WIP for etsy.com/shop/ravenyarnworks

John Rogers is the creator of two of my favorite things:

Leverage and Leverage: Redemption, show(s) about criminals who team up to punish billionaires and corporations who take advantage of regular people in ways that the law won't punish. It's a great heist show, it's hilarious, it's satisfying in a vengeance sort of way, it's deeply nerdy in sometimes subtle ways (criminals using aliases from Doctor Who, anyone?), and seeing the characters and relationships develop is really nice, too.

Mr Rogers: Be kind

Steve Rogers: Do the right thing

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Taxes

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Credit and Credit Cards

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Living Independently for the First Time

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care

MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion

like fuck holy shit people

don’t want real advice.

I have at least gotten this idea out into the world. I would love to see others’ takes on this image. 

kid: what are you eating from that basket?

me: triangles.

kid: can i have triangles?

me: dunno, did you brush teeth yet?

kid: no

me: mhm, and are you okay with screaming really loud?

kidd: what???

me: yeah, sometimes these make you scream really loud, are you ok with that?

kid: i am not afraid of screaming.

this is still very, very funny.

I also taught them that the F word is, uh, “flinkle”

Authors notes of today: okay, I know it's been 4 years, please don't hate me, but also: this is fiction, don't do the thing.

The author's proudly displayed fetish

The author's fetish you're pretty sure they don't realise they have

The author's fetish which they're firmly convinced everyone has and is just pretending otherwise

The author's non-sexual special interest which just sounds like a fetish because of their habitually unfortunate phrasing

The fetish the author is making a well-meaning effort to cater to in spite of clearly not understanding it themselves

The author's fetish that never quite makes it into the text because they keep getting sidetracked by the requisite worldbuilding

The author's utterly pedestrian sexual preference which the text treats like a bizarre fetish because they've got shit to work through

The author's seemingly innocuous recurring trope they're going to have a personal revelation about ten years down the road

shop & eat wherever you like; don’t shop & eat wherever you don’t like. it’s a personal choice, idgaf. but fucking hell, when you get your demands met, shut the fuck up about it, get off your high horse, & take the fucking win.

that’s what a boycott is for! to get your demands met! continuing to boycott after you demands have been met has literally zero point!

never taking the W is incredibly demoralizing! yes, there will always be another battle to fight in the future; cool, fight it later. for now you celebrate! take the morale boost! it’ll help if you ever need to do a collective action the future!

the boycott started in 2012 when Media Matters published a report showing that Chick-Fil-A had donated $5 Million to anti-gay groups, including multiple organizations involved in anti-gay lobbying, and one other (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) that had discriminatory policies in its leadership “code of ethics”.

due to the backlash to the findings of the report, Chick-Fil-A folded almost immediately.

they stopped donating to any anti-gay lobbying groups, & completely restructured the way they do donations. Dan Cathy, CEO at the time, even recognized it was a stupid idea to involve the company in lobbying for his political views, & promised not to do so again in the future (which, through gritted teeth, I must admit he seems to have kept his word on, despite still being awful on his own time). the only organization on the Media Matters report that they transferred over to the new donation structure was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which still barred openly queer people from leadership roles, but was otherwise not involved in lobbying for anti-gay legislation, or any kind of anti-gay activism.

it wasn’t a total win, but it was damn near one. it was still a significant victory. but people tend to be surprised when I tell them this even happened, many even get mad at me. like why? that’s a major fucking win!!

it didn’t stop there, though. backlash reignited in 2019 due to their continued support of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, combined with the addition of the Salvation Army (which the public was just starting to become aware had an ongoing history of anti-queer BS, and in all fairness, most people would not have been aware of at the time). As before, Chick-Fil-A quickly dropped the FCA & Salvation Army due to backlash.

Dan Cathy has since stepped down from the role of CEO and moved to the Board of Directors. He still sucks, he’s still the hateful bigot he always was, but he has significantly less say over anything, and doesn’t use CFA to promote his views.

like by no means am i painting CFA as a queer ally or moral powerhouse with our best interest in mind. they obviously aren’t. they’re a massive company that does what’s profitable & doesn’t open them up to bad PR & massive lawsuits. but they have been significantly more responsive to backlash over that bad PR than a lot of similarly sized companies would not be, and every one of those changes should be counted as a victory. yet idk a single queer person who was even aware of this before i told them & i only know because i was curious & fell down a rabbit hole researching the entire affair. why is this so unknown?

WE WON! WE SHOULD CELEBRATE THAT! EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THIS!

and to everyone whose response to this is immediate dismissal, with who says shit like “yeah but it’s performative; they only did the bare minimum to get people off their back; dan cathy is still a bigot & involved in the company”; no shit sherlock. they’re a company. they’re not your friend.

you have a specific problem with the company? then do something about it. set a specific goal, organize a boycott, communicate that to the company, pressure them into actually making that happen

but just looking at the actual information, how much is that donation? bc according to the only data I can find, it looks like it’s less than $2K per year ($5,750 total from 2016-2018) on average, out of his roughly $18 Million-with-an-M year compensation, out of Chick-Fil-A’s, $12 Billion-with-a-B ish sales at the time. So… like 0.00000015% of every Chick-Fil-A meal? You could scrape a penny with a nail, personally hand Cathy the shavings, & tell him to donate it to the NCF, and you would be giving them more money than if you ate Chick-Fil-A for 3 meals a day, every day, for a full year (which I’m not recommending for multiple reasons lol)

like, for sure, if the thought of even being tangentially connected to that in any way shape or form feels wrong, I totally respect that. eat where you like, listen to your conscience, & probably don’t do shit that makes you feel like bad if you can help it. i just don’t think treating other people like they’re personally responsible for the oppression of queer people because a guy they probably don’t even know exists is going to skim $0.000002 off the top of their chicken sandwich purchase to pay a guy to pay a guy to pay a guy to maybe consider possibly voting a certain way is a reasonable, productive, or moral way to treat other people. like, idk, there are probably billionaires using more money from your bank fees & gas you buy & other shit you wouldn’t even think about to have more of a materially harmful impact on the world than that.

in any case, where Chick-Fil-A is now, is objectively better than where we were in 2012 or 2019, and if the recent revelations about Cathy leads to a renewed boycott that gets the board to pressure him to leave, I wouldn’t mind that. I’m not saying don’t boycott. Have at it!

Most of them agree Jews were indigenous 2,000 years ago, but some think the Jews who were forced out of Israel during the past 2,000 years have "lost" their indigeneity in some way. In other words, they don't think diaspora Jews have a right to claim indigeneity to the Jewish homeland.

Some of them think that converts and/or external marriages have "diluted" diaspora Jewish bloodlines too much, and diaspora Jews are now a "different race" or "different ethnicity" from the "original Jews". They may even consider some diaspora Jews to be "white", which means they think those Jews definitely can't claim indigeneity.

Some of them think the fact that diaspora Jews absorbed parts of other cultures means they are no longer the "same kind of Jews" that originally came from the region, and this means they have changed too much to be considered the same culture, and thus they cannot return to their homeland.

Some just think "too much time has passed". It doesn't matter that diaspora Jews didn't choose to leave, nor does it matter that people prevented them from returning until very recently. Time is time, and too much time has passed. Indigeneity gone.

Finally, I have seen some argue that birthplace or citizenship is what matters. They say, "you can't be indigenous to a place you weren't born in". I've seen some claim that being born as a citizen of a country or becoming a citizen of a country erases any prior ethnic, cultural, national, indigenous, or religious ties they and their family may have had. For example, they think Jews born in America are American, and have zero right to say they have any ties to anywhere else.

Basically, for whatever reason, they don't think diaspora Jews are "native Jews" anymore, and thus they don't belong in their homeland.

...

I wonder though.

Do they know the difference between an ethnicity and a race? Do they know what an ethnoreligion is? Do they know how Jews view converts?

Do they think certain Jewish ethnic groups get to have a claim to indigeneity while others don't? Why do they think that as a non-Jew they get to have any say in that?

If they think the indigeneity of diaspora Jews has "expired" due to how long Jews have been living in the diaspora, do they think the indigeneity of ALL displaced indigenous peoples can "expire", or does this rule only apply to Jews?

If they believe indigeneity expires, when does it expire? After 200 years? What about 500 years? 1000?

If a colonized country with a displaced indigenous population waits long enough, will it be OK to tell those displaced people, "Sorry, you've been gone from the parts of the continent you were originally from for too long. Even though it wasn't your choice to leave, and even though we have prevented you from returning, you have no right to claim that as your homeland anymore". Is that acceptable?

2 is what the residential schools were trying to accomplish

3 is what every colonial state is hoping for

4 is part of the goal of the reservations

I have seen, with my own two eyes, plenty of white self-identified leftists who have flocked to call non-tribal members with Native heritage "pretendians" and "racefakers"; I've seen them argue that sycretized Latin American and Caribbean religions with Catholic elements are "European" and that the people who practice them are "not authentically native"; I've seen folks arguing that landback should only apply to "recent" theft of Native land, and that the ICWA is suspect in cases where the people it helps have "barely any actual Native blood".

Over the counter birth control now available. This is especially important to people in states like mine where abortion is entirely inaccessible. Opill can be ordered online with no doctor visit and is currently available at $50 for 3 months worth, which is not bad. Could help a lot of people! (they're also trying to make it so your insurance would have to cover this)

Established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is one of the first major steps towards gun control we've seen in a long time. Also awarded one billion dollars to support student wellness and school mental health professionals (which is the field I work in)

Helped broker a deal to save the Colorado river. There's something simply existential about a water crisis, and I have a lot of family living in the affected area, so it's nice to get some progress on this.

Invested millions of federal funds into cancer research, with the goal to halve death rates over the next 25 years. I unfortunately know several people who have/have had cancer, and it could happen to anyone, so it's always nice to see progress made in this area.

Made it harder for companies to engage in union busting. This doesn't directly affect me yet as I'm not currently in a union, but I sure hope to be someday!

The infrastructure deal is pouring 1.2 trillion dollars of investment into roads, bridges, airports, waterlines and broadband networks. Hey, I use those things!

Like. I've buried two foxes that fell victims to traffic I found by the road and one time decided to bury a fish and then dig it up every couple of weeks to see what was happening (very interesting! Did sacrifice the cutting board I buried it on tho) and none of that smelled at all sweet to me

Dead deer smell a lot like old leather, with like... an undertone of overripe fruit. Dead sheep have a stronger musky hair smell, and goats are like... sour, kind of? People smell different but I'm not sure if I can describe how. Kinda wetter, maybe? More bitter, like. In a sweet way? Like beer, almost?

The closest thing I can equate it to is somewhere between tallow and the smell of garbage in a New York City summer, when it's too warm and the cloying smell sticks in your nose and makes you wonder why in the world you are living there for a summer.

THIS IS HUGE!!!! Right outside of New York City, wow!!

This is the John Harper branch of the Waterloo Public Library. I wrote a book and did job applications on the left, and then went up to that gym on the right to walk around the indoor track. Parking was free. The library was free. The YMCA had subsidized rates.

That branch got me through my teen years, because I *hated* the mall.

But as a teenager, there weren't other options to the mall.

So everyone else chose the mall.

The executive branch under Biden is staffed by a highly diverse, talented group of professionals who have worked through congressional chaos and judicial extremism to bring the most progressive agenda since FDR to fruition.

The presidency (as currently understood by nearly every constitutional scholar who isn't a member of the federalist society) is not really that powerful of an office when it comes to making laws or controlling the economy. The executive BRANCH, however, has a lot of sway (for now, SCOTUS is trying to destroy this) in setting specific policy in all areas of public life. The president appoints leadership for all the executive agencies, which are permanently staffed by non-political technocrats and bureaucrats.

In the Biden administration, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary. Lloyd Austin is the first Black Secretary of Defense. Alejandro Mayorkas is our first Hispanic Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigeg is an out gay man. That's just the biggest, most obvious. But the ranks of appointed secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistants are staffed by a group of people who better represent the cross-section of American than at any point before.

Biden's initial picks for his cabinet were more racially diverse than even Barack Obama's and he has nominated more women for positions than any president. Ever. 95% of his cabinet picks came in with government experience, which means they knew how to get to work within the system to immediately start helping everyday Americans.

The Biden administration has managed to pass the single largest piece of climate legislation ever, in the history of the world. They are working to eliminate student debt for millions of Americans despite a court system that does not want them to be able to do so. They are working to make life-saving medication accessible and affordable. They are steering the US economy out of the COVID recession better than any other government in the world. They are pro-union and have created millions of new jobs by investing in the green and tech industries that will future-proof our economy. They are working to eliminate junk fees that we have to pay to credit cards, airlines, Ticketmaster and hotels. The Biden tax plan will only raise taxes on individuals who make $400,000 and up: that's less than 10% of the country.

If you vote for Joe Biden, America will continue to be led and shaped by folks who have done all of this and want to do even more to help everyday people.

If you don't vote, you are making the choice to allow Donald Trump back into office. Never mind that he's been impeached twice, convicted on 34 felonies and indicted on dozens of others. Never mind that he's liable for millions of dollars in penalties for civil convictions, including rape, defamation and fraud. Never mind that he and his supporters attempted to overthrow the government and steal the 2020 election in every which way they could.

"Oh, but we survived his last term, so in four years he'll be gone and then we can pick from better candidates." You think. We barely survived his last term (never mind the millions of people who died or are still suffering the long-term effects of the COVID pandemic he helped spread) because the people he appointed were unserious, kinda bad at their jobs, and/or were blocked by career civil servants doing the right thing.

If you do not vote for Joe Biden in November and get everyone you know to vote for Joe Biden, Donald Trump will more than likely win the election. The people who would run the government under a second Trump administration have a plan. They have been working to recruit and train partisan loyalists to dismantle the thing that got in their way last time.

They will enact a national abortion ban. They will make public life as a trans person illegal and impossible. They will make contraception and fertility treatment illegal. They will legalize discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship and housing status. They will allow oligarchs to squeeze even more capital out of the economy. They will defund public services like education, libraries, the post office and transportation. They will undo any progress we've made on climate. They will undo our freedoms of speech, press and assembly. They will establish a twisted Christianity as a national religion. They will try to use the military as a tool of domestic control. They will make our air and water dirtier and our food less safe to eat, our travel more risky and stop funding research into life-saving treatments. Life will be more expensive. Lots of people will die.

So again. You can vote for Joe Biden and his staff will continue doing an ok-to-good-to-great job in most areas, or you can not vote and help put fascists in control of our government. A 3rd PARTY VOTE IS A VOTE FOR TRUMP. You have to add to the tally on the Biden side. And while you're at it, vote for a senator, representative, state senator and state rep who will caucus with the Dems. Vote for judges and city counselors and mayors and school board members and comptrollers and whoever else is on your ballot who best fits your views or maybe just sounds least-bad.