multiple neuroqueer veganarchists

So the essence of grimdark is that everyone’s inherently sort of a bad person and does bad things, and that’s awful and disheartening and cynical. It’s looking at human nature and going, “The glass is half empty.” Hopepunk says, “No, I don’t accept that. Go fuck yourself: The glass is half-full.”  YEAH, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but (and here’s the important part) we’ve also been soft and forgiving and KIND. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion. 

Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts. 

Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. The 1% doesn’t want you to have feelings, they just want you to feel resigned. Feeling resigned is not hopepunk.

Examples! THE HANDMAID’S TALE is arguably hopepunk. It’s scary and dark, and at first glance it looks like grimdark because it’s a dystopia… but goddammit she keeps fighting. That’s the key, right there. She fights every single day, because she won’t let them take away meaning from her life. She survives stubbornly in the hope that one day she can live again. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” is one of the core tenets of hopepunk, along with, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Robin Hood and John Lennon were hopepunk. (Remember: Hopepunk isn’t about moral perfection. It’s not about being as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. You get grubby when you fight. You make mistakes. You’re sometimes a little bit of an asshole. Maybe you’re as much as 50% an asshole. But the glass is half full, not half empty. You get up, and you keep fighting, and caring, and trying to make the world a little better for the people around you. You get to make mistakes. It’s a process. You get to ask for and earn forgiveness. And you love, and love, and love.) 

And THIS, this is hopepunk: 

“While we recognize that there are a lot of crowdfunding campaigns for Indigenous relief funds, we thought it necessary to establish this emergency fund specifically for radical Indigenous Mutual Aid projects and individuals.

Hi everyone. Native communities are particularly vulnerable in this time of crisis and if you’re able to, please consider making and sending masks or donating money.

Mask Donations: 

Zuni Pueblo Covid 19 Relief: Send PPE, food, and hygiene products to this address.

Zuni Relief House #81, Silt Road Zuni, 87327 

Mask Drive through Seeding Sovereignty

Rosebud Sioux Disaster Relief Fund (taking both money and physical donations)

Monetary Donations: 

Havasupai Tribe Covid19 Relief Fund

Kinalani/Flagstaff Mutual Aid

Southern AZ Urban Native Relief fund

Protect Native Elders

Northern Cheyenne Covid Relief

Navajo/Hopi Covid Relief

Pueblo Relief Fund

 Indigenous Mutual Aid

Please let me know if there’s any more places to donate, and I will add them to the list! 

But then I found out UNTIL THE 196OS, THE TRAINS HAD LITTLE SAILS AND WERE WIND-POWERED?

How do we examine or compare such facts? Do we examine them in relation to all the studies that have been done on psychotropic medication, on hospitalization, and on therapy and simply choose to fund the means with the highest number of “recovered patients” at the end? A number of questions get lost in such an analysis, questions beyond the scope of these studies, questions which perhaps trouble the foundation and presuppositions of the studies themselves. For example: how does one get diagnosed as schizophrenic or bipolar? This isn’t a question about symptoms, but about power. Who does the diagnosing? With what tools? How are these tools legitimated? Against what standard is mental or emotional pathology measured? How did the person getting diagnosed end up in their position? What does it mean to recover from such conditions? And, most importantly in my eyes, what is the concrete experience of the mad person in these relationships?”

Yes, Jewish people are a vulnerable and marginalized group that deserves to be accepted and protected. Yes, antisemitism is still a thing, including on the left. Yes, they have repeatedly pointed out this problem, and we should believe them and do something about it. No, this accusation doesn’t only come from Zionists. No, being an atheist doesn’t give you free rein to shit on marginalized people’s culture and faith. No, this isn’t some kind of fucking conspiracy where all Jewish people are trying to divide the left or avoid accountability or win sympathy or whatever other shit by fabricating claims of antisemitism or bringing it up whenever they’re criticized, and if you’re genuinely willing to believe that shit then you’re part of the problem. Yes, antisemitism is just as dangerous as any other flavor of bigotry and it’s not something we can just brush aside. It deserves to be deplatformed and ostracized like the fascistic ideology it is

Happy Lesbian day of visibility

Here are some of my favorite femme looks!!!

Am I a bad anarchist because I spend more time finding joy in stars and kittens and hummus than feeling sadness and rage for injustice and suffering? I don’t think so.

I think it is joy that lights up our anarchism into action. Surely we do not fight to survive, but to live? We fight not just for an absence of suffering but for joy? for stars and dancing and roses?

Would we break down prisons walls if there were no stars or other joys outside it? Do we protect our planet just for the sake of it, or to play on it and raise kittens? Don’t we fight for life to taste it?

I’ve also posted about it multiple times.

Plus, Amazon, Google, Kobo, B&N are all explicit in their user agreements that they have the right to terminate your account, seize your library, and delete anything and everything off of your account at any time, for any reason, without giving you anything in return, including paying you back. 

Like, it super scary that they not only can do that, but are legally allowed to. 

I’ve seen people suggesting using the program called Calibre  to transfer and  convert your files from whatever program you purchase them on, so that if one of those companies do decide to be a dick, you will retain your e-copies safe and sound on your hard drive. Just don’t be an asshole and post those copies to pirate sites. 

https://www.epubor.com/drm-removal-tools.html

Because yes, the terms of service sure say that. But every time they’ve /tried/ on a significant scale, they’ve been challenged and backed down. And every time they tried to stop DRM removal tools from being made and sold, they’ve failed. What they’re doing relies on keeping off enough toes that a significant bloc never gets pissed enough to push through a class action suit.

Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital and inevitable. “Abnormal body shape,” “ugly facial looks,” dwarfism, and “obvious beer belly,” “too many wrinkles,” “eye disorders,” and many other “low quality” traits are all enough to keep uploads out of the algorithmic fire hose. Videos in which “the shooting environment is shabby and dilapidated,” including but “not limited to … slums, rural fields” and “dilapidated housing” were also systematically hidden from new users, though “rural beautiful natural scenery could be exempted,” the document notes.

The document, presented in both English and Chinese, advised TikTok’s moderators that for videos shot in someone’s house with “no obvious slummy charactor [sic],” special care should be given to check for slummy features such as a “crack on the wall” or “old and disreputable decorations.” The mere appearance of residential disrepair or crooked teeth in the frame, the document shows, could mean the difference between worldwide distribution and relative invisibility.

(…)

Gartner, the TikTok spokesperson, told The Intercept that “the policies mentioned appear to be the same or similar to those published by” German publication Netzpolitik in December in a story about how TikTok was artificially suppressing access to videos created by disabled, overweight, and LGBT users and represented an effort “at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.”

(…)

A “Personal live broadcast about state organs such as police office, military etc,” would knock your stream offline for three days, while documenting military or police activity would get you kicked off for that day (would-be protestors, take note).

Gartner refused to clarify whether the substance and intent of these restrictions are still in effect under different phrasing, for example, whether there is any current rule whatsoever against “harming national honor” or documenting police movements.

(…)