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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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French trans woman Marie-Pierre Pruvot, known by her stage name Bambi

Female Mimics magazine 1965

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The cruelty of racist white men.

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david lynch telling people in 2017 that you should accept trans people or kill yourself. he was so real for this.

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boyfriend asked what i was doing, told him i was editing a picture, boyfriend asked "is it something like house stretched out with the words 'menstrual blood' on it or some shit?", boyfriend was wrong, boyfriend was also onto something this goes hard

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The Monster Manual but it's blatantly written by the monsters

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So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that's what's on my passport. I'm pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.

I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office... and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn't be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?

They're my fucking hero.

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In the book Cultish by Amanda Montell, I was introduced to the "thought-ending cliché" - it's commonly used by abusive groups but is not limited to them. This is a phrase that just kills discussion as everyone nods sagely because, yes, obviously. What's pernicious about them is most of the time people don't realize this is what they're doing.

One thought-ending cliché that I am absolutely tired of is when I point out how absolutely cruel a policy or law is and someone pops in with "the cruelty is the point". I don't think it's meant to be a thought-ending cliché, although at best it's still cliché.

The thing is, I don't care if the GOP is being cruel just to be cruel or if they're secretly unaware or if they are intentionally or unintentionally hypocrites or if they even care about such things. I'm by and large not talking to people who are hostile or indifferent to me on my socials.

What I do care about is the notion that we're just allowing ourselves to shrug and move on because *of course* it's cruel, *obviously* that's the point. There is value *to me* in still pointing out exactly what and why the policies are cruel and logically unsound.

Even if being terrible is the point, why give up and say, Well. There's no reason to outline why it's cruel because we all know that's all they're interested in?

I still find value in groping toward a less grim baseline by saying, No. This is cruel. This is wrong. It is cruel for these reasons.

I find value in saying, here is why this cruel policy can't even have the effect they're lying about it having.

Because for everyone who already knows that "cruelty is the point" there is another who didn't know HOW cruel it is.

It's a reminder, too, that it isn't just something to just ignore. The cruelty isn't something that we have to accept as our normal.

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I absolutely turn the fuck around if I have to ring a little call bell for deodorant or whatever at a store. If for no other reason than, having worked retail, I know that there is the absolute minimum of employees in the store at any time and they have enough to do. But also, I just refuse to ask permission to be handed a $5 item.

Before the stores started proliferating locking up inexpensive necessities, the most depressing aisle was always the locked baby formula section. Like, how fucked up is it that enough people need to steal food for their infants that they put it in a locked cabinet?

Published Jan 14, 2025

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"AO3 doesn't need a "dislike" button"

Um, actually, it already has one. Depending on your specs, it might look a little different but over all it looks kinda like this:

You can find it at the corner of your screen, which corner is dependent on your layout.

Anyway, if you dislike a fic, you can hit this Dislike Button until the fic goes away. It really is pretty amazing actually.

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rest in peace you fucking legend

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Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook.

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here in paperback or here on Kindle.

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I need everyone to know that our cat and dog are the bestest friends. At one point we were out of town and Samhain (cat) did not care that my husband and I had returned. He shunned us until the next morning when I picked up Finn (dog) from boarding.

There really is no way to explain how close they are, but it is funny because we only have this cat because Finn and my other dog at the time cornered a black feral kitten in the yard on a blustery Halloween night, and nobody claimed him.

I am actually afraid about when one of the pair dies because I think the other will be disconsolate.

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This is one of those things where I text reads very differently to people. I've also seen people saying it downplayed Amanda Palmer's role but for me it felt like the opposite of that. To me it felt damning - the number of young women she funneled to a predator, the way in which she was so blasé about it having happened before, that she would ever think to put a vulnerable young woman in his path - terrible.

And I look at it through the lens of her as a musician who seems extraordinarily self-centered and felt entitled to free labor from her own fans. She seems to have a history of also not realizing or purposely ignoring that due to the power differential, even just asking is fucked up. Of course that may just be additional context I have picked up over the past ... 15? 17? Oh my god i'm old... years.

I also saw people talking about the Scientology abuse as protective of him, whereas what I saw was the damning image of him as an eager young auditor. There are ways that cult teaches people to manipulate others and he certainly learned those lessons.

That said, everyone will have their own takes if they are able to read it, or read selections from it. I am not necessarily any more correct than those other people even if I read the piece differently.

So very very many things are being reevaluated so rapidly that it is dizzying.

The Vulture article is extremely good reporting and utterly devastating. But it is absolutely one of the most trigger-y pieces of non-fiction writing I have ever read, and would be so even if he hadn't been one of my instructors at Clarion UCSD. It includes specific, horrible details of sexual, emotional, physical, and financial abuse of women and children.

You probably don't need anyone to tell you this, but just in case you do: you do not have to read the article if doing so will cause you harm.

It is enough to know that the allegations are severe, well-sourced, and that behind the kindly, cultured facade was an entitled monster.

No matter what anyone says, you do not need to bear witness. You do not need to harm yourself to be aware. It will not undo the harm he did. Your emotional safety is also important.

Be gentle with yourself and others.

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I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

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The Vulture article is extremely good reporting and utterly devastating. But it is absolutely one of the most trigger-y pieces of non-fiction writing I have ever read, and would be so even if he hadn't been one of my instructors at Clarion UCSD. It includes specific, horrible details of sexual, emotional, physical, and financial abuse of women and children.

You probably don't need anyone to tell you this, but just in case you do: you do not have to read the article if doing so will cause you harm.

It is enough to know that the allegations are severe, well-sourced, and that behind the kindly, cultured facade was an entitled monster.

No matter what anyone says, you do not need to bear witness. You do not need to harm yourself to be aware. It will not undo the harm he did. Your emotional safety is also important.

Be gentle with yourself and others.