coffee has been so weird for me lately. i seem to go thru these like, idk, bumpy patches? where i have a period of losing my flow and can only brew meh coffee at best
its almost like an art form in a way because with all the other variable seemingly being equal, not having that magic touch or je ne sais quoi really makes all the difference in the results
lowkey obsessed with this alvin and the chipmunks soundcloud project where every track is slowed to 16bpm. it’s dark and drippy and haunting and sorta fkd up—extremely my shit
‼️🚨 hey so libraries across NYC are rapidly unspooling.
because of recent budget cuts, they’ve been forced to reduce:
• their stock of digital books
• the number of materials you can put on hold or have out on loan
• their hours of operation
• scheduled repairs & maintenance
• staff
it’s only a matter of time before these cutbacks cascade into elimination of physical materials and closures, leading to the undoing of the library system in NYC.
i implore you to start discussing how to preserve the institutions you have near you and their materials and take steps to make it happen.
after a turbulent two months of weekly visits to hospitals and EDs, my partner and i finally started feeling that we might get a break, but sometime at the hospital after her last surgery or the other hospital for my monthly visit to get pumped w chemo / immunos., we were infected with COVID.
it takes a lot for me to share personal aspects of my life anymore and even more to reach out for support, but we could both really use some TLC and a respite from the storm!
any support is welcomed and deeply appreciated 🖤 solidarity!
This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer, and, for everyone's legal sake, I am not encouraging anyone to engage in illegal activity. Many longtime organizers and abolitionists recommend avoiding arrest by every available means except those that jeopardize another's safety, as there can be many implications to an arrest or long term ramifications. In some civil disobedience scenarios, however, like a blockade, the goal is to require physical removal by law enforcement—to make a statement that you're holding your ground no matter what—making arrest inevitable. With that said, here’s a guide on how to prepare for a demo when you expect an arrest.
people have issues with leftists or feel unwelcome in leftist spaces & leftist movements because people bring their prescriptive bs and need for control to the table and peddle it as if it’s enlightenment.
no “in my opinion” here. no acknowledgment of this being a personal decision to interpret ideologies & philosophies this way. no “here’s an interesting angle… what do you think?”
big yawn from me on ppl like this. catch up or get lost.
when we (possibly unwittingly or through social pressures) made the shift to taking authoritative positions on concepts and refusing to allow them to be challenged or allowing ourselves to be open to discussing ideas, we lost the plot because that’s what the internet was made for.
if we’re not swapping tips on how to make this declining society and difficult existence more comfy for each other, what are we doing here?
listen we can shout about things online or tell ppl to email their reps or whatever but how many civilian lives are being saved by posting the seventy-four thousandth instagram carousel?
Personally I know I'm physically distinctive. And my vocabulary is distinctive, too-- even if I made all new online accounts with perfect digital hygiene, my habits of speech are identifiable, any shot I had of staying anonymous is probably already gone. I've already showed my face at protests in the past, so I'm already on lists somewhere.
Honestly the Eye of Sauron can pick out just about any one of us at any time if it feels like it. All that data being collected for advertising or whatever, if anybody in power decides they want to target a list of folks who've read certain books or liked certain TV shows-- what's to stop them, at any moment, snapping up anyone? Even if you're perfectly behaved and perfectly orderly and perfectly peaceful. All it takes is a whim.
What's to stop them? We really need to think about that. How to stop them.
🔔 Friendly PSA for people on @kolektiva & adjacent instances and those following or supporting the #StopCopCity movement:
A group known as Refuse Fascism (@/refusefascism/@mastodon.world) is on Mastodon and they seem to have a sizeable reach.
This group is associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party a.k.a. RevCom as well as Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, none of which are to be trusted and I would suggest considering adding them to block lists.
These groups are known among organizers to:
• collaborate with police
• stifle dissent
• perpetuate harmful ideas & myths
• perpetuate racism & transphobia
• swoop demonstrations or co-opt movement engagement for their own ends (like funneling green protesters into their cult-like patterns of behavior or their fundraising efforts—including merch—that diverting funds away from longtime and legitimate outfits)
The last point is critical because prior to the Supreme Court decision to overturn protections, they had no established presence or platform in this movement space then spun up Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights to capture newly generated interest among new or young activists. They appear to be using the same playbook for the #StopCopCity movement.
If you’d like to read more about RevCom / Refuse Fascism / Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, their patterns, history, and criticism have been covered in @Vice and @theintercept by @annamerlan and @robertmackey
okay where do i find vietnamese coffee in brooklyn ?
whole bean, preferably, but i’ll take pre-ground
all the bougie markets nearby that carried brands like Nguyen have recently cut down their coffee range and only carry the bigger roasters like stumptown or mainstream coffee like dunkin’ or sbux
"Meta acknowledged in a statement to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms ["covid" and "long covid"] and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words."
@wjmaggos search would be huge, no doubt. it hampers the experience more than it seems like it should. it’s always the little things that turn people away or get them hooked
While I am a leftist, I’ve always been baffled by the “LOL 9/11” humor. It’s so vapid and immature to me.
It’s not exactly deep analysis to point out that US Gov was to blame as much as the hijackers and those that make the case that the attacks targeted financial and military strongholds are looking at it from a geopolitical standpoint, but neither make sense of or validate the childish look-at-me-I’m-edgy humor over the death. Yeah, who gaf about the buildings, but there were numerous innocent people killed.
What’s interesting to me, is that there’s a pattern I’ve noticed about the people that go hard on 9/11 jokes. They tend to invariably be the least likely to engage in substantive political conversation because even my moisturizer goes deeper than their ideology, and there’s no chance in hell they’ll pull up when fash show up to counter-demos.
Organizers and privacy-minded people: a mini thread on URLs and URL sharing and a tool 🧵🛠️
Lots of apps and sites modify links (like social media apps and news sites, particularly Instagram) to embed trackers that allow them to market to you, among other things.
You might see this in the form of a shortened URL or a link that is hella long, like when you copy a link from Instagram like "https://www.instagram. com/poorprolesalmanac?igshid=98s7duj4ed5". It's typically the part after the "?" that is the culprit, but sometimes it's embedded or not so clear where a link ends and where the trackers begin.
This might seem expected or innocuous even, but there is a lot of insight—and some creepy abilities—that can be gleaned from tracker links nowadays which put all of our privacy at risk and the security of some of us at risk.
When you open a link on Instagram or Facebook in the in-app browser (on both Android and iOS) for example, Meta can not only record the site you're on, but capture the keystrokes and data you enter (emails, names, addresses, etc).
When you're sharing a link: strip the trackers out or use an archival site like archive dot ph and share that link instead—especially if it's a link to a government site or other sensitive website, e.g. far right news sites or tabloids like New York Post
When you're opening a link: check the link for trackers, expand the shortened URL to see where it really goes (wheregoes dot com), archive it and view it as a PDF, and maybe even open it on a browser or device that isn't your daily-driver or one that you can't afford to be compromised