obsessed with john waters parents, they were funnier than him!

lmao

mrs waters you will always be famous (to me)

As much as I do love boobs, they are entirely a social construct. I really think we need a strong revival in the free the nipple movement because the concept of topless nudity existing for some people but not others is frankly insane. The breasts of fat men, men who have gynecomastia, are allowed to be seen, despite being more or less the same anatomy as afab people with breasts. In order for an afab trans person to be topless, they must get a surgery to remove breast tissue BUT if a cis woman gets the same surgery (double masectomy) for health or personal reasons while still identifying as a woman they can NOT be topless! The enforcement of topless nudity laws is unclear, based largely on opinion and used selectively to hurt minority groups (see: the trans woman who was denied a legal gender marker change and decided to go topless as a result, then was arrested for being topless despite the fact that in the eyes of the law she was a man)

When I was in college, round about 2002 or so, I did a paper on hate groups that necessitated a couple of visits to Stormfront, a white supremacist website and message board. One of the pages on the site was a "children's page" operated by the child of Storrmfront's founder, which was a unique form of horrifying. But I also remember looking at a photo of the kid on the site and thinking, that poor fuckin' kid, what kind of chance did he ever have?

But it was just a paper and that was just a photo of a child I didn't know, so I turned in the paper and graduated and got on with life.

In 2016, @archwrites posted a link to an article by the Washington Post titled "The White Flight of Derek Black" (sorry about the paywall, Arch's post quotes some relevant parts here). I thought it looked like an interesting read: it was about a white supremacist named Derek Black and a group of campus activists at the school Black eventually attended, who set out to see if they could change his mind about race with radical kindness. In large part because of their work, Black eventually renounced white supremacy and became an antiracist.

And then I hit a photo in the article and gasped, because I recognized it. I'd seen the same photo on the Stormfront children's website. The kid I'd seen and pitied was grown up and had gotten out. Immensely satisfying to see.

But it was just a news story about someone I didn't even know, so I posted about how pleased I was to see it, and I got on with life again.

This morning, I woke to the news (sorry, it's the Daily Fail) that R. Derek Black, now 35, has just published a memoir, The Klansman's Son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Antiracism. And in the epilogue, they come out as trans.

I can't imagine better news I could have heard about them -- that they're out, they're thriving, and they're embracing themself.

Congratulations, kid. It's a great new photo.

[ID: A recent photograph of R. Derek Black, with long curly red hair, wearing a floral collared shirt and a red cardigan, smiling for the camera.]

hope you don't mind but I found the Post article extremely good, so here's a gift link for anyone who wishes to read it in full.

Oh I don't mind at all -- that's actually great, thank you! Reblogging so people can access the article through the link.

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

this is the most underrated part of rockin’ and rollin’ yoda

Luke’s face is what makes this.

Happy star wars day

One day

When you are older

YOU MAY GET HIT BY A BOULDER

Just a reminder for people who may not know, in light of protestors at UCLA being shot in the face with rubber bullets— rubber bullets are not bullets made of rubber. They are metal bullets encased in rubber.

Despite being called “non-lethal” or sometimes “less lethal”, they are well known to cause death and permanent disability.

Here’s a photo showing their size— these are actual rubber bullets used during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Do not let them downplay the severity of what they are subjecting this students to for standing against genocide. Stay safe and stay educated.

May i add this to your thesis

Not to mention

The ever-classic

So fucking tired of life under catapultism

we shpuld make a tumblr bar with drinks like sonic screwdriver and the baker street mule

just got out of my time capsule btw

Super! Who locked you in there?

For example, 7x3=21, 5x9=45, etc. If you do, what is it?

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

William Hays, Cirrus Sky, Woodblock print

Israel has deployed auto-firing quadcopters that emit the sounds of crying babies.

https://xtwitter.com/jam_etc_art/status/1780038184828608975

There is no possible reality where this is in any way capable of being passed off as self-defense. It was never self-defense. It is, and always has been, a genocide.

Crying babies. Crying babies. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, meant to draw out and kill civilians while also making it far more difficult to locate and aid children who are trapped or alone.

If you have money to spare, please consider donating to some of the fundraisers on Operation Olive Branch to help people escape this genocide.

End the occupation. Free Palestine.

I liked this prematurely because I wanted to investigate for myself but yeah, it's true. Here's two news outlets reporting on the matter: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/disturbing-recordings-crying-infants-played-israeli-quadcopters-lure-gaza-residents-shooting https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6271 Normally I try to find a recurring pattern for stuff like this however I think this information is too fresh for there to be a considerable precedent yet.

One thing that I didn’t see mentioned was that the resistance in Gaza were using the recordings of children laughing to draw in the IDF for an ambush.

And really, I think this really does encapsulate how awful Israel actually is. One side uses the recordings of crying children to prey on basic human kindness and compassion.

The other side uses recordings of children playing and laughing because they know their target is explicitly targeting kids.

If I wrote this, it’d be considered cartoonishly ridiculous.

okay so I have this idea for a new therapy thing. basically the idea is after an abusive relationship or a combat deployment or anything that might conceivably leave you with PTSD and a loss of ability to reasonably gauge how bad the shit that happened to you actually was, you sit there with a mental health professional for like, a solid 30 to 60 minutes, you tell them short vignettes of your experiences and they respond ONLY by rating how fucked up each one was on a scale from 1 to 10 and then you move on. the objective isn't to reflect deeply on specific experiences but to get a sustained series of reassurances that what you went through was, in fact, That Bad and gradually rebuild your trust in your own present and future ability to judge when what you're going through isn't okay.

currently calling it Rapid Fire Affirmation and Recalibration Therapy (RAP-FART). working title, open to feedback.

Great news! This exists! It's called "critical stress incident debriefing" (CISD) and it does in fact reduce PTSD symptoms and onset!

It's usually used in a group setting where multiple people experienced the same trauma (combat, disaster, etc), so that there is an element of professional debrief and of peer support. This dual approach helps to ensure that in addition to you and your therapist being like 'that was fucked UP', you also have proof that other people in general agree it was fucked, thanks to the peers.