little grass is smiling slightly

Logged on bc I realized that an icon that traveled over with me from LJ was in need of deleting... and found that I now have a paid account!

That was a very kind and happy-making thing to do, whoever you are :) ♥

Years, I've been seeing Fischer represented as an independent journalist who just happens to embed with nazis who welcome him to their planning sessions and parties because they are just that goshdarn friendly. Never understood how this bull has stood. Here's a thread collating documentation of some of his personal ties with the far right, which he's not even done much of a job of hiding. If you see his name or videos know that he frames himself as a disinterested third party specifically to put the fash in the best light — and it works.

Twitter thread*
https://nitter.net/heresysquad/status/1429990675097952268

On one page (requires embedding from twitter)
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1429877058730020866.html


*via no javascript, privacy focused front end nitter; replace the domain with twitter's and the url will get you the same content

Someone gave me a year-long paid account yesterday, an incredibly generous gift. Thank you so much, whoever you are.

Today's source of hope with CW for the world we live in being as it is: Pirate Care Syllabus, an ongoing, collaborative consideration of illicit and illegal mutual aid

Care, a political notion

Caring is not intrinsically “nice”, it always involve power relations. Processes of discipline, exclusion and harm can operate inside the matrix of care.

Care labour holds the capacity to disobey power and increase our collective freedom. This is why when it is organised in capitalist, patriarchal and racist ways, it does not work for most living beings. We are in a global crisis of care.

There are no wrong people. Yet, caring for the “wrong” people is more and more socially discouraged, made difficult and criminalized. For many, the crisis of care has been there for a very long time.

Caring is labour. it is necessary and it is skilled labour.

Care labour is shared unfairly and violently in most societies, along lines of gender, provenance, race, class, ability, and age. Some are forced to care, while some defend their privilege of expecting service. This has to change.

Caring labour needs full access to resources, knowledge, tools and technologies. When these are taken away, we must claim them back.

A vision of a non-hell future, CW for starting from where we are:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m8YACFJlMg

I've been checking in to fandom_checkin for a couple of weeks now and found it a steadying practice when doing more poorly, as well as an opportunity to say a few words when someone may just need to hear a voice or two respond, in conversation or concern. Below is the introductory post. If you join and subscribe you'll see the daily post and perhaps a post detailing when and how a member could use some additional help.

We're in hard times, no denying it. And we, on Dreamwidth, are also a community that cares about one another. In times of trouble, it's important to stay in touch. It helps all of us to know that each of us is well, and who may need help.

Every 24 hours, we’ll put up a new check-in poll. All you have to do is click two buttons once a day or so, and your friends will be able to tell how you’re doing, even if you don’t have the time or energy for anything else.

If days and days go by without you checking in, someone will try to get hold of you by a different means, especially if you’ve indicated that you’re on your own. DM one of the mods ([personal profile] twistedchick and [personal profile] mecurtin), or one of your closest friends, if your situation is particularly precarious and you want an alert to go out sooner.

Chat in the comments about what's going on and how you’re doing, as much or as little as you want to share, and if there is something anyone can do to help besides listen. Nothing has to be on-topic.

We don't want anyone to be lost, or drift away. All of us are important. We matter … you matter.

I'll note that though I recognize some of the names involved, I wouldn't anticipate folks there to view me as a "friend" and per the tenor of the discussion I don't think preexisting relationships are necessary or predominant.

1. Visible World

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.

Richard Siken, Crush, 2005


2. Two explicit m/m fics from elijah_was_a_prophet:

whatever you run from you end up chasing
Fandom: IGOR - Tyler the Creator (Album); Note author's warnings
Cast:

Tyler Chukwuemeka- A second year med student who still works with his boyfriend.

Christophe Georges- A horror movie director who still works with his ex


artificial bloom, hydroponic skin
Fandom: Star Trek TNG, Data/Geordi La Forge
There was no need to pretend to be flesh when it was just the two of them.

I started out, long ago, in SFF fandom and I've spent a lot more time lurking File770 than in transformative fandom over the last five years. In light of that, and the latest kerfuffle, let me signal boost this GIP post from china_shop

https://china-shop.dreamwidth.org/1141076.html



I am proud to accept my portion of the Hugo for my smut, extracted and posted to AO3 from that longfic that never got finished, and for receiving and bestowing kudos in the 2018 award evaluation period.

I'd also like to pass along this rec mentioned offhandedly* in the very-much-not-recommended ongoing File770 wank: Freeport by Maldoror_Chant. I know nothing about Gundam Wing (pairing Chang Wufei/Duo Maxwell) but this 220k+ word space-station-based exploration of piratical anarchist community survival vs narrow justice via loopholes in a lawnorder oligarchical state is violently humorous, inventive, and entertaining storytelling. (You decide just exactly what the author meant to imply by assignment of sector names!) Low on smut and romance (both the interpersonal and political kinds) although I've only mostly finished it. *I'm sorry: I don't recall the reccer and am unwilling to wade through again to find it. There wasn't a link or full cite but enough information to get there by search; I'm grateful for it :)

ETA: For yer quicker fix needs, C/D and S&M by Anonymous, a PWP from the Hugo Wank 2019 collection, featuring cease and desist.

Last night a friend showed me some "homoerotic* cowboy-hustler pop" he'd fallen in love with and it was good. He described it, sonically, as the child of Roy Orbison and Chris Isaak.

It's here at bandcamp, three songs so far: https://orvillepeck.bandcamp.com/album/pony



The two with videos (Big Sky and Dead of Night) are the best IMHO but I haven't truly considered the lyrics yet. The full album is out in a few days, on subpop.

( Also at youtube )

* As in queer sex-workers unite in an unabashed ranch-lingerie / Vegas-stripper fringed ranger aesthetic.

I typed up a couple of other people's tweet threads that are in response to the administration's proposal to replace food-only dollars available via a personal debit card with a box of canned and boxed food distributed somehow by the States. They are trying to sell it by comparing it to an unsuccessful high end meal-kit delivery service. One assumes that somewhere in here privatisation and lucrative contracts with no oversight are on offer (see also the corporate leftovers that were delivered to Puerto Rico as nourishing "meals".) This is awful in all the ways, obviously, including the fact that many people won't be able to pick up/receive, store, prepare, and/or digest a given allotment, even if the needed distribution infrastructure magically pops up and works smoothly. (It won't.)

Apologies for any typos or errors. Note that the threads here are no doubt a tiny part of the discussion regarding this bullshit. My selection process was: saw them before dawn this morning, when trawling twitter, thought they made good points. I've encountered a lot of real iffy perceptions of life on food stamps (or TANF or whatever) in the last year by people who consider themselves liberals or progressives and not everyone is on Twitter, so.

@ddale8

Shocking anti-hunger advocates, the Trump admin is proposing to replace half of food stamp money with a box of government selected food they'd deliver monthly. They'd call it a "Harvest Box" even though it wouldn't include anything fresh.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/12/food-stamps-trump-administration-343245


From twitter user @hugwins:

So as someone who's covered monthly food budgets with food stamps let me break a few things down for you b/c a lot of people haven't. Food stamps are incredibly limited. What I had to work with was a bit over $100. No hot food. No prepared food. So even though rotisserie chickens are pretty similar in price to raw roaster chickens, they're off limits.

And of course, it's *just* food — not anything you'd need to buy at a grocery store in general. To quote Em, "goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers." So no toilet paper, no diapers, no toothpaste, no shampoo. Shit you absolutely do need and can't effectively get by without. So food stamps as is are already lacking.

And meal boxes selected by a govt agency? Look. People know how to cook what they know how to cook. And they know what their families will and won't eat (try convincing a toddler that the govt is making them eat a certain diet and actually getting the kid to eat it.) And they know what people in their family are allergic to or have dietary restrictions for. From the source of things in this article, that hasn't been addressed at all.

And that isn't even starting to get into that this plan doesn't include any fresh food.

There is an incredible amount of shaming people in this country for eating "junk" when on food stamps as though we don't subsidize the components of the junk such that it costs way less than fresh food. And then it's "ugh why are poor people so gross and unhealthy" when fresh food is financially out of reach and no one has any spare time to devote to full nights' sleep or exercise. That's not going to get better with cost-cutting ~delivery box~ situation.

( cut for length but it's a worthwhile read )

And now I've fried my hands so I need to take a break before formatting next thread.

From twitter user @NativeApprops (Dr. Adrienne Keene, academic):( the government food system on reservations has always been terrible )

From twitter user mattbc, on Dec 5, 2017: ( navigating SNAP while disabled )

From twitter user @KillerMartinis (author/journalist Linda Tirado):( the absurdity of WIC restrictions )