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it bothers me that you often don't really hear about people having a "favorite album" the way they might have a favorite movie or favorite video game

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[“Like every other person with AIDS in the world, they had become infected through injection drug use or unsafe sex with infected partners. Now they were students, community workers, safe sex educators, peer counselors. Many described themselves to me as “activists,” but actually they were working for social service agencies, or as part of AIDS bureaucracies.

The distinction between service provision and activism has become elusive. Poor people are very interwoven into state agencies: there's a lot of surveillance and intersection. My life has shown me that activists win policy changes, and bureaucracies implement them. In a period like the present where there is no real activism, there are only bureaucracies. So, when there are severe budget cuts, lack of jobs, lack of educational opportunities, foreclosures, et cetera, there are no structures in place radical enough to be able to mobilize people to respond effectively. These women were under siege by U.S. government policies, but had no political movement, only a social service sector to occupy.

My talk was about the history of the women with AIDS empowerment movement. I read them a piece I had published twenty-three years before in the Village Voice about women being excluded from experimental drug trials. The article included quotes from interviews with pharmaceutical executives about how “unreliable” women were, not dependable like “art professionals” (their euphemism for gay men).

I then showed a sixteen-minute excerpt from Jim's film, about ACT UP's four-year campaign to change the Center for Disease Control's definition of AIDS so that women could get benefits. The film showed the early leaders of the women with AIDS movement, Black and Latina women—just like those in the audience. Katrina Haslip, Iris De La Cruz, Phyllis Sharpe— ex-prisoners, ex-addicts, ex-prostitutes, now leading a political movement, literally yelling and screaming in the rain in front of government buildings demanding policy changes. Jim had superimposed the birth dates and death dates under the name of each activist, so it quickly became clear that all of these leaders had died. When the lights came up, there was a kind of stunned silence. Later, I heard from many women in the audience, that they had no idea that any of this had ever happened. They did not know that women had ever been excluded from treatment, they did not know that women couldn't get benefits—and most importantly, they did not know that women exactly like themselves had been leaders and activists forcing government agencies to change their policies. Even though they were currently under-served, losing benefits through budget cuts, and in desperate need of an activist movement for poor people in America, they did not know their own legacy of leadership. They did not know that they could change the world and that people in exactly their circumstances had already done so.”]

sarah schulman, from gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination

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Spin the wheel. That's who's trying to kill you.

Spin the wheel again. That's who's trying to protect you.

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Way, way too real (source)

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tumblr staff finding out their site has crowdsourced a viral song, only to discover it is 100% unusable in any corporate marketing scenario

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Please watch Fabiniku

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My mother is all into homesteading and off-grid living videos right now. Every time I check up on her, this is what she wants to talk about.

It gives her a sense of peace and purpose I guess. Which is good, she’s been struggling to find that with her injuries and condition. She’s learning skills, and feeling prepared for “the worst”. Like I can’t get her to stop watching conspiracy theory bullshit on YouTube so at least this kind of content alleviates some of the anxiety the other content amplifies, because she feels like she can do something now to secure her safety later.

But to get through these conversations, I have to tell myself— hey, if natural disaster comes our way, some of this might be useful. But I know she’s not just thinking a big storm or natural disaster. She’s preparing for the collapse of society. And I don’t know how to break it to her that we wouldn’t survive that. You can make long lasting candles with crisco? Cool. Where you going to by crisco when society collapses? You’ll stock up now? Ok cool. What will you do when it runs out? Honestly, before it runs out, what will you do when people with guns come to take your various stockpiled supplies?

If we hit a point where society collapses, we’re done for. Food, medicine, etc. we can’t survive without society, without a world where people are working together trying to help each other out.

So, I’ll go through with this shit in the name of natural disaster preparedness, and because it helps her. But that’s as far as I’m willing to put energy into it. I refuse to prepare for, bet on, or hope for the collapse of society. I’d rather spend my energy trying to prevent society collapsing, what little part I can play in that. I’d rather spend my energy supporting people in my community. I’d rather work and build towards a better future, not prepare for the worst.

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good god.

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Seiko if she was hot

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The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

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TIP:

This holiday season, if you know someone who likes house plants,

DON'T

get them a houseplant. DO NOT.

instead, get them a NICE, MEDIUM-LARGE, AESTHETIC, BOTTOM-DRAINING, INDOOR

POT.

that is what they want. that is what they dream of. ok? thats what will be most useful and appreciated. in fact, if you can, get them a CUTE MATCHING SET. OF POTS!!!! NOT PLANTS, POTS!!!!!!!!

they may be more excited initially about the plant. that is true. but a pot is a gift that they will go home and use to upsize one of their already beloved houseplants, and every time they look at it they will remember how much they appreciate you.

HOUSEPLANT:

- they already have so many

- needs to be watered

- takes up window space

- comes in a pot thats already too small, needs to be upsized, costing money

- can die

AESTHETIC POT

- lets them care for an existing plant they own

- they will be grateful every time they see it in their home

- does not take up window space not already occupied by a plant

- can be wrapped without dying or spilling dirt everywhere

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Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. Hear Israel (the state and supporters, Israel the icon) I should outlive it long enough to bury it. (old yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

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