abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
good morning this is my mood
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
I know someone who calls herself a feminist, puts her pronouns in her work email signature, donates money to women’s empowerment funds, and thinks we should deport more refugees. I also know someone who calls people ‘pussies’ when he plays video games, who doesn’t know what a pronoun is, and, for his defence of low-wage women workers in a highly-exploited industry, is a better, more strident defender of the rights of working-class women than almost anyone else I know. Of these two people, I know who is on my team, and who I want on my team, yet the standard liberal feminist calculation would have me chose the woman who loves a little deportation over the man who is occasionally uncouth, solely because the woman knows to keep her language civil, and the man doesn’t. Liberal feminists get incredibly caught up in the politics of language, because language is all they have. They don’t have a revolutionary programme for overthrowing patriarchy, so they’re forced to tinker around the edges of it, quibbling over word choice and jargon instead of building the coalitions necessary for destroying patriarchy.
— We Should Not All Be Feminists by Frances Wright
yea.
Thinking about the two (male) coworkers I had a few farm jobs ago, one of whom was a very well spoken and politically knowledgeable self reported socialist who was nevertheless urging me to stay silent about the lower wages I was receiving so I didn't compromise his job. The OTHER one was a foulmouthed nineteen year old who didn't know what trans meant (but listened VERY well when I talked about it) and was absolutely up in arms about the wage inequality, and honestly any injustice in front of him. I'll let you guess which if them I'm still in touch with
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
Anonymous asked:
also a good-faith question: what do i tell some of my friends who are terrified of the collapse of the current system for like, survival reasons? like in ways that mutual aid and community support can't really help.
i was trying to explain all this stuff to my friend the other day who is on government support and needs a lot of intensive, expensive medical intervention to live, and she accused me of being willing to sacrifice disabled people for the sake of ideological purity but like, i wasn't saying she doesn't deserve to live, but that she doesn't deserve to live more than palestinians do? and that she also doesn't deserve to specifically live on stolen land. and like, there are palestinians who also could really use those medical treatments that she has the privilege of accessing, why does she deserve them more?
she said she can't afford to not care about the election results because if anything happens to the aca or medicaid, or if anything happens to the medical supply chains, then she's fucked. like, yeah, but same goes for all these people our country is oppressing??
i feel like i just didn't explain this well and i want to give her some other stuff to read.
Great question! I think when people believe that all social care systems will collapse without the government, they are buying into a very colonialist idea that human beings are at their most basic level selfish and irresponsible and won't care for their communities. This is not the case! Thousands of years of human history prove this not to be the case, and so do the behaviors of humans right now during moments of crisis.
Look to the people of Gaza -- they are not leaving their disabled behind. People are sacrificing all that they have to care for their elderly relatives, neighbors, and friends. The only reason that disabled people in Gaza are dying is because the region is being deliberately deprived of resources by Israel. If aid were let in and the Palestinian people were free, they would feed their hungry, treat their sick, supply insulin, teach children, and perform everything that we currently in the US rely upon the government to supply.
Another example of this can be found in how humans respond to natural disasters. Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell is a beautiful read on this, following numerous real-life disasters across the globe. In every case, people did not riot and pillage or dissolve into violence--- they formed stable encampments, doctors and pharmacists worked their jobs without pay, cooks made food without expecting a wage, everyone pooled their resources and looked after one another.
We also see examples of this when other governments have fallen -- and all governments eventually do! When a nation-state ends, life doesn't end. People keep going to work to make the medicine and put on the leg casts and wash physically disabled people's bodies and make the food. People WANT to feel useful, helpful, included, and looked after, and they will do these things without being forced to by an authoritarian power structure. We see this in the campus encampments and the incredible outpouring of generosity they are experiencing too.
It is quite common for a person to mistakenly believe that the government is all that is keeping our social order working, and that we are all just one moment away from violent chaos and deprivation without it. But that really isn't true. Even without the government, we will still have the *people* who understand how food production and logistics work, the *people* who research and test the drugs, the *people* who watch the children and nurse the elders and fix the roads and butcher chickens.
Without the alienating, exploitative economic structure we currently have, it would actually be EASIER and more efficient for us to take care of one another with these skills, because our time wouldnt be wasted on bullshit jobs that don't contribute to society.
There are lots of great readings about all of this on the Anarchist Library, but I recommend starting with David Graeber's books! Bullshit Jobs, then Debt the first 5000 Years, then Utopia of Rules, then Dawn of Everything. Bullshit Jobs is the easiest read.
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.
I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”
It broke me.
Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.
When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.
I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!
“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.
Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?
I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”
He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.
Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
please please please yall read books like Debt: the First 5000 Years by Graeber and Dawn of Everything by Wengrow & Graeber and An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Dunbar Ortiz. once you understand the sheer diversity of human history a little bit better, and understand fully that the united states is a stitched together blanket of stolen individual properties painted with blood by roving settler militias, you will see why this country is not redeemable or reformable, and why states like Israel are not as well.
i used to believe in electoral politics too. but once youre really about abolition, global decolonization, and land back as fundamental cornerstones of your politics you will not be willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of Black and brown peoples worldwide for tiny table scraps like a rainbow flag on a cop car.
having a democratic politician in office IS having a rainbow flag on a cop car, and the cop car is the united states military. if seeing that feel-good symbol plastered on a tool of mass genocide makes you feel any safer then you were never the person the guns were aimed at in the first place. do you care about the people still staring at the barrel of the gun? or are you satisfied to sacrifice their lives for your own short-term emotional comfort?
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
Scientists identify substance that may have sparked life on Earth
Based on laboratory studies, Rutgers scientists say one of the most likely chemical candidates that kickstarted life was a simple peptide with two nickel atoms they are calling "Nickelback"
Bro if we solve abiogenesis and it gets named after Nickelback I am going to have an aneurysm
If I had a nickel for every nickel in this compound, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird this isn't the joke they went with
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
"In a historic “first-of-its-kind” agreement the government of British Colombia has acknowledged the aboriginal ownership of 200 islands off the west coast of Canada.
The owners are the Haida nation, and rather than the Canadian government giving something to a First Nation, the agreement admits that the “Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai” or the “islands at the end of world,” always belonged to them, a subtle yet powerful difference in the wording of First Nations negotiating.
BC Premier David Eby called the treaty “long overdue” and once signed, will clear the way for half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of land to be managed by the Haida.
Postal service, shipping lanes, school and community services, private property rights, and local government jurisdiction, will all be unaffected by the agreement, which will essentially outline that the Haida decide what to do with the 200 or so islands and islets.
“We could be facing each other in a courtroom, we could have been fighting each other for years and years, but we chose a different path,” said Minister of Indigenous Relations of BC, Murray Rankin at the signing ceremony, who added that it took creativity and courage to “create a better world for our children.”
Indeed, making the agreement outside the courts of the formal treaty process reflects a vastly different way of negotiating than has been the norm for Canada.
“This agreement won’t only raise all boats here on Haida Gwaii – increase opportunity and prosperity for the Haida people and for the whole community and for the whole province – but it will also be an example and another way for nations – not just in British Columbia, but right across Canada – to have their title recognized,” said Eby.
In other words, by deciding this outside court, Eby and the province of BC hope to set a new standard for how such land title agreements are struck."
-via Good News Network, April 18, 2024
Press release by the Haida Nation about the vote
Two really great things about this:
1- they didn't have to go to court. Cases like this usually take years or decades and are incredibly expensive for First Nations, even if they win.
2- to quote the press release: "In the agreement, British Columbia recognizes and affirms that the Haida Nation has Aboriginal title to the lands of Haida Gwaii. This recognition does not create title – Haida Title is inherent." That's a big deal!! The difference between Canada granting title versus recognising Aboriginal title is incredibly important in matters of sovereignty. Haida sovereignty and Aboriginal title is inherent; it does not need to be "given" by the Canadian government.
I hope people can appreciate the enormity of this. Most of British Columbia is unceded lands and does not belong to the crown (Canada). This is astonishing and a long time coming. Language matters, and for far too long, the concept of indigenous stewardship over the lands has clashed with the persistent western concept of ownership vis a vis legal documentation and interpretation. This development opens the doors for more and better agreements to be made in the future with other indigenous nations.
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
"gendered reality is created by the way we use our body to convey meaning. In our mannerisms, in our way of dressing, in our everyday roles and habits. Our bodily acts, through a type of bodily language, socially create and recreate gender every day... gender is the process of giving and enacting meaning through the way we use and shape our bodies. As we grow up in the world, we come to learn and internalize gendered meanings in a way that is both uniquely our own but that also builds our identity out of cultural material that isn't our own. But this totally contradicts how we understand gender in everyday life. It even contradicts the narratives that we're "supposed to" believe about trans people. As trans people, we're told that we're born with a gendered brain that gives us an unshakable sense of gender identity... but I don't think that's true. Because maleness, masculinity, manhood-- those are changing and evolving social patterns. And the brain itself is a changing and evolving organ that no one really understands and when scientists have analyzed brains to try to find "male" or "female" structure, they find that brains don't really work that way. They aren't really dimorphic and everyone has a different mosaic of neurological features. I understand why, as trans people, we want to find that one hard piece of evidence that we could point to and say "hey! we're real! science has proved it! you see?" So we come up with these discourses that argue that "we're born this way" or that "our brains are marked with the truth," but that's not going to work. One, because we're asking for recognition from a gendered system that was not built to accommodate us, and two, because it just isn't true. That doesn't mean that trans people "aren't real" or that our identities are "made up" or that we don't deserve dignity. In fact, it allows us to see the more radical truth: that all gender, even the gender of cisgender people, is based on complex social and psychological attachments and investments. All gender is constructed, and all gender identity is rooted in the way we individually process our social world."
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
The secret to adulting is this:
Learn how to reduce your resistance against the things you know you have to do.
You don’t have to like it or enjoy it. You just need to stop avoiding, delaying, or ignoring what you know to be in your best interest.
With repeated experience of the benefits, you will learn a new kind of appreciation for the practice we call “adulting.”
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
Unrestrained summer fun
* crazy tire-screeching noises*
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
the whole point of a zine is that it's cheap to produce, amateur and homemade. if you're being asked to apply to participate in a print project, it is not a zine. if the final product is being printed and bound professionally, it is not a zine. if you are being asked to enter into any kind of licensing agreement more complex than "my work can be reproduced as part of this publication" it is not a zine. nine times put of ten if the final product costs more than $5 you have left zine country. im so serious about this.
this isn't snobby gatekeeping or imaginary semantic problems or whatever, this is an issue that has come up irl at cons and zine fairs local to me and which keeps coming up online. people who show up to trade fairs selling professionally printed $15 anthologies as 'zines' have a direct impact on the people trying to sell their $3 chapbooks at the next table over. submission based kickstarter projects that bill themselves as 'zines' exploit the connotations of amateur, punk production values to induce creators to work for less and eschew formal guarantees and protections they are entitled to.
my favorite zines have all been $1 or free and printed on highlighter paper. i used to pick em up from a book store in chelsea that sold predominantly self published work, and had sections for zines. Some were about how to eat cheap in the city when most of your paycheck went to rent, others were talking about the best drag performances in town, and plenty of DIY stuff. all of them had the same unique quality: nobody but the author and their collaborators could've made this, and they wanted to make it easily accessible to the community
i kinda hate that the word that was used for extremely personal and cheap works is applied to essentially art books of your favorite anime OTP
hi! sorry, real quick:
- grab a piece of paper and fold it in half like a book
- write "im indifferent to zines" on the cover
- write "i've never been able to buy one" on the first page
- write "and i'll never be in one" on the second page
- write "just want to be a hater today" on the back
congrats you're in a zine! if you like you can photocopy it and sell it to art students, fellow haters, or anyone with a sense of humour. I'll buy one.
ive been saying this since 2015! all my illustrator friends kept submitting to them (and gettin in which i was proud of) but they... werent zines. they were like massive books with grandiose color schemes and gilded bossing. i couldnt afford them even. zines are oft free or traded and they arent about how pretty a picture you can make.
the first zine idea i found was in a book i checked out from the library (id never remember what it was. it was about cartooning i think and had a section about chibi style lol) that had a little section on taking one sheet of paper, marking it into eighths, cutting a line in the center of the page and folding it over for a quick eight pages. like this
this makes printing soooo easy too. id love to see these floating around places
So I scrolled past this post and was thinking the same thought I always do when I see people talking about zines, which is basically ‘zines are so cool, I’ve never made one because I don’t think I have anything interesting to say in one, but I should make a zine someday if I ever have creative energy again’ and then it gets added to my ever growing mental list of things I want to do but don’t end up doing (I have spent the last several years struggling so hard with my depression that I can’t seam to create anything at all)
And then I thought, hey I have a piece of paper by my desk I should at least follow that diagram and fold it, that way I’m halfway there even if it’s blank and sits on my desk for months, and then 5 minutes later I had this:
Now I’m just holding this little thing I’ve made in my hands and I love it so much
So thank you to this post for inspiring me to make something today! Even if it’s just a simple silly little thing I’m going to treasure it
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
the customer is always right -> hmm. I'm not sure about that
the pedestrian is always right -> this we cannot possibly refute
abrightandbrittlegrin reblogged
if the universe were not so cruel the "Tailor Swift" would be a beautiful bird that elegantly sews its nest together
