I think it’s incredibly fucked how capitalism discourages learning for learning’s sake. People will have interests they’ve spent years researching then say it’s “useless knowledge” bc it didn’t go towards a college degree and isn’t part of their job. Learning is never useless! Your brain is growing and developing throughout your whole life! People would never have epiphanies or sudden lightening strikes of creativity if they weren’t learning new things! That goes double for topics like science, politics, and history, which inform your understanding of the world you live in!

the usa shouldn’t be the political and economic focal point of the entire fucking planet, actually

I just learned that my medication is out of stock COUNTRYWIDE because America is restricting how much ADHD medication Australia is allowed to make... and they're just flat out ignoring Australia's request to meet to negotiate more.

America's Federal Trade Commission is taking public comments on this exact situation right now.

If you've been affected by the actions of US-based regulation in regards to accessing your ADHD medication, please submit a comment! Even if you're outside of the United States. The fact this has such far-reaching consequences is something that needs to be known!

You have until April 15th, 2024 to submit a comment. Please make your voice heard!

This is probably why, in case anyone was wondering.

False scarcity.

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

Seeing as Twitter is gonna legally steal your work now, please use glaze to protect what you make.

Guys did you hear about Nightshade?

Using both Glaze and Nightshade would corrupt the generation of pictures mimicking artist AND mess with the AI's recognition of what everything is. Like it would generate a dog when you ask for a cat.

And it would be hell for AI bros to remove the cloaked pictures from their database ʕ 👀人ʔ

Yall wanna be gnc and androgynous but hate intersex people and the idea of being intersex so much, I remember reading about PCOS potentially being considered an intersex disorder and having 100s of people dismiss it because "we can't just be calling 1 in 10 women intersex" or being in transmasc spaces and constantly being told that bottom growth and T dicks are undesirable and that people find non standard genetalia gross, in a GENDER INCLUSIVE SPACE.

The lgbt Community seriously needs to grapple with its hatred of intersex features and stop seeing androgyny that isn't pretty waify white person. You all love femme presenting androgyny but hate when people are androgynous in a broad or hairy way.

Im begging people stop shortening sandsurge as SS

Tbh idk why ppl are beating around the bush about this; SS is a acronym for the Nazi Militia and thats why you shouldn't use it. Other things do get shortened to SS, but generally you should want to avoid any possible nazi imagery or words in anything you do. You don't want them thinking yr on their side for even a split second. I get the intent w the post but vague "don't do x" doesnt rlly help anyone nor educate them, but im also assuming that OP wasn't expecting much out of making the post. Yes its what instantly pops up in google but it also takes two seconds to type out what i did. Sandies, surges, sharks, sandsharks, etc etc. Anything but SS.

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

Someone reblogged this saying they'd never heard any of this before and they didn't even know how to begin verifying it, so let me help!

Here's a 1995 article from the NYT about Disney putting this policy into effect after promising to do so in 1994.

Here's a wikipedia page about Disney's unofficial Gay Days and how they've been protested by Christian groups.

I tried to find the book I read, but honestly so many different weird evangelical anti-Disney books came up when I was googling that I can't be sure which one it was. 🙃

I can't help you with sources other than the fact that I too am an exvangelical kid whose parents went on-and-off banning Disney movies from the house as I was growing up. ("On" when the pastor got on a tear about the evils and how the movies had gay propaganda in it and ~witchcraft~ and my mom would obediently remove anything from my reach that had the concept of "magic" in it - and then "Off" when the pastor hadn't said anything for a while and my mom got sentimental about how much she loved Winnie the Pooh and The Aristocats.)

I remember the first "Gay Days" and how they put up signs around the park saying that it was unofficial and not affiliated with Disney, and how that didn't stop the evangelicals from foaming at the mouth, and the groups had to change it to "Friendship Days" to keep from getting gay-bashed... and I also remember how the last time I went to Gay Days (2019) they had fucking Pride merch in the stores with signs saying that proceeds from the sales went to GLSEN to prevent gay kids from being bullied at school.

Disney has done a LOT to normalize queerness in the mainstream - and I know it's a joke, blah blah, first canon Disney queers being a new minor character every year, but outside of the movies, in the real world where real people live, it has done a LOT.

And yeah. You want Disney to wipe the floor with these dudes. Because as evil as some of their business practices are (capitalism sucks, man, and there's no getting around that) - I HAVE to emphasize that they have been curating a safe space for real-life queer people for decades. And we want that to win.

The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but they're sure as hell a gigantic mouse-shaped meat shield, and right now we need the enemy out of bullets.

Corporations in FL and TX are watching this. Red state governors are watching this. A victory for Disney means more companies pushing back. A victory for Florida means an absolute avalanche of restrictions on LGBTQ+ people, corporate support of reproductive rights, etc.

We NEED Disney to win.

Reposting this because I need to materialize it somewhere.

hey wait i have a question. how attached to your name are you guys. like on a scale of “this name is perfect 4 me and i like it lots” to “if people didnt use a name for me i would not care/notice. if you called me by a completely different name for long enough id go by it” because im the second one but i remember a conversation w greass that was like oh huh! names r really important 2 me!

People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work

but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)

Dead silence. Nobody cares.

File this under, oh you can be active for 4 hours? You can work part-time. Um no, I have to get ready for work (30 min) get to work (15 min) get home from work (15 min) feed myself all day (30 min) maintain myself, my home and my life (15 min, yeah right), which leaves 15 min for work and absolutely nothing else.

This is so accurate, back after I’d relapsed I wanted to try and go in for one class at school so I could still stay in contact with the education system. I let slip during a meeting that I managed to drag myself to that I could manage about 4 hours of activity a week, which the teacher sprang on to mean I was being lazy for just trying to get to 1 hour class. Never matter that it was 30 minutes travel, that I would have to get washed and dressed, that I would probably still need to recover for 3 days from it. 

Far too often abled people see the things they do easily as “non activities”, they don’t realise that for many disabled people these things have to be carefully planned and measured, and sometimes they simply can’t be done.

reblog bc the non activities thing seems really important words

I get X number of pain-free steps per day right now, which means that, for large conventions (like SDCC), I need to be in a mobility device.  I had someone ask if I used up my steps every day before transferring to the scooter, and look surprised and a little horrified when I said “no, I save them so I can go to the bathroom unassisted.”  Like, they had never considered that walking is involved in peeing.

!

Reblogging for the important point that the term “activity” may mean something very different and much broader for a disabled person with a chronic pain or fatigue related condition compared to its meaning for a non disabled person. If you’re tired enough, simply sitting up in a chair rather than lying in bed is an activity that drains energy otherwise usable for other things. A thing I knew from other people with pain and fatigue related conditions, but worth reinforcing for followers who didnt know or had forgotten.

How do any of you earn things?

We don’t, it’s almost like disability puts us at risk of poverty or something.