#Substack is more open

[pacificus-pacificator]

Tumblr has lost its “mind”

[snugcuddler]

idk why but writing and like soul-searching media in general made by people younger than me has like no appeal to me anymore

[thoughtportal]

This is a developing news story and may be updated as more information is obtained. If you value such information, please support this Substack.

On Dec. 1, a woman immolated herself with a Palestinian flag outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.

Now, according to the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, the woman — referred to in their report as “Jane Doe” — is alive and “in stable condition” at Grady Memorial Hospital, where she has been since the immolation.

After repeated requests for her name, the department stated to this reporter in an email that it “does not disclose the identities of victims”. Repeated inquiries to Grady, which is a public hospital, went unanswered. The hospital houses the Walter L. Ingram Burn Center.

“Jane Doe” is 27.

When asked if they had made any comment to tell the public that she was still alive this entire time, the official at Atlanta Fire Rescue Department said they “shared the last updated with local media via email on 12/21/23. The release stated: ‘The victim remains hospitalized in critical condition. The security guard, who attempted to assist the burn victim, has been released from the hospital.’” Several internet searches on that quote produce no results. This would also indicate that "Jane Doe" went from critical to stable condition without public notice. 

Aaron Bushnell immolated himself at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, explaining “I will no longer be complicit in genocide” and shouting “Free Palestine!” repeatedly as he burned alive. So, his case — unlike many other self-immolations including Gregory Levey, Raymond Moules, Timothy T. Brown, Malachi Ritscher and others — has received some attention. Thus, “Jane Doe” being ignored fits with the usual pattern. Bushnell is the exception — probably because he livestreamed it. See “Ignoring Immolators Lulls the Society to Sleep.”

As Bushnell was burning himself alive, an officer pointed a gun at him, barking orders as if he constituted a threat. A security guard, Michael Harris, sustained injuries working to rescue “Jane Doe” — but there were similarities, where she was actually viewed as a potential threat.

At one point, the police report for “Jane Doe” refers to it as being a case of “arson”.

Much of the media coverage and general discussion of her self-immolation in December focused on if she had done damage. The Atlanta Police Chief said: “We believe this building remains safe, and we do not see any threat here.” The Israeli government released a statement: “It is tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way.”

Police records indicate that they obtained a search warrant and entered an apartment they believed to be associated with “Jane Doe” — initially using a drone:

The drone was able to relay information as to the layout and the belongings inside. After it was deemed "safe" entry was made with bomb technicians. While clearing the apartment no improvised explosive devices were located.

The police report also noted:

During the search a Quran was found in the bedroom along with a [sic] Arabic dictionary and a Hebrew dictionary. The bedroom bookshelf contained books related to fiction and fantasy. A "Drug use for grown ups" book was on the bookshelf as well. Two journals were seized from the bedroom. A thumbdrive was seized from the bedroom as well. A laptop computer was seized from the kitchen counter. A copy of the search warrant was left in the living room of the apartment. The front door [of] the apartment was secured before law enforcement left the premises.

When pressed for more information in compliance with an Open Records Request under Georgia law, Atlanta Fire Rescue Department claimed: “There is an ongoing and active investigation for the incident in question, which is why the only releasable information has been shared via the incident report. Investigative documentation is not available for release until the investigation is closed.”

[dashcon-two]

Volunteering, Virtual Dash, and Various Other Happenings!

Hey y’all!

Buckle up, we’ve got a bit of everything in this one.

Volunteer Applications!

We’re excited to say that volunteer applications for DashCon 2 are now open! You can apply to our form here (https://forms.gle/aaBjd9eSGZBsARBE7), or find out more on our website (https://www.dashcontwo.com/volunteering/). Our convention relies on volunteer staff to keep everything running smoothly, and there’s plenty of work to go around. We’re really glad to have received interest from so many of y’all, so applications will be open until we’ve filled all of our positions.

All regular volunteers will be assigned to at least one 4-hour shift between 7 AM and 11:30 PM on July 5th, 2025. Volunteers who complete their shift, or otherwise work 4 or more hours, will get free access to the con for the rest of the day.

Successful applicants will be required to sign a waiver to volunteer for the convention. Applicants who are under 18 years old must have a parent or guardian sign their waiver.

What about Virtual DashCon?

We appreciate all of the feedback we got after our announcement post last week! We’re happy to say that we’re going ahead with our plans for a virtual convention! However, considering how many of you were enthusiastic about the concept of virtual dash, we’d like to address a common question!

Why would a virtual con cost money? Because it costs money to run! We’re partnering with Live Media to ensure that the live-streamed panels, pit, and duel will run smoothly. We want to make our convention as accessible as possible, we’ve received hundreds of messages from people who couldn’t get a ticket, but we just don’t have the resources or expertise to run a virtual event with volunteers alone. Even with a professional live-streaming team, we’ll need to organize moderators for the official server, vet digital panellists, and all the other administrative work that comes with a virtual event. DashCon 2 is going down in history one way or another, but we’ll be damned if we don’t get good footage for the next generation of documentarians.

We’ll also donate 15% of every ticket to the Canadian Cancer Society! That’s 15% of the total price of the tickets, not the profits. You can learn more about our fundraiser here, and donate directly to our campaign on the Canadian Cancer Society’s website.

Drag at DashCon 2!

DashCon 2 is excited to announce that we’ll be featuring a spectacular showcase of talented drag performers! Performers will be lipsyncing, dancing, and generally serving, to the tune of such classics as How Bad Can I Be? We’re happy to say that we have two confirmed drag artists: Heaven/Hellish Lee (@heaven_lee_court.hellish_lee) and Pandora’s Box Muncher (@pandorasboxmuncher), both on Instagram! They are both incredibly talented - please check out their work and give them some love :)

We hope to announce a few additional performers before the day of the con, so stay tuned!

If you’re an interested local performer: please feel free to reach out to us directly at activities@dashcontwo.com with a link to your website/social(s), a few example photos, and what sort of performance you’d like to give. Portfolios may contain 18+ content, but performances at DashCon 2 must be appropriate for ages 13+.

LVLUP Board Game Room

We’re happy to remind you all that DashCon 2 will have a board game room, kindly sponsored by LVLUP Games! A quick FYI: while they will be providing board games of all sorts, they will not be providing TTRPG materials, dice, or DMs, so you’ll have to BYOD (Bring Your Own Dice). There must be at least a few dice goblins in our audience who have collections to show off.

As always, you can find more information on our website or follow us on Substack!

[genderkoolaid]

Right now, the world of trans and nonbinary folks feels small—too small to push back against a system designed to isolate and conquer. The far-right’s divide-and-conquer strategy has long splintered marginalized groups, pulling friends and allies apart to weaken us. But this moment demands a reframing of the fight: this battle is not men versus women, or even male versus female. That war is last century’s story. The real gender binary today draws different battle lines—and opens the door to powerful resistance. The real gender binary pits “real manly men”—cisgender, heterosexual, white, Christian nationalist men—against everyone else. These men hoard power, demand deference, and gatekeep leadership while ensuring those outside their ranks fight over scraps. They dictate who gets to succeed, who gets to speak, and who gets to exist safely. Their patriarchy isn’t just about controlling women; it’s a more generalized sexism. It’s about controlling anyone who doesn’t conform to, or bow down to their idealized masculinity. They build walls, expel interlopers, and mock challengers from a pedestal of entitlement and fear. If this is the real gender binary—real manly men versus everyone else—then suddenly, trans and nonbinary people aren’t so small. We’re part of a massive coalition of “everyone else.” And within that realization lies the seed of resistance.

— The Real Gender Binary And the Path to Resistance by Kate Bornstein on substack

[thevirginwitch]

Peace & Tranquility Candle Spell

My life has been in absolute fucking turmoil lately, so I busted out the ol' spell supplies and crafted a super simple, reliable candle spell.

Materials:

Blue candle (or candle in a "calming" color) & something to light it with

Salt

Chamomile (tip: if you can't find loose chamomile at your local grocery store, cutting open chamomile tea bags works just as well)

Lavender

Bay leaf and a marker or pen

Optional: a tool to carve your candle

Instructions:

Pour salt into a mound on a heat-safe tray or dish. Flatten the mound by shaking the tray/dish around a bit. You want a solid circle of salt.

Taking your finger, make a crossroads or X in the salt.

Pour chamomile and lavender into the X - representing "making way" for peace and tranquility in your life.

Optional: You may carve your candle with calming sigils or runes, if you wish, and annoint it with anti-anxiety/calming oil as well.

Place your candle in the center of your salt.

Light your candle, and feel peaceful waves wash over you. Focus on the intention of carving a path for yourself to feel at peace.

You may now write an intention on your bay leaf. It could be something like "I find time to relax", "Peace will make its way to me", etc. Anything will work!

Carefully burn your bay leaf in the candle of your flame. I personally like to use a pair of tongs/tweezers to hold the bay leaf above the candle so I don't burn myself.

Allow the candle to burn out, and feel the stress wash away from your body.

As always, if you want to check out my longer/more in-depth contact, subscribe to my Substack! I also sell some fun, magical items on Etsy. <3

[timothysnyder]

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists.

I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.

For the full video, see my substack.

[weewookinard]

Imagine

Tommy helps the 118 saving Bathena and Buck has a crush™️ and the crush is bigger and bigger BUT Tommy is late for his shift so he never goes to Buck's loft and so no kiss and getting together.

But Tommy is friend with Eddie now and he's also retaking his spot in Chim's life, being invited to his wedding and spending more time with the 118 and Buck hates it but he is also always so eager to see him even though he doesn't understand why.

Turns out his first muay-thai lesson with Eddie and Tommy is an enlightenment, as well as the boner that grows when Tommy pins him on the mat. He blurts an excuse and run away.

His first action when he arrives at his place is opening Google and browsing through substacks and subreddit. After a few hours he decides to write a post titled "how do you know if a boner is caused by celibate and body proximiy or if you are just horny for your hot friend even though you are straight and he's a man?".

The post is soon to be popular, as well as reposted on twitter, Instagram, even facebook, and he panics a little but cannot talk about it to Maddie or Eddie or anyone else. He goes to delete it but his eyes are attracted by one of the new responses.

The reddit user is nice and tries to reassure him. Talks about his own experience with realizing he's gay, and how it was hard for him at first. He tells him about this man he has the biggest crush on even though he is straight, and they bond through pining and shared failures.

It takes Buck a few days before he goes to this user's account, and looks at his other posts to know more about him. The user is a man, he follows a few sports and health subreddits. He is mostly active on movies subreddits though and Buck finds his takes on romcom funny.

The more he looks at this man's publication the more he finds him endearing.

But then.

He discovers that his new friend moderates a subreddit about LAFD air operations in California and his heart stops. His last post is only from a few hours ago and it's a picture of a chopper. Tommy's chopper.

Fuck.

[queerprayers]

A prayer for trying to stay off the internet more

from Nadia Bolz-Weber on Substack

Almighty God,

Creator of all things, including all those Spring flowers that I haven’t spent enough time appreciating because I think for some reason that doom-scrolling is a better use of my time,

I’ve cut down some, but it doesn't seem to be enough, so I beseech thee to grant me the will to get off the internet more. You and I both know that the last thing I need is to watch another inane video, read another hot take, or buy any more shit I absolutely do not need.

In your infinite mercy, guide me away:

…from the virtual and into the actual

…from feared tomorrows into this only now

…from what I see on a screen to what I behold in my life

…from what I am manipulated to desire to what I am content to have.

When my “will power” fails me yet again, may the strength of your hand keep my own from mindlessly picking up my phone or opening my laptop.

Guide me to what is most real, because you know, O Lord, how unsuited my heart is for the artificial.

And finally, in your infinite mercy, forgive me for the hypocrisy of posting this online.

Amen.

[glowettee]

✧ some girls collect books like other people collect apologies ✧ | aria montgomery

you know that girl who always looks like she’s coming from a bookstore or a heartbreak? that’s aria montgomery. oversized sweater slipping off one shoulder. spiral notebook clutched like a secret. vintage ring that doesn’t match but still looks intentional. she’s the reason why half of us still romanticize rainy days and weird thrift store finds.

aria isn’t the dark academia girl who quotes aristotle or does latin translations for fun, she’s the one who writes poems in her margins during math class, the one who shows up to school wearing velvet in september, and the one who knows how to turn every trauma into a metaphor.

i wanted to talk about what makes her the ✧ dark dream girl ✧ of rosewood, and how you can borrow that energy for your own dark academia-coded study + lifestyle routine.

(i tried a very poetic approach to this post, if you wanna see more, go follow my substack)

✧ the emotional foundation: aestheticism as survival

aria doesn’t just like pretty things, she needs them. for girls like her, beauty is a shield. it’s the perfume you spray before crying. it’s the eyeliner you perfect after your trust is broken. aria uses art and literature the way some people use therapists: she confesses to her canvas, she bleeds into her journal.

she was never just “quirky.” she was trying to survive in the most beautiful way possible.

you don’t do it to impress anyone. you do it to stay soft in a world that keeps trying to roughen you up.

✧ your aria-inspired academic lifestyle

studying isn’t boring when it’s a little bit haunted.

dark academia isn’t only about reading old books. it’s about how you live when you believe everything could be meaningful.

♡ your study rituals:

light a candle before you open your books (yes, even during the day. bonus points if it’s sandalwood or “old library” scented)

romanticize writing essays by doing them in cursive first, or outlining in your favorite pen

create a spotify playlist with dark academia music

keep a book in your bag at all times. your goal is to look like you just escaped a literature class from 1885.

♡ your tools:

a notebook that feels like it’s holding secrets (leather-bound, moleskine, or something you DIY with pressed flowers and tape)

highlighters in muted tones: deep burgundy, antique rose, sage

sticky notes with lines from poems you don’t fully understand, but feel anyway

your favorite pen that feels like it glides across paper when you write something dramatic

✧ the aria montgomery wardrobe theory

aria never dressed for trends, she dressed like a plot twist. litterally. you don’t have to copy her exact looks (feather earrings are very 2012 and that’s okay), but you can channel her ✧ vibe ✧ with this updated formula i created:

🖤 wear textures that feel like stories:

velvet, lace, knit, wool, mesh

things that look like they belong in an old attic or a cursed boarding school

🖤 color palette:

oxblood, ink black, ash grey, cream, plum, antique gold

the kind of colors that make you look like you know how to read tarot and annotate your syllabus

🖤 silhouette:

long coats, ankle boots, chunky scarves, asymmetrical hemlines

anything that gives “i’m on my way to find answers in the rain”

🖤 accessories:

rings on every other finger

book earrings, tiny lockets, vintage glasses

always wear something slightly off, a detail that makes people pause

✧ soft-spoken girls with sharp minds

aria’s quietness isn’t passive. it’s calculated. she observes everything. she remembers everything. and she hides her strength in softness.

when you adopt her mindset, your silence becomes strategy. your softness becomes unsettling. be the mystery and the solution. be the girl who reads you like a book, but won’t even dog-ear the page.

✧ making your life a literary masterpiece

aria montgomery’s entire vibe is living like she’s the main character in a half-sad, half-beautiful novel.

🕯 journal like it’s your only witness

don’t just “take notes.” write diary entries. write how your teacher’s voice sounded like static today. how you saw a bird and thought about someone who doesn’t call anymore.

don’t just do to-do lists. write manifestos.

“today i will be quiet but terrifying. i will get an A and feel nothing. i will smile like i know something they don’t.”

🎞 document everything

take pictures of your desk at golden hour

scan your coffee cup stains and call it “visual poetry”

make your notes beautiful. pretend someone will find them 100 years from now.

🖋 write poetry like it’s a weapon

start with a feeling. disguise it with metaphors.

every time someone makes you feel like nothing, write something beautiful to prove them wrong.

✧ mindy’s personal tips on ariafying your life

💌 keep one book that feels like your personality. reread it every year. 📚 annotate your textbooks like they’re love letters. 🖼 print out art that makes you feel too much and tape it near your desk. 🎭 give every outfit a backstory: “this is what i wore to break someone’s heart in an old bookstore.” 🕯 whisper poetry in the mirror when you don’t feel pretty.

✧ parting thoughts

aria montgomery was never just “the artsy girl.” she was an entire ✧ emotional atmosphere ✧. and if you’ve ever felt too sensitive, too strange, too poetic for this world... you’re not alone. you’re pll-coded. you’re aria-coded. and that makes you dangerous in the most beautiful way.

you don’t have to collect apologies. you can collect books. collect outfits. collect love letters to yourself. and most importantly, collect proof that you felt everything and survived anyway.

i hope you all love this poetic approach, an interest of mine is to study poetry and i wanted to give a more poetic writing style for this, i love this pll series so much and i hope you all do too.

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

✨ i started a writing advice newsletter (substack crew assemble)

hi. hello. writer friends, mutuals, lurkers, and people who’ve reblogged a post at 2am with “me fr” in the tags,

i started a Substack newsletter ✨ and you should totally subscribe to it.

💌 The Write Edvice Newsletter ← click that, it’s free and friendly and it will make your WIP feel seen

what it is:

a cozy longform writing advice zone where i go full “write tutor bestie who won’t let you write another flat scene ever again” mode.

if you like:

deep dives on story structure, character arcs, and pacing

very specific scene writing advice (like “here’s how to fix a bad chapter opening” specific)

craft posts that are low on fluff and high on examples

and occasional yelling about villain motives and prose rhythm

then you will probably like this newsletter.

why i made it:

tumblr is great (we love it here), but sometimes i wanna write longer, slower, nerdier stuff without the formatting eating itself or the reblog cycle burying it.

the newsletter lets me:

answer your writing questions in more depth

post walkthroughs and breakdowns that are too long for tumblr

give bonus resources + scene-level prompts

make a cool little archive of craft advice that doesn’t disappear into the void

what you get:

a new issue every other week (ish)

first dibs on ask replies & topic votes

sneak peeks of upcoming resources

me, yelling gently, in your inbox

if you vibe with:

✍️ character psychology ✍️ fixing plot holes ✍️ making your prose not suck ✍️ writing even when you’re tired and mad at your WIP

then i’d love to see you over there.

🔗 Subscribe here - it’s free, chill, and packed with actual writing help, not just vibes.

let’s be newsletter mutuals 💌

-Rin T.

[mariacallous]

A short note here on what I’m covering and why. The political changes we’re seeing across the world are underpinned by technological ones that are now accelerating. For more than a decade, I’ve been trying to investigate and expose these forces. Since 2016 that’s included following a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica and the revelation of a profound threat exploit at the heart of our democracies. But what’s happening now in the US is a paradigm shift: this is Broligarchy, a concept I coined last summer when I warned that what we were seeing was the proposed merger of Silicon Valley with state power. That has now happened. Writing about this from the UK, it’s clear we have a choice: we help lead the fight back against it. Or it comes for us next. Please share this with family and friends if you feel it’s of value. Thank you, as ever, Carole

Let me say this more clearly: what is happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup.

This is an information war and this is what a coup now looks like.

Musk didn’t need a tank, guns, soldiers. He had a small crack cyber unit that he sent into the Treasury department last weekend. He now has unknown quantities of the entire US nation’s most sensitive data and potential backdoors into the system going forward. Treasury officials denied that he had access but it then turned out that he did. If it ended there, it would be catastrophic. But that unit - whose personnel include a 19-year-old called “Big Balls” - is now raiding and scorching the federal government, department by department, scraping its digital assets, stealing its data, taking control of the code and blowing up its administrative apparatus as it goes.

This is what an unlawful attack on democracy in the digital age looks like. It didn’t take armed men, just Musk’s taskforce of boy-men who may be dweebs and nerds but all the better to plunder the country’s digital resources. This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States’ most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.

In 2019, I appeared in a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. That’s a good place to start to understand what is going on now, but it wasn’t the great hack. It was among the first wave of major tech exploits of global elections. It was an exemplar of what was possible: the theft and weaponization of 87 million people’s personal data. But this now is the Great Hack. This week is when the operating system of the US was wrenched open and is now controlled by a private citizen under the protection of the President.

If you think I’ve completely lost it, please be advised that I’m far from alone in saying this. The small pools of light in the darkness of this week has been stumbling across individual commentators saying this for the last week. Just because these words are not on the front page in banner headlines of any newspaper doesn’t mean this isn’t not happening. It is.

In fact, there has been relentless, assiduous, detailed reporting in all outlets across America. There are journalists who aren’t eating or sleeping and doing amazing work tracking what’s happening. There is fact after fact after fact about Musk’s illegal pillaging of the federal government. But news organisation leaders are either falling for the distraction story - the most obviously insane one this week being rebuilding Gaza as a luxury resort, a story that dominated headlines and political oxygen for days. Or…what? Being unable to actually believe that this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like? Being unsure of whether you put the headline about the illegal coup d’etat next to a spring season fashion report? Above or below the round-up of best rice cookers? The fact is the front pages look like it’s business as normal when it’s anything but.

This was Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Tuesday. She’s a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University and she said this even before some of this week’s most extreme events had taken place. (A transcript of the rest of her words here.)

“It’s very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it's only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that's unusual. I don't have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I'm a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we're in a real emergency situation for our democracy.”

A day later, this was Tim Snyder, Yale, a Yale professor and another great historian of authoritarianism, here: “Of course it’s a coup.”

History was made this week and while reporters are doing incredible work, to understand it our guides are historians, those who’ve lived in authoritarian states and Silicon Valley watchers. They are saying it. What I’ve learned from investigating and reporting on Silicon Valley’s system-level hack of our democracy for eight long years and seeing up close the breathtaking impunity and entitlement of the men who control these companies is that they break laws and they get away with it. And then lie about it afterwards. That’s the model here.

Everything that I’ve ever warned about is happening now. This is it. It’s just happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

It’s not that what’s happening is simply unlawful. This is what David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School told the Washington Post.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

And he’s right. The system can’t and isn’t. Legal challenges are being made and even upheld but there’s no guarantee or even sign that Musk is going to honour them. That’s one of the most chilling points my friend, Mark Bergman, made to me over the weekend.

Last week, I included a voice note from my friend, tech investor turned tech campaigner, Roger McNamee, so you could hear direct from an expert about the latest developments in AI. This week I’ve asked Mark to do the honours.

He’s a lawyer, Washington political insider, and since last summer, he’s been participating in ‘War Game’ exercises with Defense Department officials, three-star generals, former Cabinet Secretaries and governors. In five exercises involving 175 people, they situation-tested possible scenarios of a Trump win. But they didn’t see this. It’s even worse than they feared.

“Those challenges have been in respect of shutting down agencies, firing federal employees and engaging in the most egregious hack of government. It all at the hand hands of DOGE, Musk and his band of tech engineers. DC right now is shell-shocked. It is a government town, USA, ID, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, no federal agency will be spared the revenge and retribution tours in full swing, and huge numbers have been put on administrative leave, reassigned or fired, and the private sector is as much at risk, particularly NGOs and civil society organizations. The more high-profile violate the law, which is why the courts have been quick to enjoin actions. “So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical. We said the institutions held in 2020 but behind institutions or people, and the extent to which all manner of power structures have preemptively obeyed is hugely worrying. There are legions ready to carry out the Trump agenda. The question is, will the rule of law hold?”

Last Tuesday, Musk tried to lay off the entire CIA. That’s the government body with the slogan ‘We are the nation’s first line of defense’. Every single employee has been offered an unlawful ‘buyout’ - what we call redundancy in the UK - or what 200 former employees - spies - have said is blatant attempt to rebuild it as a political enforcement unit. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports that new appointees are being presented with “loyalty tests”.

Musk’s troops - because that’s what they are, mercenaries - are acting in criminal, unlawful, unconstitutional ways. Organisations are acting quickly, taking lawsuits, and for now the courts are holding. But the key essential question is whether their rulings can be enforced with a political weaponized Department of Justice and FBI. What Mark Bergman told me (and is in the extended note below) is that they’ve known since the summer that there would be almost no way of pushing back against Trump. This politicisation of all branches of law enforcement creates a vacuum at the heart of the state. As he says in that note, the ramifications of this are little understood outside the people inside Washington who study this for a living.

And at least some of what DOGE is doing can never be undone. Musk, a private citizen, now has vast clouds of citizens’ data, their personal information and it seems likely, classified material. When data is out there, it’s out there. That genie can never be put back into the bottle.

Itt’s what it’s possible to do with that data, that the real nightmare begins. What machine learning algorithms and highly personalised targeting can do. It’s a digital coup. An information coup. And we have to understand what that means. Our fleshy bodies still inhabit earthly spaces but we are all, also, digital beings too. We live in a hybrid reality. And for more than a decade we have been targets of hybrid warfare, waged by hostile nation states whose methodology has been aped and used against us by political parties in a series of disrupted elections marked by illegal behaviour and a lack of any enforcement. But this now takes it to the next level.

It facilitates a concentration of wealth and power - because data is power - of a kind the world has never seen before.

Facebook’s actual corporate motto until 2014 taken from words Mark Zuckerberg spoke was “Move fast and break things”. That phrase has passed into commonplace: we know it, we quote it, we also fail to understand what that means. It means: act illegally and get away with it.

And that is the history of Silicon Valley. Its development and cancerous growth is marked by series of larcenous acts each more grotesque than the last. And Musk’s career is an exemplar of that, a career that has involved rampant criminality, gross invasions of privacy, stock market manipulation. And lies. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently suing Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stock before he bought Twitter. The biggest mistake right now is to believe anything he says.

Every time, these companies have broken the law, they have simply gotten away with it. I know I’m repeating this, but it’s central to understanding both the mindset and what’s happening on the ground. And no-one exemplifies that more than Musk. The worst that has happened to him is a fine. A slap on the wrist. An insignificant line on a balance sheet. The “cost of doing business”.

On Friday, Robert Reich, the former United States Secretary of Labor, who’s been an essential voice this week, told the readers of his Substack to act now and call their representatives.

“Friends, we are in a national emergency. This is a coup d’etat. Elon Musk was never authorized by Congress to do anything that he’s doing, he was never even confirmed by Congress, his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was never authorized by Congress. Your representatives, your senators and Congressmen have never given him authority to do what he is doing, to take over government departments, to take over entire government agencies, to take over government payments system itself to determine for himself what is an appropriate payment. To arrogate to himself the authority to have your social security number, your private information? Please. Listen, call Congress now.”

It’s a coup

I found myself completely poleaxed on Wednesday. I read this piece on the New York Times website first thing in the morning, a thorough and alarming analysis of headlined “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab”. It quoted Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University, “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.” It was displayed prominently on the front page of the New York Times but it was also just one piece among many, a small weak signal amid the overpowering noise.

There’s another word for an “Executive Power Grab”, it’s a coup. And newspapers need to actually write that in big black letters on their front pages and tell their tired, busy, overwhelmed, distracted, scared readers what is happening. That none of this is “business as usual.”

Over on the Guardian’s UK website on Wednesday, there was not a single mention on the front page of what was happening. Trump’s Gaza spectacular diversion strategy drowned out its quotient of American news. We just weren’t seeing what’s happening in the seat of government of our closest ally. As a private citizen mounted a takeover of the cornerstone superpower of the international rules-based order, our crucial NATO ally, our biggest single trading partner, the UK government didn’t even apparently notice.

The downstream potential international consequences of what is happening in America are profound and terrifying. That our government and much of the media is asleep at the wheel is a reason to be more not less terrified. Musk has made his intentions towards our democracy and national security quite clear. What he hasn’t yet had is the backing of the US state. That is shortly going to change. One of the first major stand-offs will be UK and EU tech regulation. I hope I’m wrong but it seems pretty obvious that’s what Musk’s Starmer-aimed tweets are all about. There seems no world in which the EU and the UK aren’t headed for the mother of all trade wars.

And that’s before we even consider the national security ramifications. The prime minister should be convening Cobra now. The Five Eyes - the intelligence sharing network of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada - is already likely breached. Trump is going to do individual deals with all major trading partners that’s going to involve preposterous but real threats, including likely dangling the US’s membership of NATO over our heads all while Russia watches, waits and knows that we’ve done almost nothing to prepare. Plans to increase our defence spending have been made but not yet implemented. Our intelligence agencies do understand the precipice we’re on but there’s no indication the government is paying any attention to them. The risks are profound. The international order as we know it is collapsing in real time.

It’s a coup

We all know that the the first thing that happens when a dictator seizes power is that he (it’s always a he) takes control of the radio station. Musk did that months ago. It wasn’t that Elon Musk buying Twitter pre-ordained what is now happening but it made it possible. And it was the moment, minutes after Trump was shot and he went full-in on his campaign that signalled the first shot fired in his digital takeover.

It’s both a mass propaganda machine and also the equivalent of an information drone with a deadly payload. It’s a weapon that’s already been turned on journalists and news organisations this week. There’s much more to come.

On Friday, Musk started following Wikileaks on Twitter. Hours later, twisted, weaponized leaks from USAID began.

This is going to get so much worse. Musk and MAGA will see this as the opening of the Stasi archive. It’s not. It’s rocketfuel for a witchhunt. It’s hybrid warfare against the enemies of the state. It’s going to be ugly and cruel and its targets are going to need help and support. Hands across the water to my friends at OCCRP, the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative journalism organisation that uncovers transnational crime, that’s been in Musk’s sights this weekend, one of hundreds of media organisations around the world whose funding has been slashed overnight.

It’s a coup

By now you may feel scared and helpless. It’s how I felt this week. I had the same sick feeling I had watching UK political coverage before the pandemic. The government was just going to ignore the wave of deaths rippling from China to Italy and pretend it wasn’t happening? Really? That’s the plan?

This is another pandemic. Or a Chernobyl. It’s a bomb at the heart of the international order whose toxic fallout is going to inevitably drift our way.

My internal alarm bell, a sense of urgency and anxiety goes even further back. To early 2017, when I uncovered information about Cambridge Analytica’s illegal hack of data from Facebook while the company’s VP, Steve Bannon, was then on the National Security Council. That concept of highly personalised data in the control of a ruthless and political operator was what tripped my emergency wires. That is a reality now.

The point is that the shock and awe is meant to make us feel helpless. So I’m telling a bit of my own personal story here. Because part of what temporarily paralyzed me last week was that this is all happening while my own small corner of the mainstream media is collapsing in on itself too. The event that I’ve spent the last eight years warning about has come to pass and in a month, 100+ of my colleagues at the Guardian will be out of the door and my employment will be terminated. I will no longer have the platform of the news organisation where I’ve done my entire body of work to date and was able to communicate to a global audience.

But then, it’s all connected. We are living through an information crisis. It’s what underpins everything. In some ways, this happening now is not surprising at all. Moreover, many of the people who I see as essential voices during this crisis (including those above) are doing that effectively and independently from Substack as I will try to continue to do.

And, the key thing that the last eight years has given me is information. The lawsuit I fought for four years as a result of doing this work very almost floored me. But it didn’t. And I’ve learned essential skills during those years. It was part of what powered me to fight for the rights of Guardian journalists during our strike this December.

The next fightback against Musk and the Broligarchy has to draw from the long, long fight for workers rights which in turn influenced the fight for civil rights that must now power us on as we face the great unknown. What comes next has to be a fight for our data rights, our human rights.

This was former Guardian journalist Gary Younge on our picket line and I’ve thought about these words a lot. You have to fight even if you won’t necessarily win. Power is almost never given up freely.

If you value any of this and want me to be able to continue, I’d be really grateful if you signed up, free, or even better, paid subscription. And I’d also urge you to sign up also for the Citizen Dispatch, that’s the newsletter from the non-profit I founded that campaigns around these issues. There is much more it can and needs to do.

[bluecatwriter]

One of the theological bloggers I follow on Substack opened her post with the quote “But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more strong together" and I was like ABRAHAM VAN HELSING???

(She's reading Dracula but that had nothing to do with the post. Still, every time I encounter a Dracula quote outside of Tumblr I feel like my world has gotten bigger.)

[dashcon-two]

Vendor Applications Open Now!!

Reminder to everyone that DashCon 2’s vendor applications are now open! Please fill out this form (https://forms.gle/tyNPA6AJv2xiJ8ko7) if you’re interested.

Artist Alley/Vendor's Hall (Dealer's Hall) is a space for independent artisans who create print media, handmade crafts, or other merchandise. There are 65 available booths. Each booth is a 6'x3' space, with a 6'x2' table and up to 2 chairs available. Each booth will cost $135.60 CAD ($120+ 13% HST), but discounts will be available for Black and Indigenous Vendors. Booths include admission for one artist. For more details please see the Dealer's Hall page on our website.

Applications will be open until all of our slots are filled. Booths will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, except if we receive an extraordinary number of applications. In this case, a lottery system will be used to assign booths. In this case, our team may take up to 4 weeks to process your application.

A reminder that panel applications will open on February 10th at 9 AM EST, and tickets to DashCon 2 will be available on February 22nd, 9 AM EST.

As always, you can find more at www.dashcontwo.com, or subscribe to our mailing list over on substack!

[see-arcane]

As the Count says, we are only one measly month away from getting to hear from our good friend Jonathan Harker once again. Since the initial Dracula Daily boom on here two years ago, there've been heaps of Dracula-inspired creative works blossoming among its fans. I recently popped out a little book in the aftermath and I've been swooning over a number of amazing comics and Substacks spurred on by the undead renaissance. But I'm sure I've missed several more.

So consider this an open call for everyone's recommendations for storytelling creations that were sparked by Dracula Daily and/or the incredible addition of @re-dracula. I want to make a mega post of the whole list for perusal before we dive back into Dracula Season itself. Ideally I'd like to put everything together with a week or two left of April so folks can read through as a little preliminary fun right as the Horrors kick in.

Please feel free to add recs in the replies or an Inbox ask!

[shannonpurdyjones]

Short sample clip because Tumblr is being a butt and refusing to upload the full video without crashing (hellsite my beloved and beloathed)

Here's the link if you want to see the full in-hand spinning demo video with captions (you don't have to subscribe or download anything to watch...I mean it's lovely for me if you do subscribe obviously, but don't let Substack bully you. It's a link. You can open it with no strings, no matter what they say lol.)

More about the textile history inspiration behind my historical fantasy novel Wyrd Weaving below the cut!

When I first conceived of the idea that is now becoming Wyrd Weaving, an historical fantasy novel set between Northumbria and Svealand in the tumultuous early 9th century, I only knew two things for certain. I knew I wanted to write a story centering the lives of women, queer people, and gender-nonconforming people in the 800s. So often stories set in the “Viking Age” center only the pursuits of men (wealthy men especially), and I wanted to dig for what other stories were buried there, waiting to be told. I also knew without doubt that fiber arts would somehow comprise a significant portion of the story’s magical realism elements.

I’ve knitted since my late teens, and have harbored and interest in all sorts of fiber arts for even longer than that. When I decided to get serious about writing a story centering the lives of medieval women (in Europe primarily, though several other unique period cultures factor into the story as well), I knew I had to do a deep dive into historical spinning and weaving. Women at all levels of society spent more time on aspects of cloth production than any other chore during this period, yet arts like spinning and weaving are almost never shown in novels, movies, or TV set in the early Middle Ages.

That wasn’t going to fly for Wyrd Weaving, a story inspired by the countless forgotten fiber artists who quite literally wove the history of our society. This first short video about my (mis)adventures in historical textile research gives you a glimpse at how and why I learned in-hand or “twiddle” spinning, the style of spinning prominent in early 9th century northern Europe. Enjoy!