Summon the Glitterball

Happy Pride Month!

Faust is back for the 5th time! If you want to use the flag of your choice as an avatar, they're under the cut. They're free to use as long as it's for personal use only.

If you are going to buy pride merch, consider going to that web shop you have bookmarked that you've been meaning to shop at but never got around to it.

"Will they ship it in time?"

it does not matter

look into my beautiful blue gray eyes and notice the way the subtle wrinkles accent my middle age and listen to my gentle, wispy voice when I tell you

it doesn't matter when it arrives

your support of somewhere between pocket change for a sticker to the equivalent of lunch at a restaurant that you spend in an independently owned shop is the line between:

them closing

them celebrating in a tiny way

them surviving

them doing well

them thriving

them building queer spaces in the economy

this is not a guilt post

this is not a "you should spend money--"

from the title of the post

"...money you were going to spend anyway..."

Your choosing a small business and saying "hey this may not arrive in time quickly" is a significant portion of supporting that business, becuase they do not have Big Box Retail mechanics

Your choosing a small business and saying "costs a more but is still comfortably affordable" similarly so

I am a cold hearted business person whose love for money is only secondary for my love of happy, thriving people in an enriched environment that serves and protects the entire population always in every form and structure

(which is honestly the source of my love for money, because it directly leads to people happy and thriving, protected and supported)

(if i could waggle my fingers and live in Star Trek I would but I cannot)

(I tried it) (it didn't work)

so the economic incentive

to this post is quite simple:

happy, thriving people doing business is good for the world

If you want to show your support and/or identity

and planned on doing that with a bauble sticker shirt pin keychain art print whatever

the queer shop you have bookmarked in your computer is a great place to look

If you want to read about your support and/or identity

the local bookstore in the queer neighborhood of your community is a great place to go browse

and/or the library, leave us never forget that these are for some fucking bullshit reason under attack, too, okay sticking to the point lest I start coughing up blood and/or throwing bricks

If you want to see your support and/or identity

the local theater in your community that shows queer films is a great place to start

etc. etc. etc. etc.

Paying a a few cents or dollars more at a store that directly aligns with the values you have in your heart for something you were going to purchase anyway -- listen to me -- is a direct action support to keeping their lights on in hard times and allowing them to grow from "survival mode" to "thriving mode" in good times

i know that it sounds simple

maybe even too simple

and it's literally this straight forward

"I can't because--"

solid

i'm not here to guilt or request or demand justification

from anywhere about anything

live your life

this is a discussion point me @ me me @ you

"Big box ships faster. Do I need it faster? Big box offers free shipping, and is cheaper. Can I spare the extra few bucks?"

sometimes yes

sometimes no

thems the breaks to being alive

I say this as someone who loves money (see above qualifying statment) and whom loves Doing Business (my current job is extracting cash from rich people for queer art, great gig, highly recommended)

at least 1/2 Doing Business is "I am here, right now, with the thing you're looking for, with agreeable terms."

literally that direct and forward

WHEN you can bend what you consider agreeable terms to the realities of small business -- slower shipping, a drift towards higher prices, they have to special order it rather than it be in stock etc. --

you are directly creating a change in the world towards the shifts you want to see

this is the "doing your own dishes, folding the towels everyone uses in the house laundry" version of buying things btw

"okay again I can't because--"

:)

it doesn't matter

there is no permission slip needed to sign

you're not in trouble

there is not a list I'm going to check your reasons against

there is not a reason to have a reason

this is exclusively meant to seed the thought of "when I can, I will"

it doesn't sound like much

it is being intentional

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Friendly reminder as we get closer to the launch of the ModRetro M64. ModRetro is owned by Palmer Lucky, a self described “Radical Zionist” who fundraises for Donald Trump.

Palmer Lucky also has another company, called Anduril Industries, that manufactures and sells AI powered weapons and surveillance systems. ModRetro even sells Anduril branded gameboys that were made from the same metal that they use to manufacture attack drones.

They seem to be pushing the fact that there are new Nintendo64 games being made for the M64. This is very misleading because any game that runs on the M64 will run on a real Nintendo 64.

If you can't get an actual N64 and don't want to give money to Palmer Lucky, this thing exists.

As an oppressed people, we cannot rely on the privileged classes to discover our own interests, but as a minority we also cannot rely on our independent forces to overthrow such powerful systems. A strategic alliance of all oppressed people's is needed to build socialism, whilst autonomous unions of oppressed people are needed to protect ourselves and advocate for our interests within the coalition.

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

national gf day

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

Our neighborhood is near a field that happens to be home to at least one coyote. I have seen that coyote wander down the road and people have even spotted it in fenced backyards before. I'm sure one reason it dares to wander into backyards is because it knows there are cats wandering freely around here.

The red tailed hawks in the area may not be large enough to carry off most full grown cats, but that doesn't mean they won't try.

Raccoons aren't exactly nice to cats either.

And i can easily point out several houses, including my own, with flowering plants out front that could absolutely make a cat sick or worse. Lilies, for example.

Even before tackling the problems of cars, malicious people, poison from pest control, or the ecological damage cats themselves cause, just the fact that other people will decorate their own yards with plants that can poison a cat should be enough of a reason to keep them inside!