mattapparently

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Hey, if you did work over the past few weeks to try to stop the GOP's obscene and murderous budget: thanks. It ended up without the AI regulation ban, the trans healthcare ban, the western lands sell off, and without its stupid name being official.

It passing was a major loss for everyone in this country including the very wealthy and other people who believe they will be able to be better off from it.

But also, it passing was not as bad as it could have been and it took the ongoing effort of huge amounts of people to even make that a possibility, so if you were part of that, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you.

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the world's biggest fundraising event for doctors without borders is video games! help save lives with gaming!

seriously! SGDQ 2025 is july 6-13 2025, 24/7, online and in person, with a fuckload of awesome video game related prizes to win! as of when this post is going up, it starts THIS SUNDAY!

doctors without borders/médecins sans frontières (MSF) is a humanitarian organization dedicated to providing medical care for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, disasters, and exclusion from healthcare around the world. this includes places like sudan, gaza, DR congo, ukraine, syria, and haiti. they operate in over 70 countries, and it gets expensive.

and this is where games come in. games done quick (GDQ) is an organization that showcases top-level skill in video games for great causes. speedruns, challenge runs, randomizers, races, and so much more. GDQ has raised over 50 million dollars USD for charity! GDQ's summer games done quick (SGDQ) event raises money for doctors without borders, and it is their BIGGEST fundraising event!

so here is how it all works: you tune in for free, any hour of the day, between july 6 and 13. you watch video games get played wrong. you can send in money to enter to win a bunch of prizes, make choices about how the games get played (routes, character choices, names), buy some really cool merchandise, and maybe even get your donation read live on air! proceeds go towards saving lives!

summer games done quick is always a ton of fun and does a ton of good. this event is going to raise millions of dollars that will directly save lives around the world.

check out the schedule for summer games done quick 2025 here!

gamesdonequick twitch <- they will be live streaming here, and have great programing year-round!

gamesdonequick youtube <- VODs!

see you there!

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If you're heading to a protest tomorrow, it's important to know your rights. Consult this information from the ACLU. Be peaceful. Be safe. Be careful. Be strong.

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FYI for any iPhone users who live in the USA, there's a new app out called IceBlock, which allows you to anonymously report ICE agent sightings

Worth a download if you've got an iPhone.

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I know a lot of y’all have been told to be on the lookout for ICE activity in your area and stay aware, but most of the posts/sources I’ve seen don’t actually tell you what to look out for. So I wanted to make a quick and simple guide of what to be on the lookout for as potential ICE activity:

Distinguishing logos

ICE agents will look to most like any other police officer. The main things to look out for are badges/signage that say Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security (DHS or HSI), and Federal Agent.

Tactical Gear

When out of plainclothes, a lot of times these agents will be dressed to the nines in tactical gear. This includes tactical vests/body armor, helmets, goggles or sunglasses, face coverings, radios, handcuffs/zip cuffs, and of course firearms, pepper spray, batons and tasers. Even when they aren’t in full tac gear, they tend to use face coverings and bulletproof vests, typically marked “POLICE”. If there’s no other identifying signage to indicate they’re part of the local police force, there’s a good chance it’s ICE. ICE agents are known to travel in groups, so if there’s only one it’s most likely a fake agent trying to prey on the vulnerable.

Vehicles

This one is tricky. ICE agents typically use unmarked cars which can make them more difficult to identify. Some key features to look out for are dark tinted windows (especially tinted lines on the top of the front and back windshields to hide lights), lack of license plate/dealership placards, and police bars in the backseat. They tend to use common vehicles, usually trucks and suvs. The trucks will usually have a lockable bed cover or box. Marked vehicles however will have either a green or blue vertical line across the back doors and have the ICE logo on them.

I know this isn’t a very extensive guide by any means, but as someone who didn’t really know what to look for myself I wanted to compile some features to be on the lookout for. If you see that I’ve missed something important, please add it! Protect yourselves, protect your neighbors, and don’t stop fighting.

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@importantcatpics

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this quote from hbomberguy’s plagiarism video really resonated with me:

“creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. […] this stuff really is valuable. if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it”

your craft is and always will be valuable, please never let anyone make you doubt that

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u will always be my home~

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if you just register for a dysautonomia international medical conference. and you just let the videos play. and you even just half pay attention. you will gain the ability to change and save other people's lives.

so many chronically ill people only get diagnosed when someone other than their doctors say, "hey, have you heard of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome? it is really common, treatable, but it only shows up on specific tests."

or "hey, I know you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, have you had autonomic testing or testing for non length dependent small fiber neuropathy? 30-40% of people with fibromyalgia have small fiber neuropathy, and a lot of that is the non length dependent pattern, which not a lot of doctors know about."

or "hey, you know how you have weird allergy issues? have you ever heard of mast cell activation syndrome? around 17% of people have mast cell issues, and they can cause debilitating symptoms all over the body until treated."

there are so many debilitating chronic illnesses that are EXTREMELY treatable, but only show up on specific tests. a lot of people with these conditions test as 'healthy' otherwise. and so fucking many of these kinds of conditions are presented at dysautonomia international in presentations that are easy to understand.

these medical conditions are everywhere, and have been around forever. and covid-19 has multiplied how many people have these, around the world.

everyone has an autonomic nervous system, and it breaks very easily. dysautonomia can happen alongside countless other medical conditions. every chronically ill person needs to be asking themselves if they might have some form of autonomic dysfunction. because chances are pretty good that they do.

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archive of our own went down and apparently it happened BECAUSE

someone placed the 2,147,483,647th bookmark on the site. and that was the largest number of bookmarks it could handle. and it broke everything.

programming is amazing

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please stop treating the word neurodivergent like it means the overlap between autism and adhd

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