The Iranian Regime is going to execute rapper Toomaj Salehi for supporting protests of Jina Amini’s murder by the regime in his songs.

Iranian activist Elica Le Bon says, “Iranians in the diaspora picked up on the fact that the regime tends not to execute people who become known to the international community. We have seen many examples of prisoners that were either released on bail or had their sentences commuted through our “say their names to save their lives” campaign on social media, using hashtags to garner attention for their causes, and even before social media existed, through getting the stories of political prisoners to international media outlets. Once reported on, and once the eyes shift to the regime and the reality of its pending brutality, realizing that the action is not worth the repercussions, we have seen them back down and not execute. For that reason, this is part of an urgent campaign for readers to talk about Toomaj as much as you can, using the hashtag #FreeToomaj or #ToomajSalehi. Every comment makes a difference, and if we were wrong, what did we lose by trying?”

Someone in the tags mentioned that Twitter is probably a more effective place to do this. But Tumblr is an excellent place to tell people to go mention Toomaj Saleh and #FreeToomaj on Twitter, IG, and TikTok in particular.

Fun fact about the early Catholic church is that, despite spending generations being persecuted by the Roman empire, it took less than 15 years under Theodosius I to go from “the empire is Catholic now” to “and also every other religion is banned.” You can literally read St. Augustine move from “state religious persecution is unacceptable” to “state religious persecution is cool actually” over his lifetime as Catholicism came to power. I’m sure there’s no broader lessons to be learned there

Just gonna keep pointing to the part in Asimov’s auto biography I Asimov, where he talks about antisemitism (cause it’s all really good stuff even all these years later), but I’m once again gonna just share the last 3 paragraphs cause… well you tell me they’re not relevant to this post and relevant all these years after he wrote them:

Even as I write, Jews are immigrating from the former Soviet Union into Israel. They are fleeing their country because they fear religious persecution. But the moment they set foot on Israeli soil, they become Zionist extremists who are merciless toward the Palestinians. They change from persecuted to persecutors in the blink of an eye.

That said, the Jews are not alone in this. If I’m sensitive to this particular problem, it’s because I’m Jewish myself. In fact, this phenomenon is universal. In Roman times, when the first Christians were persecuted, they pleaded for tolerance. But when Christianity prevailed, did tolerance reign? Not on your life. Instead, persecution was soon going on in the opposite direction. Or take the case of the Bulgarians, who demanded freedom from their dictatorial regime, but once they had it used it to aggress against their Turkish minority. Or the people of Azerbaijan, who demanded of the Soviet Union the freedom denied it by the central government, only to immediately attack the Armenian minority.

The Bible teaches that the victims of persecution must in no circumstances become persecutors in their turn: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”(Exodus 22:21). But who follows this teaching? Personally, whenever I try to spread the word, I get hostile looks and make myself unpopular….

Reblogging for that quote from Exodus.

I never want to hear conservatives go on about repressive censorship in China, North Korea, and Iran ever again

To be clear to those unfamiliar: these are the companies that libraries use to lend ebooks.

They are literally cutting off library access to minors.

If you are affected by this or other bans and restrictions in the United States, be aware that the Brooklyn Public Library is offering free digital library cards to anyone age 13-21 nationwide as part of their Books UnBanned initiative:

BOOOOOST

Seattle has joined them:

Including pre-symptomatic cases, spread with no symptoms is estimated to be greater than 60% and why just masking when you feel sick isn't actually keeping anyone safe.

oh here comes a bat fact:

Bats are extremely important to nature as a whole, they are crucial both to ecology and economy actually. First of all there are species of bats that eat fruit or nectar, which in turn means several fruit have evolved to be pollinated by mostly or even only bats. They’re important to south asian fruit industry that way, being responsible for stuff like mango and durian fruit being able to even bear any to begin with. In south America they pollinate agave which means syrup and tequila can’t be made without them. In some areas the decline of bats leads to fruit not being eaten which attracts pests. And in Australia flying foxes are crucial pollinators for the lumber industry

In places like the South American rainforest the fruit they eat leads to seed being spread, and bats are the first line of reintroducing trees to areas that have suffered deforestation.

In a slightly less direct way bats also eat a ton of insects and pests that would otherwise go eat crops. I’ve only seen numbers for America, but a single specific bat population eats about 10.000 pounds of insects a night, and I saw researchers estimate that bats save farmers several billion dollars worth of pesticide just by eating as normal. In an environment where bat habitat isn’t damaged and humans don’t encroach into their space too much, healthy bats are also likely helping reduce the number of insects that carry disease. I’ve only seen one article mentioning that specifically though, and I suppose you’d need a ton of bats to reduce the number of insects to the point of no disease at all.

anyway, say thank you to your neighbourhood bats as they’re probably waking up in the northern hemisphere, and blow them a kiss

So, thanks to President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill, remote locations on the Navajo Nation Reservation will be receiving electricity for the first time — ever.

Also, water treatment devices are being developed to help the tribe access clean running water. After decades without.

#controversial opinion: the infrstructure bill was one of the most important bills passed in the past decade (or even... longer)#the fact that biden got it passed can never be understated. that bill sat in congress for YEARS.#we're fixing problems that have been problems for decades because of this bill

Besides all the money to fix all the shit that's broken in the last forty years since we haven't been maintaining things properly and/or replacing them as they wear out, it also includes

$39 billion to modernize transit and improve accessibility--you know how a lot of public transit is not usable for people with disabilities? Here's $39 billion to fix that! And you know how a lot of public transit isn't actually very well designed so it's cumbersome and inefficient to use? Here's money to fix that!

$66 billion for passenger and freight rail--rail is by far the most environmentally friendly and financially efficient way to move people and freight. And we're actually investing in it for the first time in a century.

$7.5 billion to build a national network of electric vehicle chargers to make electric vehicles more practical.

$73 billion to overhaul the nation's power infrastructure, clean energy transmission, and overall energy policy--you know how leftists have been saying for years that renewables are ready to go, why aren't we moving in that direction? Well, that takes money to transition the infrastructure, and here is the money to do it.

$65 billion for broadband development--bringing broadband to rural places where the big corporate ISPs aren't going to bother because they're not profitable enough. With today's economy, a lack of broadband access leaves people isolated disconnected. This is fixing that.

It also MASSIVELY ramps up what the US is doing to make sure everyone has clean water

$15 billion for local governments to replace lead water pipes

$9 billion to address emerging contaminants such as PFAs

$3.5 billion to build water and sewer systems on Indian Reservations

$7 billion to FEMA for handling climate change-related disasters

Many of these line items are orders of magnitude more money than the US has spent on these things before. This is transformational. But the thing is, the Infrastructure Bill was not a one-and-done thing. It's designed to work over several years, because major infrastructure work doesn't just start on a dime. If Trump gets re-elected, all of this goes away.

I have friends who live in Puerto Rico, where the infrastructure is...not great, and this bill gave the island 950 million, which is more than the value of the entire current infrastructure. My friends say since the bill passed they've seen crews out constantly fixing roads, bridges, electric, all the things.

In our neighborhood, we're getting a bunch of roads repaired and the Water Treatment Plant is being upgraded and having lead pipes removed, among other things.

Looong overdue investment in infrastructure.

Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation.  He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.  

The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society.  He loved the correct functioning of the social contract.  He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it.   He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay.  He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture.  He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.

As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent.  The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series?  Ludicrous.  He was just full of treasure.  What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.

In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person.  He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.”  He just did the work.  I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.

This post seems to be making the rounds again so here it is on the word blog

GNU Terry Pratchett

"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.

It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).

Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.

One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.

*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.

Please, PLEASE use Libby. OverDrive. Hoopla. CloudLibrary. Kanopy. Flipster. Freegal. Transparent Language. Mango. Jstor. Your library would not offer it if they could not afford it, and we afford things by reporting the number of people who use that service, so if you don't use the service we can't afford it. It's a cycle. Keep it going, keep using it, and we'll keep providing because we'll be able to justify the cost to the bean counters in government.

@/savoirflair: On #EarthDay, it's crucial to recognize that the guardians of our planet are its indigenous peoples, who have historically maintained biodiversity and preserved natural resources through deep-rooted practices and ancestral wisdom. There is no climate justice without human rights, and we cannot celebrate our planet without honoring its original and eternal custodians. Without the stewardship of indigenous populations like the Palestinians, our environmental efforts are incomplete. Their resilience and ongoing struggle underline that Earth Day is not only a call for environmental action but also for justice and the recognition of the rights of indigenous guardians who have nurtured the land for centuries.

nobuddy feels like they have a sharp attention span these days, right? and we all just click “agree on terms of service” because its hard to love yourself sometimes, well

enter Terms of Service, Didn’t Read: a website and a browser addon that streamlines the terms of service of many popular web services to be read by the tech sunday drivers.

It’s graded from A (great) to E (awful) and if you have the addon you have access to the info about the website on your bar

this post came back to me like a dear son from war, hello ol boy

If you (like me) want 3rd party candidates to be an actual viable option in USA elections so you no longer have to vote for Democrats OR Republicans as your first and only choice, then what we need is Ranked Choice Voting. In order for that to happen, we as voters have to do two things:

"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.

Why do we say that capitalism must be “dismantled”?

You’ll hear phrases like “Smash the state!” “Eat the rich!” and “Smash capitalism!”

And, yes, of course, but… :)

However relevant those sayings are, our work must be careful, highly organized and above all planned.

Because capitalism and all of its associated systems are not discrete, abstracted entities we can attack independently.

It is a structure, like a complicated machine with many thousands of working parts…

And right now it is connected to absolutely everything.

If we do this… [picks up huge hammer and smashes the machine]

Then a lot of vulnerable people will die.

The machine was built and improved and redesigned and patched over the course of generations. It is very good at its intended purpose, which is ultimately to generate profit.

Every human being alive today relies on the byproducts of the machine to survive, without exception.

The machine’s engineers want it to keep working like it does. In fact, they want to optimise it.

That will kill all remaining life on Earth.

So, we must destroy the machine, quickly and carefully

We must examine its deadly programs and mechanics and replace them with alternatives we built together.

The engineers don’t want us tampering with the machine.

However, we make it run…

So we can make it STOP. Together.

How will YOU help us to safely dismantle the machine?

iww.org

p.s. My computer is on its last legs. If you would like me to draw you a little cartoon and help me get a new computer, learn more at this post.

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

my followers can have some cave pics, as a treat

Every time I advocate for voting people are like "no you shouldn't vote! Read this literature, it'll totally change the way you view voting!" And every single time it's the same fucking "you shouldn't vote because both parties are exactly the same so it won't make a difference who wins" bullshit wrapped up in some fancy language

"OP you need to read 'Voting is not Harm Reduction" OP has read Voting is not Harm Reduction. It opens with the acknowledgement that for the most vulnerable people, even a tiny degree of harm reduction can mean life or death and then continues to advocate for not participating in that harm reduction lest you "participate in your own oppression". Pardon me for not finding "vulnerable people should die for my ideology" very convincing.

I'm just gonna leave this here:

🔴New Zealanders put on a powerful display by doing the Haka in solidarity with Palestine