couple upcoming volunteer efforts coordinating food distribution
No one can do everything but everyone can do something. Go and do it.
---
*ICE HAS NO LEGAL AUTHORITY OVER US CITIZENS. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR PROBABLE CAUSE THAT A 37 YEAR OLD WHITE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN WAVING ICE BY WAS ACTUALLY AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT. This matters. The fact that police have trampled human rights for decades does not mean it doesn't matter when the federal government asserts authority over you that it straight up unambiguously does not have.
