coming out dream series by Indigo Som in Anything That Moves Issue #3 1991, page 20. [source].

Image description: Scanned magazine page from Anything That Moves with the following text.

Our Words... Our Voices: Bisexual People of Colour Caucus

Coming out dream series by Indigo Som

copyright 1991

I.

I dreamt that my mother came out to me. In this dream Asian women dance in a courtyard or in some outdoor public plaza. We step in exaggerated shapes of overdramatic dream tango. It is a bright San Francisco day with cold wind finding its way through the sunshine. My mother sits at a small cafe table on the edge of the plaza & introduces me to her lover, a younger fortyish Asian woman wearing hip dark shades.

II.

In another dream my lover & I sit on a couch in my parents’ house. She is outing me to them. I become enraged. She smirks when she says that I'm bisexual. I tell her to get the fuck outta my house. When she is gone I go back & talk to my Mom who is calm & understanding. Dad is nowhere in sight.

III. I am alone in Oaxaca with my mother, enjoying the avocados the way only a mother & daughter can. She takes a picture of me in the hotel room with green fingers.

We sit in a restaurant squeezing limes into our drinks. I am overcome with a sudden urge just to tell her everything. Like wanting to jump off a cliff, but knowing you won't do it because that would be so beyond reason, so crazy, But it's the urge, the wish focussing itself in yr stomach, so demanding that you frighten yrself w/it. I almost open my mouth to say it, but pull myself back from the edge.

IV. I dreamt I waz hangin out w /all the girl cousins of mine & everybody was queer, It seemed very normal.

V. I return from two & a half weeks of travel w/the fambly. Two & a half wks of confronting unfriendly restaurant menus & young heterosexual couples as common in the streets as gumwrappers. My brother is the only person who hears my daily complaint that Hong Kong does not contain a gift fit for my girlfriend. I am silent over breakfast bowls of jook & on the bus with my mother; I remain mute when my father introduces smiling relatives who want to know how old I am, the unasked question why am I not married yet?

I get off the plane, carry myself home to my girlfriend's perfect arms & sleep. I sleep 15 hours & wake up to a country at war. We are out in the streets for a week together, crying in each other's hair every night from outrage and the sheer shock of war.

By the end of the week it seems farcical to have to sit in a slick Italian restaurant with my family (including closeted cousin & brother), pretending that half the people at the table are not queer and that we never heard of war.

VI. This morning my girlfriend said to me, “it’s important when you come out to the person you came out of.” She's planning a celebration for me, for when I come out to my mom. I picked a date two weeks from now.

VII. I came out to Mom. I really did. This is not a dream. I am not the same person | was. I am the daughter of a mother who thinks her kids are weird. I dread the in-between waiting time until she comes around.

When I came home from telling her, my friends were waiting for me with a smudge stick, a pot of “coming out soup” and a “coming out chocolate cake.”

[unfortunately the pdf did not let me copy the text for the author description - if someone else can make it work please do.]

My mother learned darning socks and mending clothes because they were eight children, and they were poor. They called it Putz- und Flickstunde (cleaning and mending hour), and they all hated it.

I learn darning socks because my mother knitted them for me, and I do not want her love to be thrown away. I feel very connected to my mum and my family right now.

It doesn’t take much to erase a trans person

It also doesn’t take much to make a trans person feel seen and validated

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re at a low point:

If you were a fictional man right now, there would be *at least* ten people if not a large portion of the fanbase that would call you their wet beast poor little meow meow

another deranged drawing from my demented mind

When I refer to zionists as textbook genocide denialists, btw, I'm talking about literal textbooks I was assigned in my genocide studies classes. Here's an excerpt from one, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction by Adam Jones, detailing common genocide denialist arguments. I've bolded arguments that I've personally heard from zionists (including ‘neutral’ fence-sitters, who are on the side of the oppressor by default) — during the current Gaza genocide, but also in reference to the entire history of the genocidal zionist occupation. It's important to learn to recognize these arguments and call them what they are, genocide denial, rather than excusing denialists as simply misinformed or misguided.

"Among the most common discourses of genocide denial are the following: 'Hardly anybody died.' Reports of atrocities and mass killings are depicted as exaggerated and self-serving. ... Photographic and video evidence is dismissed as fake or staged. Gaps in physical evidence are exploited, particularly an absence of corpses. Where are the bodies of the Jews killed by the Nazis? (Incinerated, conveniently for the deniers.) Where are the bodies of the thousands of Kosovars supposedly killed by Serbs in 1999? (Buried on military and police bases, or dumped in rivers and down mineshafts, as it transpired.) When the genocides lie far in the past, obfuscation is easier. Genocides of indigenous peoples are especially subject to this form of denial. In many cases, the groups in question suffered near-total extermination, leaving few descendants and advocates to press the case for truth. 'It was self-defense.' 'The onset of [genocidal] killing,' wrote Jacques Sémelin, 'almost always seems to involve this astounding sleight of hand that assimilates the destruction of civilians with a perfectly legitimate act of war. From that moment on, massacre becomes an act of self-defense.' Murdered civilians - especially adult males – are depicted as 'rebels,' 'brigands,' 'partisans,' 'terrorists.' The state and its allies are justified in eliminating them, though unfortunate 'excesses' may occur. Deniers of the Armenian genocide, for example, play up the presence of armed elements and resistance among the Armenian population – even clearly defensive resistance. ... Genocide may also be depicted as an act of pre-emptive self-defense, based on atrocities, actual or alleged, inflicted on the perpetrator group in the past – sometimes the very distant past. Sémelin, for example, has explained Serbs’ 'insensitivit[y] to the suffering they caused' in the Balkan genocide of the 1990s in terms of their inability to perceive any but 'their own woes' ... A substrategy of this discourse is the claim that 'the violence was mutual.' Where genocides occur in a context of civil or international war, they can be depicted as part of generalized warfare, perhaps featuring atrocities on all sides. This strategy is standard among the deniers of genocides by Turks, Japanese, Serbs, Hutus, and West Pakistanis – to name just a few. In Australia, Keith Windschuttle used killings of whites by Aboriginals to denounce 'The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History.' ... Sometimes the deniers seem oblivious to the content of their claims, reflecting deeply embedded stereotypes and genuine ignorance, rather than malicious intent – as with the CNN reporter who blithely referred to the world standing by and 'watch[ing] Hutus and Tutsis kill each other' during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

'The deaths weren’t intentional.' The difficulties of demonstrating and documenting genocidal intent are exploited to deny that genocide occurred. The utility of this strategy is enhanced where a longer causal chain underpins mass mortality. Thus, when diverse factors combine to cause death, or when supposedly 'natural' elements such as disease and famine account for many or most deaths, a denialist discourse is especially appealing. It buttresses most denials of indigenous genocides, for example. Deniers of the Armenian and Jewish holocausts also contend that most deaths occurred from privations and afflictions that were inevitable, if regrettable, in a wartime context – in any case, not genocidal.

'There was no central direction.' Frequently, states and their agents establish deniability by running off-duty death squads, or employing freelance forces such as paramilitaries (as in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Darfur), criminal elements (e.g., the chétés in the Armenian genocide), and members of the targeted groups themselves (Jewish kapos in the Nazi death camps; Mayan peasants conscripted for genocide against Mayan populations of the Guatemalan highlands). State attempts to eliminate evidence may mean that documentation of central direction, as of genocidal intent, is scarce. Many deniers of the Jewish Holocaust emphasize the lack of a clear order from Hitler or his top associates to exterminate European Jews. Armenian genocide denial similarly centers on the supposed freelance status of those who carried out whatever atrocities are admitted to have occurred.

'There weren’t that many people to begin with.' [*] Where demographic data provide support for claims of genocide, denialists will gravitate towards the lowest available figures for the targeted population, or invent new ones. The effect is to cast doubt on mortality statistics by downplaying the victims’ demographic weight at the outbreak of genocide. This strategy is especially common in denials of genocide against indigenous peoples, as well as the Ottoman genocide of Christian minorities.

'It wasn’t/isn’t genocide, because ...' Here, the ambiguities of the UN Genocide Convention are exploited, and combined with the denial strategies already cited. Atrocious events do not qualify as 'genocide' … because the victims were not members of one of the Convention’s specified groups; because their deaths were unintended; because they were legitimate targets; because 'only' specific sectors of the target group (e.g., 'battle-age' men) were killed; because 'war is hell;' and so on. 'We would never do that.' Collective pathological narcissism occludes recognition, or even conscious consideration, of genocidal culpability. When the state and its citizens consider themselves pure, peaceful, democratic, and lawabiding, responsibility for atrocity may be literally unthinkable. In Turkey, notes Taner Akçam, anyone 'dar[ing] to speak about the Armenian Genocide ... is aggressively attacked as a traitor, singled out for public condemnation and may even be put in prison.' In Australia, 'the very mention of an Australian genocide is … appalling and galling and must be put aside,' according to Colin Tatz. 'A curious national belief is that simply being Australian, whether by birth or naturalisation, is sufficient inoculation against deviation from moral and righteous behaviour.' Comedian Rob Corddry parodied this mindset in the context of US abuses and atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. 'There’s no question what took place in that prison was horrible,' Corddry said on The Daily Show. 'But the Arab world has to realize that the US shouldn’t be judged on the actions of a ... well, we shouldn’t be judged on actions. It’s our principles that matter, our inspiring, abstract notions. Remember: just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.'

'We are the real victims.' For deniers, the best defense is often a strong offense. With its 'Day of Fallen Diplomats,' Turkey uses Armenian terrorist attacks against Turkish diplomatic staff to pre-empt attention to the Turkish genocide against Armenians. In the case of Germany and the Nazi Holocaust, there is a point at which a victim mentality concentrating on German suffering leads to the horrors that Germans inflicted, on Jews and others, being downgraded or denied. In the Balkans, a discourse of genocide was first deployed by Serb intellectuals promoting a nationalist–xenophobic project; the only 'genocide' admitted was that against Serbs, whether by Croatians in the Second World War (which indeed occurred), or in Kosovo at the hands of the Albanian majority (which was a paranoid fantasy). Notably, this stress on victimhood provided powerful fuel for unleashing the genocides in the first place." * Zionists make two demographic claims to deny genocide, and specifically to deny the Nakba: the first parallels what Jones says here — that there weren't many (or even any) Palestinians ("Arabs") in Palestine to begin with, and/or mass expulsions were actually voluntary migration. The second is a reversal, where zionists point to demographic data and claim that Palestinian population growth must mean genocide never occurred (as if genocide survivors aren't capable of having children). For further reading on Nakba denial specifically, Nur Masalha's work is a good place to start, especially The Palestine Nakba (2012), Politics of Denial (2003), A Land Without A People (1997), and Expulsion of the Palestinians (1992).

sometimes my friends send me good reels

(op)

I got some questions about my research but my reply function is still broken!

All of my stuff is self-funded and self-motivated, but it's all going to be publically avaliable. I'm in the process of depositing a lot of my material (hundreds of individual vials of small shrimp and other creatures) at the museum where I work, and the records will go into their database and be avaliable online to the public. Someone can go into the database and search for a species or a location and then see what I've found. Hopefully before the end of this year.

I'm working on a few papers with a few other scattered freshwater biologists, but since none of us get paid for it the process is very slow and our regular lives often get in the way. I don't have a car right now and my co-author is in the middle of moving states.

Ultimately, I think if I was living somewhere with a more established water bug science industry, people would be thrilled to have the kind of data my friends and I are finding. It's cool and important stuff. If I wasn't here trying to work on it, it probably wouldn't get done for years, and these tiny rare weenie bugs don't always have that kind of time.

It is very taxing, especially because living with AuDHD in USA is already hard enough. People think I'm nuts. I'm probably pretty nuts. I love the little shrimp though and I want other people to know they're here. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, but I know it all starts with having publications. Hopefully I can do some good and save a little piece of the world here while there is still time.

Stomatopoda Meshwork

2024, hand cut suede openwork, 16x16in

i’ve been connecting plankton and lace together in my mind for a couple of months and attempting to create designs inspired by both, and I think I finally cracked it. i was gifted some lovely white suede a while ago and finally was able to put it to use! I designed a lace doily pattern inspired by mantis shrimp larvae digitally, then transferred it to the suede and cut it out by hand with my fabric shears. I think the fragility and delicacy of plankton really gives itself to lace designs. really happy with this piece and wondering how I can make this a series of multiple different planktonic species all as doilies :)

weevil 463

beautiful weevil sculptures by @konaya578 on instagram x

An entity found alone in the Far Plane. The entity seems to do nothing in its environment except exist. Its relationship with the plant-like organisms that grow around it is currently unknown.

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

PS: if you liked this, there’s a whole book of these comics available now!

Seer of Spring, Fortune's Spyglass and The Bathyal Oracle ✨️ These 5" enchanted eye jesters will be available this Friday in my secret patreon shop (April 19th, at 21:00 GMT, worldwide shipping from Ireland, paypal only, prices in my tags!)

Article written by Reservation Dogs’ actress, Devery Jacobs, for Time Magazine.

(via How Reservation Dogs Is Addressing Suicide in a Crucial Way | Time)

senshi: take care of yourself with a balanced diet and sleep schedule

chilchuck: be your own advocate in the workplace and don't push yourself for other people's greed

marcille: always revisit and challenge your perceptions of what's good and bad so you don't get complacent with cycles of harm

laios: infodump Loudly and Often until your friends kill you

who up feeling the Lakaev Academic Stress Scale