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so I have this thing where I keep every single piece of paper I've ever used in my entire life and just shove them in random places

and today I realized that I actually needed a random piece of paper from like 6 months ago

and I was like perfect! there's no way I got rid of this

famous last words guys I have hunted and hunted and I have dust in my hair and have uncovered things that should never see the light of day and it appears that this is in fact the one piece of paper that i've ever gotten rid of and I'm gonna cry

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reading through your drafts and thinking "wow this is so cool, I wonder where the story is going?" only you forgot and now you'll never find out :(

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I was kind of sympathizing with the upset queer usamericans in the notes about how they're not the ones perpetuating this imperialism, but then I realized how alien it would feel for me to bring up my own country's queer history.

I know we celebrate pride in June because our first parade was inspired by Stonewall, but I totally forgot that the turning point in our own gay rights movement was Kim Friele being elected leader of DNF 48 (the Norwegian Organisation for Sexual and Gender Diversity) in 1966, ending the discretion policy and significantly ramping up their activism and political activities.

Usamericans say we should talk about and learn our own history, but it is really hard to cultivate spaces where there is room to do that. The most efficient way to create communities that are open to everyone (even those in the closet irl, those who don't know any other queer people close by) is online, but if those spaces are international and communicate in english they will inevitably be filled with usamericans eager to educate about "our" history, burying smaller communities through sheer volume. The conversation will center Americans, American history and American experiences because no one else acts like every English speaking space is by definition their space.

There are also a lot of structural factors other people have mentioned, like how search engines and media favour usamerican perspectives.

It is not enough for queer Americans to say that they would be happy to hear about other histories. They need to start acting like they are one corner of a big room, that their experiences and histories are one part of a big whole. They need to refer to Marsha P Johnson as a pioneer in the American queer rights movement who had a lot of influence abroad, not as a mother of all queerness. And most importantly, they need to learn to shut up every now and then and let other people speak.

OP is right and her concerns are valid. Please don't yell in the comments.

Anyway, if anyone wants to share some local queer history, that would be cool :)

i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

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#as a writer i've had to transition from googling to positing hypotheticals to my family and friends. accuracy has declined but good times are being had by all

and the worst part is google doesn't even answer the questions that get you put on fbi watchlists anymore

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they spent billions on this

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for the past two years i have been sponsoring a tuberculosis detection rat in tanzania, her name is carolina. she sniffs sputum samples & alerts her handlers when she detects TB. recently she turned 8 & aged out of the program, so they held a retirement party for her & sent me photos.

while carolina moves on to live a life of rest & luxury in the retirement kennels, her role is being passed on to her successor, tamasha. she is 2 years old & was named after the grandmother of one of her handlers.

(with her handler priscus)

here is a description of tamasha:

"Tamasha is also quite playful! She enjoys jumping, climbing, and sometimes does a joyful little dance when placed in the TB evaluation enclosure – as if celebrating her enthusiasm for the work ahead. She’s also a big fan of avocado, her favorite treat for a job well done."

im not afraid to admit that this email made me cry like a stupid baby. you can sponsor your own big beautiful TB- or landmine-detecting rat through APOPO HeroRATS. they send you an update on how your rat is doing each month, including photos.

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VICTORY! Democracy persists another day, and I get to sleep/study

Supposed to be studying right now, but my government has decided democracy isn't cool anymore and are laying the groundwork for a forced labour, suspension of all personal rights and probably the end of our democracy and there are literally no newspaper articles about it or anything??? So now I'm stuck writing emails and praying someone is ready for a revolution on two days notice

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I love bugs I love them they're so small and they have so many cool specialized survival niches a ton of them can fly and even more can just casually climb up walls they are tiny little dudes with their own individual powers and abilities and they control through hydraulics which is so. cool plus they are silly and weird and some of them are downright ridiculous and I love them so very much

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EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP SCIENTISTS AT THE SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE HAVE FOOTAGE OF A LIVE COLOSSAL SQUID FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑

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reblog if you have skilled writer friends and you're damn proud of them

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Born to sleep. Forced (by myself) to write emails

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Det er snakk om vedtaket til endringer i sivilbeskyttelsesloven, for dere som lurer.

https://www.nettavisen.no/norsk-debatt/ny-lov-kan-tvinge-deg-i-arbeid-slik-griper-regjeringen-inn-i-hverdagen-din/o/5-95-2389699?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1744885410

Supposed to be studying right now, but my government has decided democracy isn't cool anymore and are laying the groundwork for a forced labour, suspension of all personal rights and probably the end of our democracy and there are literally no newspaper articles about it or anything??? So now I'm stuck writing emails and praying someone is ready for a revolution on two days notice

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Supposed to be studying right now, but my government has decided democracy isn't cool anymore and are laying the groundwork for a forced labour, suspension of all personal rights and probably the end of our democracy and there are literally no newspaper articles about it or anything??? So now I'm stuck writing emails and praying someone is ready for a revolution on two days notice

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angels, deciding what shape to take when interacting with The Humans: well….eye contact is important to humans, right? they find it reassuring when they can see the eyes of the person they’re talking to. so if we have LOTS of eyes, in very visible places, that’ll be even MORE reassuring

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Favorite bird genre has got to be 'that's literally just a dinosaur'

Groove-Billed Ani

Hoatzin

Pheasant Coucal