[ID: tweets from jon_speaks_ reading: "I don't think straight ppl understand that queer ppl celebrating pride in the US this year are up against a growing crowd whose response is "we will kill you"
pride might be a party to you, or a festival, or whatever, but for queer ppl it's celebrating life in the face of death
i'll add that pride has a long history of being precisely this kind of celebration. through the queer lib movement, through the AIDS crisis - and it will persist now too
the question will be: do you support queer people, or fascists. there is not a middle ground. End ID]
A hard zero for me.
One for me. AKA "Old fuck"
Divine voice "I have done everything"
(Also the fact that "owned a dictionary" is on here at all explains a lot I think, plz get a dictionary you need one trust me)
Ra doodle
missfionnaisdead
Okay. I really like the rainbow headdress!
Despite some of its misses, Firefox still matters. Mozilla is pushing companies to be more private, and its key product is different at its core. The browser market is dominated by Google’s Chromium codebase and its underlying browser engine, Blink, the component that turns code into visual web pages. Microsoft’s Edge Browser, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera all use adapted versions of Chromium. Apple makes developers use its WebKit browser engine on iOS. Other than that, Firefox’s Gecko browser engine is the only alternative in existence.
“This market needs variety,” Willemsen says. If Firefox diminishes further, there’ll be less competition for Chrome. “We need that difference for open internet standards, for the sake of preventing monopolies,” Willemsen says. Others agree. Everyone we spoke with for this story—inside and outside of Mozilla—says having Firefox flourish makes the web a better place. The trick is figuring out how to get there.
Download and start using Firefox if you don’t already, I made the switch back to Firefox after not using it for years and being a chrome person until 2020 and have never regretted it
Real lawyer plays Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
xphilosoraptorx
Japanese law doesn't require evidence to be presented for review by both parties. "SURPRISE!!! I have facts you weren't aware of!" is very much a thing there.
nonenosome
The entire game was written to show how messed up the Justice System is there.
villainous-queer-deactivated202
Japanese courts have a 99% conviction rate. In essence, if you are accused of a crime you are already considered to be guilty and it is up to you to prove otherwise if you can. Remember in the end of Persona 5, where the person who falsely accused you of assaulting them confessed to everything on national television but you were still in prison until your friends tracked down every witness and got them all the recant their testimonies individually? That was in no way exaggerated.
Also Japanese police have a 90+% rate of successfully arresting a “suspect” for every crime they investigate. At first this sounds really impressive, how they always track down the criminal, until you realize that they do it through a combination of refusing to investigate crimes which seem hard to solve or are likely to involve organizes crime or politicians (lots of “suicides” and “accidents” which are very blatant murder), and any time they do open a case but fail to figure everything out in the first day or two they just grab a convenient scapegoat (usually poor, frequently an immigrant or ethnic minority).
There are also very few restrictions on how long you can be “interrogated” for after arrest, or what they can do to you during the interrogation. Almost all the accused confess to everything... eventually. Regardless of whether they were actually anywhere near the incident in question.
Yeah no, death note was also about how fuck up japanese police are. The reason the death note causes people to have heart attacks if you dont put a cause of death is because thats the go to excuse cops use if they dont want to investigate a case or cant solve it fast enough. And giving the death note to the police chiefs son and then exposing that son to be a fuckin freak and mass murderer was very much extremely intentional. The japanese justice system is extremely fucked up
Ok I know this has been said but
Cops is cops the world over
I'm trying to write a post about tick safety and avoiding tick bites, but a lot of the info on websites is like "Avoid going in the woods, in plants, and where there are wild animals" and "Activities like hiking and gardening can put you at risk" and I'm like thanks! This is worthless!
As ticks and tick borne illnesses are expanding their range, I think it's important for people to be educated about these things, and I think it's especially important to give people actual advice on how to protect themselves instead of telling them to just...avoid the natural world
Rough draft version of Tick Advice:
- Ticks don't jump down on you from trees, they get on you when you brush against grass, brush, bushes etc.
- Ticks get brought to an area when they get done feeding from an animal and fall off them. In the USA, the main tick-bringing animal is deer, but I've seen plenty ticks on feral cats and songbirds.
- Ticks get killed when they dry out so drier areas with more sunlight are less favorable to ticks.
The above is useful for figuring out whether an area is likely to have lots of ticks, and how vigilant you have to be in that area.
- Wear light-colored, long pants outside. Tuck your pants into your socks, and tuck your shirt into the waist of your pants. Invest in light, breathable fabrics idc
- IMMEDIATELY change out of your outside clothes when you come back from a tick-prone area, wash them, and dry them on high heat to kill any ticks that might be stuck on.
- Shower and check yourself for ticks after coming inside. Hair, armpits, and nether regions in particular. You can use a handheld mirror or rely on touch; an attached tick will feel like a bump kinda like a scab
- While you're outside, you can just periodically check for ticks by running your hands down your legs and checking visually to see if anything is crawling on your clothes. Light colors make them easy to spot, and they don't move fast.
- Combing through each others' hair to check for creepy crawly critters is a time-honored primate ritual and is not weird. When hiking, bring a friend who will have your back when you feel something on your neck and need to know if it's sweat or a tick
If you're careful, you can usually catch ticks before they bite you, but if one does bite you, it's not the end of the world. Since tickborne diseases are different regionally i suspect this advice will differ based on where you are, but the important thing is remove the tick with tweezers (DON'T use butter, a lit match, or anything that kills the tick while it's still attached, please) and contact a doctor to see what to watch for. Most illnesses you can catch from ticks are easily treatable if you recognize them when symptoms first appear
Also, don't assume that just because you weren't in tall grasses you don't need to be checked.
Some advice from a former camp counselor:
- If you’re camping, check your towels, blankets, and anything else you’ve hung up before letting it touch your body. Ticks are drawn to wet towels and find it an easy jump to a person.
- If you’re out with a dog, check them over thoroughly before you pet them. Anti-tick medication can kill ticks that attach to your dog, but they can still hitch a ride on fur and then jump on you. Consider getting an outdoor comb and wear gloves while checking.
- Invest in a pair of fine-tipped tweezers to remove ticks. There are a ton of special “tick removal” tools that will work, but they’re essentially a riff on a basic set of fine-tipped tweezers. The fine tip allows you to pull a tick off without killing it while it’s attached. Standard, blunt-edged tweezers for eyebrows don’t work as well, because they can crush the tick’s body and release germs into your skin at the bite site.
- If you have a tick on or near your genitals, just go to a doctor. Just...just do it. Trust me. I’ve seen this happen. Do not engage with the junk tick.
- When you need to remove a tick, grasp it firmly with your tweezers as close to the skin as you can get it. If you can, grasp it under the head. Pull straight up - do not twist the tick. That’s going to be your best bet to pull it all off without leaving the head or mouth embedded.
- If you do break the tick, leave the mouth alone - don’t dig in to get it, since that can break your skin more and cause infection. Without the tick attached, the mouth should eventually fall off. If it doesn’t within a day or so, call a doctor.
- Disinfect, disinfect, disinfect. I’d recommend hitting the area with rubbing alcohol several times.
- Keep the tick in a plastic bag in your freezer or fridge. It’s gross, but if you start having any illness symptoms, it can be helpful for your doctor to have the tick itself.
- Watch for a rash on the site, a fever, chills, or body aches. If you experience anything like that, go to an urgent care or hospital.
- Don’t panic! Lyme disease is treatable. The quicker you get medical treatment, the less likely that you’ll have significant long-term effects.
Speaking as a long time outdoorsman this is all great advice. I’ll add one thing: in the past many places have had traditional tick seasons. Be aware that these seasons are shifting and expanding due to global climate change. I’ve spent a lot of time in the central Rocky Mountains and traditionally tick season was early to mid spring. That has shifted to late winter in the valleys and ranges to mid summer at higher altitudes.
Additionally, tick species ranges and the tickborne illness ranges have also been shifting because of climate change. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever used to be moderately common in the Rockies and has expanded east.
Teal deer: don’t rely on traditional information, verify seasons and ranges before assuming you’re safe.
Pride events happening with no covid safety policy in place is exactly as vile, reprehensible, and irresponsible as telling people to go share needles and fuck strangers with no condoms or HIV testing plans, because the AIDS Crisis is "over," even though AIDS killed 650,000 in 2021, and in the same year 1.5 million were newly infected with HIV. (Source)
Wear a condom, don't share needles, wash your hands, wear a goddamn mask.
There is a genocide brewing against queer people in Florida, and my disabled queer ass can't even take comfort and solace in my local queer "community" because they don't have mask or vaccination or covid test policies for anything.
I posted on the local pride center's FB page for an event not too long ago, asking if they had any covid policy, and they told me that they "didn't need one" because the CDC "isn't advising it right now."
It took every fucking scrap of willpower I possess not to respond with, "Ronald Reagan told everyone not to worry about AIDS, too."
please keep wearing masks, people. the pandemic is not over.
just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees
They existed *before beetles*
Why is this sad? Why am I sad?
This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.
(my own photos)
Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.
Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.
You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

First quote from the linked article. Found it poetic.
[Warning: Reading this article may cause a whiplash-inducing paradigm shit. You will no longer view wild areas the same way. Your concepts of "pristine wilderness" and "the balance of nature" will be forever compromised. You may even start to see ghosts.]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/05/10/mlk-malcolm-x-playboy-alex-haley/
Jonathan Eig was deep in the Duke University archives researching his new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. when he made an alarming discovery: King’s harshest and most famous criticism of Malcolm X, in which he accused his fellow civil rights leader of “fiery, demagogic oratory,” appears to have been fabricated.
“I think its historic reverberations are huge,” Eig told The Washington Post. “We’ve been teaching people for decades, for generations, that King had this harsh criticism of Malcolm X, and it’s just not true.”
The quote came from a January 1965 Playboy interview with author Alex Haley, a then-43-year-old Black journalist, and was the longest published interview King ever did. Because of the severity of King’s criticism, it has been repeated countless times, cast as a dividing line between King and Malcolm X. The new revelation “shows that King was much more open-minded about Malcolm than we’ve tended to portray him,” Eig said.
Haley’s legacy has been tarnished by accusations of plagiarism and historical inaccuracy in his most famous book, “Roots,” but this latest finding could open up more of his work to criticism, especially “The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley” — released nine months after Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965.
Malcolm X, a member of the Nation of Islam, had frequently attacked King and his commitment to nonviolence, going so far as to call King a “modern Uncle Tom.” But his criticism often had “strategic purposes,” Eig said.
In acting as “a foil” to King, his message had more value to the media. “King saw value in being a foil to Malcolm sometimes, too. But I think at their core they had a lot in common. They certainly shared a lot of the same goals,” Eig said.
Eig, who previously wrote acclaimed biographies of Muhammad Ali and Lou Gehrig, said he found the fabrication in the course of his standard book research for “King: A Life,” due out May 16. When a subject has given a long interview, he’ll look through the archives of the journalist who conducted it, hoping to find notes or tapes with previously unpublished anecdotes.
He did not find a recording of Haley’s interview with King in the Haley archives at Duke, but he did find what appears to be an unedited transcript of the full interview, likely typed by a secretary straight from a recording, Eig said. Eig provided The Post with a copy of the transcript.
On page 60 of the 84-pagedocument, Haley asks, “Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X?”
King responds: “I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don’t want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don’t think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes.”
That is not how King’s response appeared in the published interview. While the top part is nearly identical with the transcript, it ended in Playboy like this: “And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative,I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.”
Some of the phrases added to King’s answer appear to be taken significantly out of context, while others appear to be fabricated:
@meanmisscharles @russianspacegeckosexparty @ubernegro @that-biracial-geek-girl @redstarovermoundcity
Eig has shared this discovery with a number of King scholars, and the changes “jumped out” to them as “a real fraud,” Eig said. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been teaching that to my students for years,’ and now they have to rethink it,” Eig said.
Despite the Proud Boys being all over the news for seditious conspiracy convictions, most outlets failed to mention that the FBI was actively working with numerous members of the far-right group, including its former leader, to specifically target those on the left, according to a report from Jacobin.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is among up to nine members who reportedly served as informants to the FBI. Those informants were partly helping law enforcement target "Black Lives Matter protesters and other left-wing activists," according to Jacobin's Branko Marcetic.
"That fact doesn’t just make the FBI’s failure to detect and prevent the Capitol riot even more baffling," Marcetic wrote. "Revelations from the trial suggested that the FBI’s historical and ongoing fixation on left-wing protests potentially blinded it to the threat of the far right, and that the bureau is even happy to collaborate with far-right groups as a way of neutralizing what it sees as a greater threat from the Left."
Once again, I hope SAG strikes too
We could lose acting, filmmaking, television as we know it.
(click for better images)
There is a new subreddit called r/PeriodPantry that allows people who need period products to post wishlists. Many people are forced by poverty to chose between menstrual hygiene products and other necessities, and may end up skipping meals or suffering health problems or social isolation as a result of lacking hygiene products. Please feel welcome to post a period product wishlist, fulfill a wishlist, and/or reblog this post to help it reach others.
Hey, this is a really cool mutual aid group, if you need period products or can help someone get period products this is a great little group to check out.
Brazilian activists have voiced outrage after congress moved to drastically dilute the powers of the environment and Indigenous peoples ministries in what campaigners called a potentially crippling blow to efforts to protect Indigenous communities and the Amazon.
[...] By 15 votes to 3, a congressional committee approved draft legislation that would strip the environment ministry of control of the rural environmental registry, a key tool in the fight against illegal deforestation and land-grabbing, and water resources. The rule change would also strip the ministry for Indigenous peoples of responsibility for delimiting Indigenous territories, handing those powers to the justice ministry.
[...] “They are fleecing the environment ministry,” Marina Silva told the newspaper O Globo.
“The Brazilian people elected President Lula but it seems congress wants a repeat of the Bolsonaro government,” Silva added, warning the moves would undermine Brazil’s international claims to be committed to fighting deforestation and climate change.
Guajajara told AFP that attempts to erode her ministry’s powers went “totally against what president Lula is defending” and represented a “step backwards” for Indigenous rights.
A prominent political columnist, Miriam Leitão, claimed the changes were tantamount to “the demolition of the [two] ministries”.
In a separate move, the lower house also approved plans for an imminent vote on legislation which activists fear would annul all Indigenous claims to land Indigenous people were not physically inhabiting when Brazil’s constitution came into force in 1988.
On Twitter, Guajajara called that manoeuvre “genocidal” and a direct attack on Indigenous rights, territories and the fight against climate change.
[...] Marcio Astrini, the chief executive of the Climate Observatory environmental watchdog, said the moves – if approved in their current form – would deal a severe blow to the environment ministry and an even greater one to the Indigenous ministry, whose raison d’être was the demarcation of Indigenous lands.
“It would be like having a finance ministry that couldn’t handle fiscal or tax policy. It would be like having a health ministry that didn’t run the NHS,” Astrini said, urging Lula’s administration to find ways to block or alter the proposed changes.
“The government is going to have to take some decisions … Will it cave in to all the demands of the ruralistas and Bolsonaristas in congress? Or will it stick to President Lula’s campaign promises? It seems very clear to me it can’t do both,” he added.
May 25 2023
given the Discourse, i couldn't not post this article.
Extremism experts and LGBTQ advocates warned that removing merchandise could be seen as a success by anti-LGBTQ extremists and violent protesters which could lead to copycat behavior threatening the already marginalized community. "I think this will embolden alt-right actors, who now are going to believe that with social media campaigns and targeted actions against retailers that they can proceed in limiting visibility of LGBTQ people," said Sophie Bjork-James, a professor at Vanderbilt University, who researches the white nationalist movement, in an interview.
"Target's giving into this," said Victor Asal, a professor at Albany and extremism researcher. "Other extremists will say 'hey, that's a great idea. We should do that.'"
Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center, believes extremists are making calculated efforts to redefine LGBTQ+ Pride as a "toxic" or dangerous thing.
Bomb threats, he said, are intended to scare the community and supporters into silence. National LGBTQ+ organizations, including Family Equality, GLAAD, GLSEN, The Human Rights Campaign, and more are calling on Target and all businesses to stand up against anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. "When values of diversity, equity and inclusion are tested, business must defend them unequivocally," the organizations said in a joint statement.
Remember kids, Nazis don't deserve their kneecaps.
Also if any of these are incorrect pls lemme know
i didnt see anyone saying any of this is wrong in the notes so im gonna reblog-
additional helpful resource:
this is the anti-defamation league’s hate symbol database. it’s massive and includes details about what symbols mean and where you might see them.
i’m a tattoo artist and use this all the time when i see a symbol i don’t recognize—better safe than sorry. it’s saved me from working with white supremacists a few times.
I'm glad to see the arrow cross (last one( there! It originates from Hungary and was used by the nazi party here, but it was banned after WWII. It barely shows up in guides/warnings like this and idk if they still use it but better safe than sorry.
reasons new pickup trucks suck:
- the beds are at best no bigger, and often smaller, than older models
- heavier = less efficient
- higher bumpers make them less compatible with most other vehicles, therefore more dangerous in a collision
- higher tailgates make them harder to load
- higher hoods give them an enormous blindspot in the front
- higher center of gravity makes them less stable
- higher seats give the driver a worse view of their immediate surroundings
- higher bumpers also make them more likely to collide with a pedestrian's chest as opposed to their legs, as well as making the victims more likely to go under the car, leading to more deaths
oh also market research suggests people who buy trucks and SUVs are more likely to be assholes lmao
basically, watch this video if you need more reasons to hate trucks:
Every pickup truck I ever see actually being used for work or to haul shit is one of those older normal trucks not those gigantic mistakes
the video linked above is amazing, and it has a ton of great stats and information about how americans are held back from having better options for vehicles. as well as the type of people who tend to choose trucks and SUVs (and also how many ppl don't use their trucks for actual truck things)
I love that the pandemic actually definitively proved a lot of those "hard" questions for us. Masking up reduced cases of the flu to almost nonexistent numbers and we had zero flu deaths for a time. The welfare and social service and unemployment programs helped keep people living paycheck to paycheck out of poverty, and those stimulus checks some folks keep complaining about actually massively benefitted the common man and the economy. Individual personal travel was so extremely restricted on a global scale that we basically have concrete proof that individual restraint in terms of driving cars or travelling means absolutely nothing by comparison because the mass pollution is coming from the fisheries and the corporations with private jets and container ships. Working from home actually has massive benefits for a company like productivity boosts and better mental health of employees while also saving gas
and we're just. Willingly going back to how everything was before. We were shown how to do things better and the people in charge said "that's nice but we just want to get everything 'back to normal' :)"
we’re not willingly going back to how everything was before. we are being forced back into it by members of the ruling class who found out that making things better for almost everyone else made them feel bad.