#Fuck the state of the internet in 2023
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I am fucking RAPIDLY losing my patience.
Surely YouTube can't get away with this kind of insidious shit, right? The fact I have to jump through a billion fucking hoops to have an actually tolerable experience online in 2023 is genuinely disgusting.
Adblock ain't just an optional choice, it's a fucking necessity online, and forcing users to turn it off compromises not only quality of life, but privacy and actual personal safety too.
Fuck this shit, man.
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hi. why is nobody talking about the porn ban in north carolina? the PAVE act is a bill that was passed back in september 2023 (came into law january 1st 2024) that effectively bans users from viewing websites hosting adult content without age verification. (link to the bill)
"-the act legally requires commercial ventures to verify users’ ages if a company “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material.”
In order to do so, North Carolina requires these sites to either use “a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification,” or utilize “another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification.” Companies are not allowed to hold records on any personally identifying information used to confirm users’ ages.
Additionally, North Carolina offers residents the right to a lawsuit if a site is found to record user identifying information, or if a minor’s parent or guardian finds that a website allowed their child to access a site purposefully hosting material “harmful to minors.”"
obviously we don't want these websites having our IDs, but sites like e621 and pornhub just straight up aren't asking for them either- blocking their service to the state in it's entirety instead.
even beyond the restriction of adult websites, obviously as the 'queerest place on the net' we can see how "material that is harmful to minors" is not just intentional vague wording, but a massive red flag.
even if you dont care about the porn- which you should, this is a massive rights violation. how long until 'harmful material' is expanded to include transgender people? same-sex relationships? anything lgbtq? this is a serious fucking problem and it opens the door to hundreds of potentially worse bills that extrapolate on the same concept.
i have no idea what to do to fight it, but if someone smarter than me could add links to representatives or something, that would be awesome.
i'm also going to tag a few people to get this post out:
@polyamorouspunk @safety-pin-punk @doggirlbreasts (i have no idea who else to tag, if any of you can think of someone who can help this post get out there, please tag them!)
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URGENT: Congress about to pass a mass censorship and surveillance bill under the guise of "protecting children"
May 13 2023
The Senate has been in a "do something!" mode regarding children's online safety. They're using this as an excuse to push for widespread internet censorship and surveillance. The EARN IT Act, has a slimmer chance of passing with widespread opposition and some senators saying they won't vote for it. TLDR;The real threat is actually KOSA (s.1409), the Kid's Online Safety Act, which will mass censor and surveill the entire internet by giving all 50 state attorney generals the power to remove content that is "harmful" for kids, and force you to upload your govt ID online to access the internet. I'll explain how it works below the action items but it's absolutely urgent that anyone who likes having a free and open internet fights back. It's all hands on deck, because this has so much public support it's insane:
HOW TO FIGHT KOSA
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & THE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
This is a link to the Senate Commerce Committee phone numbers and a call script to read off of. (202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline
Opposition is getting drowned, and these upcoming weeks will be heavy for lobbying and they're using young people to do it. We NEED to show these senators that young people are actually opposed to this and don't want it.
2. Sign these petitions
Open Letter Against KOSA
Petition 1
Petition 2
Petition 3
Petition 4
Resistbot: Text PHJDYH to 50409
3. Spread the word.
The opposition is getting absolutely drowned online. Dove has nearly 100k signatures to push for KOSA. Influencers on tiktok are pushing for this without ever having read the bill. Fucking Lizzo is sponsoring it. If you have twitter, reddit, tiktok, are in any community, SPREAD THE WORD, PLEASE.
Here is a linktree with all the above petitions for easy shargin: Link to linktree
HOW KOSA WORKS
First, KOSA pressures platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This means instructing platforms to censor. We saw how these filters impacted websites firsthand with tumblr in 2018, with not only blocking all adult content but also sfw queer content such as suicide hotlines, art archives, wiping out entire blogs because they had queer fandom related posts, etc. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups. KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. And who gets to decide what is and isn't harmful for minors? Oh don't worry, just every single state attorney general and the FTC, which is appointed by the president. You know, the same attorney generals that just banned gender-affirming healthcare under the guise that it "ruins mental health" of minors. This is why the Heritage Foundation was one of the first to sponsor the bill because they can use it to censor trans content, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is it's co-author.
Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by forcing websites to use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Yup, that's right. Now every single person who wants to access the internet has to upload their govt ID online to third party apps that get hacked all the time. You queer in a red state? You undocumented? You an activist? Have fun getting all your online activity and metadata attached to your govt ID.
Over 90+ human and LGBT rights groups agree that KOSA is dangerous and updates to the 2023 version won’t and can’t address the big problems with the bill. This bill has MASSIVE bipartisan support, and the authors Blumenthal and Blackburn (yes, that Blumenthal that's pushing the EARN IT Act, and who also sponsored the RESTRICT Act and SOPA/PIPA if you remember) are using the tragedy of mothers who lost their kids to online harassment and young adults who've been traumatized online to lobby for it, and got Dove the company to use a bunch of influencers to push for this under the guise it prevents eating disorders...I wish I was lying. There are already 30 co-sponsors.
It is all hands on deck. I'm dead serious when I say if this bill is passed it is the beginning if not end of the open and free internet.
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Please share, and donate if you can!!
$375 is way too low right now to be of any use in stopping KOSA, so the more you share, the better, and it's also great if you're able to also donate (only if you're able to do so without worsening whatever monetary and/or safety situation you're in)!!
This bill affects all of us. Both children and adults of the following: the LGBTQ+ community, Black communities, Latinx communities, Native American communities, Asian communities.
It will affect ex-Jehovah's Witnesses, and younger folks still trapped. Same thing for ex-Catholics and children/teens still trapped in the Catholic Church. Same thing for Mormons.
This bill affects everyone, okay? There is no beating around the bush. It has been stated time and again by literal lawmakers that this bill is a censorship bill. Senator Blackburn, co-author of the KOSA bill, said herself it would be used to "protect children from the transgender."
So please help keep the fight going. Because the more of us contribute, the bigger chance we have of winning.
And don't fall for that "oh, what I do won't matter much, other people will do it" line of thought.
Even if you think other people will help: please help anyway. We are running out of time, and when one person falls into this line of thinking, so does everyone else, and then nothing happens. So if you can, please help anyway, because we need all we can get. It's all hands on deck at this point.
So far, chances of KOSA being enacted is 31% according to the site linked below.
We need to get it down to zero. 31% is way too big still.
Also, here's a petition you can sign!! If you can't donate, signing will also be a big help (I also recommend signing even if you do donate).
You can also call your senators' offices!!
(Correct call script document in post this time as opposed to comment section, ha!)
The call scripts linked below were originally for Congressional representatives, but now that the bill is in committee consideration by Senate Commerce, you should call your Senators instead and you can use the scripts for them. Also, when calling your Democrat senators, make sure to add that Senator Blackburn explicitly stated in interview that it would be used to "protect children from the transgender." I think it's pretty clear that this is not meant to protect children. It's just going to harm children further, especially trans children.
(Article below with a video of the interview embedded.)
Please help keep the fight going. If we let up for even a second, the bill might get passed and the fucking conservatives will win this round. Yeah, we can still fight after, but it's going to be so much harder with how much damage KOSA is going to do to social media sites and our ability to communicate online.
We need to stop KOSA now, if we want the best chance at protecting our freedom on the Internet.
#queer#lgbtqia#lgbt#lgbtqplus#lgbtq community#blacklivesmatter#black lives matter#ex jw#ex mormon#ex catholic#ex christian#stop kosa#kosa bill#fuck kosa#kids online safety act#internet censorship#us politics#abortion#bodily autonomy#abortion rights
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Because it's relevant to the blog:
TLDR; The United States' Justice Department have Google in an Antitrust lawsuit over it's ability as a monopoly to corrupt search engine results and more people need to understand what's going on and why this is important.
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198558372/doj-google-monopoly-antitrust-trial-search-engine
At work one of my bosses threw a fit (justifably) because Google is doing a lot shittier things with advertising and their algorithm than you think. I feel like most people know at this point that Google search results are essentially bunk- the top searches is influenced by how much a company directly works with and pays google. People bid to make their names or businesses at the top of the search results.
But it goes a little deeper in that. Recently, I learned that top bidders do not actually get the top result. Why? Because Google wants to make it look less bad when Amazon always gets the top result for virtually anything you're looking for. Top bidders get second top search, the NEXT top bidders actually get the top spot. I could be wrong, but this is essentially my understanding of it at our office in super simple terms.
But the biggest issue right now is that Google actually quietly (but significantly) raised their prices for bidding and nobody has any fucking say in it. This makes large corporations (such as Amazon) more likely to be only ones that can manage to take up these top spots, and smaller companies continue to get shafted because they simply cannot compete and Google is essentially stiffing the competition, so to speak, harder than ever before.
BUT ON TOP OF THAT, my boss also found that Google is actively making it harder to find information about this and the incoming huge fucking lawsuits thrown at them. They're trying to make it difficult for their users (and basically, the entire world considering so many devices automatically use google search, as Google has deals with Apple and Samsung) to find out anything about their corporate greed and corruption. When searching for the same thing in a different Search Engine like Bing, the lawsuits are the first things to come up. It's huge fucking news but few people know about it or are talking about it.
The results of this lawsuit are going to permanently and drastically change the internet and how people find their information.
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REBLOG THIS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE AMERICAN!
On March 2nd, 2023, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee passed an anti-drag (read: anti-trans) bill for the state. To grossly oversimplify, this bill basically requires everyone to pass as their birth gender, and any individual suspected of not being cisgender/being dressed in drag will be charged with a felony.
On March 8th, 2023, local legend Maia Crimew leaked 2600+ emails between hate groups and Republicans, scripting a narrative targeting trans people.
Now today, March 27th, 2023, in Nashville Tennessee there's been a mass shooting at a Christian school of ages Kindergarten to 6th grade. The shooter was reportedly a former student at the school, a 28 year old woman named Audrey Hale.
However, misinformation is flying through the internet, apparently starting from 4chan, that the shooter was a trans teenager and former student named "Samantha Hyde." There have also been archived threads about it.
Other sources, like one my mother read to me from Twitter which I can't find atm, claimed someone (Nashville police?) found the shooter's LinkedIn, which had he/him pronouns on it.
A few people have also told me they've seen tweets of people claiming the shooter was trans because "they can't imagine a real woman doing this" and other vile bullshit along those lines.
What am I suggesting here? I find it very fucking funny that we have 2600+ emails of proof that politicians are coordinating shit with hate groups against trans people, which arguably has started publicly in Tennessee after the anti-drag bill passed, and suddenly there's a "trans shooter" at a CHRISTIAN school full of young children IN TENNESSEE.
4chan rumor aside, this misinformation is already being used by sources like Fox News, the New York Post and, according Newsweek, "high profile" Conservatives in general to push their "Trans people are threatening our good Christian nation and are out to kill our children" narrative.
Even worse, the same Newsweek article claimed that the Nashville Police "confirmed" that Audrey was transgender:
SPREAD AWARENESS that this misinformation is being weaponized against trans people. REBLOG.
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quotes from the 2023 wine stream that live in my head rent free
“ive got my own alcohol free options…how do i continue from here”
“limited edition livestream where only one of us is completely sloshed”
“i’ll drive you i just cant promise that we’re gonna get there.”
“THIS ISNT A TABLE THIS IS A STOOL! THIS IS A STOOL!”
“yeah i do think people in mexico speak spanish”
“a dating show just like the qsmp”
“lloyd! my man lloyd”
“why are you fucking calling me on whatsapp auto”
“brighton. my favorite state.”
“i mean the sun’s shining”
“wilbur soot is DEAD. meet WILBUR SOOT.”
“they wanna hear about da eggs”
“you’re coming to vegas or else im gonna kill myself”
“ive been high on the internet twice”
“weed is like tiktok”
“what we need is this building to just start like fucking burning”
“his head turns into a fucking knife”
“it’s not fucking abba chat”
“what kind of music?”
“just the one that you sing”
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Pick a Card readings - what I learned as a viewer/consumer
Part 02 of my vision of the use of pick a card readings. I’m someone who makes them but I also consume them as a viewer. I wanted to combine both in a post but it’s too damn long so I divided in two parts. Part 1, reader (link); and this is part 2, consumer.
Part 02 - From a viewer point of view
Link to part 01 here
I discovered pick a cards readings on YouTube back in 2017, was super into them for like a couple years before distancing myself from that whole thing due to realizing the spiritual bullshit I was getting myself into (it's a story on its own, so perhaps I'll go back to it at another time).
Found my way back to them back in December 2023, again on YouTube, then Tumblr, due to a specific love situation I needed insight on but for some reason wasn't willing or able to divine on on my own.
The Good & the Bad
I definitely think that they can bring actual insight to a situation. There were many time where I was blown-away by how accurately a pile described my situation, despite feeling like I was just ''randomly'' choosing the first one that pulled me in.
It's definitely an interesting exercise of intuition, to see if you're connected well to yourself and if you're able to grab the thread that shines with your color the most. It's quite fun to see that some days it seems really easy to find your pile from the first try, and some days you just struggle, or don't find it at all.
It's a nice way to get familiar with the feeling of your intuition ''clicking'' when you're looking at all the piles, and makes you realize that it's something that's available to a lot of people, and that's fascinating on its own.
That whole thing made me think about what was happening exactly. Like, is this internet reader I've never interacted with actually reading on my personal energy or situation? I don't think so. I went into it a bit in part 01 but yeah I think those readings target too general energies for that. I see it more like story lines floating in the air, and the reader is guided towards translating one of them (by who or why, I don't fucking know).
Don't get me wrong, it might still be accurate because we human are unique but we also are all the fucking same deep down, and history repeats itself all the time.
It's a game of resonance, as in, you're naturally drawn to the pile that holds the same note as the one you hold inside. And sometimes you do stumble upon a reading that is so crazy specific that it seems like it was made just for you. Not gonna get too into that because I found this post by @helianthus-tarot that explains it very well already.
However, something I've experienced myself and anyone has to be super careful about, is to not over do it.
I think it's very easy to end up in a toxic cycle when you keep looking at tarot spreads about the same topics. What happens is that you keep getting slightly different answers, which make you confused about the situation, so you want to find more, and confuse yourself even further in the process, thus starting an obsessive cycle of not feeling satisfied with anything.
It also removes your sense of agency. You end up trusting what you read online more than your own intuition and guidance and you abandon yourself, in a way.
I'm saying that because I went through phases where I was ob-sess-ed with those damn PAC because of a love situation that was frustrating me a lot, and my mood would actually fluctuate a ton if I got a good one or a bad one. It's like I was trapped inside my own head and was just mirroring the chaos happening within me and mistaking it for reality. It's possible that some of them were actually real but I had no way of knowing because I was seeking as many PAC in a day as I could, thus drowning any useful message and keeping myself in a state of fear that colored everything else.
So yeah that's your PSA to be more mindful about what PAC you decide to read or watch. Don't just read everything all the time. Take breaks and only do it if you actually have a clear issue in mind and feel called to a reading, and once you get the message you needed, let it rest until you or the situation develops further.
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How on earth are Jews “playing the victim” when antisemitism has been well documented over CENTURIES? And it seems to increase? Also apparently saying hey I think maybe you shouldn’t harass them (specially since some people do love to do that to the ones who live in diaspora) and they deserve to live is still a hot take in 2023 and somehow for them implies that you saying it, means that you want a whole other group dead??? Like how
literally like these people are genuinely convinced that any kind of oppression is a competition, and if you think that way then you’re in the conversation for all the wrong reasons because this shit shouldn’t be happening to ANYONE. no one should be going through this. saying “jews deserve to live” does not mean palestinians don’t and vise versa. it’s the mentality of “oh they didn’t mention this OTHER thing so obviously they hate it” like if you say you like chocolate ice cream people automatically assume you hate/don’t like vanilla or other flavors, and it’s getting so incredibly tiresome. it’s wholly unhelpful and a waste of time and energy. we could be helping the people in the middle east but instead we’re on the internet debating whether or not jews should be harassed, if they deserve to live, and if calling for genocide of jews on a college campus counts as harassment and bullying.
I’ve stated so many fucking times now what I think and believe regarding pretty much every aspect of this situation and if people aren’t willing to take 5 minutes to scroll through what I’ve said personally, then they aren’t worth the time it takes to respond to their disgusting ignorance. period, end of. I’m done explaining the obvious to those who willfully ignore it.
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Found while dredging up ✨influencer✨ controversies on TVTropes:
Lola Presents was a semi-active user on FanFiction.net who wrote many fanfics based on The Loud House. In her bio, she stated she was a 20-year-old female victim of child sexual abuse who wrote Loudcest fanfics as a way of coping with her trauma. However, on September 25, 2023, it was revealed that Lola was actually a married man in his fifties who had attempted to gaslight other users on the site. Shortly after this revelation, Lola deleted his account and scrubbed all of his fanfics off the site, ending his presence on the internet.
Is it me, or does this really not belong on the same page with the likes of Onision and James Somerton and Austin Jones? Aside from the vague mention of "gaslighting" (which - let's face it - these days could mean pretty much anything) it looks like literally all this dude did was write some fucking stories
also like in today’s fanfic climate lying about your identity so that you can write problematic fanfic is a lot more understandable imo
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The Scholar & The Assassin
Pairing: Arno Dorian x Reader
Warnings: None in particular.
Summary: Arno makes the Reader take a break for once as they prepare for an important assessment.
Add. Notes: I'm quite sure I have said this before, but I'm sorry if any of the Assassin's Creed characters I write about are out-of-character. I only have access to ACIII and ACIV: Black Flag, and honestly? I prefer playing first-hand instead of watching a playthrough on the internet. Now, watch me try to figure out the entire internal structure of Café Théâtre solely through Fandom Wiki screenshots-
>✉️<
{ Dude. I planned to write this in May/June to celebrate the end of the school year. I was like "why not?" and started writing the piece at the start of May. The problem? It's fucking August. I finished it after three fucking months. I'm afraid I finished this only because I felt obligated to. }
-Eero, August 2023
Masterlist ✧*。
"You have been working for quite a while. Can you take a break with me?"
Arno's spontaneous request caught you off-guard. You were a scholar preparing for the final exams created by your institution, and you now realized you had been studying in the memento gallery the whole morning.
"I probably should, I completely lost track of time." You responded to Arno, as you dipped your quill in the pot of ink sitting on your workspace. "Give me a moment to finish writing this down, I'll come with you in a bit."
"Will you? Put the quill back in the ink pot and simply go out for a bit with me." Arno insisted, but added with a chuckle: "It won't grow legs and escape while we are away."
You giggled at his remark as you got up from your desk. After a stretch, you cleaned up the quill and closed the lid of the ink pot. In the process, Arno left the gallery to get some more practical clothing for you.
As you were changing into the clothing Arno had brought you, he asked; "Do you know any places you want to pass by as we are out?" "I don't have any in mind," You told him, and added a question of your own, "You were the one who wanted to take a walk, though. Don't you have any ideas?"
"It never hurts to ask. But yes, I thought of going to the Café's rooftop, and it looks like that's where we are going." Arno stated, as the two of you began walking in the direction of the gallery's exit.
Once you had entered the balcony, you noticed that the weather had improved from the last moment you had taken a break. The Sun had come out and the winds had calmed down. Perfect weather for relaxing on the rooftop.
Arno swiftly climbed onto the roof, then turned to you and offered you his hand to help you up. You took it, and with a little struggle, you managed to get on the rooftop as well.
As the two of you moved away from the edge of the roof, you realized how much you envied Arno's skills as an assassin. Your inexperienced self was trying to keep up with him while he moved like he lived on the roofs.
Arno gestured you to sit next to him once you had made it to him. You obliged, and told him: "You need to teach me how to climb like that." "Like what?" He playfully questioned. Without a pause, you clapped back: "Like a roof hermit."
The man next to you burst into laughter at your blunt response. He took a moment to calm down, but finally he explained: "Learning to move the way I do takes years of practice. It's not something you can learn in one sitting. "
You sighed when Arno told you the truth about his skills. "At this point, I am probably too old to become an assassin," You told him. "You told me of a few assassins before. All of them were already related to the Brotherhood when they were children."
All Arno could do was agree with you. He was associated with the assassins since his childhood as well – his father was one.
Neither of you didn't want to dwell on that anymore, so you leaned against him, and began explaining the topics that you were revising before he offered to take a break.
He enjoyed listening to you talk about the things you studied, as you were passionate enough to dedicate a few years of your life to learn even more about it.
Arno realized shortly after that you were technically back in the state before the break – revising. He was sure to bring it up: "Wait a second! We are supposed to be taking a break from reviewing all that!"
#eero's fics#assassin's creed#assassin's creed unity#arno dorian x reader#arno dorian#arno victor dorian#assassin's creed x reader#assassin's creed fanfiction#ac unity#i havent been writing much for the past few months#i cant tell if its because i cant think of what to write or if its bcs im not motivated enough to write#eh. it doesnt matter
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On the 27th of October 2023, just a few days ago my sister texted me thay her Israeli jewish boyfriend who went back to "protect his home" texted her that he didn't have his phone and it could be 4 days to 4 months before he had it again. So I called my sister and calmed her down.
Today, I found out that Israel has cut off Gaza's internet access and is currently invading Gaza. He is most likely apart of those Israel soldiers.
I feel fucking sick knowing my sweet twin sister's boyfriend is actively participating in this fucking genocide.
I can't fucking post about this anywhere else because it might put that cunt in danger and my sister in a horrid mental state in turn. I only have like 150 follows on Tiktok but I should still be posting, but if I do, my parents will be fucking pissed and my sister will loose one of her few support people. (She is at risk of unaliving herself)
Who the fuck am I to complain!?!?!? There is a genocide happening to so many people and I feel like I can't do shit but post on tumblr, boycott, and fucking repost and comment on my anonymous backup titok account.
I should be doing more, but no one is listening to me and I can't disagree with my sister. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I doubt anyone will read this, but writing this for the tumblr void is better than writing in a journal. FUCK
#free palestine#freepalastine🇵🇸#palestine#gaza#gaza strip#free gaza#feel free to ignore#i hate this government so fucking much i hate it i hate it#the Australian government is doing fucking nothing the shot heads
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The Lost Cause prologue, Part V
I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.
In my upcoming solarpunk novel The Lost Cause (Nov 14), we get an epic struggle between the people doing the repair and care work needed to save our planet and species, and the reactionary wreckers who want to kill the Green New Deal and watch the world burn:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues
Amazon refuses to carry my audiobooks, which means that I make my own indie editions and pre-sell them on Kickstarter, along with ebooks and hardcovers. I narrated this one! It came out great! You can back it here:
http://lost-cause.org
This week, I've been serializing the prologue to give you a taste of what you can expect from the book, which Bill McKibben calls "politically perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."
Here's part one:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/06/green-new-deal-fic/#the-first-generation-in-a-century-not-to-fear-the-future
And part two:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/07/met-cute-ugly/#part-ii
And part three:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#lost-cause-prologue
And part four:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#super-soaker-full-of-hydrochloric-acid
And now, part five:
Look, I had weeks to go until graduation. I had a life to live. I had stuff to do.
Gramps and his friends would stew and shout. Idiots on the internet would make dank memes out of Mike Kennedy and deepfake him into a million videos, turn him into a main character whose image would be around long after he left the world.
I just had to keep my head down, collect my diploma, and get the hell out of Burbank. I’d already been provisionally accepted for a Blue Helmets AmeriCorps spot down in San Juan Capistrano, helping to rebuild the city’s lower half a mile inland, up in the hills. I was going to do a year of that and then go to college: I had applications in to UCLA, Portland State (they had a really good refugee tech undergrad program), and the University of Waterloo, where my mom did her undergrad in environmental science. They’d let me declare my major in my second year, so I could take a wide variety of courses before settling on something, and if anything, Canada’s free college was even more generous than the UC system or Portland’s, with a subsidy for dorms and meals.
To tell the truth, I’d be glad to go. My senior year hadn’t been anything like I’d anticipated. Gramps’s health had gotten a lot worse the previous summer and his shitty sexist and racist remarks chased away any home help worker Burbank sent over within a week or two, so I’d been trying to keep my grades up while picking up after Gramps, getting him to take his meds, washing his sheets and cleaning his toilet—not to mention making sure he made his doctor’s appointments and even bringing him into the office a couple of times a month for the kind of exams you couldn’t do by telemedicine.
I wasn’t sure what Gramps would do without me to take care of him, but at that point, I was running out of fucks to give. Let his asshole Maga Club buddies look after him, or maybe Gramps could figure out how not to offend everyone that came over to wipe his ass and do his laundry. He was—as he was fond of pointing out to me—a grown-ass adult, and this was his house, and he was in charge. So let him be in charge.
I put myself to bed stewing about all of this, thinking of San Juan Capistrano. Some of my older friends had graduated the previous years and had gone down there and I’d followed their relocation of the old mission on their feeds. It looked like hot, sweaty, rewarding work, the kind of thing where you could really measure your progress.
For the second night in a row, I was woken up at 2 a.m. This time, it wasn’t my screen, it was Gramps, who’d stumped into my room with his cane, flipped my lights to full on, and started shaking me and calling out, “Get up, kid, get up!”
“I’m up,” I said, getting up on my elbows and squinting at him.
He was shaking, and he reeked—of both booze and BO, and I felt a flash of guilt for not getting him in the bath that day.
“God dammit,” he said, and staggered a bit. I leapt out of bed, pulling the sheets off with me, and steadied him at the elbow.
“Calm down, okay? What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. No one is all right. Fuck all right and fuck you.” I’d had Gramps tested for early dementia the previous year, by showing his doctor videos of moments like these. The doc had run a battery of tests before pronouncing, “Your grandfather isn’t senile, he’s just ornery.” Which was undeniable, and also pissed me the hell off. “Ornery” was a polite word for “asshole.” What the doc was telling me was that Gramps didn’t have to be cruel. He was cruel by choice.
I untangled myself from the sheets and piled them on the bed.
“What is it?”
“It’s Mike Kennedy, that asshole. Someone shot him.”
“What?”
He shoved his giant screen into my hands. I tapped the video window. It was from the POV of a car cam, that weird fish-eye view of a self-driving car, split-screen with the passenger in the front seat, and it was Mike Kennedy, looking even worse than Gramps, bloodshot and trembling, with that under-chin camera angle that makes everyone look like they’re half dead.
I tried to watch both halves. There was Kennedy, whispering something to him. There was the cul-de-sac he was parked in, false-lit with IR from the cameras. The timestamp was 1:17. Less than an hour before.
Then the external image flickered for a second and resolved itself into a man, who phased in and out. He was wearing a ghillie suit like the one Kennedy had worn on the roof, covered in telltale CV dazzle stripes, designed to exploit defects in the computer vision system. You had to wear a different specific pattern for every algorithm, but if you got the right matchup, the computer would simply not see you. The man was flickering into existence when his posture crumpled up the ghillie suit and made the pattern stop working, then out again when he straightened up.
He straightened and disappeared and Mike Kennedy’s eyes widened as he noticed the man for the first time—computer dazzle worked on computers, not humans—and he started to say something and then a round hole appeared in his forehead, his head snapping back against the headrest, then careening forward. The flickering phantom appeared again as the man in the ghillie suit turned and disappeared.
I dropped the tablet to my bed.
“Jesus Christ, Gramps, I didn’t need to see that snuff movie—”
He tried to smack me then. I was ready for it. I was faster. I stepped out of his reach. I was shaking too.
“You don’t get to hit me anymore old man. Never again, you hear me?”
He was purpling now, and a decade’s worth of fleeing and defusing his rages rose in me, made me want to apologize. After all, I rationalized, he’d just seen a friend murdered.
But I’d seen that friend murdered too, videobombed with a snuff flick at 2 a.m. without warning or consent. It was a traumatizing, selfish, asshole move. I’d be watching that movie on the backs of my eyelids for years to come. And the friend who’d died? He’d been ready to kill me. Gramps had no right. He was a grown-ass adult. He had no right.
“Listen to me, you little shit, you think you can live under my roof, take my charity, and talk to me like that? Now? With all the shit that I’m going through? No sir. No. Get out, you little bastard, get out now. Get out before I kick your goddamned teeth in.” He was vibrating with rage now, literally, actually shaking so hard his wispy hair swished back and forth across his forehead.
I didn’t say another word. I picked up some jeans and a jacket, put a pair of socks in a jacket pocket, and jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers without bothering to unlace them. I shouldered past him—still vibrating, stinking even worse—and banged out the back door and stomped through the nighttime streets.
My feet automatically took me up to Verdugo, and then across the empty road. I turned toward school—as I did every morning—and autopiloted in that direction. By the time I reached the Verdugo Aquatic Facility I had calmed down enough to realize that there was no reason to go to school at two thirty in the morning, so I stopped and headed for the playground in the park behind the pool. I sat down on a bench and kicked my shoes off and shook out the playground sand, pulled out my socks and put them on, then put my shoes back on properly. I was still furious, but now I could think straight and my hands weren’t shaking. Gramps and I hadn’t had a blowup like that in years, mostly— okay, entirely—because I’d backed down every time we’d been headed in that direction. I wasn’t in any mood to back down. Not ever, to be fully honest.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#part-v
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
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Share, donate, and give politicians the fucking middle finger because we're going all out, darlings!!!
And this bill affects all of us. Both children and adults of the following: the LGBTQ+ community, Black communities, Latinx communities, Native American communities, Asian communities.
It will affect ex-Jehovah's Witnesses, and younger folks still trapped. Same thing for ex-Catholics and children/teens still trapped in the Catholic Church. Same thing for Mormons.
This bill affects everyone, okay? There is no beating around the bush. It has been stated time and again by literal lawmakers that this bill is a censorship bill. Senator Blackburn, co-author of the KOSA bill, said herself it would be used to "protect children from the transgender."
So please help keep the fight going. Because the more of us contribute, the bigger chance we have of winning.
And don't fall for that "oh, what I do won't matter much, other people will do it" line of thought.
Even if you think other people will help: please help anyway. We are running out of time. It's all hands on deck at this point.
So far, chances of KOSA being enacted is 31% according to the site linked below.
We need to get it down to zero. 31% is way too big still.
Here's a petition you can sign!!
You can also call your senators' offices!!
(Correct call script document in post this time as opposed to comment section, ha!)
The call scripts linked below were originally for Congressional representatives, but now that the bill is in committee consideration by Senate Commerce, you should call your Senators instead and you can use the scripts for them. Also, when calling your Democrat senators, make sure to add that Senator Blackburn explicitly stated in interview that it would be used to "protect children from the transgender." I think it's pretty clear that this is not meant to protect children. It's just going to harm children further, especially trans children.
(Article below with a video of the interview embedded.)
Please help stop this bill in its tracks. Reblog, donate, call your senators, and keep an eye on the bill's chances of being passed. We need to keep fighting this bill. Period.
#queer#lgbtqia#lgbt#lgbtqplus#lgbtq community#blacklivesmatter#black lives matter#ex jw#ex mormon#ex catholic#ex christian#stop kosa#kosa bill#fuck kosa#kids online safety act#internet censorship#us politics#abortion#bodily autonomy#abortion rights
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hyper-empathy fucking sucks. i'm in a state where i can be openly trans, and i live in a household where i can be openly trans, i have the privilege to be as big of a genderfuck as i want and i know that simply being visible and happy is a powerful enough statement, and that's the fucking problem, it shouldn't have to be a statement, me being happy with my life is supposed to be a normal fucking occurrence. i constantly worry for other people way more than i should, i worry for people who have to fight tooth and nail to stay alive, i worry for people who have no support in their life outside of the internet, i worry for people who have the risk of being assaulted or murdered on the streets, and i worry for people who are only living out of spite. the mere fact that there are trans people who killed themselves is enough to give me a headache. if you're reading this and you're suffering in one way or another, please know that i wish the best for you and your wellbeing, and i will always feel nothing but anger towards the horseshit that you have to put up with
Submitted May 24, 2023
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Hey! The vast majority of non voters are people who are in such maligned, marginalized circumstances that voting has never materially benefitted them ever, but you've never given a shit about their circumstances because you're in a position where voting DOES effect you, and THAT is your privilege!
You calling the poorest, most disabled, most violently oppressed people in the US "at fault" for the political crisis for not voting is actually you being a disgusting classist racist! And also politically illiterate in what a normal voter turnout is under democracy. Genuinely hope you learn to extend empathy to people who've never felt any ounce of political power in their life and RIGHTLY so not trust the system to advocate for them, you vile piece of shit 👍
hey, listen. i know you're angry and probably very very young and likely wouldn't be able to sniff out a case of "not for you, rabbit ears" if it were staring you in the face. but voting does actually materially benefit you, always.
i understand recency bias has influenced a good majority of y'all that have just become eligible or just started to pay attention to ampol in a serious way either since oct 7 or since mid 2023 when campaigning started up again. but it shows your lack of attention, insight, and political knowledge to say that voting does not benefit people that are marginalized. especially voting in us elections.
i am one of those people. i grew up on SNAP and WIC and independently still qualify for SNAP. the only reason i am not on SNAP is because i live with my mother and washington state considers me a dependent with combined income. i have been multiply disabled for my entire life and have more medical debt than you can fathom. i am not white. i am visibly transgender. all of these things impact my ability to vote in person. but you didn't consider any of these things before you sent this, did you?
i also should not have to qualify these things when i make the point to stir and promote political engagement. the only point where i politically have a leg up is that i vote absentee, because my state has mail in ballots by default, and it's somewhat easy to register in washington state. that's it. that's the only part of this where i have it easier.
we all benefit from political engagement. voting is the most crucial part of political engagement. protesting is useless when it is illegal. writing to your representatives is useless when your representatives are fascists. sending money overseas is useless when you are legally no longer allowed to have a job or a bank account. making ragebait posts on twitter and resharing infographics on your insta stories does fuckall when you live in a country ruled by an 80 year old nazi. but you, hiding behind those cute anonymous sunglasses enjoying your time on the internet like the nineteen year old jobless nobody like you are, don't understand that. because you're angry, and you're taking that anger out on someone that is also angry instead of directing it somewhere productive. and here i am doing the same because of it. but i'm also gonna give you some fucking information at the same time. because you wasted my morning sending this to me.
project 2025 is going to happen if we do not vote blue across the board and at that point you will literally not be allowed any form of political engagement. life will be worse for you than it already is now.
also, just because "normal" during a midterm means "less than during the primaries and generals", doesn't mean the turnout we have during the primaries and generals is something good or something to strive for. we need to be better than that if we actually want to move past the stale fucking 80 year old center right democrats we currently have speaking for us. we need to aim for 100% voter turnout. i will not settle for less.
there are also plenty of things elected democrats have done that have materially benefited us. plenty of things the Biden Administration has done! but again none of you fucks are paying attention!
inflation reduction act and medicare - access to prescriptions for disabled people, highlighting insulin caps and the ability to negotiate even lower. we are paying significantly less than we were before this legislation was signed.
bipartisan infrastructure law - specific provisions for women and minority owned businesses, public transport, fish and wildlife, indigenous land.
bipartisan safer communities act - gun control legislation, expanding access to telehealth under medicaid and CHIP, expanding the medicaid and CHIP networks, allows NICS to look into potentially disqualifying juvenile records and closes the "boyfriend loophole", provides multiple grants for multiple mental health services.
respect for marriage act - defines marriage as any valid legal union between two people and
DEA rescheduling of cannabis - oct 2022 biden asked the DEA to consider rescheduling cannabis. reschedulings are rarely denied - deschedulings are rarely approved. this will almost guaranteed happen.
electoral count act reform (2) - makes it exceedingly difficult for another january sixth to happen
local democrats also codified abortion access and protections in michigan, ohio, and washington. local republicans have been a nightmare for it in florida and arizona. dook at what julie mccluskie has done for colorado.
and again, with resources like how to vote in every state, the excuse of "i can't" is lazy as hell at this point. people can literally show up at your door and help you fill out an absentee ballot or get to a polling station to vote curbside, people are allowed at the voting booth to help you with a language barrier or processing issue if you need it.
but. like i said. continue to be angry. continue to rage in my inbox, behind your anonymous sunglasses. continue to be disengaged. and then be all fucking shocked pikachu face when trump and the like-minded GOP get voted in, and everyone in southwest asia gets bombed to shit, and every queer USian gets legislated out of existence, and every latino not born here gets deported. continue to make this a me issue, and not a disengaged voter bloc issue. because this is all about me, someone that has voted in every single election since august 2018, and totally not about the youth vote that has notoriously been disengaged and fucking useless in american politics. sure babe.
#anonymous#asks#answered#ampol#american politics#long post#i was drafting more of this in the car but i forgot a lot of it tbh#anyway#i'm so mad lol
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