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Sharing space is nothing new. Sharing bathrooms is nothing new. The reactionary outrage is so manufactured.

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Because I was now a man, I could not speak about what it was like to be a woman. Because I had been a woman, I could never really speak about what it was like to be a man. Do the math: I could not speak. It was a double erasure, a double bind, in which every experience I had was false, and so nothing I said was credible. I could no longer derive authority from my experiences before transition, and shouldn’t even cite them — I had never “really” been a woman, so those things hadn’t happened — but those experiences could always be weaponized against me to prove I wasn’t “really” the man I claimed to be. They call it erasure, when this happens. I wasn’t prepared for how literal the term was. Every day, I could feel myself disappear.

— Eraserhead: On writer's block and being a gender traitor by Jude Doyle

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the world is running out of glassblowers and yet you want to become a fucking doctor

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From the article:

But, as Brownell explained to new customers, Smart is different from the typical craft store: Everything on its shelves has been donated. The shop is what is known as a creative reuse center. These crafting thrift stores keep leftover and unwanted art supplies out of landfills, and instead get them into the hands of other creators at affordable prices. Smart combines that model with another mission. Many of the employees and volunteers who run the shop are adults with disabilities. Over the last decade, the organization has diverted more than one million pounds of art and craft materials from landfills, while providing over 37,400 hours of job coaching, volunteering and employment for adults with disabilities.

I think this is a really great example of how expansive environmental work can be--and how it can coincide with other forms of community action.

Protests and politics aren't the most effective or sustainable form of action for everyone (though there are more diverse ways to participate in that kind of action too!)--providing a service to your community that increases sustainability and aligns with your passions and interests is also an extremely valid and needed form of environmental action.

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“Organizer Aaron Regunberg pointed to an article published by Politico last week detailing how 40% of Cuomo’s endorsements came from lawmakers who had previously called for his resignation when he was accused of sexually harassing more than a dozen women. “Politico ran this very convenient piece listing out every New York Democrat who needs to get primaried!” said Regunberg.”

— ‘Earthquake’ win for NYC socialist spurs demand for national Dem 'insurgency’

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i think the hill i'm going to die on here is that lasting anti-fascist activism begins and ends with unrestricted social services.

protests are great. kind of indispensable right now. but in times when we can be less reactive, you want to know what you're protesting *for*, not just against.

today i saw a post elseweb saying "why aren't white women fleeing maga? they have to know by now that tradwife means sex slave". and like... it's very simple. they can't leave because they would end up like me.

they're, we're, deliberately made unemployable so that we'll have to marry whatever mediocre white man picks us out. as it happened, i was unappealingly intersex, fat, butch, and autistic, so none of the mediocre white boys of my generation ever took a second look at me, but that didn't give me job skills or career connections.

i knew multiple women whose husbands divorced them and took the house as part of their midlife crises. they had to send the kids to live with relatives and take dead-end jobs like bagging groceries because they were in their forties with zero job experience. if they'd rejected the worldview, if they'd alienated their families and what few friends didn't victim-blame them for the divorces, they'd have had nowhere to turn.

it's been over twelve years since i got out. psychologically, medically, i'm healthier. but i've chased a fresh start through half a dozen states. i spent my inheritance getting a degree. none of it helped. there are no supports for abandoning (or being abandoned by) your support network.

you won't defeat fascism until my people are free to leave the cult if they realize they want out. until we can access free housing to get away from financial abuse, free comprehensive job training and placement services to help us start careers, national healthcare so we can flee across state lines if necessary without losing any medical care we're lucky enough to have access to, protections for children and teens so they can flee without needing a parent's help... universal basic income would be really good but there are smaller steps that could help with financial independence.

and it all has to be available to everybody, including people you think are "unworthy". people who hold the wrong opinions. drug addicts. people whose husbands or parents make too much money. people who aren't from around here. unrepentant bigots. if they want out, you have to give them a path out. minds can change later, once people are less scared and less pressured.

(i'm ex-catholic. do you want to hear about what happens when you force people to profess certain beliefs in order to access basic assistance? i have two thousand years of examples.)

"but if they really wanted out they'd do the Right Thing and leave without support!" Better to be one man's sex slave than turning tricks on the street. "staying just proves they're actually evil and there for the bigotry!" Live in your car for six months in 100°F heat, twice, and then talk to me again. There's no virtue in cutting yourself off from society just to prove some kind of moral point. All that does is get you dead or worse.

("JT, you're not dead" I'm a fucking cockroach. Most people would be dead by now. Survival bias goes both ways; we're not all the same model of airplane.)

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🧵 THREAD: This #PrideMonth, don’t forget that the fight for queer liberation didn’t start or end with marriage equality.

💪✨ We need to keep fighting for our rights.

Here’s are a few examples:

💋 Before the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, same-smex smexual activity was illegal in fourteen U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military

👶 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t adopt in all 50 states. Before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, laws varied wildly by state.

🏳️‍🌈 Before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosmexuality as a ‘mental illness.’ In December 1973, a vote was successfully held to remove it.

🗳️ Before 1974, there were no openly gay elected officials. That changed with Kathy Kozachenko, who became the first openly gay American elected to public office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

🎖️ Before 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” banned LGBTQ+ people from serving openly in the military.

💍 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t get married in all 50 states. At the time, laws varied by state, and while many states allowed for civil unions for same-sex couples, it created a separate but equal standard.

💼 Before 2020, employers could legally discriminate against queer and trans employees. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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it’s crazy how different you get treated in a mask but what really gets me is that when people ask why I’m masking, I’ve stopped saying I’m immunodeficient and started saying I have an immunodeficient family member at home. I am not exaggerating when I tell you this has 100% improved every single encounter I’ve had with anti-maskers. i’m not exaggerating in the slightest.

i used to tell people i’m immunodeficient and they’d ask invasive questions about my diagnosis, whether my parents kept my childhood overly sterile, whether I was vaccinated as a child (with the implication that it would have been bad if I were).

Now that I say I have an immunodeficient family member at home, people smile knowingly and say, “oh, well you do what you have to do,” and “my mom went through chemo. I remember how hard it was to do all the precautions” and “that’s so kind of you.”

if i tell someone i mask because i’m disabled, i’m assumed to be the weak link in our society, a burden to my family.

if i tell someone i mask to protect a disabled family member, i become the burdened, compassionate caretaker deserving of sympathy. how sad that i must limit myself to protect someone i love. how heroic that i choose to do so.

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Master doc that contains different resources and support for many countries including Palestine, Congo, Haiti, Hawai’i, etc ((op is underneath the link))

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To my mind, the main advantage of Big Stupid Tables over generative content is that generative models must, by the nature of how the technology operates, produce outputs that are statistically likely to appear in their training data, while the outputs of a well-constructed set of dice lookup tables may principally consist of combinations of elements never before attempted on account of being dumb as hell.

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Happy pride month specifically to folks on the asexual and aromantic spectrum who oftentimes feel isolated and left out of the conversation. You belong here as much as the rest of us and I hope that you are all loved in a way that is comforting to you.

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"South African entrepreneur Phumla Makhoba is on a mission to solve the “global south housing crisis.” And she’s doing it by using clothing waste.

Her invention, Texiboard, is a material that combines fibers found in textile waste with lime cement to create a durable, affordable, and circular building material.

The result is a textured, white square, almost tile-like, that is created with recycled materials — not emission-generating wood or concrete.

“It can be used to make furniture, flooring, walls, or even your entire home,” Makhoba said in a video for social media account We Got Earth.

The first iterations of the Texiboard included colorful cotton threads that were compressed together, with multiple attempts to remove cracks and seams and perfect the ratios of size, shape, and material mass.

With her design firm, Studio People, Makhoba has been working since 2022 to perfect the TexiBoard. 

Makhoba has since created a solid panel, with shredded textile fiber and natural lime cement fully cured. Finally, it can be formed into a full sheet of building material.

Once realized, the Texiboard will confront the estimated 92 million tons of clothing waste generated around the globe each year. But it will also provide safe and stable housing that Makhoba says only 20% of South Africans can afford.

“Growing up, I saw two worlds: one with polished buildings, and one built from scrap,” she said in a video. “I always wondered, why do some people get homes that last and others get homes that leak?”

Now, the Texiboard design is available as an open-source resource, and Makhoba and her team host in-person workshops for locals living in shacks to learn how to build their own supportive and sustainable housing.

“Just having a roof isn’t enough,” Makhoba said. “A real home should protect you from the weather, work for your daily life, and not fall apart in five years.”

Her approach includes a full theory of change. Right now, Studio People is in the input process, building partnerships and funding to scale their operation. From there, they hope to develop a fully sustainable supply chain to manufacture and sell Texiboards and help build affordable housing for people in need.

Once that dream is realized, Makhoba outlines the tangible output of this work: Economically inclusive waste management, circular building materials, green jobs, and a sustainable housing and manufacturing market.

“Informal settlements can be transformed when we all work together,” she shares on the Studio People website. “Texiboard is the seed of innovation that will create updated trade jobs in the innovative building industry.”

Although the Texiboard is still being completely perfected, the goal is to provide a weather-proof, cost-effective, and circular way to house people by democratizing the act of building.

“Our goal is to create an egalitarian and sustainable urban environment, helping shack dwellers and youth out of poverty,” Studio People shared on LinkedIn.

“We empower the underdog, including people and businesses, to co-create solutions in our fight against the housing crisis, unsustainable building materials, and unemployment — one board at a time.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, May 28, 2025

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Hooray! Yay! Dykes!

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Reminder:

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This is one of those true, declassified government things that always sounds made up but one of the things Henry Kissinger did with his career was use the CIA to help turn small, prosperous socialist nations into fascist dictatorships just to keep those nations powerless and possibly to keep socialist systems *looking* doomed and futile to the American public, like maybe just to scare Americans out of demanding better infrastructure or universal income. Yes it sounds like an insane conspiracy theory a maniac would invent. It also happened multiple times and several generations of people around the world are still living in misery because of it.

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happy pride from the trans flag on the floor in deep space nine

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"No War with Iran. USA out of Middle East"

Poster by No Brains zine