little crafts & resisting oppression

Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.

Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

We have got to stop framing our oppression in ways that promote the idea that other people cannot relate to our struggles. Not only does it isolate comrades in the struggle, it actively diminishes recognition of other struggles--often including those even more horrific than what we are at risk of. And this happens especially between Gay and Black struggles.

"when have straight people ever had to check what states were safe for them?" Sundown towns are still a thing. Starlight tours. What states have abortion access? What states have open carry? What states have stand your ground? What states have 3-strike rules? Women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, and more have had to be abundantly cautious where they travel to. Straight trans people have much more travel risk right now than gay cis people.

It's a new iteration of the same tired question: "imagine if straight people weren't allowed to marry" interracial marriage in the US is younger than my parents. We disgrace people of color by forgetting their history and contemporary struggles, and we abandon queer people of color, Black queer people, by segmenting their overlapping fights.

A lot of the responses from (mostly white, cis) other people were something along the lines of "Yeah, freedom is dead in this country. This is not freedom."

But that's just been the lived reality of Black people in the United States this entire time

And a lot of Indigenous people, and undocumented people, and the list unfortunately could and does go on

Those friends were right, by the way - this isn't freedom

Greece suspends asylum applications for migrants from North Africa by Laura Gozzi (BBC).

Greece passes draconian legislation with prison terms for rejected asylum seekers by Helena Smith (The Guardian).

Greek coastguard threw migrants overboard to their deaths, witnesses say by Lucile Smith and Ben Steele (BBC).

Bill on Detention Centres for Asylum Seekers Published by Jelena Ćirić (Iceland Review).

Italy sends 40 rejected asylum seekers to Albania by Karl Sexton (DW).

Record number of migrants, refugees reached Canary Islands by sea in 2024 (Al Jazeera).

When they meyowl pathetically for more food, it's not because they're trying to "trick" you into feeding them again. They just want to be fed, and they're smart enough to notice the correlation between certain sounds they make and the responses they get from you.

They've figured out that if they want to communicate to you that they want more food, if they make those pathetic sounds, you're more likely to behave as if you've understood what they're trying to communicate.

When your cat waits for you to look away then yoinks food off of your plate, it's not because they love crime. It's because they're social colony creatures who instinctively share food with each other and they don't understand why you're not sharing the best foods with them.

Your cats are very intelligent, social creatures who see you as their Very Strange sibling.

They've learned how to make intricate sounds just to communicate with their humans. When the sounds they make elicit the responses they want, they learn that those sounds are the most effective way to communicate their desires.

Original

Little pockets of biodiversity are beautiful and fascinating and joyful.

I still have a yard that's kind of a generic weedy lawn mix of non-native grass and clover, mint family weeds, dandelions, and native violets. But we add more beneficial plants to our gardens and margins every year, and mow less, and seed bare patches thoughtfully.

cost of education acting as class barrier

exploitation of graduate workers

colonialist past and present

ties to military industrial complex

danger of power structure entrenching and justifying orthodox views on social issues

criticisms of academia that get made:

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

"When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as…doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process."

Anyway I was just going to grab the link, but the used bookstore marketplace I usually use currently has a bunch of physical copies for less than $2 USD rn, so psa if that is of interest!

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Sherry Turkle

I felt that this book was really not written for me and expected me to be shocked or dismayed by certain technological intrusions that I actually don't have a problem with. That said, it does a wonderful job of articulating some of the impacts of digital entertainment and communication displacing in-person conversations, as well as the hellish surveillance state caused by reliance on tech. People who like How to Do Nothing for its emphasis on reclaiming attention might like this book.

Imagination: a Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin

I adore this book and Benjamin does a terrific job of outlining the power of imagination and how to use it constructively. I especially like that she turns are critical eye on technology-as-savior schemes, sharing what she sees as the difference between real transformative use cases and technology that replicates old problems in new ways. People who like How to Do Nothing for its exploration of many different social and art projects might like this book.

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis

Here's what I need you to do:

If you see a post with a "mature content" label, and it's 2026, DM me a link to the post.

Yes, that's really it.

I am hoping to collect several thousand such posts, so that I have a decent sized dataset. I do not care what the post is about; if it's labeled as "mature content", I want to add it to my dataset.

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Abusers and creeps are not some species of especially heinous animal or alien or monster wearing the face of a human. They're people. And you NEED to drill it into your head that they are people because you NEED to remember that people are capable of doingn heinous shit. And you are a person. And your loved ones are people.

For the most part, xenophobes, white supremacists, homophobes, Islamaphobes, antisemites etc. don't start primarily from a place of pure bigotry based on those characteristics. They start from hating criminals, or people who cheat the system, or terrorists, or yes, abusers. And then the propaganda dehumanizing any given social group works, because it just has to convince those people that the group is criminal/cheaters/terrorists/abusive/etc.