wizardlybullshit - Tumblr blog

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Meanwhile in France:

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Biden Administration’s report on Israel’s wartime conduct will be suspended indefinitely

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LESS THAN 2 HOURS AGO: in chicago, outside of the labor notes conference there was a solidarity rally for palestine, and some protesters were arrested. the crowd, mostly made up of union members and organizers, SUCCESSFULLY DEARRESTED PEOPLE! i highly recommend looking at the entire twitter thread this is from. mel documented the dearrest as it unfolded over the course of about 40 minutes.

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Possibly my new favorite pictures

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I'm sorry, it could

FUCKING WHAT????

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Build an affinity group. An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. Affinity groups generally consist of like minded people who come together to get something done. If you already have an affinity group, link and cluster those groups!

Skill up. Delinking from capitalism and colonial apparatuses requires us to learn how to do things for ourselves and each other beyond buying, selling, working, or asking the state to help us. From self and collective defense, to gardening, building bikes, unschooling, and caring for each other- we can learn a skill and share a skill. We can change how we value skills and dismantle hierarchies of class and ableism.

Establish and practice good security culture. Security culture is necessary to survive state repression. We can stop a lot of infiltration and disinformation in its tracks by improving our ways of communicating and navigating conflict. We can still be horizontal and transparent without sacrificing security and safety.

Practice transformative and restorative justice. Strong communities make police and prisons obsolete. We can change our culture to prevent violence and abuse. We can build up our capacities to confront and resolve conflicts. We can strengthen our ties and detoxify our relationships so harm has no space to grow in our communities.

Mutual Aid. Start a mutual aid group and provide necessary support to those who are in need. Mutual aid organizing can ensure our communities are not dependent on corporations and the state. Shift your use of resources to things you can grow and make or procure from others in resistance. Build networks of aid and resources beyond capitalism.

Mutual defense. From arms training to street tactics to bystander interventions and safety teams, we need to have the skills and resources to defend our communities from fascist attacks on our people, non-human beings, and lands.

Build and sustain conflict infrastructure. Conflict Infrastructure is any structure we organize helps us be more effective in our fights. This is infrastructure that goes beyond solely providing awareness and services and instead builds our capacity to wage actual resistance. From community gardens and collectively coordinated farms to infoshops and independent media/communications.

Open squats for unsheltered folx. Rent is theft. Private property is colonial violence upon the land. Abolish rent and private property. Rematriate lands to original caretakers. Create spaces to live beyond landlords.

Defend and reclaim ancestral lands. Because #landback means ending colonial occupation and restoring Indigenous stewardship of our ancestral lands. Regenerate our sacred relations, and all that entails spiritually and materially, with our original homelands. Liberate the sacred.

Reparations. Seize what has been stolen from Black and Indigenous Peoples and liberate it back.  Radical redistribution is necessary.

Shut shit down. Intervene in critical infrastructure at the points where capitalism and colonialism are at their most vulnerable. Seize the streets, factories, ports, fracking pads, pipelines, power stations, smash the borders, be smart and be creative! It’s also an effective way to target those industries perpetuating climate change.

Be fiercely intersectional. ‘Cause we’re not taking those old shitty behaviors with us. Fuck anti-blackness, fuck orientalism, fuck islamaphobia, fuck anti-semitism, fuck transphobia, fuck heteropatriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck imperialism, fuck ableism, fuck hierarchy, fuck racism, fuck citizenship, fuck privilege, fuck everything fucked up!

Practice Radical Self & Collective Care. To remain dangerous to power we must care for ourselves and each other. Learn common triggers and how to communicate without being fucked up. Learn to communicate your needs, boundaries, and wants effectively and nontoxicly – remember that folks in the struggle and resistance have the hardest time accessing resources for mental and spiritual care. Movement work can be unsustainable to those with many experiences of settler policing and violence triggers – find ways to communicate and negotiate group norms and boundaries that accommodate peoples’ needs if reasonable. Identify toxic communication patterns and learn / create ways to dismantle them and communicate in more healthy and less harmful ways.Be honest about your limitations and care for yourself and each other. The christianized, capitalized colonial state has taught us to never rest or heal. Reject any attempts at coercing people to go beyond their limits. Radical self-care keeps us safe and invulnerable when consistently engaging in agitating governability by the state.

Make everything accessible for everyone. Reject ableism and objectification of our bodies and lives, establish community care networks with people equipped to provide first aid and care support to a full spectrum of needs. Challenge ableism in our language, how we organize, and how we value each other. We are all enough.

Abolish Rape Culture. Study rape and rape culture and how it relates to the desecration of sacred lands. Transform our culture and practices around dating, humor, relationships, sexuality, consent, parties, sex labor, and play to abolish rape culture. Hold mactivists, rapists, abusers, opportunists, and creeps accountable. Center consent and healthy relationships in everything we do everywhere.

Spread radical and militant joy. We can fuck shit up while we dance, sing, party, laugh, play, wonder, have deep conversations, tell stories, make art, make love, make magic, make brilliance, make awesomeness, and have fun.

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How the Geneva Drive (the mechanical step that makes the second hand on a clock work by turning constant rotation into intermittent motion) works.

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It’s called a lance… hello?

>more spice<

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not that either is a good thing but there is a small cosmic sort of irony to appreciate in the way that the russian invasion of ukraine and the most recent nakba happened so close together and how they through comparison made it undeniably clear how much the definition of war crime and genocide and atrocity &etc depends on the geopolitical interests of the imperial core

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Old Cairo 🕌

By me @un-known97

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I tried wax play with one of my partners for the first time and the pictures were too pretty not to share

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im a normal human woman and i spend a normal amount of time each day looking at the USGS topographical map of mars

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there have been 774664 studies on basic income and the results of every single one have been “wow! we gave people money and literally everything improved! crime rates are down! the actual sky is bluer! my (the researcher’s) wife decided not to leave me after all!” but these have all been short studies, just a couple years. i think what’s really missing from the field is a proper long form study, with a broader, bolder demographic, to really get us those numbers we need. a truly diverse study pool like, say, everyone. forever

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Mint Plays Games: The Wildsea

I spent the month of April (and a little bit of May) playing a game of The Wildsea as part of our Planedawn Orphans meta-campaign series. The Wildsea is the brainchild of Felix Isaacs, and published under Myth-Works, and it’s had such a successful crowdfunding experience that it’s got a number of special scenarios, expansions and game accessories for the dedicated collector. I have access to the original game, as well as the Storm & Root expansion, but most of what we used was just from the original game.

The Wildsea was chosen to represent the “Earth” element from the checklist in Planedawn Orphans, this time targeting a relic titled “The Titan’s Throne.” Once again, we had a few folks who signed up to play as their Planedawn Orphans characters, and a few people who just signed up to play The Wildsea.

Once again, the setting and character creation was very very fun, and in this case, I think it might have been my favourite part of the game, especially when we got to ship creation. I’ve often referenced Forged in the Dark games as a cornerstone for The Wildsea in the past, but the character and ship creation process is, in my opinion, much more time-intensive than many other typical Forged in the Dark games. When you sit down to make a ship, each player has a number of stakes they can spend to ensure that the ship has a component or two that they really want. Our crew decided to build our ship out of the body of a giant lamprey eel, covered with copper scales and complete with a lightning spear built into the tail. We all agreed it would likely be horrifying to look at; and we embraced that horror whole-heartedly.

The rules are very similar to Forged in the Dark, with the added mechanic of a Twist, which makes the generally larger dice pool more interesting; roll two of any number and apart from success or failure, you’re going to have something else interesting happened. However, I feel like the twist mechanic kind of threw my play group off their rhythm, since the narrative kind of had to stop in order to give them time to think of something that they could add to the narrative. This might just be a table issue, as some groups of players might be jumping to add details to the narrative, while others might be more used to looking to the Game Master for guidance.

The game has a lot of interesting set pieces and hints of lore built into its setting, but there’s more prep that I think might be required than I originally thought. There were moments where the freedom of the setting led players down paths that I hadn’t anticipated, and I had to quickly invent NPC’s and setting descriptions that I wasn’t prepared for. I’ve heard about this kind of problem described before about the family of improv-heavy games, of which PbtA and FitD are definitely members, but this was the first time that my sparse notes in terms of locations and NPCs felt like they really bit me in the behind.

Overall my experience with Wildsea was a bit more stilted than I would have liked, but I don’t think I need to lay all of our problems at the game’s feet. Our game group had a big lull in between sessions, and we had to meet in a format that meant that communication was sometimes slowed down or difficult. I definitely want to give this game another go in the future, hopefully with a group that can all meet in the same place, and hopefully with less gaps in between sessions. The biggest takeaway that I have from this game is that Game Masters should definitely look through all of their players’ character sheets and take note of what each character is geared up for and what the players have indicated is interesting to their character arc, because I think the game will connect with your players more if you have designed threats or set-pieces that speak to those abilities.

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“Why should rich people pay more” because fuck ‘em

“So you are okay for paying more when you have money” I am not excluded from ‘fuck ‘em’ when relevant