seagodofmagic

[seagodofmagic]

La Dame de Saint-Sernin, and an Early Dynastic Sumerian lady

[seagodofmagic]

Just for fun:

Feel free to reblog and tell me what country or region you’re from and what kind of bear 🐻

[seagodofmagic]

hi, i’m your local laid off discord employee, here to talk about exactly how safe it may or may not be to talk about Political Activism on discord. my credentials here are that i was a senior member of discord’s trust & safety team, which is the team that handles bans, legal investigations, and legal compliance. (my speciality was in child safety, anti-grooming, and taking down CSAM, but i also worked occasionally in low level terrorism issues and assisted that team in investigations.) i also know most of the people still working there in these capacities.

the tldr and most important thing to know is: i do not recommend you plan, discuss plans, or use any kind of hyperbolic (or not) language about violence to government officials or anyone in that vicinity on discord. please use signal instead.

a discord trust & safety employee is technically able to see any message you’ve sent under your account, going all the way back to the beginning of your account. unless you have manually deleted a message, it is viewable to a tns employee. now: it is a tremendous part of being on a tns team that we did NOT invade user privacy without cause. cause was usually: another user reported something you said, and we thought the reported message indicated you might be doing something elsewhere that was illegal (for example: a user says “i’m talking to this girl but she’s in high school lol.” i would then try to find evidence as to whether or not there was a child safety issue there. in this example, we’d require clear admission of age from both the user and the alleged high school girl, and then clear evidence of sexual talk between them, and go from there.) finding evidence required looking though all of that user’s messages.

most of the tns team, as i know them, are pretty resolute about not going further in looking than would be needed for action. most of the tns team that i still speak to is very much on the side of blue. your general conversations are probably perfectly safe, and we were very good at figuring out quickly if someone has reported you maliciously. i don’t believe you need to worry too much about your porn and fanfic and all that.

HOWEVER: reported content must be investigated, and discord can, and has been, legally subpoenaed to turn over user information. again, this has nominally been in Very Evil cases (CSAM and grooming, school shooting threats, murder admissions, etc.) but that could change, either at the federal level, or at the discord policy level. discord, like any social media company, could easily be pressured or forced into taking on different internal policies that could get you in serious trouble if you are organizing violent or “illegal” resistance. if that happens, there is a scenario where this incoming administration is given access to your messages.

again: please do not organize your political or social resistance on discord from now on. please use signal to ensure your maximum safety. do not panic if you have already talks about things on discord: you can easily delete your messages, and that WILL remove from an employee’s view. do that and use signal from now on.

stay safe. i love you. 💕

[seagodofmagic]

[seagodofmagic]

Seasonal affective disorder havers how are we all coping

[ID: Two versions of the cat screaming at food bowl meme. The first has a clock showing 4pm and is captioned "WHY IS IT NIGHTTIME". The second has a November calendar and is captioned "WHY IS IT TEMPERATURES".]

[seagodofmagic]

spin this wheel

[seagodofmagic]

ever since I was a young lad I knew I wanted to be a middle-aged man with an undone tie around his neck who’s having a crisis so he goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face only to look up at himself in the mirror and wonder at the stranger looking back

[seagodofmagic]

Kim Kitsuragi is a fascinating character because there's not that much fun or interesting or compelling about him. And yet somehow over the course of playing Disco Elysium the game rewires your fucking brain around him. He's the middest man you've ever seen in both appearance and personality but at some point he says something kind to you or something critical of you and you feel like you just got hit by a truck and you need his approval like you need oxygen and like how tf did this happen. what are you

[seagodofmagic]

crime and punishment heritage posts. to me.

[seagodofmagic]

don't let the alt right make you think being a male is an immutable trait of yours. you can always become a woman to be a true leftist

[seagodofmagic]

[seagodofmagic]

oh my gosh this lamp is like a little decorative bell

YESSSSS I LOVE HER

i also think she could look really cute with some of IKEA's other similarly intricate white carved pieces....i think they've discontinued a lot of them at this point but for example this tealight holder?

[seagodofmagic]

and don’t get me started on what it means when men start throwing the word “immutable” around. you didn’t actually hurt his feelings, i promise. he is just mad that women and minorities are sometimes able to seek (limited) rights and protections under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. you know, the part of the u.s. constitution conservative men wish didn’t exist

[seagodofmagic]

something unbelievably toxic and sickening about all these posts citing bell hooks for the proposition that if women don’t lie down on the floor for #allmen somehow every bad political thing that is happening is our fault

[seagodofmagic]

I don’t really want to wade into discourse too much today because I know everyone is extremely miserable online rn but I think if you want to give people genuine advice on what to do politically, “join a union/get involved in your current union/organise your workplace” or “join ACORN/a tenant union/etc” is much more actionable advice than like “build community.”

the problem with “community” is that it doesn’t have the same formal infrastructure / resources / political connections / organising capacity that allows your hard work to have reach far beyond your immediate circle (which is what a union has), and also because like, “community” is an extremely vague and abstract concept that can mean anything from a local restaurant run by your neighbour to a church to your dnd friend group. Reaching out and helping your neighbours is a good thing, lots of people are having a really tough time and helping people around you pay rent or take care of their family or etc is a good thing and you should feel good doing that, but in response to the complete institutional and political failure of electoral liberalism I think the next best option is to turn towards already existing national infrastructure that can mobilise people without requiring you to individually maintain dedicated personal relationships with everyone around you. In my experience + the experience of many long-time activists that I know, relying on interpersonal connections to organise and get things done leads to highly sectarian, disorganised, toxic, and unpleasant organising conditions. The cold impersonal bureaucracy of union membership is legitimately a good solution to this problem.

there are many little positions of power available in these organisation that become open to you for as low a cost as showing up to zoom meetings. I have personally been elected to positions in various unions/orgs literally because I was someone who showed up to meetings! Nobody goes to committee meetings! You get annual budgets! You get to pass votes, organise events, spend money on organising materials! You get to buy food for people! Organising is so much easier in these spaces.

And of course, you are going to face the same ideological resistance, apathy, ignorance, incompetence, and bigotry that you would at your local queer meet-up or community neighbourhood council, and I have no illusions about the institutional limits of unions (which can also be reactionary, bigoted, highly disorganised, incompetent, toxic, and so on), but if you want to avoid completely exhausting yourself and resenting everyone around you, you don’t need to build “community” from the ground up, there are already structures out there where you can do good work. For all the resistance there is to unions and union activity, you will face that same level of resistance with local organising but have none of the power, resources, or institutional legitimacy already secured by unions

[seagodofmagic]

Boars love sweets