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i think it's important to acknowledge that the reason why mastercard/visa has such a stranglehold on american society is because cash is not the main form of payment in the usa. the predominance of card has effectively privatized currency

in japan, one of the reasons why dlsite and other similar websites are able to just remove visa as a payment option instead of changing any of their merchandise (aside from the fact that visa doesn't have a monopoly here) is because cash payments for online transactions remain an option. even if you don't have a jcb credit card or paypay or whatever, you can still pay for your online purchases using cash by taking your barcode to a convenience store, and you can do this for essentially every online vendor, meaning credit card companies can't just impose their moral judgments on your purchases with much repercussion

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Lol I managed to swing by my faja shop today to pick up a new romper and a pair of jeans, and the owner was so happy to see me again she gave me 15% off everything and chatted me up the whole time and isn't it nice when you're a staple in the parts of the local community you frequent?

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sometimes I think to myself "it would be cool to learn to identify Solidago species" and then i look at the solidago species and I'm like "actually no it wouldn't"

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I know I say that I'm kinda nuts for doing the amount of visual research I do, but at the same time: Specificity is SO much more compelling and real feeling, and imo not getting references often makes things look more amateur.

Eg. drawing a sofa- my mental image of a sofa is something like this:

Like. Its a sofa. It works. But it's not very convincing, the pillows are kinda wrong at the back, and it's not really giving any information about the owner. Even if you want a basic sofa... What kind of basic.

comfy and cheap?

kinda rigid?

inherited? ------

who does this comfy cheap ikea sofa belong to anyway?

guy living alone?

teenage girl?

Grandma?

Anyway I'll get off my soapbox but specificity is sexy and fun and it can do your storytelling for you!

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I'm going to sleep for ten million years lmfao

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i wish there was an easier way to tell the difference between an "if it sucks hit da bricks" situation and a "sometimes being an adult means doing things that you dont wanna" situation

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A Demonstrator’s Guide to Operational Security

Fighting Back, Staying Free

https://crimethinc.com/opsec

How do police and federal agents identify and target those who participate in demonstrations? What countermeasures can we take to hinder this kind of repression? In this anonymously submitted text, one affinity group explores how they address these questions.

Once upon a time, only those who intended to engage in high-risk confrontational protest activity had to concern themselves with surveillance and security. Today, surveillance and policing are becoming much more invasive and arbitrary. Even if you never violate any law, the state may nonetheless seek to make an example of you. Everyone who might participate in a demonstration at some point should familiarize themselves with the security protocols that radicals have developed over the years.

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hey since homestuck is finally getting an animated series i'd like to make a suggestion

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Excerpt from this story from Northern Public Radio:

Next year, “rewilding” will officially be a part of the conservation approach in Illinois.

A new state law explicitly includes the concept as part of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ strategy. It’s the first time a U.S. state has included rewilding in its legislation, people working in conservation said.

The goal of rewilding is to reintroduce native species and restore whole ecosystems. Advocates often describe it as helping nature help itself, or putting nature back in the driver’s seat.

Cynthia Kenner is the executive director of Prairie State Conservation Coalition in Illinois. She said the new law formalizes the work happening in the state already.

“It's allowing the continuation of practices that are already in place, but it brings more meaning to really letting nature come back,” she said.

An example of rewilding is occurring in the northern part of the state in Rockford, where the Severson Dells Nature Center is working to transform a former golf course into 170 acres of prairie, forest and wetland habitats. The area will serve as a wildlife corridor as well, allowing species to pass through to other nature preserves in the area.

Rewilding often focuses on repairing habitat suited for apex predators like mountain lions and keystone species like beavers and bison. The idea is when these species can succeed, other species will start to recover around them, said Jason Kahn, board president of the Rewilding Institute, which supports large-scale conservation projects across North America.

Perhaps the most well-known example is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. In South Dakota, black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to Badlands National Park, and bison are roaming prairies in Illinois and Iowa. These keystone species have helped to recover native habitats in the area.

“It doesn't cost a lot of money,” Kahn said. “Nature knows how to take care of itself. If we stop insulting and abusing it, all you would need to do for something is to let it grow, let it mature and let it be. And the wildlife will find a way in.”

Rewilding isn’t just about restoring large swaths of the landscape away from humans, said Cathy McMullen, a faculty member in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Iowa State University. She said one of the most meaningful approaches to rewilding can take place on your block.

“There's a buy-in for everybody, say, in a neighborhood,” she said. “You plant a pollinator patch, and you maintain that pollinator patch, and if you scale that up to a whole neighborhood, no one person gets overwhelmed by all the work. Everybody's doing their piece. In the process, they’re going to learn some bugs and birds and make a connection to nature.”

“This bill adds rewilding as a strategy that the agency can implement,” she said. “They are also already doing many of these practices, and they already have the ability to consult with their ecologists, the biologists and the folks that make these decisions for the state to add species to the landscape.... This doesn't give them any new authority.”

The law goes into effect at the start of next year.

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my favorite thing right now is how mad the official french language people are that parts of african languages are getting mixed into french

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It's quite strange witnessing how obsessed people on here are with privilege, but also, at the same time, how much mental gymnastics people do to avoid race. Getting into the weeds on the privileges and marginalizations of a particular identity and conveniently leaving out how race changes things so drastically. I get that this website is mostly white and white people don't know what it's like to live without that privilege, but it is so telling how much people don't understand racism and white supremacy, how people seem to think their queerness or neurodivergence makes them an expert on all bigotry, not just their own personal experience.

I don't really have a point with this, just wanted to thank you, as a POC, for constantly reminding people that racism exists and should be taken into account in all of these conversations. I wish more people on here did that.

Of course! It's something that is just baseline important on a general political level, and also something that matters to me extremely personally for a lot of reasons that hit really close to home.

For context my family is blended, mixed race, and many of my family members are immigrants. I also wasn't raised religiously Jewish because of my great grandma's fear of white supremacy and antisemitism and there is a history of antiracist action on the other side of my family that I feel really proud to carry the torch of.

It's always been extremely clear to me that race fundamentally alters the way someone exists within the world because of my experiences with my family — and frankly the way my white family is afraid of talking about race despite the way my non-white / immigrant family experiences the world (shout out to my mom for actively ignoring the way racism impacts my sisters 🙃).

It genuinely feels like the bare minimum to break the unspoken "white people don't talk about race with each other" rule and constantly talk to other white people about the fact that white supremacy and racism are so ingrained in our society that white people literally do not consider race as a passing thought, even when we absolutely should.

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today is my birthday! i’m 33 today and i have done an ungodly amount of stupid shit in my life that honestly probably should have gotten me killed. so here are 33 hard-won things i’ve learned that i wish someone had told me sooner.

whenever you buy an object, you are going to own that object for your entire life unless you make the conscious decision to throw it away or give it a new home. maybe other people don’t struggle with this as much as i do, but i’ve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i don’t want it anymore, but i don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything with it. signed, a woman with a packed 10x10 storage unit who is now extremely hesitant to buy new things.

food, and by that i mean good food (and by that i don’t necessarily mean healthy food, but food of good quality that you love), is necessary to live, and buying it, preparing it, and eating it is not a chore. the sooner you accept this and make food a priority in your life, the healthier you’ll be. 

speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally i’ve found it’s always worth it to splurge on good olive oil, butter, and canned tomatoes. for years i thought i was an awful cook because i was cooking with cheap, disgusting olive oil that made my food taste like shit.

speaking of food part 2, i can’t BELIEVE how long this took me to figure out, but mise en place is the real real. get your shit out and organized and prepped *before* you start cooking, even if it makes things take longer. and yes, it is always worth it to do the dishes as you go, which pisses me off.

when i was teaching myself how to cook and feeling daunted about it, the best advice i ever got was to aim to learn 15 recipes and then put them in rotation.

this is the most horrific and awful truth i have forced myself to accept: there may come a day you can no longer digest your favorite foods, and you will either have to stop eating them, or remain very close to a toilet. i’m sorry.

other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other people’s opinions of you don’t actually have anything to do with you. they’re not your business, and you don’t have to worry about it or change yourself.

when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize you’re having a big reaction, and then when you’re ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because you’re about to learn something important about yourself.

a pill sorter can save your life. i don’t know how i managed my meds without one.

sometimes college is about learning stuff, and not about becoming something.

no matter how many perfectionist tendencies you have, it’s worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.

if you’re always forgetting to do important but tedious things, set an alarm and set aside one hour of each week, not to do the important tedious things, but to assess what needs to be done, and *schedule* the important tedious things for the following week. this literally changed my life.

during that hour, make a meal plan too. the point of doing this is condense the time in which you’re making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you don’t have to burden yourself with them throughout the week. decision fatigue is real. any way you can alleviate that is a good thing.

learn the difference between aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive behavior. recognize when you’re being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if it’s hard.

you can tell you’ve processed trauma, not when the traumatic thing stops upsetting you to think about, but when the traumatic thing takes up the same size in your brain as all your other memories.

if you’re one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, there’s a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and don’t feel bad about putting down a hobby to pick up another.

if you love stickers but have sticker anxiety, buy vinyl stickers. you can re-stick them.

there are only a few careers i can think of that you have to commit to early in life because getting the undergraduate credentials is a pain in the ass (teachers, doctors, and engineers, from my research). nearly everything else you can switch to later, which takes a LOT of pressure off having to figure out what you want to do with your life.

people say there’s no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually there’s a ton of money in all of those things, it’s just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. it’s still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because it’s more “practical” or whatever. 

sleep when you’re tired. SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE TIRED. don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t be tired or that you’ve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never say “hm i’ve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirsty” so don’t treat sleep the same way.

when you build a piece of furniture from target or ikea or whatever, the first thing you should do is count all the little screws and things to make sure everything’s there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find there’s a piece missing and you have to go buy it.

learn to travel by yourself, go out to eat by yourself, see a movie by yourself. in my early 20s i was scared to do these things, but i do them so often now i don’t even think about it. it’s the most fulfilling skill i’ve ever learned.

adding to the above, if you’re a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because you’ve probably developed the habit of making the people you’re with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and you’re missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when you’re by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt. 

sometimes you’ll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no one’s fault, and you don’t want it to be volatile or make a big thing of it, in which case the goal is to simply fade out of their life. it is okay to let people go.

shame is useless. get rid of it.

no matter how much of yourself you put into your art (or writing, or music, or whatever), when people criticize it, they are not criticizing you. they are having a reaction colored by their own tastes and perspectives. their opinion of your work has nothing to do with you. you don’t have to take everyone’s feedback. in fact you don’t have to take anyone’s feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments don’t have anything to do with you either. it’s good to accept this because it means you’ll stop seeking validation from other people and won’t let anyone else’s perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.

if you’re an artist of any kind, take one day a year to look up opportunities like grants, funding, residencies, workshops, whatever. put the due dates of all of them on a calendar for the year following and get into the habit of applying for stuff. getting rejected sucks, application fees suck, but in all the years i’ve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what you’re passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something that’s absolutely necessary in order to be successful.

you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respects–in health, in love, in happiness, in freedom, you must. no one will ever fight as hard for you as you will. this in turn will give you the strength and motivation to help others fight for themselves too. the only way the world will ever get better is if every person on this planet learns to see themselves as equals to everyone around them.

brag about yourself as often as you can. for one, people develop their perceptions of you based on how you treat yourself and speak about yourself. but for two, it’s the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because they’re the ones who are going “oh hell yeah, you’re awesome.” 

be the person other people want to brag to.

at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and it’s going to be willful and intentional. it is not worth it to waste brain space figuring out why they did it or why you think you deserved it. all you have to do is let yourself feel that pain, acknowledge it, and try to move on.

no matter how bad off you think you are, recovery is possible. the first and hardest step is to learn you’re worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.

developing an expertise does not mean you’re getting objectively better at something. becoming an expert is only the process of seeing your mistakes and having the patience to sit in the discomfort of not knowing how to fix them.    

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it’s actually wild how terrified of the general public most usamericans are. like you don’t realize it if you’re someone who mostly walks and takes transit and spends a lot of time in populous public spaces but then you talk to one of the thousands of people that seemingly never set foot in any public space besides a parking garage or a starbucks and you suddenly understand why it’s so easy for fascist rhetoric about the dangerous alien to take root. this country’s median voter pretty much never interacts with strangers who aren’t their coworkers or people they met on dating apps

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These articles come out from time to time where someone with real organizing/policy and practice experience attempts to boycott a suspected monopoly innorder to demonstrate that it is, in fact, an unavoidable monopoly that morally should be considered a threat to an actual person-centered market. They often detail the extensive steps they have to take to actually "boycott" and describe the destructive material affect to their lives in doing so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-tech-giants.html

On the one hand, it's still helpful to cut away from these corps as much as we can, even if we can't do it in entirety, but ultimately we may need to start having real conversations as a community about how to coordinate action and infrastructure to make these kinds of boycotts survivable.

insane seeing YouTube boycott people completely incapable of doing any of the actual research required for successful action;

Bit. Chute and Rumble are both Alt-right founded platforms that platform Neo-nazis that got run off YouTube they aren’t ethical alternatives.

YouTube is owned by Google, Google’s APIs are so intensely embedded in the internet that a decentralised boycott of one service will do very little to Google’s bottom line. If you want to organise against YouTube’s policies, targeting their advertisers is a better starting point. A boycott is usually more of a one arrow un a quiver form of action anyway alongside mobilisation.

I’m not shitting on people who want to do something about the age restriction rules but like you have to know who you’re up against and not watching YouTube videos while still using Gmail or google maps is going to counteract any minor drop in numbers.

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Actually, if you have a dynamic disability or if you are an ambulatory wheelchair/mobility aide user it IS okay to lie. As someone who has had surgery if you need the lift/ramp etc or someone is giving you shit for not looking disabled tell them you just had surgery, theyre more likely to give it to you (ask me how I know 🙄). Tell them you're recovering from a car accident. Tell them youre dying. Whatever. You don't owe prying ableist strangers your actual medical history. Do whatever you need to get accessibility and whatever you need to get to safety if someone is harassing you.

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I don’t think I’m ever going to be over Edi Gathegi and can’t help but feel so happy for him with his role in James Gunn’s Superman

For those of you who don’t know Edi Gathegi starred in X-Men First Class as the character Dawrin (aka Armando Muñoz)

Dawrin’s powers are literally super adaptation, his body changes to every possible scenario in order to survive.

Gills to breath under water and fins when submerged

Stone skin when struck with an attack

In space his body will change to be able to breathe, when fire is directed at him he will become fire proof, etc. he is essentially unkillable dude to his mutation!

And yet in the movie he gets introduced solely to be killed

The unkillable, Black, Hispanic, Male, character literally gets killed first and acts as a ‘motivator’ for the rest of the cast even though they hardly mention him after his death.

Edi Gathegi even voiced his concerns, only for the studio to promise him that Darwin would eventually come back and be resurrected in future movies but surprise surprise. That never happened.

Years later James Gunn reaches out and askes him to audition to the point he sees 200 people and still ask if Edi Gathegi’s tape has come in.

Edi Gathegi despite his hesitation due to his last super hero movie experience decided to give it a shot and what a way to right a broken promise from the past!!

He not only doesn’t die but plays a vital role in the story, he’s been praised as a scene stealer being one of the most liked characters right behind Superman

Edi has been open in interviews about what this means to him and how happy he was to have this opportunity

Its great to see this come full circle

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I think parents don't understand how punishing a child isn't for when they make you upset, it's for when they do something wrong. Like, you don't just punish them for stress relief, it's so they can learn right from wrong.

So if your kid learns, for example, that helping mom make dinner = getting in the way, but not helping = being lazy, but asking if mom needs help = being annoying and asking stupid questions, then you have basically trained a person to see the only option that doesn't lead to scolding as 'hide and don't be thought of until dinner is done'. So now what relationship is your kid going to have with cooking or cleaning or chores in general? How is that going to affect them as an adult?

If there is no right answer regarding the things that bother a parent, then your kid is going to associate those things with being punished no matter what they do. If talking during a car ride is bad and annoying, but being quiet and staring out the window is bad and disrespectful, then what are they going to do every time they're in the car with you but count every word they say? If texting is suspicious, but why don't they have friends, but going out with people is irresponsible, but why don't they ever leave their room, but their friends are all bad influences, but why did they stop hanging out with them, they were nice kids, then what are you even doing?

If playing video games is lazy, going outside is unsafe, playing is ignoring chores and doing chores is being in the way, then YOU'VE CREATED A CHILD WHO'S LEARNED THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID BEING SCOLDED IS TO DISAPPEAR WHENEVER YOU'RE IN A BAD MOOD! You've created a person who is hardwired to feel guilty no matter what they choose to do. You turned them into a confrontation ninja, who can vanish as soon as a hard conversation enters the picture. You've trained a person to disregard why rules exist and instead focus on who they can placate and suck up to in order to make the rules change. Because to them, rules and punishments are just who gets on the bosses nerves at the wrong time.