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It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

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Dude, your piñata looks like shi—

Happy Tuesday the 17th 🍍🍍

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SAME SEX MARRIAGE FOR ITALY

Hey italiani!! There's an official ministry of justice referendum to get same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couple in being actually married and not just "uniti civilmente". This will grant them the same rights in adoption and stepchild adoption.

Of course the big news arent talking about it so the only way to let it circulate is through spreading the info ourselves.

It needs 500k signatures in 3 months and while that alone will not automatically grant equal rights it will be a HUUUGE step forward in italy, lately quite discriminatory politic.

Here's the link to the referendum! Se siete italiani e potete entrare con lo SPID firmate!

If you're not italian, please spread the word as it might reach someone that can sign!

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I have some news for members of the united states armed forces who feel like they are pawns in a political game and their assignments being unnecessary.

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So far in LA an Australian news reporter has been shot in the leg by a rubber bullet, a British reporter has been shot by a sponge bullet and sent to the hospital for emergency surgery. A NY Post reporter has been shot in the head with a rubber bullet and went to the hospital for a large bruise on his forehead, whiplash and neck pain, and CNN reporters were handcuffed and escorted away being told to not come back or they will be arrested BECAUSE they are reporters.

It seems like all reporters there to give the real story are being targeted by police/ICE/military in LA.

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Just wanted to share some shockingly good news in these difficult times. The full article is really worth reading. [Find it here]

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Nader @abdalsalam2000 is in Gaza during an internet blackout, he and his family are in serious danger and they can’t communicate it to the world because the internet is cut off and e-sims are very slow. He’s a 17 year old boy who is fundraising to support his family of eight, including his father who is sick with cancer and needs treatment. Please help me share his story while he is away. i’ve only briefly heard from him in the past few days, and the situation is extremely dangerous. He doesn’t have the ability to reach out to people how he usually would, so I hope you will help me share his story and do that for him while he’s away

€59,995 raised, they’ve almost reached 60,000!! Please keep supporting Nader

@tamamita @rhubarbspring @heritageposts @dirhwangdaseul @neechees @butchniqabi @socalgal @finalgirlabigailhobbs @newporters @pikslasrce @vampiricvenus @danlous @loumandivorce @jackiedaytona @deepspaceboytoy @autisticmudkip @nashvillethotchicken @femmefitz @pitbolshevik @innerchildabortionclinic @omegaversereloaded @hotvampireadjacent @boobieteriat @mens-rights-activia @ot3

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I have some news for members of the united states armed forces who feel like they are pawns in a political game and their assignments being unnecessary.

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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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PSA: Credit Card Phone Scam

(Or, how Tumblr just saved my ass)

I saw a PSA recently about a scam going around with spoofed official numbers calling and asking for information, and how you should hang up and call back using the correct number rather than just go along with what the caller is telling you. But this is Tumblr, so I'll never be able to find the post again.

I decided to make my own, because this literally just happened to me an hour ago. Hopefully my story can spread some more awareness and save other asses the way mine was saved.

Around 7:30pm tonight (Friday), I got a phone call from a 1-800 number. I almost didn't answer it, then I saw it was 1-800-465-4___, and I recognized that as the start of the CIBC phone number, so I picked up.

Me: Hello?

Guy: Hi, is this [MrsD]?"

Me: Yes.

Guy: Hi, [MrsD], this is _____ from CIBC, how are you tonight?

I thought, okay, this is a sales call. Right before I'm about to sit down for dinner. Typical. Mentally, I'm already putting together an exit strategy, preparing to say no to everything and get off the phone ASAP. But then—

Guy: We've just flagged suspicious activity on your CIBC Visa card. It was an online BestBuy transaction for $980.00. Was that your transaction?

Me, flustered: Uh. What? Sorry, how much?

Guy: $980.00 at BestBuy, was that you?

Me: Oh. At BestBuy?

Guy: Yes, your card was used at a BestBuy in [town nearby]. Was that you? Did you go to [town nearby] today? You don't live in [town nearby], right?

Me: Uh. No?

Guy: Okay, so I need some information to verify this transaction.

By this point, my brain had caught on that something about this was hinky. First of all, I thought he said it was an online purchase, then he said it was in person. But maybe I'd misheard, he was talking fast. My second thought was that every other time there was a suspicious transaction, I got an automated phone call and a text message with instructions to call back. I've never had a person call me directly.

My third thought was, well, the phone number on the caller ID was right....

THEN! I remembered a Tumblr post I saw recently, and I remembered what it told me to do.

Me: I'm skeptical about this call. I'm going to call CIBC myself and look into this.

Guy: What? Ma'am, you can just tell me, I can verify—

Me: No. Thank you, but I'll call the number on the back of my card.

Guy, getting more agitated: Ma'am, if you look at the number on your card, you'll see it's the same number.

Me: You know that can spoofed, right?

Guy: Uh— but ma'am—

Me: Sorry, but I need to make sure. I'm going to call CIBC directly.

The guy kept sputtering, but I hung up on him. In that moment, I really didn't think that he was a scammer. In fact, I thought I was being paranoid and was maybe kinda rude to the guy. I wondered if I was being overcautious, and I felt a bit guilty.

I called the number on the back of my credit card, waited 15 minutes for an agent, and told him what just happened.

IMMEDIATELY—

Agent: You didn't tell him anything, did you?

Me: No. I said I wasn't in [town nearby] today, but that's it.

Agent: Good. You did the right thing by calling us, let me look into the transaction for you.

Then, a minute later:

Agent: I'm not seeing any transaction like that. There's no flags on your card, nothing suspicious at all.

Me: So it was a scam?

Agent: Yep. Entirely fake.

I was honestly surprised. I really thought that there was some kind of mix-up and that I would be apologizing to this guy for being rude to his colleague.

Looking back on it now, I can see all the telltale signs of it being a scam call:

Time of day. Early evening on a Friday, chances are people are either sitting down for dinner or in a hurry to get somewhere. In this situation, a lot people probably wouldn't think twice about giving "the bank" some information just to get off the phone. (Joke's on them, I have no life!) But the way that I reacted to his introduction did evoke the desired reaction of Ugh, what now? Leave me alone! that the scammer was banking on (pun intended).

Sense of urgency. The scammer spoke fast, threw details at me quickly, and made sure I knew that I had to give him my information right away. This honestly threw me off. It was overwhelming, and I felt concerned and a bit frantic for a few seconds until I thought about what I know about scams and what I'd just read in that Tumblr PSA.

Complete lack of empathy or understanding about my skepticism/anti-fraud precautions. The last time I had to get a new credit card number due to fraud, the agent I spoke to said things like "I know this is frustrating", "I'm sorry this is a hassle", etc. And of course the CIBC agent I spoke to tonight was immediately grateful that I'd called them directly and reassured me that CIBC would never ask for information. By contrast, the scammer was outright dismissive of my concerns and got agitated when I wouldn't just trust him right off the bat.

Emotional provocation. Similar to #2 & #3 above, the scammer was very good at making me feel things. Worried and fearful at first, then guilty about being suspicious, to the point where I actually apologized to the guy. (Granted, I am Canadian, but still!)

And finally, I cannot stress enough: the spoofed phone number. I am a pretty well-informed person. I keep up with news about scams and whatnot. I know that phone numbers can be spoofed. I've been in front of my phone when it just starts to ring and I can see the auto-dialler number appear briefly before it gets replaced with a number that has my area code. But tonight—early evening on a Friday—I was cooking dinner and my phone was across the room. It had rung several times by the time I got to it. I only picked it up because I recognized the CIBC number. And when the scammer started his spiel, the fact that the number was the same was enough for me to give him just a tiny moment of trust. Had he actually gotten past that first barrier and started requesting my information, I think I would have caught on, because people asking for sensitive information over the phone is a huge obvious red flag. I like to think I would have caught on, anyway. But maybe not! That fake number almost had me.

TL;DR: No matter what the number on your caller ID says—that it's your bank, your energy company, your internet provider, whatever!—if the person on the other end is requesting sensitive information urgently, don't panic. Stop. Think. Then tell them nothing, hang up the phone, and call your service provider yourself using a verified phone number.

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"We're living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow" sure is the mood right now, huh.

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😭😭

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Reporter: Why do you think so many countries’ governments around the world are just ignoring what’s happening in Gaza?

Greta Thunberg: Because of racism, that’s the simple answer, I would say. Racism, and basically desperately trying to defend a deadly, destructive system that systematically maximizes short term economic profit and geopolitical power over the well being of humans and the planet. Right now, it is morally difficult to defend that – it is impossible— but they’re desperately trying which is …. absurd is not the word, but there are no words to describe it.

- Greta Thunberg in Paris, after returning from Israel’s illegal abduction of her aboard the Madleen (10 Jun 25)

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