Wicked Runs the Wolpertinger

But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.

This person has the best tutorials I've ever seen. No stupid videos, just text, illustrations, photos and little infographics explaining things as they go along. They've been plugging away forever, putting out both free and paid content since the mid-2000s and I would never have found them if not for some stupid aggregate website listing dinosaur patterns. Like, SEO is screwing them raw.

They have written literal books about how to sew, and are giving them away free, with no nag screens, no "sign up and you can get this pattern" data leeching, nothing. Just giving it away. I paid like $25 a couple years ago for a beginning sewing book so I could just have something in a format that I could understand, and honestly, her free resources are just as good if not better than the book I bought.

Not only that, check out the faq for info on how she lets folks use her patterns. It's actually amazing, how free she is with them. The only thing you have to do is not sell them as your own patterns, you can sell the plush you make from them. It is the barest, simplest thing anyone could ever ask for in return, and I swear I have a knife for whoever doesn't follow those simple directions.

For something like computers, this looks like how pricey "gAmiNG" laptops look all fancy but fall apart in about the same timeframe as the lower end laptops for students. But if you've ever handled the sort of laptops for banks or businesses, you'd wonder why laptops can't all be like this. People swear by Lenovo Thinkpads for a reason. Dell's Latitude (general productivity) and Precision (has the power of a gaming laptop but far less bs) lines, HP's probooks, all feel really nice and last for-fucking-ever. But you can't buy them in a store even if you wanted one.

So the trick is to buy what big organizations are buying, but you likely gotta get 'em secondhand when the orgs are done with them. For basic clothes, mil surplus might be a good port of call, for technology see an e-waste recycler or sometimes government auction (you just gotta know what to ask for; ThinkPads, Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Probook/Zbook). Otherwise try to thrift old, pre-enshitification items. The blanket I had as a kid is still going strong and has lived to bury multiple sets of newer bedding (which have worn thin and torn). Kitchen items, see if you can shop at a restaurant supplier.

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Wore a couple modified shirts recently and someone asked “how?” so my illustrator background made me draw this because work was slow ✂️ Featuring examples at the end— drawn in Procreate.

'“The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was 'done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said 'This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.'" "The morning after the tour, the Mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don't know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the Mayor of Ordruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought 'How is this my fault? I have no jurisdiction over this.' Maybe he would have said, 'This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?' But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”

Arizona Right Watch also posted a video of within the warehouse.

I recommend watching it.

This, this is the first time I've seen a concentration camp before it became a concentration camp.

This is the first time I've seen a place and known that people are going to be tortured there, that people are going to die horribly there. If it's not stopped.

We have to stop it. We just don't have any other choice.

You may have seen pictures of concentration camps after they were liberated, but this is the first time you've seen a concentration camp before it became one.

You saw photos of an atrocity you couldn't do anything about.

Are you going to come out of it with a Klein-level work? No. Dude was bonkers skilled. But I am here to tell you that if you've ever gone to Home Depot and shuffled through paint chips and been like "God, this is such a gorgeous color, I fucking love this color" and then immediately been like "...but I can't imagine painting a wall with it." and bought a can of soul-killing eggshell off-white or what the fuck ever, you absolutely can go pick up a $10 canvas from a craftstore and a $5 sample of that color and just hang 6 square feet of it on a wall and enjoy the fuck out of it.

Down to folks' appreciation of the mission's badges & NASA brand guides.

He just... asks strangers for help. Everywhere. And everywhere, strangers help him. Sometimes strangers just roll up and give him stuff, like fresh produce from their gardens, or a cold bottle of water. Strangers let him camp in their yard (yes, even in the U.S., I was shocked, too), or sometimes they'll say you're not sleeping outside when I have a perfectly good guest room and invite him in for a hot meal and a warm bed with zero strings attached. Strangers stop and chat with him even when they have no language in common. The only strangers who were genuinely threatening to him were--no surprises here--cops.

And I do take all this with a grain of salt, because he's a thin, able-bodied, neurotypical (or at least neurotypical-presenting) white man, so the deck is stacked in his favor.

if you are helping someone vulnerable, you don't. fucking. televise it. you also don't go to ICE and let them learn who you are to follow you home, or to the people you are trying to help.

there are a lot of examples of this kind of mutual aid ongoing, with a large amount of coordination between local and hyperlocal groups, businesses, individuals, charities, legal defense teams, people who are on the frontlines, people who need support, paramedics, and people who are behind the scenes. it is quiet work and it is necessary work. and that work is going on, so, so strongly. forgive us if it's not as gratifying as a civil war or as dramatic as the protests that are still ongoing. you will hopefully never see video footage from this side of a revolution, but we are protecting our own.

Local schools providing remote learning options to students, presumably for the primary benefit of those who aren’t safe going to schools in-person right now.

People taking constitutional observer training to document how fucking lawless and illegal and brutal so many of ICE’s actions are, who they’re taking, etc.

People coordinating pick-ups for groceries, medicines, and other necessities for those that cannot go out themselves.

People tracking and following ICE officers and vehicles to make sure that they are not able to steal folk away blindly.

Locals tormenting ICE officers in public and at their hotels, preventing these assholes from having a moment of peace.

And so much more.

Many of these people doing this have little to no political or direct action involvement, and surprisingly come from a broader political spectrum than you might think. A lot of these people are people who are at higher risk themselves if they tangle with ICE because of their race, their national origin, their gender identity, etc.

And in case you feel overwhelmed by this document, I have provided a summary on what this means for you. I read the whole thing and listed everything they can do with your information in list format for people who TL;DR or felt like the legal jargon was too confusing:

Please, for the love of god, read this. This isn't about "user data" or politics. They are selling your home address, immigration status, mental health conditions, and personal identifiers to your service providers and government authorities.