" The phoenix must burn to emerge."

So like a long time ago I had a professor that I absolutely adored. She happened to be Japanese American. She grew up speaking Japanese at home but never really spent a lot of time in Japan. She mostly spoke with other Japanese Americans and read books.

So one day early in her teaching career there’s an exchange student from Japan who’s having a hard time understanding a concept so she explained it to him in Japanese and then he looked absolutely rattled. Like in shock. Pale.

This is how she learned that the way she speaks Japanese makes her sound like a gang member.

He was a cook at the restaurant/bar I was a bartender at, and almost punched a costumer once because he overheard him talking about how women belong in the kitchen. Told me he thought women should stay out of kitchens, that cooking is a man's job and when I asked him what he thinks women should be doing, he went quiet for a moment, then proceeded to explain to me the following

"I trust a bitch to run a kitchen as much as she can run a country, they should do shit like plumbing. Or electricity. Something you can just learn to do and don't need to lead, you know?"

We had an openly gay coworker who looked like it (crop tops, dyed hair, make-up) and he was often harassed by the waiters from the football bar next door. The gay dude had the same name as the Guy, who insisted that we would specify the he isn't gay, so they just became "Name" and "Not Gay Name". He was fine with that.

Boss gave us one meal from the menu a day as a job bonus, and we had this very shy seventeen year old working with us who was already nervous around men, but Our Guy was a 6'3 dude who only stopped yelling and cursing when he was not speaking at all. If he was the one cooking that day, he'd peek out of the kitchen an hour before he'd start closing it up, and would shout at you if you haven't ordered your meal yet because he hated cooking once he already cleaned. The waitress was scared shitless of him, and so whenever he would yell at her to "fucking order already", she'd panic and just pick something.

She didn't eat much but the first time she tried to throw out almost the whole plate, he got so personally insulted that he berated her for not picking something she'd like, and demanded to know what he did wrong. He got really upset about apparently not being able to cook something that this kid would like and I'm pretty sure he started putting in extra effort to make sure she would eat it this time? It lead to him quite literally standing over her like a hawk when she ate to "see her reaction" and demand an immediate review to see what he can improve.

My friend thought he was really funny before I explained to them that I'm pretty sure he thought he was being mean (but hey he it wasn't misgendering so yay)

I like how his issue isn't with the "that shit ain't in nature" thing he mentioned, but the idea that being nonbinary is some form of self-deprivation and that they deserve a gender like everyone else.

They want to control our elections.

I am dead serious people call your representatives. Get volunteering. Get protesting. Get LOUD.

They released a letter full of straight up lies. Spread the truth. MAKE NOISE.

How interesting. How very interesting. They rejected my Blaze of this post.

Basically, people are using their key fobs to set off their car alarms when they see ICE.

This is effective for several reasons:

Obviously, it alerts everyone that something is wrong. Given ICE has been terrorizing Minnesota, people are likely to immediately know it is ICE. This gives people time to flee or barricade themselves in their homes.

ICE loses the element of surprise.

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Source is WHYY, because public media is still alive (and if you can support it, please do.)