😖 just another human 👤 ♻️ i will bite 🫦 your mom

Steven J. Demetriou, guest 92 of 93 as photographed by Backgrid

He is the executive chair of Amentum, a company that provides engineering and technology to the USA’s army and nuclear programs. They operate the most test and training ranges of any contractor if their site is to be believed.

It appears they run the East Montana concentration camp, the largest in the USA. While much of the abuse, including sexual and physical abuse, occurred under the camp’s previous contractor, Acquisition Logistics, the ACLU has confirmed Amentum was WORKING AS SUBCONTRACTORS at the East Montana camp during this time. Amentum's current role as sole contractor from March onwards proves no less deadly, with 2 overdoses with the intent to commit suicide from inhumane conditions. Representative Escobar confirmed nothing has changed since Amentum’s takeover. Lawyers representing prisoners report being unable to reach their clients.

The following conditions are BY DESIGN, as "Guards tell people detained at Camp East Montana who complain about conditions that if they do not like the conditions, they should self-deport." Civil Detention Centers are not supposed to be punitive. This is only a civil detention center on paper. It is a concentration camp.

The ACLU lists: I already linked this but I'm doing it again bc if you read one source, it should be this one.

Medical neglect, including for people with pregnancies, diabetes, cancer, and HIV.

Severe beatings. One man was beaten to death for requesting his asthma medication.

solitary confinement

unclean water

Tuberculosis and Measles outbreaks

Limited to no sunlight

no or limited hygiene products

rotten food, not enough food, no special diets for medical conditions

SEXUAL ASSAULT

No ventilation in a DESERT leading to lung damage

Not enough toilets, overflow often, whole tent smells of urine and feces

No privacy to use said toilet

Threats and beatings for those that refuse to sign deportation papers, sometimes to places they are NOT FROM

No activities, punished for attempting to make art from recycled items like cracker boxes, can only practice own religion at guards' discretion

no dental care. This is likely universal across US concentration camps. Note Emmanuel Damas, the Haitian immigrant that died from a dental infection due to lack of care

Unable to receive legal representation if not already represented

LOCATED ON FORMER JAPANESE DETENTION CAMP BECAUSE TIME IS A FUCKING CIRCLE

Taylor Swift's guest is directly responsible for these. This is the LARGEST CONCENTRATION CAMP IN THE US, made to hold 5000 people. He's not just any ICE contractor he is the biggest and baddest. At least this will get people talking about just HOW bad this camp is.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

the lines on the bottom say do not microwave but i have been microwaving it for 7 years now. i put it away wet and it must have slid off the counter. it broke into 6 pieces. my girlfriend says this is proof a ghost that lives in my house; particularly because it is a black mug with a ouija board design. i think it is proof that i should dry things before i put them away.

i had superglue from an abandoned art project. it took me four days. inspired by kintsugi, i painted the seams golden. it is my first time doing anything like this, and it was more error than trial. i do not have any fancy materials. there is a thick band of gold across the no, so it reads like a diphthong now, N\O. a part of it broke in an almost-perfect peace sign, oddly round.

it will not be watertight anymore, it cannot be a mug. i'll reuse it as a flower pot. it will go on my back porch. it is kind of ugly, really. i didn't do an excellent job.

i spent every minute of this repair thinking about how often i had used it. how many little rituals it has been a part of. it is a big mug, but not a soup mug, which i loathe. it is perfect for two hands to hold. i have used it almost daily, so often that many of the details have worn off. my own skin did that - almost a decade of shared warmth.

none of the times i have told this story has a single person said what do you mean you have a favorite mug. not a single person who has seen the resulting half-maimed piece has said why would you put that back together? not a single person has said this is a waste of time. not a single person has told me what's the point of this? if you want to find a new mug, just use AI.

somewhere someone is probably using AI to draw an image or write a poem, i know that is true. but i think it is also probably true that most of us are going to write and read and draw and dance just because. that the process of doing so is not for a goal or a specific benefit, but because for thousands of years now - when a piece of pottery breaks, we try to fix it. for thousands of years - long before capitalism had any say in it - humans have been doing things just for the experience of it. for the fuck of it. for the love of the game.

ai is not going to win because i cut my thumb while i did it. ai is not going to win because i kept thinking about my all friends who do ceramics, how they're always asking me if i want to join them for a lesson. i was thinking about every person i've ever shared a coffee with. i was thinking about who i was when i bought this mug (graduate student. could barely afford the off-season thing on clearance). i was thinking about how many hands have held this, how many people i've been since.

ai is not going to win because i didn't do a perfect job of it.

my sister-in-law and i recently had a conversation about how one of her coworkers uses Chat instead of reading self-help books. and we both looked at each other about that, the stunned silence of rabbits. "can you imagine?" we said. what's even the point to it.

The true most ordinary object is beautiful, horrible sounding, very smelly, intangible, and delicious.

i think the second one works well for our hypothetical object. so we can use that.

therefore, the Default Object is:

beautiful

makes a horrendous sound

smells absolutely awful

is very fragile

tastes delicious

loved and adored this exchange in my replies on a barduil post. thinking about middle-earth history and what stories survive… ooughh