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My roommate and I have until the 14th to scrape together enough money for a place to stay until we can start work in mid-August. My mom is directly responsible for this and there was nothing we could have done to avoid it. We have no family and no friends who are able to take us in or help us. We have a lot of cats we are going to need to get rid of. I do not see any options for us. We are in Northern California. Please contact me if you can help, or just share this post. We have almost no money to our name right now and donations would also help toward temporary housing. Please share if you can’t help. Please

pp: @rainwave17

ca: $rainwave177

dm me for my zelle

Younger folk are getting really good at spotting AI slop, to the consternation of marketing execs.

The good news is that if it persists and Gen Z and Gen Alpha continue to scoff at the generated stuff, then marketing departments aiming at them will just have to give up on using it because they won't be able to figure out how to fool their targets with it.

The bad news is that this won't apply to scams and campaigns aimed at older people, so once again we're going to have a situation where the kids will be the ones lunging across the coffee table to stop Mom from giving her financial info to that really obvious fake scam mom oh my god do NOT buy that it isn't even a real thing.

it's bad.

“Nothing disgusts me more than a faggot on the sideline.” — Rev. Ray Broshears

Flanked by drag queens while brandishing a .410-gauge shotgun on July 6, 1973, Broshears announced the establishment of a new vigilante group: the Lavender Panthers.

Clad in a clerical collar, with a heavy silver cross hanging from his neck, he carried a gun and commanded a group of people on the offensive against anti-LGBTQ violence.

He was the Reverend Raymond Broshears, and his followers were the Lavender Panthers. [...] By the time of his death in 1982, he’d made many enemies, among them fellow gay activists who condemned his penchant for fighting violence with violence. But he’d also gained the loyalty of those he attempted to protect: the impoverished members of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community.

Source:

The Lavender Panthers’ street patrols were not designed to watch for police abuses, as was the case with the Black Panthers’ street patrols in 1966, but were instead directed towards straight “punks.” These punks were not explicitly racially identified by the Lavender Panthers but were often Chicano, Black, or Chinese.

This racial tension is not often documented in stories about the Lavender Panthers, but it speaks to the disconnect between them and other liberationist groups operating at that time.

Whereas other groups were formed around multi-issue organizing including coalitions against state violence, the Lavender Panthers (and the GAA) operated from an explicitly gay and religious ethos. [...] The group also included trans women and gender noncomforming peoples[sic] at a time when these populations were shunned by other activist groups.

Source:

That Was Ray (2019) - Short Documentary Film

Like so many other queer elders who didn't quite fit the mold (such as Lynn Segerblom, the actual creator of the rainbow flag), Ray Broshears was erased almost entirely from history.

Ray wasn't marketable, palatable, sanitary enough to serve as a figurehead for a movement that soon ditched queer liberation and, increasingly on a global level, chose assimilation to reach its goals - from civil rights and anti-discrimination laws (slay) to gay marriage (...yay?) to disposable rainbow flags, pigs at Pride and such (🤢).

Ray held views that I don't share. He publicly declared sadomasochism a mental illness. He was into guns. He was into god.

Ray was a person who suffered and dealt violence. To help his community, he drew on the resources he had at this disposal - including an abundance of personal anger and hurt. No matter how you feel about Ray's activism, his story is important because it still resonates with many of us, and it can provide inspiration, comfort, and a stark warning to new generations of faggots and other queers who feel the same all-consuming rage.