alice-stuff

[alice-stuff]

Liz Toohey-Wiese, 2024.

"A sign installed in the largest wildfire burn I’ve ever seen, along the BC/YK border. Borrowing the aesthetics of BC Recreation Site signs, once again pointing to the overlaps of outdoor recreation, resource extraction, and the consequences of the climate crisis. Most recreation sites in BC exist along previously built logging and mining roads.

“Forced into a great and difficult transformation” was a line I heard in a lecture on Buddhist philosophy I was listening to on my drive up north. But it became another mantra I thought about while living in a place that’s been utterly transformed by resource extraction over the past century, and as I thought about the burnt landscapes I drove through."

More here.

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sorry for the longpost.

i only just now read your essay "be jealous. make demands. want more." and greatly enjoyed it and related to a lot of the things you described as far as your feelings about mainstream polyamory. to me it often feels very manicured and not honest or natural, which has been a turn off in seeking connections with other poly or ENM people. i'm pretty slow at processing, and dont have a lot of dating experience anyway, so just the prospect of being asked upfront what i want and desire and prefer just doesnt mesh with me. that's not how i get to know myself and not how other people get to know me. i like to do things first, then survey myself and circle back on what can be done better.

even before i read the essay i saw you posting about it, saying things like "be jealous, be audacious" etc. and i really took that to heart. over the past few months i've been working on communicating my feelings and needs to people rather than bottling them up and just adapting to the environment until i cant adapt anymore and i snap. i still find that, sometimes, an emotional outburst is rhetorically advantageous for me because it communicates the degree to which i've been neglected, i guess, and also it feels good to be needy when i'm used to taking care of everything and everyone else.

i sent very emotional emails to my managers at work, i've cursed a few coworkers out here and there, and i straight up walked out during a conflict. i still have my reputation as hardworking and nice and easygoing, but now it's known that i won't tolerate certain mistreatment against me. people are being kinder and friendlier to me. i'm not embarrassed about being emotional in front of other people. it had the intended impact. now i can survey how i feel each day and be more mindful of when something bothers me without giving into my reflex of compartmentalizing until i "forget" (but secretly keeping tally until i have no more space for tallies).

i wrote a super heart-on-my-sleeve love letter to a man who we took turns ghosting each other due to our mutual shit communication and avoidant behaviors, and before i had the chance to send it he told me he met someone. i still told him how i felt. i got this far in practicing speaking the fuck up, by god i'm not letting anything steal this opportunity from me lol. it took me a few days to figure out how to do it, and now i'm waiting for a response (or waiting until i figure it's been long enough that, this time, he probably is ghosting me lol). but i feel the most relief from the fact that i did it. i hate the feeling of regretting not saying anything. been there, done that, time for something new, see if that yields any results i like.

every time i've been needy and audacious, i haven't always gotten exactly what i wanted, but at least i no longer resented myself for being complicit in my own hurt. all along i secretly knew that being quiet and polite was only adding to how much other people could push me into boxes they liked but it was so hard to stop that habit.

anyway "be needy and have the audacity" is probably the best advice i've ever followed. tbh i first learned this from the perks of being a wallflower, but it has taken years to really practice it and reap the benefits. glad i am here and thank you for being part of that

wow. i find this so inspiring. thank you for sharing this.

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I think being autistic has made me realize how extremely hostile the environments we have designed are. And I don't mean "this environment is uniquely hostile to me because I am autistic" I mean that even normies are just existing in brutal, stagnant spaces, they have just internalized them as normal. We could have it all, we could live in such a beautiful and fascinating world, designed by humans and for humans who actually enjoy life and it's complexity and wonder. but even now it's like, seen as kinda hippy-dippy bullshit to have "excessive" indoor plants in a workspace or something

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you may notice i use the phrase "my beloved" frequently. this is because i am in love with the world and everything in it. hope this clears things up <3

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Thinking about how when the Oceangate sub imploded, the coastguard picked it up on their radar and knew from the moment it happened that everyone on board was already gone, and yet there was still a five day manhunt.

And how like a week before that, a refugee ship sank off the coast of Greece, whose officials knew this was happening and had ships within reach, but intentionally did nothing.

And how there was like the most expansive manhunt in recent history to find a suspect in the UHC shooting. In a city known for its unsolved crimes. How Briana Boston was arrested for a vaguely perceived threat to a CEO she wasn't even speaking to nor mentioned, while internet stalkers are never addressed unless they hurt someone, and then it's a maybe

And just how there is always money to perform for the rich, even when they can't actually be helped. And there is never money to help the poor, no matter how easy they would be to save.

And for some reason it's considered "dangerous and extreme" to want a world where our lives aren't just fodder at the whims of the rich.

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So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”

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The headline: UK Drug Dealer Feeling Bleu After Cheese Photo Leads To Arrest

The article: Police cracked encryption on a privacy-focused phone service provider and ran fingerprint analysis on photos posted by users.

Like I get that law enforcement does things like this, that’s literally what it exists for, I’m just really upset by the cutesy framing.

Also. Like. Don’t organize shit online or over the phone. Law enforcement has been pressuring tech companies to put backdoors into encrypted services for years, this whole crackdown happened because of a device-level attack, and you never know who’s listening.

And yeah. If you’re setting up an anonymous ID online for any reason do not, under any circumstances, post or share any identifying information under that ID or with devices associated with that account.

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literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

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every time i say doing drugs is morally acceptable or whatever on here the notes/tags instantly fill up with people trying to agree with me by being like "you're not better than a methhead just because your drug of choice is a joint or a beer" and it's like well yeah as a factual observation correct but why do i get the feeling you still actually don't really respect either of the people you've just conjured up lol

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Rings my fucking bell, like a perennial fucking plague maiden:

Center harm, not disgust!

When in doubt (and when not in doubt, just swept by problems bigger than you and assured by someone that they know the answer, so don't think right now, just Do!), center harm.

Focus on what specific harm you're reducing with your actions. Make sure it's tangible and concrete. If your actions are minimizing hypothetical harm at the cost of real, tangible harm on others, 9 out 10 times you're on the wrong fucking side, being weaponized by propaganda.

If a conversation revolves around disgust as a driver for action, you're being radicalized. If a call to action depends on your emotional response, you're being manipulated. I'm sorry, this isn't the 90s anymore, social media has eroded the web of respectability of the pre internet society. The primary axis for misinformation to spread in this day and age is emotional response: half the things you believe are true and share as such are not based on fact, expert opinion or personal research. Social media has conditioned us (all of us! You and me and most dangerously of all, the idiots we put in power) that if something feels true, it probably is.

But do you know for sure it is? Do you think it's true because you have first hand experience or actual time spent on reputable sources learning it to be fact? Or just because it aligns with your worldview and it would be nice for you if it were true?

Are you taking action because you're angry and a group of fellow angry folk invited you to join them? Do you have a plan or is this just catharsis? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions or are you drunk on rage and focused only on the immediate future?

Center harm. Center specific actions and their consequences.

Discomfort is not harm. Disgust is not harm. Hypothetical paranoia is not harm.

The reactionary pipeline is real and your self-image as a progressive is not actually enough to save you from falling down the hole. Radicalization is not hinged on politics alone. Saying you're a leftist is worthless if your thought process and actions themselves are indistinguishable from qanon losers. Conspiratorial thought has literally no politics inherently, and your insistence it does is pure lack of critical thought on display.

Center harm, not feelings, not politics, not group think.

Center harm, and remember that individual actions cannot dismantle systemic structures on their own, so anyone who calls for individual action at the cost of community structures is not actually trying to change anything, and instead actively suppressing efforts to make anything better in any way.

[alice-stuff]

This campaign defies censorship in social media to raise awareness for early detection of breast cancer

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Queen of getting invited to Opioid Crisis Taskforce Meetings as a person with lived experience / representative working on Harm Reduction advocacy + programs, then getting my microphone muted halfway through.

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oh you have to go pee? are you like, self diagnosed

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The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

[alice-stuff]

Hey I Love You Thank God It’s Spring

3 colour riso prints :) available here !!

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For #InternationalFlamingoDay here's a fun Art Nouveau A-Z alphabet fashioned out of flamingos!

Flamingo Alphabet, typography designed by Étienne Mulier and published in Lettres et Enseignes Art Nouveau (Paris, 1901).

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"The nonbinary afab who goes by she/her, dresses femininely, and uses a push-up bra when I—" when you what? What's wrong with her?

Is she not nonbinary enough for you? Is the way she experiences her queerness and how she presents not perfect enough for you? Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny, right? So why is she the exception? Why does she have to hate herself to appeal to your standards? Why is she any less trans—any less worthy of respect—cause it's "not visible"? Queer solidarity my ass. Don't spout this bullshit on Pride, man.