phrygianmodus

[phrygianmodus]

[phrygianmodus]

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.

[phrygianmodus]

That's literally what it is. I wear professor drag all the time.

Back when I used to walk around my college in a corduroy blazer and slacks I didn't call it "dark academia" I called it "professor drag" and the purpose was to smoothly walk into parts of campus I wasn't supposed to access

[phrygianmodus]

the fucking budget bill of hell passed the house that removes HRT from medicare, general medicare spending cuts, student financial aid cuts, and oh yeah lets the teump regime ignore court orders even harder and lets for even harder executive overreach. they did this shit at motherfucking 2 am so people wouldn’t notice too

it passed house like i said but still needs to pass senate.

tell your senators to invoke byrd rule which is a goddamn real thing apparently

call your goddamn senators i swear to god

and if you’re in DC there’s a protest going on as we speak

go do your civic duty you piece of shit

[phrygianmodus]

[phrygianmodus]

[phrygianmodus]

also

[phrygianmodus]

(Quds) At Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebration, Ibtehal AbuSaad — a Palestinian employee — interrupted the event in a powerful protest against the company’s complicity in the Israeli genocide unfolding in Gaza.

Facing Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, AbuSaad didn’t hold back: “Shame on you,” she said firmly. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide.”

Her voice cut through the celebration as she condemned Microsoft’s role in enabling Israeli occupation forces through artificial intelligence technology.

“You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate while Microsoft is helping kill Palestinian children?”

Her act of courage joins a growing wave of tech workers and global voices calling out Western complicity in Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians — the majority of them women and children — have been slaughtered under a brutal siege.

[phrygianmodus]

BOTCHED COUP D'ETAT LEADER YOON SUK YEOL HAS BEEN IMPEACHED CONSTITUTIONALLY AND UNANIMOUSLY, AND THE DECISION IS FINAL!!!!!🥹🥹🥹🥹🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

WE DID IT!!! WE KOREANS DID IT!!! PLEASE SPREAD THE WORDS!!! I WANT ALL INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITIES TO KNOW THAT WE DID IT🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🩵💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵🩵💙🩵💙🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💛💛💛💛💛💙🩵💛💛💛💛

I'm nearly in tears. All the mental and physical pain and suffering that me and other Koreans have gone through waiting for his ousting has finally been paid off.

It was NEVER easy. I can't believe how many obstacles there actually were to come to this conclusion. Yoon and his cronies, his ruling far-right conservative party, and their blind supporters never gave up till the last minute. They took numerous cards in their sleeves to prevent this glorious day from happening.

Still, such is life. Life is full of chaos. Humans are just chaotic. Some are unbelievably great, while some others are just downright scumbag. That's just how it is. All we need to do is never give up going forward. 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

[phrygianmodus]

posting this for no particular reason

[phrygianmodus]

Meta doesn't want you to know about Sarah Wynn-Williams book Careless People. So much so they got the courts involved so she can't promote herself. Would be a shame if a bunch of people not tied up in court promoted it for her…

[phrygianmodus]

Keep it up!

Keep calling, keep emailing, keep going to town halls, keep protesting! Dont give them a moments peace! These bastards are cowards who dont like a spotlight put on them. They want to be authoritarians quietly and freak out when people notice them and call them out on it!

If we have to be miserable the next 2-4 years, so do they and we vote them out!

[phrygianmodus]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

[phrygianmodus]

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are feeling the wrath of constituents as their phone lines light up with complaints, worries and confusion over Elon Musk's efforts to gut government programs and fire longtime civil servants.

[phrygianmodus]

Okay all -- few quick thoughts about the Elon Muskifying of the government, especially the takeover of the Treasury and associated financial data for every single US citizen and organization, that we are learning about in detail today.

Don't panic. This sounds bad, because it is bad. It's really, really bad. It's outrageously fascist bad. But we've still gotta take a deep breath and get through it.

This is the kind of shock-and-awe exercise of untrammeled fascist power where they are absolutely counting on gleefully terrorizing, paralyzing, and stunning you into mounting no resistance, or just giving up and giving in. They are literally live-tweeting it in real time and boasting about all the access and influence they have right now. They want you to know about it and feel like you can't do anything, so you might as well let it happen.

We have to show them that's not true.

TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE. Because it's Sunday night, I've gone ahead and contacted my state Attorney General and both senators by email (but come Monday morning, we should all be calling). Here is the email that I wrote to my AG:

Dear Mr. [AG],

As you will be aware, today (February 2, 2025) the Trump administration has granted wide-ranging access to sensitive US Treasury data, including the personal and private information of [state] citizens, to Elon Musk's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Musk is an unelected private citizen who has no legal right to access this data, and is engaging in extensive intimidation and coercion to fulfill his personal and harmful ideological agenda. The present and material harm that this causes to US citizens, [state] residents, and basic laws of government, privacy, and financial security is direct, unconscionable, and actionable. I strongly urge you, in your capacity as [state] Attorney General, to file direct suit against the Trump administration, Elon Musk, the "DOGE" office, and any identifiable individuals who have taken part in this action, in order to protect consumer data, citizen privacy, and basic faith and trust in government.

All the best,

[Qqueenofhades]

Short! To the point! Doesn't waste time, tells him what I want him to do, how Elmo's nonsense directly harms the residents of my state, and why he should take action to stop it! And frankly, given how on-the-ball blue-state AGs have been thus far, they're probably already working on it. You are very welcome to copy-and-paste this message and fill in your AG's last name and your state as appropriate. Super easy to do. Takes five minutes. Call tomorrow.

If you are in a red state, your voice is particularly important right now. The Trumpsters are counting on and are even emboldened by blue state pushback, but you really need to make it start coming from Republican strongholds. Congressional Republicans will only feel the slightest amount of unease about docilely enabling this BS when it starts threatening their own personal power. Hit them where it hurts.

Other lawsuits are coming. Marc Elias, Democratic lawyer extraordinaire, is well aware of this situation and has noted on Bluesky that more lawsuits are in the works. He often wins his cases. This does not mean that you shouldn't loudly make noise elsewhere, but please remember that this is one of those 24-hour periods where, as noted, they are counting on demoralizing you with a nonstop blizzard of bullshit. It does not say anything about how this will play out long-term or the opposition that can and will be mobilized to stop it.

Once again: courage. Take the small steps that you can do today. Then take a breath and get off social media for a little while. Try to take the long view. One step at a time, we will get through this.

Courage.

[phrygianmodus]

idk why but this resonated with me so much

A Much Needed Break, oil on canvas

by Thomas Blackshear II

[phrygianmodus]

sounds fake but okay