14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

Since it's been a while since I sang the praises of my favorite book 'Anarchy Works' by Peter Gelderloos: here's a reminder that there is an easy to read anarchism book out there organized around frequently asked questions and it's online for free with the authors consent. I'll copy-paste them all just to showcase how great it is:

Introduction

Anarchy Would Never Work

What exactly is anarchism?

A note on inspiration

The tricky topic of representation

Recommended Reading

1. Human Nature

Aren’t people naturally selfish?

Aren’t people naturally competitive?

Haven’t humans always been patriarchal?

Aren’t people naturally warlike?

Aren’t domination and authority natural?

A broader sense of self

Recommended Reading

2. Decisions

How will decisions be made?

How will decisions be enforced?

Who will settle disputes?

Meeting in the streets

Recommended Reading

3. Economy

Without wages, what is the incentive to work?

Don’t people need bosses and experts?

Who will take out the trash?

Who will take care of the elderly and disabled?

How will people get healthcare?

What about education?

What about technology?

How will exchange work?

What about people who don’t want to give up a consumerist lifestyle?

What about building and organizing large, spread-out infrastructure?

How will cities work?

What about drought, famine, or other catastrophes?

Meeting our needs without keeping count

Recommended Reading

4. Environment

What’s to stop someone from destroying the environment?

What about global environmental problems, like climate change?

The only way to save the planet

Recommended Reading

5. Crime

Who will protect us without police?

What about gangs and bullies?

What’s to stop someone from killing people?

What about rape, domestic violence, and other forms of harm?

Beyond individual justice

Recommended Reading

6. Revolution

How could people organized horizontally possibly overcome the state?

How do we know revolutionaries won’t become new authorities?

How will communities decide to organize themselves at first?

How will reparations for past oppressions be worked out?

How will a common, anti-authoritarian, ecological ethos come about?

A revolution that is many revolutions

Recommended Reading

7. Neighboring Societies

Could an anarchist society defend itself from an authoritarian neighbor?

What will we do about societies that remain patriarchal or racist?

What will prevent constant warfare and feuding?

Networks not borders

Recommended Reading

8. The Future

Won’t the state just reemerge over time?

What about other problems we can’t foresee?

Making Anarchy Work

Recommended Reading

It Works When We Make It Work

90% of the volunteers were wealthy retired neurotypical cishet white women. That meant that for basically every call these people received there was a pre-existing power dynamic where the caller was well below the call-handler, and the call was consequently handled totally paternalistically, never with any sense that the volunteer might actually have something to learn from the caller. The similarity to the typical patient-GP/PCP dynamic was really striking.

Most of the callers were prisoners, homeless, or people who had recently stopped taking anti-psychotic meds. I think many of the volunteers enjoyed the feeling of the power dynamic that was obvious in these calls. If you spend most of your social time with people of the same high social class as you, I guess you might find it refreshing to encounter people who remind you that you've actually done well out of life, only from a safe distance and through a phone ofc.

We also got a lot of trans callers. Hearing how the volunteers talked to these callers was a really radicalising experience. "Why do you think you're a woman?" "Why do you think you enjoy wearing women's clothing?" "Is there a sexual component to it? Maybe something that happened in your childhood?" "What do the other girls at school think about you calling yourself a boy?", plus the obvious constant misgendering and pronoun "mix-ups", saying, "Oh sorry, miss, your voice sounds like a man's so it's confusing."

People would say this stuff during training too, and the people training us would say it was correct. It's not like they were letting their bigotry cause them to deviate from policy, bigotry was the policy. I remember there was one senior volunteer who was a retired cis lesbian police officer, and I asked her about handling trans callers and she just repeated back all the same bigoted nonsense everyone else thought (at the time I put that down to her being a cop, not being aware back then that being a cis lesbian is no guarantee at all of an absence of transphobic views.)

It didn't take long for me to start getting reprimanded for having too much empathy for the callers. I was an unusual volunteer in that I had actually been in the same position as a lot of the callers. I was trans (albeit not out yet), I was frequently suicidal, I had been on anti-depressants (incredibly I was the only volunteer out of around 150 with that experience), I had experienced CSA and domestic abuse, I had lived through times when I had a zero bank balance, I had eaten food out of a bin because I had no money, I had been heavily addicted to alcohol and nicotine.

It meant I normally had some commonality with all the callers that I could use to make sure I was talking to them in the way I would've wanted to be talked to, i.e. as an equal. I would actually let the caller direct the conversation rather than directing it myself (which was the policy), I would show genuine interest in their story, I wouldn't tell them to hurry up because there were other callers with "real problems". After a while, I couldn't handle it and I just left, not because of the stress of dealing with the callers, but the stress of dealing with the other volunteers.

Reposting these tags with consent from the person that wrote them. The post about the Sex Offenders Registry is locked, but these tags are too important to go unnoticed.

When you hear people throwing around the talking point of “well there’s a high rate of sex offenders in the trans/queer community”, this has to do with why.

Being on the sex offender registry isn’t inherently equivalent to whatever horrific sex crime you’re meant to think of when it’s mentioned. It evokes imagery of pedophilia and rape, but there is a lot that can get you put on it and not a lot you can do to be taken off of it.

Public crossdressing used to be able to get you put on the sex offender registry (and by used to I mean as recently as 2011).

Public urination (you know, the literal only option for someone who’s homeless and doesn’t have access to public bathrooms, a venn diagram where trans people are more likely to rest in the meeting zone) can get you put on the sex offender registry.

Sex work is pretty much an automatic way to end up on the sex offender registry if you’re caught. (This is especially weaponized against black trans women who do sex work)

“Deviant Sexual Intercourse” (aka literally any sexual activity aside from penis-in-vagina penetration) could get you on the sex offender registry as recently as the early 2000s. That effectively impacts the entire queer community in one way or another.

The sex offender registry is, first and foremost, useless. It tells you nothing about what someone did. It’s mentioned to quickly associate a person or a group of people with the worst possible crimes imaginable.

I will throw a party if the next shooter hits their mark.

But I don’t want The State to be able to take away Donal Trump’s human rights. Because I don’t want The State to be able to take away anyone’s human rights.

Because the moment they can (which is right now), they target marginalized people. They target refugees. They target trans people. They target people of color. They target disabled people. They’re doing it all right now. Oppressing minorities is What States Do.

kristjanson writes a lesbian, and gives you absolutely no opportunity to extend her kindness or empathy: sera is marginalised across several dimensions, both in- and out of-of-universe, as an elf, as neurodivergent, as a lesbian, and her romance is marked by scenes you are intended to read as hysterical, irrational, unreasonable. your reward for being interested in a neurodivergent lesbian is getting shouted at, having a bow pointed at you, don't you regret this? and again, in mass effect - you romanced Black man and he leaves you without a word, he takes up with another woman and starts a family behind your back, what did you expect?

kristjanson's writing is so full of racist, homophobic, bigoted tropes that are levelled against the player and the romance in a way that feels like punishment, like he wants to make sure no-one (no woman) can have a joyful, fulfilling relationship with a marginalised person, like you don't deserve to be successful in these relationships without conditions. and i love a difficult, unconventional, even tragic romance in games, but in contrast to the treatment the other romances get it is notable to me that kristjanson singles out the lesbian and the Black man for treatment that not only punishes the characters involved but leans heavily on stereotypes particular to those groups.

The Russians are simply burning everything alive in the Donetsk region.

White phosphorus ignites spontaneously and burns at temperatures above 800°C. When it hits a person, it causes deep chemical and thermal burns. Phosphorus is practically impossible to extinguish with ordinary water, its combustion is accompanied by the release of thick poisonous smoke, which instantly burns out the respiratory tract, and large-scale fires and prolonged chemical contamination of the soil make this weapon devastating for all living things around the impact.

The site above has a great starting list with books I've been meaning to read, as well as videos and articles.

2S roles vary by Tribe/Nation, as I understand it.

Some fictional book recs with 2S rep:

"Love Beyond Body, Space & Time" A collection of Indigenous sci-fi and urban fantasy short stories focusing on Indigiqueer and 2S characters by various authors.

"Between Earth and Sky" Series by Rebecca Roanhorse An an epic fantasy series inspired by pre-Columbian Americas. It's a great mixture of clashing politics, prophecy, and fantastic characters. There is a large cast with different genders and sexualities, including characters within cultures outside of a binary gender system. (The first novel is Black Sun)

as in, why would altering someone’s genes so they don’t have a disposition to develop cancer be bad?

as someone who is pretty sure their genes are responsible for their horrible mental health, if the genes responsible for my disposition towards ocd and depression could have been removed, I don’t see why that would have been bad

wouldn’t it be good if we could alter people’s genes so no one is violent and everyone has a kind & loving nature

I don’t see how that’s a bad thing

I can see how eugenics could potentially be harmful too but I don’t think any of the above would be bad

(just to be very clear, i am NOT advocating for anything horrible like “euthanising the disabled”)

Eugenics is not just gene editing, it is a set of deeply racist, ableist beliefs about human ‘improvement’ on the basis of so-called ‘desirable racial characteristics.’ Eugenics as a concept is inherently wrapped up in white supremacy, homophobia and ableism. It was extremely popular in the west as an idea, it took the Nazis putting it into practice to show us what eugenics in practice actually looks like.

Gene editing sounds good on the basis of curing or preventing human disease, but that is precisely how all controversial science is framed. It is hard to object to editing genes to prevent cancer, but what happens when we start selecting for other traits we deem to be ‘desirable,’ and who gets to decide? The state? Medical professionals? The industrial military complex? Scientists? All of whom have the same biases we all have from being socialised in a deeply prejudiced society?

You say you don’t support anything horrible, but we don’t all agree on what is horrible - what should be kept and what should be lost. Many hearing people would see deafness as uncomplicatedly a medical issue, and assume all deaf people would want a cure. But Deaf culture is vibrant, and many in the community don’t see themselves as in any way needing to be ‘cured.’ Imagine the possibility that someone could edit the potential for anyone else to be part of your group out of the human genome entirely, that we could potentially see cultural genocide of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent communities done on a systematic scale.

Take depression as an example. Taking away any genetic disposition towards depression is tempting, but then what is to stop us from expanding this same line of reasoning to genetically select for positive dispositions? Is that actually desirable? Taking away the propensity for a natural range of emotions? What would be the an actual impact of that human society? Could we end up ‘curing’ the symptom of a sick society by just editing out the resulting depression, rather than addressing what is actually causing the mental health crisis, beyond just genetics? Could we end up in the dystopia that Huxley envisioned in a Brave New World, but with gene editing instead of soma?

You mention violence, but violence is an evolved response to stressors that is sometimes necessary. I shouldn’t have to spell out why genetically editing a population to be non-violent and good humoured regardless of what is being done to them is bad, and what you’re essentially saying here isn’t very far away from ‘why can’t we edit everyone to be the perfect, passive citizen and consumer?’ Fight or flight is part of our very being, and aggression when it is called for in defence of our loved ones or our own interests is a part of the human condition. Do we really want to lose that? Do we want to cull the propensity for violent resistance from our DNA?

It doesn’t stop at physical traits and overtly negative dispositions, either. We have been able to genetically engineer voles to be monogomous. That is not a joke. Can you imagine what the implications could be for being able to select for behaviours and desires? The state being able to mandate gene editing to avoid disease, slowly turning into gene editing for ‘super soldiers’, then to select for desirable traits in their citizens? Even if democracies wouldn’t do it, history tells us that if the technology is there, someone will.

Before it even gets to the human stages though, animals will bear the brunt of our curiosity. In the famous case of Alba, we created a glowing rabbit for the sake of an ‘art’ project. We have grown an ear on the back of a mouse. We have already selectively bred farmed animals to the point where they suffer constantly, imagine just how horrific it could get if we can edit their genetic sequence cheaply and at scale? Imagine what we would do to them?

These technologies being developed under capitalism brings up even more issues. The wealthy classes have always argued that they are somehow superior, better ‘breeding,’ more intelligent, less lazy. They’ve always been kidding themselves, but genetic editing available only to those who can afford it would make them right. At least initially this technology would be wildly expensive, and before those prices were bought down we’d likely end up with a society that is biologically hierarchical as well as economically and socially. Capitalists would very likely fight to keep it that way, just as they fight to keep themselves economically superior now.

This isn’t just a class issue either, the chances that this technology would be offered to the global population and not just rich western nations are minimal. Environmental racism and cultural ideals could become genetically baked in. We wouldn’t be improving the human race, we’d be ‘improving’ very narrow sections of it, according to a narrow and context dependent definition of what a ‘good’ human looks like. Wealth and social hierarchy could become biologically embedded, with only rich westerners benefiting from these advances. I mean, people in the global south are still dying of malaria, despite us wiping it out in the west in 1950s.

The Pink Triangle Legacies Project is a grassroots initiative dedicated to researching the experiences of queer and trans people in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

A YouTube playlist of lectures from the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Queensborough Community College.

On the Institute for Sexual Research

and

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dmd.8

Desalination is the process of generating freshwater from brackish or saltwater, usually through the process of reverse osmosis. While this can be a very useful tool in water shortages, it also has some pretty huge drawbacks--reverse osmosis requires a lot of energy, requires chemical treatment of the water, and produces concentrated brine as a waste product which can be harmful to aquatic ecosystems.

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