Karalora World

But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They'd sit down at the bar to order (that's how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren't many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn't serve them, they'd respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they're holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn't just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.

Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?

And the struggle didn't stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.

For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners "see, we hate them just as much as you do, you're safe here" and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. "If you're not careful we'll smash you just like we did this plate."

But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day ... how long before the cafe can't afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it's eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don't care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?

1. Folks in these movements trained. They were disruptive and they were strategic about it and they trained so that they could stay calm in terrifying situations and create the targeted disruptions they wanted to create and not get goaded into deviating from that. Absolutely badass.

2. Not at all a criticism of OP because I think their description of people thinking it was "quiet self-sacrificial non-disruptive christ-like activism" is dead on, but I think that description itself speaks to the same kind of revisionism re: the Christ of the Gospels and how disruptive he was and why, and it's important to remember that, especially in this era of renewed christofascism. Rev. Dr. King was a prophet and you will never convince me otherwise.

Nonviolence is not a goal, it is a strategy. A deliberate strategy at a calculated time in response to violence of the oppressor, which can be effective if it shames the perpetrators. See: why Selma or Montgomery was chosen by the SCLC (they had the most racist unhinged sheriffs who would deploy maximum force, which got shown on nationwide broadcasts and finally moved the public).

Nonviolence doesn’t mean you don’t carry weapons if necessary, as many organizers in Selma did. Nonviolence doesn’t mean that you accept that people will throw bombs into your family’s home, as they did to MLK.

And yes, the absurd simplification and bastardization of this strategy is deliberate. It went from being a tool for fighting for liberation to being a justification for more violence and oppression used against future generations of protestors who didn’t meet the standard of perfectly obedient nonviolent non disruptive protestors. Which of course there is no such thing.

However, algorithms are stupid. They are really good at finding “cheat” factors to get good at predicting, factors which a human might (hopefully) disregard. So in this case, the algorithm will learn that being male (whether stated explicitly or implicitly in the CV) means a six times larger chance of being hired in the training data.

This means that the algorithm will notice that sex has a major impact on what it has been told “success” looks like. So it will end up weighting sex heavily in the final formula it comes up with to score applicants, which means that a CV from a woman will only get a high score if the other factors the algorithm has decided are important outweigh the low score in the sex category. Since it’s unlikely a woman will be enough better in other categories to outweigh the low score on “sex”, she will likely not be called to an interview.

Intersex bodies do not need correcting, intersex bodies are not unnatural. Intersex people deserve autonomy.

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.

.....

This is the medical side of the discussion, and I very much support this discussion being held. We need to, scientifically, get to the bottom of this.

However, medical is far from being the only way to transition.

And every transphobic shit going beyond "I'd rather see more research here and am voicing my criticism of the lack of research, maybe hoping for people to be more thorough in their own research after reading my critical opinion, individual people's decisions are none of my business though" is just that.

It's shit, rooted about everywhere.

The belief that sick people (these people consider being trans a kind of sickness, usually just like being disabled) are lesser people in some way, that need to be managed by healthy/abled/normal people, to be cured of everything that makes them nonconforming, or disposed of. Not necessarily in the nazi way mind you, just cut out from regular society.

The belief that gender norms are laws of nature instead of weirdly specific rules we as a society made up over the centuries, for many different reasons. A lot of them being misogyny, but not all.

And of course overwhelm. Humans like rules, they like putting things in boxes, they like simplifying their world. After all we're still running on MonkeyOS, even if there's a fuckton of processing power behind it now. Rules and boxes make us feel safe, and reduce the mental load that is just perceiving and processing the world around us. And let's be honest here, the world is getting more overwhelming every day. So what those people feel is us evil trans people trying to rip their safe little box from them, that's protecting them from the storm that is the world, at least a little. It's both a lack of proper education and a lack of community that's at fault here, that is my belief at least, a lack of healthy coping methods that leads to people building dream castles out of rules and pretending that's how the world looks like, clinging to their belief even when faced with solid evidence that they are wrong, because it was never about being right, it was about living in denial of being a miserable little animal all alone in a cruel world.

In the end, in kinda all boils down to a system that is designed to keep us isolated and overwhelmed, so we don't band together and fight for change, but remain bound, through our energy being barely sufficient for our own survival. It really is all the same fight. Climate action, disability rights, trans rights, women's rights, worker's rights, etc. We're all fighting the exact same system of oppression.

So can we please stop the infighting our collective enemies love to see in our ranks?

do not taste plants if you don't know what they are

do not identify a fruit as edible just because it tastes sweet

hope you didn't eat any fucking seeds, bro

I saw the photo in my feed and went ohh, dude, no, we do not handle yellow rocks with our bare hands until we know for sure what they are. And I know that orange...

In comments, they continue:

and that's where I started cussing at the computer monitor. But someone else had got there first:

Those of you who's sphincter just tightened, congratulations you make it through night one of the Hunger Games. Everyone else, that's fuckin poison hemlock. It'll kill ya real dead.

My hand snapped out and slapped the small spray of flowers from their hand.

"What the fuck?!"

"Out of character, that's hemlock. It's very toxic, so you are going to not touch anything, and go to the kitchen and wash your hands with cool water and dish detergent and never do that again. Stop."

Back in 2008, I lived in a place that was absolutely lousy with this plant:

There were so many vines that they were literally destroying a fence under their weight. I didn't know what they were, and I didn't have internet or a smartphone. When I smelled them, they smelled spicy like a pepper plant.

Anyway, I decide I'm gonna cut these vines down. I have trimmers, but I don't have gloves so I'm doing this all barehanded. This was around the time I was also fucking around with cars, so my hands are pretty torn up. Are you freaking out yet? Because I wasn't and I definitely should've been.

Well, I save the fence from the vines but start noticing that my hands are losing feeling and going kinda pins-and-needles on me. Which was super weird because that's only happened when I sleep on my hands. And I'm sweating profusely because it's summer, and I've wiped my hands across my face while I've been cutting down these vines to wipe at my sweat, and occasionally when I lick my lips, there's a weird bitter taste because either I must've wiped my hand across my mouth at some point or the sweat from my forehead is carrying the plant juice with it as it travels to my mouth. Yeah, you should be freaked out.

Anyhow, the next day, I was back at it. Except this time it didn't take as long for my hands to go numb and I started feeling really dizzy, so I had to stop.

The day after that, I tried again and my hands went numb even faster and I got dizzy again and started feeling super weak.

And the day after that, I tried one last time, and nearly passed out about 5 minutes into it.

Some might recognize the berries better, since they're more brightly colored: