DIGITAL EXORCISMS

$200 a barrel is misleading. You're not just paying for the container, but also the valuable crude oil inside of it.

Watching footage of this makes me openly sob. Disabled folks repeatedly put their bodies on the line in hopes for better. Needless to say, we’re not impressed lately.

By analyzing records obtained by @deportationdata.org, I found that the total number of people who have experienced ICE detention in the first 9 months of the Trump admin amounts to the population of a mid-sized city.

Not for the first time, these are the actions of a thoroughly collaborationist political party.

There is nothing more or else to it.

In the ‘90s, veteran trans liberation organizer Leslie Feinberg made a point of recounting an incident that happened three decades before, well out of the spotlight. “I remember the Thaw Out Picnic held each spring during the ‘60s by the lesbian and gay community in Erie, Pennsylvania,” ze wrote in 1996’s Transgender Warriors. “Hundreds and hundreds of women and men would fill a huge park to enjoy food, dancing, softball and making out in the woods. During the first picnic I attended, a group of men screeched up in a car near the edge of the woods. Suddenly the din of festivity hushed as we saw the gang, armed with baseball bats and tire irons, marching down the hill towards us.” But things didn’t go as the bigots planned. To their surprise, the queers fought back. “‘C’mon,’ one of the silver-haired butches shouted, beckoning us to follow. She picked up her softball bat and headed right for those men,” Feinberg remembered. “We all grabbed bats and beer bottles and followed her, moving slowly up the hill toward the men. First they jeered us. Then they glanced fearfully at each other, leaped back into their car and peeled rubber. One of them was still trying to get his legs inside and shut the car door as they roared off. We all stood quietly for a moment, feeling our collective power. Then the old butch who led our army waved her hand and the celebration resumed.” The act of defiance Feinberg participated in didn’t make the official histories. There’s no monument to it. But for the queer and trans people there, the willingness to take up weapons and the readiness to use violence turned a would-be brutal queer bashing into a victory.

There are still conservatives that, to this day, will swear that “cities burned to the ground” in the summer of 2020. All of this, of course, is in spite of objective evidence that 89-96% of protests were non-violent and that both that far-right counterprotesters and police killed and assaulted numerous protesters. One study revealed that over 30% of confrontations the fascist Proud Boys got involved in ended in violence. This was even known at the time, as a 2020 Slate interview with abolitionist historian Kellie Carter Jackson, who drew parallels of the violent revolts against slavery to now, particularly the sanitized image the Civil Rights movement has developed in white popular history. Most succinctly, the final exchange between the interviewer and Johnson reveals how this disparity of public perception revealed the problems of pushing for nonviolence as the be-all-end-all. “You’ve said riots have a way of magnifying not merely the flaws in the system but also the strength of those in power. I feel like we’re seeing that now with the police reaction and this tremendous power in the streets. New York City has a curfew of 8 o’clock, and the power structure has helicopters and SUVs and a lot of guns,” interviewer Mary Harris said. “And tanks and tear gas and rubber bullets. It’s military force against civilians. What was most disturbing about George Floyd’s death was not just the knee and his neck, but the smug look on the cop’s face of ‘You won’t tell me what to do. You won’t tell me how to stop. I’m doing what I want.’ He just seemed completely unrepentant,” Jackson responded. “I get annoyed when people talk about looters. Look at the people in power. Look at what they have access to. Look at the tools they have. Then ask yourself: Is this a fair fight?”

This sort of reaction emerges not out of a desire for aimless chaos, but to retaliate against those harming people who just want to live their lives. I can personally attest to the amount of violence queer and trans people receive on the regular. I’ve had an ex-Marine hold me at gunpoint, saying he’d shoot if I was “a fag.” I’ve been threatened by groups of transphobes, stalked by jeering right-wingers in trucks, forced into homelessness on multiple occasions, denied jobs, left to choke in a pool of my own vomit, and even been physically attacked back in high school. This is the hard reality countless queer and trans working class people face. From this, it’s easy to understand how bloodless liberal declarations that “violence is never the answer” come off as suicidally naive. If I didn’t defend myself, if I didn’t fight like hell to stay alive, if I didn’t learn how to navigate some of the hardest and most terrifying situations of my life, I’d be dead. The same is true of virtually every other queer person I’ve ever met. This is doubly true for queer people of color I know. Fighting back, self-defense, retaliation – these aren’t done for fun or some vague ideological fantasy. They’re done to survive.

From queer and trans community defense that didn't make the standard histories to the smearing of Black liberation to the violence communities under attack have to reckon with every day, this sweeping longform piece is an honest and much-needed reality check.

Edited by @davidforbes.bsky.social

ordoiuris.pl Gender Ideology, Sex Education, and "Gender Affirming +" Procedures Criticized by Experts... 15 hours ago

Top hit on Google News for the past few hours if you search “gender ideology” — a term outlets like CBS have started using without scare quotes, is a presser from the far-right group responsible for the “LGBT-free zones” in Poland on a panel held at the UN between Manhattan, DNH & ex-gay groups.

MAGA sexism IS the same as the old patriarchy. Of course it is. Certain individuals, subcultures, or waves are inevitably more mask-off about it, but at base it's always the same thing. Sorry that some people had to learn this the hard way because they liked feeling edgy.

To be clear here, they didn't just rape a man, they raped him with a knife and filmed it. They've been doing this for decades. Sometimes they use electrical prods instead. They do this to children, regularly, as has been documented by numerous human rights groups.

I’m sorry, the suffering is infinite and things are genuinely fucking dire, but it is truly hilarious that the nazis ran into the middle east while screaming “logistics and diplomacy are fake and gay” and now they’re trying to ask everyone else to fix the strait of hormuz because tfw no more THAADs

Sodomizing a Palestinian prisoner with a knife on camera is apparently legal in Israel

It's true that Americans have largely been forced into car dependency, but also the nature of the infrastructure in many places leads people to "prefer" car travel over other modes, whether because it is viewed as more efficient or because it is safer. This is a real problem to address!

Elad Simchayoff on twitter: I interviewed two Israeli Air Force pilots who are part of the operation in Iran. When I asked what it felt like to enter Iranian airspace for the first time, one of them said: “You find yourself thinking, what do these people, so far away from us, actually want from us? They have a huge and beautiful country. Right now full of snow and lakes. Truly a very, very beautiful place. What do they want from us, this small piece of land? It’s such a strange feeling.”

A surprising number of Israelis seem to have already forgotten that they're the ones who started the war.

I'm so tired of having to defend porn made by consenting adults for consenting adults when our government is run by literal child predators that are hurting people everyday

COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHOUPISTA CULTURAL VICTORY!!!!!!!!

i cannot believe we are into year 2 of the groyper regime, the camps are open and the state is revoking id's, and we are still getting "oppressed minorities are kinda rude on the internet :/" hand-wringing

yeah we're a little tense right now, believe it or not. fucking shut the fuck up about it

It shouldn't fall to trans people to explain to cis people why creating laws that effectively amount to "If you have or ever had a penis, you must behave this way; If you have, or ever had a vagina, you must behave this other way" is horrifically dangerous for everyone's rights.

Some folks treated me like a naive child for believing we had the money to cancel a portion of student loan debt

British politics, more than any other, has an unrivalled streak of paternalism where marginalized people are easily dehumanized as spoilt children who must be sternly punished and managed and whipped into shape.

Our advocacy is simply seen as as tantrums.

Meanwhile, if you are cis...

Reminder that the only time Mastercard has flinched is when outrage was directed at them. Attacking platforms like SubscribeStar for Visa/Mastercard's extralegal censorship is exactly the deflection they want.

CHECK THIS OUT

I've been saying!!

GRAVEYARD SHIFT, my fast-paced zombie FPS where you use office supplies to kill your coworkers, now has a Steam store page!

Be sure to WISHLIST if you want to play when it releases!

store.steampowered.com/app/4202840/...

#screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev

Facebook post by Nekima Levy Armstrong: "Friends, A Breaking News headline just appeared in the Star Tribune, claiming that the national Target boycott ended today. This is false. The writer of the story, Carson Hartzog, is fully aware that the Target boycott was launched in Minneapolis on February 1, 2025. I have spoken to her several times since then, yet she failed to reach out to me, Jaylani Hussein, or Monique Cullars Doty, the three founders of the national Target boycott for the story. Carson even used the photo from our press conference that includes my daughter, Assata Joy and Ms. Rosemary Nevils, an elder in our community, to try to add legitimacy to a bogus story. I am once again disgusted by the Star Tribune and their attempts to minimize and erase the voices of our community. The nationwide Target Boycott is not over, unless and until Target reverses its decision to rollback Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as we said from the beginning. “Pastor” Jamal Bryant does not speak for us or our community and has zero authority to end the nationwide boycott of Target, a company that is headquartered in Minneapolis. Please don’t believe the hype and these attempts to rescue Target from the effects of capitulating to the Trump Administration. Target rolled back DEI because of Donald Trump. They donated $1 million to the Trump/Vance inauguration committee. Target also allowed ICE to stage in its parking lots during Operation Metro Surge. The nationwide boycott of Target is successful and it will continue. Please continue to shop elsewhere."

Nekima on the Target boycott.

They attempted to occupy Minnesota in the winter.

After detainments and deportations, the lives left behind in Minnesota From abandoned possessions to unpaid rent, many Minnesotans had to lean on family, friends and community organizations for help with their unfinished business.

"Each person plucked from their day-to-day existence left a whole life behind. There are shoes by the front door and an empty bed. There’s a car in the driveway and a job undone. There are pets that need feeding, bills that keep arriving and leases with months left to pay."

This is Frey’s entire plan to deal with the massive housing crisis his veto is about to cause.

I repeat again, americans have the most power to challenge these issues. If you have the ability to, you need to challenge them where you can.

EU, Canada and elsewhere can only exert portions of the strength americans can in instances these. Please use that power.

Academia finds a whole new low into which to sink