I Have Way Too Much Free Time, Yet Not Enough

Some poc parents showing their support because images like these are rarely shown and hard to find.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

if you're a rabbit, the boss rabbit is the one who gets groomed by its subordinate rabbits.

but if you're a cat... the boss cat is the one that grooms the other cats.

A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:

2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.

2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.

November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.

December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)

Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.

1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)

Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.

The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.

ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.

It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.

Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.

And from today.

They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.

And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.

So that's a brief history.

Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.

It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.

I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.

St Paul has gone to partial virtual learning for anyone who doesn't feel safe sending their kids to school.

Every school I know now has safety patrols.

The school districts are not mincing words about the clear and present threat. Everyone in the area is completely clear that we are under violent occupation.

Most of the white people ICE grab, are released within days, because ICE can't even keep track of who was grabbed by who over what. However, they are still subjected to beatings, gassing, having their home and car windows smashes, etc.

Local police are advising compliance with the blatant human rights violations and total lack of due process, because they are cowards.

Even conservative Minnesotans are balking at the total lack of due process and open violence against unresisting people for doing things like taking videos. I know a guy who was in his house recording ICE, and they smashed his home window, dragged him out over the broken glass, beat him while screaming slurs, smashed his phone, and detained for three days.

We need your help to spread the truth about what is going on. Find the videos and share them on any platform you have. Make noise about what's happening. Get your "don't tread on me" relatives whipped up about it if you can.

We need republicans to be afraid, otherwise ICE plans to be here for half a year attacking us.

I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:

Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.

Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.

10h

So I go down to the basement, which is well-lit and finished and indeed there are more pepsi but also in the fridge is a massive tortise. This animal was the dimensions of a desktop computer and probably outweighed a labrador. It’s not moving, and is set in the middle of a plastic tray so it’s apparently supposed to be there. I go back upstairs.

“Hey Andrew.” I say, nonchalantly. “So is the tortise in the fridge down there for soup or what?”

“The what?” says the other member of the group project. I don’t remember her name, just that she always wore her hair in pigtails with butterfly clips that were based on real butterflies and she had at least a dozen species.

“Oh! No, that’s Andrew Too.” he says. “His species hibernates so he stays in the fridge for the holidays.”

“You named your tortise after you?” I ask.

“No, uh- Well, my grandfather got him in Egypt or somewhere while he was on leave during the war and He was named Andrew, so he thought it would be funny to name him ‘Andrew Too’. …Then Mom named me after him so Gandpa left me Andrew Too in his will. He’s pretty cool when he’s awake. Lets us dress him up for summer holidays, doesn’t bark.”

“Oh!” Said Butterflies. “My dad served in the Gulf War too! What unit was he in?”

Story board art for This is What it Sounds like!

Credit to tinyfortress on Instagram

This helps disprove some theories and approve others

1. Gwi-Ma is not Rumis father. He appears to be a similar species to the Saja Boys

2. Rumi is not a rape baby. Many theorize Miyeong was raped by Rumis dad but this shows it was mutual love

3. This confirms Rumis dad was a specific type of demon and that the love was mutual between her parents

*Damian and Jason, four hours into a stakeout*

Damian: Jay, hand me the mango pieces.

Jason: *plastic crinkling* ayyy, I’m Jason again!

Damian: *snorts*

Jason: what was with that, by the way? I just showed up in Gotham and found you referring to everyone like they’re your professor. Like, that’s not a ‘you’ thing, I don’t know why you started doing that.

*audible chewing noises*

Damian: do you want the genuine honest answer?

Jason: please god do tell

Damian: so- and you aren’t allowed to laugh. but when I first came to Gotham and I showed up at the manor, father obviously had to give me a tour of the place, right?

Jason: yeah.

Damian: and they wanted to do a DNA test to check that my mother wasn’t pulling a fast one by claiming my birthright, so the first place he showed me was the cave, which was also where Tim was.

Jason: *hums*

Damian: and you know that place- the first time you went to the cave, it was wild, right?

Jason: oh, like walking into the tardis for the first time. insane.

Damian: exactly. all high-tech and shit, and I’d just come from the desert compound I’d spent my entire life in- like, my first time going into the kitchen at the manor I saw Alfred loading the dishwasher and my first thought was ‘oh my god what the fuck kind of machine is that-‘

Jason: *abrupt cackle*

Damian: -so the fucking cave for the first time? as a little desert-boy ten year old? I was a little distracted,

Jason, chuckling slightly: ok, fair,

Damian: and so I’m zoned the fuck out, looking around this cave and not paying attention to anything father’s saying, and then I finally tune back in just to hear the words ‘-ackson drake’ while he like, tries to introduce me to Tim.

Jason: *slowly starts laughing again*

Damian, raising his voice to be heard over Jason’s increasing beats of laughter: -and so I’m fucking standing there, ten years old, no clue what this kid’s first name is, and everybody’s looking at me like I’m supposed to be the one fucking talking right now, and ALL I can think of is my mother, who before she shipped me off to Gotham completely alone kept fucking telling me ‘Damian you have to be strong and show that you deserve to be the Batman’s blood son. show no weakness and take the mantle you were born to have; show no fucking hesitance.’, so I’M panicking,

Jason, still cackling: *a clap* NO I DO- I DO REMEMBER, LIKE, BACK IN THE LEAGUE-, holy shit back in the league when your only coping mechanism for not knowing the fuck was going on around you, was literally just to pretend you knew what the fuck was going on around you and bullshit till you make it,

Damian: WELL IT WAS LIKE THE ONLY FUCKING THING MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME-

Jason, through tears: -that’s why I didn’t say shit when I came back to Gotham and found you fucking, doing all this blood son bullshit! You started calling me Todd and speaking in old english and I was just like ‘bless him he’s terrified, just leave him be’

Damian: *cackles* and I did- I did appreciate you going along with it, because back when this happened I panicked and just started calling Tim ‘Drake’ because I was too embarrassed to ask him for his first name, and then by the time I heard somebody else call him Tim in passing, everybody had just assumed this was a thing I did. and I was too socially awkward to clear it up and switch back, so I just had to stick to Drake.

Jason: *wheeze* a-and Grayson?

Damian: well at first I just went along with the surname thing out of awkwardness, but then I’d gone too deep and I had no way out- AND THEN- and then Batman fucking died-

Jason: *wheeze*

Damian: -and I went from being parented by the gymnastics version of the dark lord to being gentle-parented by fucking Nightwing-

Jason, choking: holy- holy shit-

Damian: do you know what it’s like to go from *gruff voice* ‘Damian we don’t fucking kill, give me the katana or I’ll put you in Arkham’ to *high pitched, sweet voice* ‘oh hey Dames, obviously I can’t stop you from killing but I really would appreciate it if we discussed all our options and came to a mature decision together on what’s best in this scenario-‘

Jason: *crying, silent wheezes*

Damian: so DURING all this I’m trying to subtly switch back to using peoples actual names, except it fucking backfired because people just assumed I was calling Richard Richard because we had that special parental mentor bond, and Tim had pissed off to- whatever he was doing in the desert for six months- getting a hysterectomy or whatever the fuck happened-

Jason, amused: hysterectomy- he lost a spleen, Dames

Damian: well whatever happened he wasn’t AROUND for me to shift to calling him Tim! and when father was back I’d made no progress and was back to square one, except this time I was stuck calling one brother Richard and the other Drake!

Jason, still laughing: and this is where I came in?

Damian: I felt BAD! I’d already taken Robin from the guy, I didn’t want him to feel like he was lesser of a brother to me than Richard. So I demoted you to Todd so he wouldn’t feel alone.

Jason: very thoughtful.

Jason: we should probably get you a therapist, dude. I think everybody forgets that when you showed up you were literally just a very confused immigrant child with no experience of normal social interaction apart from me at the league.

Damian: oh I was like, 60% into an anxiety attack consistently for the first two years I was in the city.

Jason: *snorts*

Damian: the first time I was left alone with Tim we were in the kitchen and he said ‘do you want wifi?’ and, y’no, coming from the league, barely any tech and the only normality was the concept of fighting to the death over everything, MY instinctual ten-year-old thought was ‘oh shit, wifi must be slang for brawl here, we’re about to fight’-

Jason: *laughter* you’re fucking kidding

Damian: -so I’m like, so be it, and I say ‘come on then’ and get ready to start punching, only for him to turn around and grab a piece of card stuck to the fridge and hold it out to me,

Jason: *cackles*

Damian: and he goes ‘here’s the password so you can connect, I’m assuming you have a phone or something’-which I fucking didn’t by the way, my mother gave me a shitty flip-phone to call her in emergencies but it didn’t use wifi-, and he’s holding it out to me and I had to like, subtly shift my posture out of the defensive position I’d been in-,

Jason, delirious from laughter: this is the fucking best. thing.

Damian: -and I take it from him, and he gives me this weird look like he has no idea how to communicate with me, and I was just like ‘shit I might have to kill this one, it’s the only way to get out of this interaction’.

Jason: *wheeze* if we go through the timeline, every murder attempt on Tim’s life has just been an occasion where you’ve felt socially awkward and didn’t see any other way out of conversation,

Damian: pretty much, yeah. I should have been on xanax for those first few years.

Jason: stories from your first years in Gotham are my favourite thing in the world.

*a few silent beats*

Tim: are you telling me I’ve been stuck as Drake for YEARS all because Damian’s fucking scared of social interaction?!

*crashing sound*

Jason: HOLY FUCK-

“Lilo and Stitch” 2002

Deleted Scene

I desperately need to understand

WHY

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

Was this scene cut from the movie??!!

Fucking christ, do you know what this would have done? What this would have meant to SO MANY people??  The truth of this is devastating. And to think it almost found it’s way into a DISNEY film??

The inclusion of this scene alone would have made it the greatest animated feature the company ever produced. Easily. And if you think that’s hyperbolic clearly you don’t understand.

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger

1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix

1 TBs ketchup

1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,

1 Tbs bbq sauce

1 Tbs steak sauce

1 egg

mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)

(6 servings)

-2lbs red potatoes

-1 cup butter (2 sticks)

-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)

-Chives (optional)

-Salt & Pepper to taste

1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U don’t even have to chop them just wash them

2. boil til soft!

3. Drain

4. Mash (usually they’re small enough you can use a fork if u don’t have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix

5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

the most frequent reactions are from people from Not America agreeing that the cultural force of american pride has detracted in some tangible way from their knowledge or recognition of their own history. there’s so many links and references in the notes now, for so many different places. i had a scroll through some of them, that i could find versions of in english. the world has such a rich queer history, and i am inspired by all of the people saying they’re going to go and research more of their own histories. there have been resources shared from all six permanently inhabited continents (none from antartica, yet…), including a lot (relative to the usual zero) from the regions most frequently glossed over in our global queer histories; africa, the middle east, southeast asia, the pacific, and south america. every single person who’s shared a queer historical figure’s name, or a book or other source, or a historical event from their country or culture is doing an important thing by helping to dismantle the US pride hegemony.

the next most frequent reactions are from americans pissing on the poor, and claiming that either it’s not their fault individually because [nebulous reason missing the point] and/or that i’m racist (someone even said fascist lmao?) because the two people i mentioned were Black and latin american… it’s not the fault of those two women nor myself that americans have chosen their faces and names to put at the front of their imperialist pride. cultural imperialism doesn’t have to LOOK racist! you can be unintentionally culturally imperialist and look woke! a lot of the people who do this are queer and liberal or even leftist. the problem is forcing american queer history on the rest of us. shoutout to the Black and latine people in the notes who’ve rightfully pointed out that that’s a bullshit rebuttal. I’ve also noted the autocorrect typo on Marsha’s name, and fixed it, thanks for the heads up.

sort of the point of cultural imperialism is that the people doing it don’t notice it on an individual level. of course you don’t feel like you’re responsible! of course you struggle to see it when the rest of us point it out! that’s by design! if the rest of the world is saying something is a real experience that they’ve had, and you say “well i don’t see it / i’m not responsible for it,” that is blatant denial of a very real issue.

finally, for the love of god, stop using they/them for me, a trans woman who exclusively uses she/her. my pronouns are front and centre on my blog! funny how the people calling me racist and transmisogynistic for Using Examples are also frequently degendering me in the process, huh?

Personally, as an American, I never really thought of that. I've never even heard the term 'cultural imperialism' before, and I had no idea how much that negatively impacted queer culture in other countries.

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.