the bare-faced virago

I’m belowdesire over there, if you’d like to follow me.

rats live on no evil star

i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

as many have noted, this 11-hour-old post is an incomplete list. the situation on the ground continues to rapidly evolve: harvard set up an encampment despite the ban; UT austin students are getting brutally assaulted by the police, prompting faculty to declare the first university-wide strike

in awe of the 1000+ students who flooded columbia's campus yesterday in response to the columbia president's warning of deploying the nypd and/or national guard against them at midnight

In my new report, I provide the first ever look inside of a US military program known as the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) program, which gives major government contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing a way to influence senior military policymakers.

The program sends US military officers to work at major corporations for nearly a year; when they return, the fellows submit recommendations for reform of the Pentagon based on their observations of the private sector. 

We document numerous examples of companies using this program to pass along self-interested policy recommendations to US military leaders, including: more outsourcing, corporate subsidies, deregulation, less oversight, more political power to contractors, looser arms export rules, and more. We also analyzed a sample of former SDEF fellows and found that 43% of them go through the revolving door and work for military contractors after leaving the program. As such, the SDEF program uses government money to help subsidize the military-industrial complex, placing corporate interests above the public interest.

You can read my summary of the report here, along with coverage by The Lever here.

friendly reminder

some dykes for your feed :) going to be making pints of this later this year >:)

Horniness is not intrinsically less pure than any other human motivation

"He only made this art because he was horny!" ...Yeah, and? You only made a sandwich because you were hungry.

David Shrigley, This huge cat (2022)

the pretence of innocence about constantly asking trans women to deny that they're pedophiles is so transparent and stupid. like, the reason the 'not involved in human trafficking' shirt tweet is funny is because when you see someone, with very little prompting, deny some heinous accusation, the main piece of information you register in your mind is that the accusation exists. all these asks and 'just answer the question'-ing are an attempt to get every trans woman on this website (and, more generally, in the world) to wear a NOT A PEDOPHILE shirt. and we all know what questions such a shirt raises!

ah the astrology tango

"no one really takes it seriously, we're just having fun" -> "okay so people take it seriously but they're right to take it seriously because it's such a good tool for understanding yourself" -> "okay so it might cause you to make bad predictions about people based on the month they were born in and might foreclose on important life opportunities but it's not like it can cause structural harm" -> "okay so sometimes astrology leads to ungrounded discrimination in housing, dating, and employment but those people would be assholes anyway" -> "okay so i have no way of showing that and it does give people conceptual resources to justify certain forms of discrimination and more widespread cultural buy-in would make that problem worse but i like it" -> "shut the fuck up redditor and let people have fun"

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

There once was a man from Verdun

There once was a man from the sticks Whose limericks stopped at line six. They were fine till line five Then they took quite a dive — But the problem is easy to fix If you just ignore the last line, it doesn't even follow the rhyme scheme oh god I've really lost control of this thing I'm so sorry...

There once was a man

From Cork who got limericks

And haiku confused.

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks

But he failed at the sport

Because he wrote them too short

@limerickshere

There once was a fellow named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He replied, "Yes, I know-- It's because I try to squeeze as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

On Tumblr did lasses and lads Their way with fail poetry had. You're having your fun But you're fooling no one - It takes skill to do something this bad.

Welcome to the age of enthusiasm.

Unironically love this

Me with a 3D printer for a decade: brackets

This guy: I'm gonna change the world

AE HEE LEE, from "Prelude"

Humming bird taking a shower