#POSItive!

[shokosriver]

look what you did

[vipermenace]

First positive thing to happen in 2024, I received my amended birth certificate with my updated name and gender! This was the last legal document I needed updating, and boy howdy did that take longer than I thought it would. Online, they say it can take up to 19 weeks to process and ship out your birth certificate. For me, it was 2 years!

Didn't think I'd have to fight for updates with the state of California more than when I changed my name and gender. Personally, for me, I changed my name first instead of doing the combo of both. It cost more money, but I'm glad I waited. I was originally going to change my gender to man because I was afraid that if I picked nonbinary I would have a harder time around healthcare or just people in general. But I felt that it would be unfair to myself, I don't see myself as a man or a woman, so if the option that fit me best was right there then why don't I take it?

Fast forward 5 years later, I've gone through HRT, and top surgery, and now all of my legal documents have X or nonbinary for my gender. I know I'll still have a harder time with healthcare because of it, but I'm sticking to it. I do like being perceived as masculine and addressed by Sir/Mr. title by strangers in public, even if I'm agender. I'd personally love to go back on HRT again since I had stopped after surgery while recovering. I just can't afford it right now sadly.

But hey, legally nonbinary!!

[thirteens-earring]

jhariah continues to absolutely wipe the floor w the competition in the 15yo arcane cosplay tiktoker music sphere

[choochooboss]

Your art is SOOO gorgeous!!! Your style is so pleasant and I can tell there's so much love and effort put into your work 🥺👉👈💞

Thank you!! I'm super happy to hear it shows!!

My focus is very easily lost so I am slow-paced in both drawing and thinking, but all you see here is coming straight from my heart hehe! It's been a long journey to reach this point where I can actually feel content about my art and ideas, with the help of these two nerdy silly guys and the wonderfully supportive community! Getting comfortable drawing the characters also makes it much easier to experiment and fine-tune my skills even further!

[mackachu1212]

Today has been wild I have been called funny and I have been told in going places just because I did good on an annotating assignment and these are things I have been beating myself up for like what tf is happening

All I need now is a mob of happy people going “wow this is so cool” to my stories lmao

[higgyriffs]

they should call sexy dorothy wizard of oz costumes whorothy

[golden-letters]

bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.

[almyranpine]

really good tiktok

Transcript:

Girl, just do it fat. Don’t wait until you’ve lost enough weight. You’re worthy of taking up the space that you fill. Live your life now. Don’t wait for some future version of yourself that you think will be more deserving. You have every right to pursue your passions and dreams just as you are today. Your worth isn’t tied to a number on a scale or the size of your clothes; it is inherent in who you are. You’re allowed to be seen, heard, and celebrated in whatever body you inhabit right now. Don’t let anyone or anything convince you for too long. So go out. Do it fat! Wear the clothes you love, pursue the opportunities that excite you, and live unapologetically. There’s no reason to put off living the life that you want, waiting for a moment that you’re not even sure will come. You deserve to be happy and fulfilled just as you are, and the world needs you exactly as you are today. Everything good that has ever happened to you, happened in this body. Girl, just do it fat.

[allthatispeculiar]

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[leofwines]

[carnage-cathedral]

my partner said something that kinda rocked my world

[shopwitchvamp]

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

[bebx]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

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