My spouse, trying to describe an academic scholar to me based on Twitter beef

Me: do I look like the sort of person who knows the name of holocaust scholars off the top of my head?

Wifey: yes???

Me: oh no.....i do know four.

Wifey: see???? You're literally an anthropologist why am i crazy for asking???

A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it? Lavender is Israel's system of "pre-crime" [3] - they use AI to guess who to kill in Gaza, and then bomb them when they're at home, along with their entire family. (Obscenely, they call this program "Where's Daddy"). One input to the AI is whether you're in a WhatsApp group with a suspected member of Hamas. There's a lot wrong with this - I'm in plenty of WhatsApp groups with strangers, neighbours, and in the carnage in Gaza you bet people are making groups to connect. But the part I want to focus on is whether they get this information from Meta. Meta has been promoting WhatsApp as a "private" social network, including "end-to-end" encryption of messages. Providing this data as input for Lavender undermines their claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging app. It is beyond obscene and makes Meta complicit in Israel's killings of "pre-crime" targets and their families, in violation of International Humanitarian Law and Meta's publicly stated commitment to human rights. No social network should be providing this sort of information about its users to countries engaging in "pre-crime".

Barana Hanabneiho Organisation (BHO)

Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG)

Hadhreen (7adhreen)

Nas Al Sudan

Sadagaat Charity Organisation

Sudanese American Medical Association (SAMA)

Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA)

Sudanese Diaspora Network (SDN)

Sudan Tarada Initiative and Save Al Geneina Initiative by Sadiea

Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS)

Sudan Solidarity Collective (SSC)

Takaful Organisation

My favorite thing about grabbing fajitas is that it's like 3-4 meals worth of tasty tasty foods that I don't even have to reheat. Great for my lunches.

hey guys i just finished a draft for one of the stories in my comic but could really use some critique. basically ive been interviewing multicultural people and then writing short comics based on our conversations. i think ive been staring at it too long and need a fresh pair of eyes. please be harsh idc. are the drawings too stiff or monotonous? do i need to add more background? is it written ok should i rewrite anything?

[“Eight months into transitioning as far as I could get from male, I developed a strange interest in power tools and short hair. But I was too scared to say I was butch. I learned otherwise by dating a femme.

We’d met years before in student organizing, but only shared tea after I’d started transition. She was a big bi femme; a broad who fucks who and how she wants. Her mum and dad thought that it would be kind and freeing to raise her as they would a son. She disagreed and out-femmed this attempt. But even though her femininity was, from the start, a rebellion, in queer spaces, it started the process of her erasure; the men she dated finished it. Consigned to the “quiet ally” seat, she was left dating bi-curious women, whose curiosity she offered to satisfy, sans underwear. Her dates declined, remaining bi-curious rather than bi-informed. She remained frustrated.

Dating a tranny—a girlfriend with stubble and a necktie—made her smirk. She clarified my doubts and explained to me that I fuck “like a girl.” She was my anchor in women’s circles where I would not be welcome were she not beside me, calling bullshit. Dancing with her, fisting in washrooms, it felt right, intimate, honest. Together, we were bold. We were femme and butch.

Still, I was scared to call myself “butch.” Wouldn’t that be a contradiction? An Eddie Izzard joke? But she saw the butch and named it. I owe her.

I encounter femmes who shepherd friends and lovers through the FtM spectrum. When they see the butch and smell the trans on me, they discreetly offer a rolodex of gentlemen and genderqueers, friends and exes, to whom I can talk if I, y’know, need to talk. I explain that I am changing the other way. They are happy to hear this, to know that I can honestly be myself right now.

I see how many butches lean on femmes, whether we know them romantically or platonically. I feel like a bulldagger Lois Lane to their Superwomen. Escorting us through everything from washrooms to transition, I wonder and marvel at how femmes save us over and over and what they get in return. Visibility? Help moving boxes? Someone who is not femme who will say, “People see butch and expect male, but I am not. People see you and expect conventional, and you are anything but.”

I wonder what we can do so that they could openly lend their help at dyke gatherings, rather than catching our ears in private.”]

amy fox, from changed sex. grew boobs. started wearing a tie, from persistence: all ways butch and femme edited by Ivan Coyote and zena sharman

robert f. reid-pharr, from living as a lesbian, from Sister & Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write About Their Lives Together, 1994

["In 1985 Barbara Smith came like a fresh wind into Chapel Hill. She brought with her a vision of home unlike anything I ever had imagined. It was then that I began the process of being a lesbian. It is only recently that I began to understand lesbianism as a state of being that few of us ever achieve. To become lesbian one has to first be committed to the process of constantly becoming, of creatively refashioning ones humanity as a matter of course.

Coda

By becoming a lesbian, I have done nothing more nor less than become myself.

I had expected to end this piece with these words, forcing all of us, myself included, to reevaluate what it means to be labeled lesbian, gay, straight, bi, transgendered, asexual. And yet, this is not enough. For even as I recognize the difficulty of giving definition and meaning to our various identities, I also realize that as I struggle to lay claim to my lesbianism I am always confronted with the reality of my own masculinity, this strange and complex identity that I continue to have difficulty recognizing as privilege.

It was a Friday afternoon in September when I had my first bathhouse experience. I'm not sure what I expected, or wanted. In truth, I was compelled more than anything else by Samuel Delany's description in The Motion of Light in Water of his visit to the St. Mark's Baths in the early sixties. I thought that it would be exciting, that perhaps within this outlaws' territory I could throw off the stifling fears and anxieties that shape and constrain our lives, sexual and otherwise. I even felt that, given the name of the enterprise I was about to visit— "baths"— there had to be something intrinsically cleansing and healing about it.

Now I find myself asking if in the bathhouse— the most sacred of male enclaves, where my masculine body and affected macho style increase my worth in the sexual economy— I am still lesbian. Is it lesbianism that spills out of the end of my cock as bald-headed men with grizzled beards and homemade tattoos slap my buttocks and laugh triumphantly? Is it lesbianism that allows me to walk these difficult streets alone, afraid only that I will not be seen, accosted, "forced" into sexual adventure?

All my bravado, my will to adventure is caught up, strangely enough, with the great confidence I have gained from "The Lesbian." And yet, this confidence, this awareness of my own body, of my own independence, takes me to places where she dares not go. Perhaps then I am not a lesbian at all, but rather like a drag queen, by day a more or less effeminate, woman-loving gay man, by night a pussy, a buck, the despoiler of young men recently arrived from the provinces and the careful tutelage of their loving mothers. What I know for certain is that this self, this lesbian-identified gay man, is in constant flux. I live like a lesbian, as a lesbian, because I know no better way of life. Still, I live beyond her, in a province that continues to be reserved exclusively for men, all the while reaping the many fruits of sexual apartheid.

Me, I want to escape…. this dirty world, this dirty body. I never wish to make love again with anything more than the body.

Perhaps in my next life I will be done with these questions of identity altogether, will cherish fully the body that I am given, begin to see it neither as burden or weapon, but only as the vessel of my existence. Perhaps in my next life I will have given up finally this constant struggle to explain who I am not— not woman, not white, not straight, not you— and start to revel in the limitless of my boundaries. Perhaps each one of us will recapture that which has been lost, start again to accept and acknowledge the profound ambiguity and uncertainty of this existence. It is then and only then that we will find home.

In 1985 Barbara Smith came like a fresh wind into Chapel Hill."]

they call it "protecting the children".

Another KOSA update:

Sadly, it is true that today, 04/10/2024, KOSA has been introduced to the House BUT! That doesn’t mean it’s game over just yet!

Proof:

Friendly reminder that there is much less support for KOSA in the House than the Senate. And even if it does pass the House—God forbid, it’s not over until the President signs it.

Here is the phone number for the Committee that’ll be holding the hearing on April 17th (Use the top number), and of course keep calling your Senators & House Representative.

I know this is scary for a lot of people, but we have to keep fighting. Please spread this around & don’t give up!

Don’t lose hope.

KEEP FIGHTING.

I'm having a bit of an internal debate with myself about groceries and budget and I really don't know how to go about it, but I'll probably sit down and run the numbers by wifey tonight after work to make sure they check out.

I know we need to grab chicken feed this week, and ideally kibble for the dogs as well. The cats can make do with back up kibble and soups instead of wet food for a week if they need to, but I think we're good? And the utilities and other bills are all paid up for the month so all that's going to come due before the first is health insurance, which granted is gonna be most of our available funds.

So the question becomes, how much of our remaining grocery/gas money can we afford to use on restocking our dry goods (which sorely need it) and building up a meal planner? I'd really love to be able to do a full pantry restock, but I don't know that we can afford the flour right now. So maybe just full legumes? That should stretch us several months of dry goods at least. I dunno. We'll work it out. Grocery days are always weird anyway.

Wifey is getting us morning fancy coffee, and I have charts to make and notes to finish today, and tomorrow is my last day of the week amd Eorzea day!

I am feeling positive. Things are good and steadying out, and I am feeling good about where we're at right now.

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.