Just in case we suddenly disappear. Tumblr is actively censoring Black and Native people.
There’s a road in between where I live and another town I go to called Dead Indian Memorial Road, and when you look up how it got its name and it was because there used to be a native village in the area but one day they were discovered to all have been poisoned, and the official histories are like “it is possible they poisoned themselves accidentally, buuuuuut this was during a gold rush in the area, soooooooo……,,”
This is important.
Also Lakota Man is racist af and super toxic/performative so don't follow him anywhere actually.
Research on transsexuals also shows how the elicitation of deference depends on the type of man one is perceived to be. Based on in-depth interviews with 29 transmen, Schilt (2006) found that whereas white transmen beginning to work as men were taken more seriously, had their requests readily met, and were evaluated as more competent than they were as women, young, small Black, Latino, and Asian transmen did not gain similar advantages. Similarly, in her interview study of 18 transmen, Dozier (2005) found that, as men, white transmen reported being given more respect and more conversational space and being included in men's banter. They also experienced less public harassment. Transmen of color, on the other hand, reported being more frequently treated as criminals, and short and effeminate transmen reported being publicly harassed as gay. Gaining the full privileges of manhood is thus shown to depend not merely on being recognized as male, but on the whole ensemble of signs that are conventionally taken as evidence of a masculine self.
— Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts by Douglas Schrock and Michael Schwalbe (2009)
LAP Bands should be illegal
This post is going to deal with medical fatphobia, weight loss surgery, coercion, emetophobia, food issues, disordered eating, and just all around bad shit. But it’s important.
Shortly after I reached adulthood, I was coerced into weight loss surgery. I weighed about 250 pounds and was considered morbidly obese.
The Lap Band is a disgrace to the medical profession and is just another example of how the medical profession does not care about the lives of fat people.
To preface this: the surgery works. I lost 70 pounds and people treated me differently and I hated them all for it.
The Lap Band made my life miserable. When it was filled, I could not eat until noon without getting stuck. Even then, getting stuck was always a risk. There was a strict diet to follow and you were supposed to be safe from that if you followed it. On top of that, there were rules for how you ate. One standard I saw was not to eat in bites larger than your fingernail. Can you see yourself doing that for a week, let alone years and years?
Getting stuck is a horror you can't imagine. The food lodges in the top of your stomach, blocking off your system. You continue to produce saliva and swallow it down. Slowly, the mucous in your saliva builds up. It feels like you're drowning. Eventually, you have to essentially throw it all up. A disgusting experience (and a mortifying one if you're in public.) The saliva is thick and ropy. This experience is often called "sliming" on the forums.
I became frightened of eating in public. In a way, I became frightened of food altogether. I knew something had to give the day I reacted to someone biting a hamburger in a tv show the way a regular person would react to a killer jumping out in a horror movie. I developed the disgusting and unhealthy habit of chewing and spitting out food. I completely lost my enjoyment of many foods I had previously enjoyed because of how problematic they were (I can no longer enjoy a chicken thigh for example.) I stopped eating meals and began grazing. I developed eating habits worse than the ones that "made me fat"
After 3 years, I had the band emptied of fluid, which significantly decreased, but did not stop, these problems. I regained the weight, and found it didn't bother me. (Along the way I discovered that my discomfort with my body had never been weight related)
I had my band removed after 6.5 years earlier this year. I am in a support group on facebook for victims of this malpractice. There are 5.6 thousand members, each with their own horror stories. Some of them cannot get the band removed because insurance will not cover the procedure, though they happily covered the band's placement. Some have tried to go through with removal but have had surgeons try to coerce them into getting a different weight-loss surgery instead of just removing it. Many have long-term damage from the band eroding the walls of their stomach or esophagus, or from the band adhering to multiple organs. Many of them had the band for 12-14 years, before removal because none of our doctors told us it needs to be removed within 10.
Many practices no longer perform Lap Band surgery and now believe it is unethical. The surgeon who removed my band still performs this surgery regularly.
A study performed in 2011 with 151 lap band patients, found that 22% of patients experienced minor complications and 39% experienced major complications. The person who coerced me into surgery actually experienced major complications and needed an emergency removal.
I experienced no serious complications. Everything I described above is considered normal. And It still drastically lowered my quality of life.
I don't know why I'm sharing this or who I'm sharing it for, but here I am. If you know anyone considering the lap band surgery, don't let them go through with it without knowing the truth. And please be kinder to your body than the medical profession wants you to be.
The Joshua tree is on its way to extinction because so-called green energy companies want to keep the death machine of civilization going by installing large swaths of solar panels over the desert floor, a big metal blanket that will kill everything it covers: the desert tortoise, the sage grouse, the hawks and snakes and beautiful flowers that have flourished for thousands of years. Gone. Gone.
All so that we can keep the dead heart in the rotting corpse of industrial civilization beating into the next decade. These are the "good guys" btw, these are the "renewable" "carbon neutral" options: covering the desert in miles of metal and microchips until every living being without a bank account is dead.
Indieginous sites are also being bulldozed.
And residents of towns near the panels are also experiencing health problems due to the panel construction causing dust.
The purpose is to achieve clean energy goals and to provide energy to the metro of LA county. But also, why in the desert?
This article was just published May 21 2023 on the topic. I didn't know about this angle of solar energy until I saw this post despite living in LA.
It's a great reminder; if we're working towards a sustainable future, we can't outsource the solution our problems. As climate change gets worse we are seeing more solutions like this, where habitats and indieginous soviergnty are threatened for progress and comfort of industrialized communties. We have to do better and be willing to implement solutions at the source before enacting harmful solutions on other communities.
I feel like, regarding the recent shit with the laws in FL, this is a really important time to say y'all should be for the whores and the hookers too, because y'all did not say shit when SESTA/FOSTA was goin on, y'all kept quiet when new banking laws rolled out that specifically targeted sex workers (from FSSWers to cam workers to strippers to professional pornstars) and I need y'all to understand that a straight line can be drawn between the censorship/deplatforming of sex workers and what is happening regarding legislation against trans people now. mainstream leftist orgs and individuals scrambled to distance themselves from sex workers and sex worker organizations and catch it! that's now biting y'all in the ass
“anti-trafficking” “anti-sexual exploitation” “child safety” are all euphemisms for pushing censorship and criminalization of sex education, LGBTQ+ ID and existence, abortion, anything right wingers deem unsavory; it is so easy to deplatform something by calling it "pornographic" or "exploitation" and if you give a fuck about liberation for all that needs to include the decriminalization of sex work because we (queer non-white SWers) were the TRIAL RUN; now trans people are the next step and after that it's going to be other LGBTQ+ people, and best believe that will also eventually include POC, LGBT+ or not.
you can understand the timeline of the deplatforming of sex workers by reading this thread by the amazing Ashley Lake. because believe that this is the same playbook that will be used, is being used, on other people the GOP deems "undesirable" (like trans people)
this is ok to rb btw bc as someone whose sex work is keeping my lights on and funding the MAJORITY of Decepticon Disaster Relief/Kaon City Medics rn I'm fucking tired of beating this drum, I'm the first to rock with ANYONE else who needs help but y'all don't like the yucky whores and hoes and hookers when we're the ones who need help even though our liberation is INTRICATELY entwined with y'all's so get with it
So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom
It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education
602-771-3500 or empower @ azed .gov 🤡
In recent years, Google users have developed one very specific complaint about the ubiquitous search engine: They can’t find any answers. A simple search for “best pc for gaming” leads to a page dominated by sponsored links rather than helpful advice on which computer to buy. Meanwhile, the actual results are chock-full of low-quality, search-engine-optimized affiliate content designed to generate money for the publisher rather than provide high-quality answers. As a result, users have resorted to work-arounds and hacks to try and find useful information among the ads and low-quality chum. In short, Google’s flagship service now sucks.
And Google isn’t the only tech giant with a slowly deteriorating core product. Facebook, a website ostensibly for finding and connecting with your friends, constantly floods users’ feeds with sponsored (or “recommended”) content, and seems to bury the things people want to see under what Facebook decides is relevant. And as journalist John Herrman wrote earlier this year, the “junkification of Amazon” has made it nearly impossible for users to find a high-quality product they want — instead diverting people to ad-riddled result pages filled with low-quality products from sellers who know how to game the system.
All of these miserable online experiences are symptoms of an insidious underlying disease: In Silicon Valley, the user’s experience has become subordinate to the company’s stock price. Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. And instead of trying to meaningfully innovate and improve the useful services they provide, these companies have instead chased short-term fads or attempted to totally overhaul their businesses in a desperate attempt to win the favor of Wall Street investors. As a result, our collective online experience is getting worse — it’s harder to buy the things you want to buy, more convoluted to search for info
Source: Business Insider
https://ictnews.org/news/tohono-oodham-nation-to-get-ancestral-land-back
New Things to Beware on the Internet
On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.
Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.
Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".
This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.
What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.
Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.
This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.
What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.
I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.
Be cautious out there.
I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks.
A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc).
Scenario.
Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this.
Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor's website without them having to send you anything.
Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud's tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that.
These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn't the the same as clicking on the promised attachment.
They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it's from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn't the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware.
Another Scenario.
An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip.
The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source.
Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials.
These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated.
Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites.
Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You'll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you.
Yes, a lot of users aren't going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out.
In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk.
It's an unnecessary and risky can of worms that's been opened up.
Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.
quick and easy workaround (until you can find a better solution)
is to add
||zip^
||mov^
to your My Filters tab in Ublock Origin. reblog to save a life
The text translates to “people devourer” (from a Yiddish song about tuberculosis) and “economy”.
Marginalized people have always been considered disposable but it’s more obvious now than ever, with lawmakers eager to sacrifice whoever they can in the vile name of industry. They will feed you straight to the dogs without a second thought
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A new strain, dubbed Arcturus (XBB 1.16), is becoming prominent in India, and “an infantile phenotype seems [to be] emerging”. Pediatric cases are on the rise with a new symptom: conjunctivitis, more commonly known as “pink eye”.
XBB.1.16 is a recombinant of two descendants of so-called “stealth Omicron” BA.2. A preprint study updated Sunday from scientists at the University of Tokyo suggests that it spreads about 1.17 to 1.27 times more efficiently than relatives XBB.1 and XBB.1.5, also known as “Kraken,” which currently dominates U.S. cases.
XBB.1.16’s increased ability to outpace other variants suggest that it “will spread worldwide in the near future,” researchers wrote, adding that the variant is “robustly resistant” to antibodies from a variety of COVID variants, including “stealth Omicron” BA.2 and BA.5, which surged globally last summer.
Your vaccine, now woefully outdated especially if you did not receive the bivalent booster, will only marginally protect you. Even if you caught Covid within the last 6 months, your antibodies are negligible.
If you know anyone who has recently returned from India or any neighboring countries, encourage them to mask and isolate. If you or your children are experiencing mild cold/allergy symptoms, especially red, itchy, watery, and/or sticky eyes, please wear a mask, isolate if you can, and test for Covid. “Adenovirus, which has symptoms similar to COVID, can also result in conjunctivitis. Adenovirus and COVID are impossible to distinguish from each other without testing.”