#communication snafus

[worldisahouseonfire]

I think something has happened to me, from a lifetime of trying to communicate with people who seemed committed to misunderstand me. I say one thing, and the way they respond, it's like they were listening to another audio track, or radio frequency. I think something happens when nothing a person says gets understood, believed, acknowledged, for years on end.

It becomes impossible for me to understand what even the point is of language. The more I try to correct, the less I make sense, even to myself anymore. And I worry that all the reasons people gave for not understanding me only served to make me more anxious and difficult to understand, even for people who wanted to make an effort.

I read things that Mel Baggs and other disabled writers wrote, and they're things that make sense with what I'm going through now. On the one hand it's validating to know I'm not the only one experiencing these things. On the other hand, many of those disabled writers are now dead, and the people who should be reading their words never have and possibly never will. If I send posts to people and they refuse to read them, and refuse to listen to me and what I can now quote from memory, then what would be the point of me writing or speaking at all?

I think a lot of people lose their voices and words this way.

I think a lot of people die this way.

Not because they're not articulate, not because they lack insight into what's happening around them, but because the people crammed in thickly around them are determined to misunderstand them, until the frustration boils over, meltdowns and 'behaviors' are had, and this is used as justification for chemical restraint, institutionalization, coercive control, and brilliant minds are vanished to silence their voices.

I don't want this to happen to me.

I think this is something that's been happening throughout the history of language and oppression to a lot of people, and it's a dangerous razor's edge to walk sometimes. Every word. Every facial expression. Every tone. Every movement. Every variation in volume. Where it's not merely about the perception of people in the immediate vicinity, but what they can write into charts and notes. What they can report to doctors, paramedics, agencies, therapists, and the sort of kangaroo courts that preside over involuntary commitment, guardianship, conservatorship.

Where anything you do or say or write, and even how you do it, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, so easily manipulated by those who can benefit from shutting someone up and away.

No staff have to be smart to do this. All they have to do is be more credible than those in their care. And this credibility is a function of their position. It's built into disability support services and welfare agencies, places and systems where we wind up when there is nowhere else to turn.

I live in an adult residential facility. When I was placed here, it was supposed to be temporary, to get me out of a dangerous shelter, to keep me off the streets and out of some inpatient situation. Much was not disclosed to me until after I was shuffled in. I am still legally my own person, and I'm alone.

The facility is getting paid over $10k a month for my board and care.

This facility has the highest restriction possible for a facility of this type, in order to be able to charge the maximum legal amount.

I have been here over a year. In that time I have not been able to access actual medical care.

Even in this expensive area, that much money a month could have paid rent, paid for a car and a printer/scanner, and paid for a graduate student from a nearby prestigious university to come over for a couple of hours twice a week to help me unfuck my life and actually access care.

When a business provides care for profit, they keep whatever they don't spend on those in their care. They keep whatever they don't spend on the staff salaries or training. They can hire people who don't even speak English, can barely read or write, and staff will be motivated to do whatever they're told by those who sign their checks. They see just how easily they could wind up in much worse jobs, working for people who haven't been groomed into terrified passivity, under the watchful metal eyes of Ring cameras in almost every room, whose footage is only accessible to the people signing the checks.

It doesn't matter what I say, what I understand, what I write. It doesn't matter what I experience.

All that matters is I have disabilities and I am poor. That is what is heard, instead of me. Like a loud, insistent, ringing alarm that drowns out my attempts to communicate. Like something that, once you know it, you can't ever un-know it, that undermines any willingness to understand, to feel respect for what I'm going through. Pity feels degrading, demeaning to put up with. It places me beneath the person feeling it, expressing it, exuding it.

It doesn't matter that I feel like a veteran of some of the worst shit imaginable, like I was born into a war on my very self, and I have largely had to fight and survive it alone.

Mel Baggs wrote about something -- I think sie called it the 'rule of two.' Where when there is just one other person accompanying you into a situation with a care provider, a doctor, someone in a position of power, then we get listened to more, treated a little more fairly. And the person doing the accompaniment may be mystified, if the expected discrimination and interpersonal badness doesn't actually happen. They may think we were exaggerating for dramatic effect.

But people thought that about femmes' overwhelming experiences of sexual harassment and assault, and Black people's overwhelming experiences of cop violence and harassment violence. It's not an accident that it mostly only happens when someone with too much power is alone with someone who is not considered a credible reporter of their own reality.

As a trans human I experience this also. As I child I experienced this with my abusers. And many, many, many disabled and chronically ill people experience this with care providers and caregivers, compounded the more marginalized and disbelieved we are in other ways.

I think there's a strong, strong tendency to want to differentiate and distance from people sharing stories of interpersonal harm. I don't think it's necessarily conscious, which is part of what makes it so difficult to interrupt. I think there's an instinctive, socialized, acculturated response that happens, in the knee-jerk responses people have to being told that a human is hurting another human. Interrogating details, heaping pity and unsolicited advice, a listener trying to feel safe again in their own experiences, in their own skin, in their own humanity. Trying to find reasons the victim of misfortunate brought it on themself, choices and mistakes the listener will of course never make. Never to live like that, or lose their job, or wear that, at that time of night in that neighborhood, with a person who in hindsight is easily evaluated as dangerous and harmful.

I don't know what to do or say about this. I think the more we ignore the reality that people don't have to mean harm to do harm, the more harm can proliferate. Like ignoring that termites can eat wood will wind up ensuring the house gets chewed to pieces around you -- like ignoring that black mold can grow in damp poorly-cleaned places inevitably ensures an equally unhealthy home -- ignoring the ways we all fuck up and fail to course-correct ensures that it's going to keep going, and going to get a whole lot worse, and eventually it won't be people making choices you're careful not to make yourself.

Eventually we will all harm others, and be harmed by others.

Denial is something that goes around and comes around. It seems like a harmless habit at first. But eventually you wind up dependent on so much denial, and so many people cooperating in that denial, that when some really bad shit goes down, you're alone.

And you're stuck in a place you can't leave.

And there's nowhere else to go.

And things are happening that are so bad that they are unbelievable, because everyone seems so Nice™ and everything looks so Pleasant™ whenever anyone with any power is watching. And the people who are saying that this shit ain't kosher struggle to string words together in a way that makes sense, and seem constantly afraid that if they speak up, things will get worse for them.

They seem, on the surface, quite Mad and unreliable. Paranoid, even. In spite of the fact that there are literal cameras watching them, and people 24/7 monitoring them and writing little notes in files that are kept under lock and key, that the subjects themselves can't see and can't contribute to.

And one of those subjects is you.

And people who don't have to live like you do tell you to be patient. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

They ask, over and over, if anything bad has happened. But they don't seem to understand or even believe the things you do say, or if they do, then what they do about it makes things even worse for you.

If you're lucky -- very lucky -- you have held onto a laptop computer, and have managed to stay off the worst of the mind-scrambling drugs by staying quiet and keeping to a minimum interactions with the people in a position to panic and administer those drugs. If you're very lucky, you have a lifelong habit of responding to confusion and anxiety by reading and reaching out online to find other people writing about situations like yours.

Unfortunately a lot of the people in situations like yours are just as disbelieved and anxious and afraid and wound so tight you and they set each other off all the time. It will be like interacting with other burn victims while still trapped in the burning house. You will argue over whose burns are worse and how far away you have to stay from each other, and who should get priority for any ointments and bandages hurled in through the flames. (Metaphorically speaking.)

You will realize just how many of you there are. And you will find writing by people who are now just charred skeletons, who never made it out. You will wonder how many others didn't have the great good fortune to have words to put to paper, who died voiceless, stories untold.

You will try to help each other, but there will never be enough soothing or healing or supplies or support to go around. You will wind up hurting others. You may wind up feeling just as awful as the people who are calling platitudes on the outside, telling you to just be patient, asking who set the fire, and not believing you when you tell them that the arsonists, wearing flameproof suits, are still wandering through the house setting and feeding fires.

They will tell you that those people are firefighters.

The arsonists will tell you they are fighting fire with fire.

This will seem like absolute bullshit. No one who's not an arsonist is coming into the inferno anymore, so there's no one to tell except each other. But it feels horrible to keep harping on it, so doing almost anything else, anything distracting, is essential so as not to just lie down and feed your pain-wracked exhausted flesh to the flames.

You will get really, really pissed about the trollish people who ring the house and mock you and others like you for 'letting' this happen to you. You will yell back sometimes, and they will become absolutely unhinged and go round up their trollish friends to investigate your entire life and say horrible things about your personal private business, both to you and everyone in earshot.

You will, understandably, be feeling a bit misanthropic and apathetic.

You will probably hate people who tell you that the only fire is a bad attitude, and that if you wanted to get up and leave, you could.

You will probably hate people who think you need a therapist to fix your way of thinking about and responding to being in hell.

On the bright side, you will probably come around to appreciate the really dark humor of the people you're burning with. Laughs will be your only morphine, sometimes, and they may sound maniacal, because you all need them so bad.

You will probably wonder if this is actually what Madness is -- pain whose context is not understood and experienced by others.

And if you are lucky, and have the capacity for it, you may read and listen to things Mad people have written and said through history.

You might come to think that the real madness lies not in your perception of what's actually happening, but the yahoos outside calling syrupy-sweet reassurances and platitudes in to all of you, chasing the denial dragon like absolute fiends.

You may wonder if there was ever a time when your world was not a house on fire, or if it was just a dream you once had.

You might write. You might sing. You might cry. You might rock. You might roll. You might sleep. You might even come to enjoy your nightmares, because at least they go away when you wake up into the nightmare that never ends, and they're a change of fuckery.

You may develop more of a taste for swearing, especially really creative swears. They will be honest.

You may start writing and be unable to stop.

You may despair, knowing that no one has the patience and attention span and desire to read that much anymore. Especially if there aren't any cat pictures to go along with it.

You may post it anyway. And include a cat picture at the end as a reward or apology for anyone who read all the way through. Gods only know what someone who read all the way through this is going through (as long as they're not out trollin' & hatin').

And even though you don't know them, and may never compare burn scars with them, or trade cool rocks with them, you'll feel love for them, as I love you, right now. And you'll hope, as I do, that your love -- so painfully necessary to feel right now -- is received with understanding, and can be passed on, as it was to me, as I pass it on to you.

You matter. Your voice matters. Your words matter. What you have to communicate without words matters. It really fucking sucks that you're stuck where you are, wherever you are. I hope one day you get out, and laugh in the rain, and cry in the sun, and do all the things you love and want to do. You are human, and you matter.

Here it is, your moment of cat:

[selfish-wanderer]

The "we should all learn to be honest and not be afraid of what people think" narrative in anime is weird. Because on the fluffly side you get like Bocchi, watamote, and the like. And on the other extreme you get like oshi no ko.

And even if you go, well ok idk how much a reincarnation story about a dead star is for me you go more to the middle and you get OreGairu fuckin' kiznaiver and is everyone alright???

[bestanimecouples]

Best Anime Couple: Shouko Komi and Hitohito Tadano

Anime: Komi can’t communicate

2 Seasons: 24 Episodes

OG

Dub & Sub

[randomwar]

no hay contexto (o bueno si. cronologia)

(yor iba estar como me atrapo mas que komi, pero la de mis leyes son mis leyes. mas tarde les explico lo de emilia)

[witch-of-the-writing-desk]

I Miss Powerpuff girls

[tpwrtrmnky]

ruse (half, part 2)

[ID: Three panels. Continuing from part 1, Blue-Yellow is walking away from the grayscale person, who smugly points at them as they walk along a winding path.

Grayscale: "Hah. I got you!"

Blue-Yellow: "Nah. You really didn't. I got bored, did the snippy comeback, and now I'm walking away."

Grayscale: "But you fell for my scheme! You've been tricked! Coaxed, into a snafu! I got you!"

Panel 2: Blue-Yellow is in the foreground looking exhausted, while the grayscale person poses smugly.

Blue-Yellow: "Sigh. What the fuck are you talking about now?"

Grayscale: "Well. It just so happens that my ruse... My scheme... Was to trick you into dismissing material analysis!"

Panel 3: Focus only on Blue-Yellow, who says: "...I did not do that, I dismissed you in particular making up a bullshit material analysis and accusing me of believing in it. It's actually incredibly pathetic that after pretending the idea of two colors is too complicated for you, you implied I was less competent than you at material analysis.

Panel 4: Focus on the grayscale person, who is holding their phone, which is displaying an image of Blue-Yellow.

Grayscale: "Ah, but your actual views on the issue don't matter, because I have a recording here, of you saying..."

Blue-Yellow, on the recording: "My material conditions are that I lose twenty hours a week to this shit you're doing right now."

Grayscale: "A perfectly catchy soundbite that I can now use against you.

End ID.]

[ID 2: The above continues for four more panels.

Panel 1: The grayscale person continues monologuing smugly:

"The brilliance of my scheme is that I know your discourses intimately! Deprived of context I will circulate your clever little line in the worst, most anti-materialist chromatic spaces I know of! They, in turn, will weaponize it as a meme against materialists, doing my work for me! The discourse will sow further division, waste the time of your theorists, and you will be the face of it!"

Panel 2: Zoom on Blue-Yellow.

Blue-Yellow: "I can actually feel my brains leaking out with every word you say. I'm actively participating in the material chromanist theory community here. They know me. This is a ridiculous scheme."

Grayscale: "Oh, but you can't know everyone. All it takes is that you reach enough people who don't know you.

Panel 3: Grayscale gloats as their phone is swiped out of their hand by a purple person from above.

Grayscale: "It is foolproof! My scheme is ironclad, it-"

Purple: "Yoink"

Panel 4: A tall purple person, a lime green person and a dark red person approach the grayscale person from opposite of where Blue-Yellow is standing.

Purple: "Is this person bothering you?"

Blue-Yellow: "Well they're trying to I guess"

Dark red: "Cringe."

Grayscale, in smaller text: "Hey! My phone! Give it back!"

End ID 2.]

Start - Previous - Next

[dare-to-dm]

I voted earlier today. There were a lot of big things on the Missouri ballot other than the presidential election, such as ranked choice voting, an abortion amendment, sports gambling and increasing minimum wage. So even though I know my state is going to swing red, I don't feel like I wasted my time going to the polls.

However, there was a snafu at the polls. Basically the machine that we feed our paper ballots into jammed. I wasn't too nervous though, because I saw the poll workers there react quickly, calmly and professionally. They immediately started gathering the ballots of those who hadn't been able to put them in the machine, and assured us all that the ballots would still be counted as normal. And they replaced the ballot of the poor guy who jammed the machine, because it was completely shredded.

I reached out to my housemate who was also working the polling place to see if he could give me further insight on how our ballots would be treated. I was a little nervous that my ballot might be treated like a provisional ballot since it wasn't being counted by the machine. Provisional ballots are perfectly legitimate of course, but I just know the Republicans are going to throw up a stink about them this year and try to paint them as a source of fraud.

Anyway, my housemate got back to me to let me know that they had fixed the machine as quickly as possible. And that all the ballots that were collected during that time would be fed into the machine at the end of the polling period and counted as normal.

It's a lot easier to have trust in the system when you're not afraid to ask questions and make sure you understand the process. From what I observed, I have trust that my local polling place is being run ethically and efficiently. I am very grateful that someone I trust is directly involved in overseeing the process. This is the value of community involvement.

[sexhaver]

for clarification: is your stance that the *word* kink inherently refers to a sexual experience, and the activities themselves are incidental to the conversation? it isn't clear what exactly you're trying to say which is probably the source of a lot of the grief you're getting on the topic.

That's the only way I can make sense of "non sexual bdsm is just hurting people for fun" being posted as a gotcha, despite obviously (to me) being an implicit agreement with the argument that commonly "kinky" activities can be nonsexual depending on context.

anon bc I don't want to risk catching your "bizarre anons" syndrome, sorry if you think I'm a part of that lol

if you, personally, ever get sexually aroused by an activity/fantasy/power dynamic/lifestyle choice, then it is a kink (TO YOU) even when you aren't actively aroused by it

if you, personally, never get sexually aroused by an activity/fantasy/power dynamic/lifestyle choice, then it is NOT a kink (TO YOU), even if it's something most people would assume is "kinky". it is instead a "hobby" or "interest"

as alluded to in point 2, there are a lot of activities/fantasies out there (like BDSM, inflation, findom, etc) that most people assume are kinks. this is because they are, in fact, kinks to most people who participate in them. if you are into these topics without getting aroused by them, the solution is NOT to keep saying that you have that kink while redefining the kink in question as "not inherently sexual". the solution is to say that you have a "hobby" or "interest" in the topic (you can add "nonsexual" if you want to be clear, but remember, "nonsexual [x] kink" is an oxymoron)

people who insist on referring to their entirely nonsexual participation in a mostly-kinky scene (like leather or shibari) as "nonsexual kink" fall into one of two camps: either they want to keep using the word "kink" without having to associate with those yucky perverts who are only trying to get off (which is obviously morally wrong), or they are in fact deriving sexual pleasure from those activities but are also trying to groom minors into participating in them under the pretense of "no it's not sexual so it's totally fine" (see the infamouse "sfw inflation kink community" snafu on here last year)

tl;dr: there is a reason you have to specify "nonsexual [x] kink" and do not have to specify "sexual [x] kink", and the people who don't get this point are mostly just being obnoxious about not knowing what words mean but are occasionally using this confusion to harm people

[seafoamreadings]

week of august 25th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: mercury going direct at last in leo in just a few days here will likely be fun for you and i don't even mean that sarcastically. something that got put on hold in the last few weeks gets new traction. by the end of the week uranus stations retrograde, though, so with that most likely in your second house, avoid excessive spending or burning through resources you aren't totally sure about.

taurus: while you can expect some (likely not unpleasant) surprises this week you can also expect them to be fickle or to have unseen strings attached. it's not a bad idea to accept or pursue them if you like them, but don't get too wrapped up in it all. things are fleeting. it's not an easy energy for a steady and stalwart taurean to grasp but, frankly, you're not supposed to grasp it.

gemini: the big news of the week for you is the end of your ruling planet's retrograde. things do not return to normal or comfortable just yet, due to the shadow period that follows, but this is the end of the actual retrograde phase and especially from the end of the week, things should start to get easier and less snafus ensue.

cancerians: this week may well bring new life into any stale or stagnant relationships or friendship situations. mercury stations direct in your second house also. take stock of what resources you have and what is lacking, and use what you have (or don't use what you don't have!) accordingly.

leo: unexpected opportunities arise this week. they may be quite startling and weird but if you feel drawn to them and it's within your means at all, you should take them, especially towards the beginning of this week. by the end of the week, uranus retrograde may have them a little bit less fruitful, or perhaps simply more difficult, but you can trust your best judgment even then. too much input from others is not advised.

virgo: the importance of ceres to your sign should not be understated. this week she goes direct in capricorn just as uranus goes retrograde in taurus. while they don't perfect the grand trine it's truly well-connected earth vibes for you. even inconveniences turn out to work in your favor. nourish yourself carefully and lovingly.

libra: venus coming home to your sign should help provide some comfort if times have been trying and even if they haven't, it's auspicious for you. meanwhile, uranian activity continues so be very careful who you share your resources (money, time, energy?) with.

scorpio: take care of your personal needs first of course, but then as much as you are able to, be in your local community and neighborhood. clean up a little trash, do a little volunteer work, help a neighbor out, etc. with the current activity this is the auspicious way to keep things going as smooth as possible. at minimum, it makes you look good, but best if you do it from the heart and not for status alone. this can help you cope with any relationship drama, btw.

sagittarius: venus into libra can have you in soap opera mode, turning friends into lovers and vice versa left and right. meanwhile mercury direct again in leo fires up your thirst for the truth, philosophically and spiritually. there's no reason you can't lean into both vibes.

capricorn: ceres goes direct in your sign this week and, believe it or not, one of the first events of *next* week is the retrograding ingress of pluto back into the extremes of your sign for the last time in any of our lifetimes. let ceres vibes help you nurture yourself as you prefer for any final demolitions caused by the king of the underworld.

aquarius: the air of churning and muckraking is still afoot. but at least some of it is in a pleasant manner thanks to venus. generally the muddiness of such upheaval is not so pleasant, but sometimes it does turn up trinkets from the bottom of the sea.

pisces: friends may come and go but your inner world is forever. without getting lost in the dream state, pay attention to it and respect and honor it. your dream life is just as real as your waking life. of course, you don't need to hear it from me, you're the expert. but in a time in a world where people are inclined to be blind to the magic around them, don't lose your contact with it too and don't let them convince you it's frivolous.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

imagine the change you wish to see in the world

[paingoes]

Rubies Masterpost

Rubies is a direct sequel to Destroyer. It is focused on Delta's life after captivity and deals with the aftermath of severe conditioning and abuse.

You can also read it on AO3 !

====================================

Character Overview:

Delta - living weapon whumpee with very, very powerful telekinetic abilities. was raised from birth to be a weapon of mass destruction for an evil space empire. hes killed thousands of people and hes really normal about it.

Kitty - catgirl caretaker! she works for the rebellion in infosec. used to be online friends with delta before they met irl.

Apollo - caretaker and combat medic, kitty's best friend. means well more than anyone on the planet.

Kitty and Apollo both coordinated to get Delta out of Empire and have now been made officially responsible for him in the event of snafu.

Not pictured above are:

Lun - Apollo's brother. Space vampire. (did all the real work)

Iza - Weapons expert and squadron leader (took the rap for it)

Levon - Supreme leader of rebel group Galatea (DILF)

====================================

Story:

First Night

Missed Calls

Light Show

First Base

Waiting Room

Settling

Ungrateful

Web 2.0

Terrors

Mood

Stars

Habits

Communication

Haircare

Asking

Check In

Trial I

Trial II

Midnight

Trial III

Trial IV

Orientation

Hangover

[12thperigeeball]

Quick Ball Announcement

Hey guys! So right off the bat I do want to apologize the usual pre-invite with the dates has ran into a few snafus along the way and we've decided it's for the best for the team to instead make a regular text post and leave the graphics for when it's closer to time! Sorry for those who have been waiting!

As it stands, I wanted to go ahead and announce that the Ball will run from Dec 12th to Dec 19th! One whole week worth of Ball Shenanigans for people to enjoy!

So what does that mean?

That means that:

Ball Nominations will be open for the entire time until they close on the 19th! No need to worry about getting it done during the three day period it was previous open for!

Voting will begin on the 20th!

We will be reblogging artwork and stories during that 1 week period as much as we can! Please feel free to reach out to us if we miss anything - 1 week is a long time and we may miss things during our normal lives.

This will NOT affect the current 'canon' in-character ball length. The ball will technically still only run for the weekend as normal - the extension is simply for the community as a whole to feel less stressed to create and finish their nominations.

This will hopefully allow people more time to relax during the holiday season and spend more time enjoying their RPs and trolls

Thanks for being patient!

[aaknopf]

Martyr!, the poet Kaveh Akbar’s propulsive debut novel, tells the tale of Cyrus Shams, the son of a lost mother (victim of a 1988 U. S. Naval snafu in the Persian Gulf that killed 290 people on a commercial airliner) and the long-suffering father who emigrated to Fort Wayne, IN with his baby boy. We meet Cyrus as a student of poetry at Keady University and a reformed addict. In this excerpt, he’s at the local open mic with his friends; we also share one of the poems from Cyrus’s bookofmartyrs.docx, helpfully supplied by Akbar, the poet behind the fictional poet.

. .

The Naples Tuesday night open mic had become a mainstay of Cyrus and Zee’s friendship. It was a small affair, not much to distinguish it from the myriad other open mics happening elsewhere in the country—except this was their open mic, their organic community of beautiful weirdos—old hippies singing Pete Seeger, trans kids rapping about liberation, passionate spoken-word performances by nurses and teenagers and teachers and cooks. As with any campus open mic, there was the occasional frat dude coming to play sets of smirky acoustic rap covers and overearnest breakup narratives. But even they were welcome, and mostly it felt like a safe little oasis of amongness in the relative desert of their Indiana college town, a healthy way to spend the time they were no longer using to get drunk or high.   Naturally, Naples didn’t have its own sound equipment, so Zee would usually show up fifteen minutes early with his beat-up Yamaha PA to set up for Sad James, who hosted every week. Sad James was called this to distinguish him from DJ James, a guy who cycled nightly through the campus bars. DJ James was not a particularly interesting artist, but he was well-known enough in the campus community to warrant Sad James’s nominative prefix, which began as a joke but somehow stuck, and to which Sad James had grown accustomed with good humor, even occasionally doing small shows under the name. Sad James was a quiet white guy, long blond hair framing his lightly stubbled face, who played intensely solemn electronic songs, punctuated by sparse circuit-bent blips and bloops, and over time at Keady, he had become one of Zee and Cyrus’s most resilient and trusted friends.   On this night, Cyrus had read a poem early, an older experimental piece from a series where he’d been assigning words to each digit 0–9, then using an Excel document to generate a lyric out of those words as the digits appeared in the Fibonacci sequence: “lips sweat teeth lips spread teeth lips drip deep deep sweat skin,” etc. It was bad, but he loved reading them out loud, the rhythms and repeti­tions and weird little riffs that emerged. Sad James did an older piece where the lyrics “burning with the human stain / she dries up, dust in the rain” were repeated and modulated over molten beeps from an old circuit-bent Game Boy. Zee—a drummer in his free time who idolized J Dilla and John Bonham and Max Roach and Zach Hill in equal measure—hadn’t brought anything of his own to perform that evening, but did have a little bongo to help accompany any acoustic acts who wanted it.   On the patio listening to Cyrus talk about his new project, Zee said, “I could see it being a bunch of different poems in the voices of all your different historical martyr obsessions?” Then to Sad James, Zee added, “Cyrus has been plastering our apartment with these big black-and-white printouts of all their terrifying faces. Bobby Sands in our kitchen, Joan of Arc in our hallway.”   Sad James made his eyes get big.   “I just like having them present,” Cyrus said, slumping into his chair. He didn’t add that he’d been reading about them in the library, his mystic martyrs, that he’d taped a great grid of their grayscale printed faces above his bed, half believing it would work like those tapes that promised to teach you Spanish while you slept, that some­how their lived wisdoms would pass into him as he dreamt. Among the Tank Man, Bobby Sands, Falconetti as Joan of Arc, Cyrus had a picture of his parents’ wedding day. His mother, seated in a sleeved white dress, smiling tightly at the camera while his father, in a tacky gray tux, sat grinning next to her holding her hand. Above their heads, a group of attendees held an ornate white sheet. It was the only picture of his mother he had. Next to his mother, his father beamed, bright in a way that made it seem he was radiating the light himself.   Zee went on: “So you could write a poem where Joan of Arc is like, ‘Wow, this fire is so hot’ or whatever. And then a poem where Hussain is like, ‘Wow, sucks that I wouldn’t kneel.’ You know what I mean?”   Cyrus laughed.   “I tried some of that! But see, that’s where it gets corny. What could I possibly say about the martyrdom of Hussain or Joan of Arc or whoever that hasn’t already been said? Or that’s worth saying?”   Sad James asked who Hussain was and Zee quickly explained the trial in the desert, Hussain’s refusing to kneel and being killed for it.   “You know, Hussain’s head is supposedly still buried in Cairo?” Zee said, smiling. “Cairo, which is in which country again?”   Cyrus rolled his eyes at his friend, who was, as Cyrus liked to remind him when he got too greatest-ancient-civilization-on-earth about things, only half Egyptian.   “Damn,” Sad James said. “I would’ve just kneeled and crossed my fingers behind my back. Who am I trying to impress? Later I could call take-backsies. I’d just say I tripped and landed on my knees or something.”   The three friends laughed. Justine, an open mic regular whose Blonde on Blonde–era pea-coat-and-harmonica-rack Bob Dylan act was a mainstay of the open mic, came outside to ask Zee for a cigarette. He obliged her with an American Spirit Yellow, which she lit around the corner as she began speaking into her cell phone.   In moments like these Cyrus still sometimes felt like asking to bum one too—he’d been a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker before he got sober, and continued his habit even after he’d kicked everything else. “Quit things in the order they’re killing you,” his sponsor, Gabe, told him once. After a year clean he turned his attention to cigarettes, which he finally managed to kick completely by tapering: from one and a half packs a day to a pack to half a pack to five cigarettes and so on until he was just smoking a single cigarette every few days and then, none at all. He could probably get away with bumming the occasional cigarette now and again, but in his mind he was saving that for something momentous: his final moments lying in the grass dying from a gunshot wound, or walking in slow motion away from a burning building.   “So what are you thinking then? A novel? Or like . . . a poetic mar­tyr field guide?” asked Zee.   “I’m really not sure yet. But my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally like, meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? So was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accom­modate her. That’s what I’m after.”

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

Browse Kaveh Akbar's poetry collections and follow Kaveh on Instagram @kavehakbar.kavehakbar.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[melysmo]

Thought i’d post some of my favorite symbols!( I did not make these btw! credits to owners)

ᯓᡣ𐭩 | ꩜ .ᐟ | 𐙚 | ᯓ★ | ୨ৎ | 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 | ᡣ𐭩 | 𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚ | ��� 𝗓 𐰁 | ⊹ ࣪ ˖ | ໒꒰ྀི´ ˘ ` ꒱ྀིა | ≽^•༚• ྀི≼ | ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ | ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀིྀི | ୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ | ⟡ | .ᐟ | ໒꒰ྀིっ˕ -｡꒱ྀི১ | 𓊆ྀི❤︎𓊇ྀི | 𓂃 ࣪˖ ཐིཋྀ | જ⁀➴ | •⩊• | ⋆⑅˚₊ |

[preciselypetra]

>.<

hii!! welcome to my blog!!

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꒰ nicknames !! ꒱ petra, petrini, riri

꒰ pronouns !! ꒱ she/her/hers

꒰ ˙ . ꒷ 🍰 🥄. ˙ ꒱ may 17th ⇢ taurus

꒰ ⌕ nationality ꒱ hungarian & bulgarian

꒰ languages ꒱ english, hungarian, & romanian

꒰ socials !! ꒱ @preciselypetra ⇢ ig, pinterest, yt, bereal, & tmblr

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📎・．desc:

hiii! I'm into lots of things, some of the main being music, playing guitar, art, fashion sub cultures, crochet/knitting, literature, and video games. [+ either brainrotting into space or intensly focusing on some hyprefixiation / assignment in school.]

I'm not a regular poster type of person but I'll try to keep mine interesting. my (super awesome cool amazing) moots post cooler shit!! <3 luv u all. mwaa !

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꒰ fandoms i'm in!! ꒱

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꒰ video/games: ꒱ fnaf, class of 09, mouthwashing, doki doki literature club, dti, silent hill, silence of the lambs, phasmaphobia, fatal frame, animal jam, minecraft, dead plate, cult of the lamb, silent hill, zelda, ears to fathom, bendy the ink machine, baldi's basics, coffee tie, DND, gacha, mortuary assistant, amanda the adventurer, granny, piggy, doors, buckshot roulette, pressure, backrooms, poppy playtime, hello neighbor, 60 seconds, that's not my neighbor, identity fraud, mm2, bad parenting, genshin impact, honkai star rail, & wuthering waves.

꒰ animes/mangas: ꒱ higurashi, tbhk, frieren spyxfamily, komi can't communicate, violet evergarden, panty & stocking, madoka magica, glitter force, onegai my melody, boogie pop, K'on, angel beats, kakeguri, toradora, tanya the evil, sleepy princess in the demon's castle, morestu irates, just because, SNAFU, horimiya, demon slayer, made in abyss, hyouka, rezero, (and so many more I'll update the list later...)

꒰ books/webtoons: ꒱ girl interrupted, silence of the lambs, tromeo & juilet, the tempest, macbeth, a mid summer night's dream, no longer human, the dead poet's society, hamlet, school bus graveyard, dear nemisis, heartstopper, unOrdinary, suıcıde boy, soulwinder, that awkward magic, star catcher, cherry crush, shelter, ramshackle, stagtown, lore olympus, homeick, funtime phobia, down to earth, the dummy's dummy, our secret alliance, your letter, crystal city killers, the d!ckheads, the half of it, 1hp club, after shcool lessons for unripe apples, warrior cats, sherlock holmes, pride & prejudice, the series of unfortunate events, the hunger games, & lord of the rings.

꒰ bands/artists: ꒱ nirvana, kirt cobain, radiohead, thom york, weezer, cranberries, hole, courtney love, smiths, sting, the police, darylh hall & john oats, the cardigans, coldplay, alice in chains, heavenly, oingo boingo, L7, alice in chains, pink floyd (ish), garbage, manic street preechers, misfits, smashing pumpkins, the alan parsons project, abba, cocteau twins, laufey, inabakumori, pinkpatheress, cavetown, the living tombstone beebadoobee, mistki, mother mother, dazey and the scouts, kikuo,

꒰ movies/series: ꒱ x files, hannibal, silence of the lambs, mission impossible, star trek, star wars, mandalorian, my little pony, shopkins, heartstopper, indiana jones, dr house, ally mcbeal, gilmore girls, the adams family, fnaf movie, hazbin hotel, helluva boss, die hard, digital circus, ailens, predators, only murders in the building, stranger things, outer banks, anne with an e, dead poets society, girl interrupted, jennifers body, trolls, gladiator, ramshackle, mean girls, clueless, all ghibli movies,

꒰ content creators: ꒱ caseoh, jynxzi (ish), game theory, koihaou, crackhead chronicles, mahum, markiplier, bendy the bundy, brandon rogers, bunnlops, dantes, cudlil, eshuga, kwite, naphia, zaypixel, polarcub, temprist, kaden fumblebottom, flamingo, nirami, aizen, koihau, minori, k.art, chewzy, jeremy fragrance, lespuls, aphmau, natalietran, katie whitney, powenvy, nodiddydog, yapdollar, epic gamer grandma, lilrebeany, 0grimlin0, smol.kio, lovesikart, ryan trout, kiidktaze, & https.lisaqqq.

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that's all!! I may update this from time to time. have a nice rest of your day/night/afternoon. take care of yourself!! ♡ ︎>ᴗ<

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[itsbenedict]

Do you have a source for the Brazilian courts demanding personal information of the posters? I haven't been following the story very closely, but everything I've seen has only talked about censorship, which Mush already did for Turkey last year.

I haven't been following it closely either- I'm just going off this post, by someone I don't know and whose objectivity I distrust. They claim that the new Brazilian government had a Jan 6-style failed coup attempt by their far right, and that their Supreme Court ruled that the social media platforms the participants used to coordinate the attempt were required to hand over all their information about the attackers so they could be prosecuted. Purportedly, Musk said no, this obviously violated the laws that said he had to do it, and there is now a legal snafu of some sort.

I don't expect OP to have been lying about most of this, because they're arguing that the demands were justified- but I also can't find a source on that specifically, yeah. The news stories I'm seeing only mention that they demanded that some number of users' accounts should be suspended due to "spreading misinformation". I'm not sure if the link between the riots (which happened) is as direct as OP is implying, but it seems plausible.

Regardless, communications platforms should not be legally liable for speech hosted on them, and even though the rioters in question probably should be arrested, demanding that Twitter be involved in this process and taking retaliatory action against them for noncompliance is- and I believe this is the technical term- "some real bullshit".

If web platforms can be held responsible for anything any government decides is "misinformation", then you have a serious problem the next time you get a Bolsonaro. You don't want Twitter to cave to these sorts of orders. This was the correct move.

...And, as you note, the move Musk did not make when Erdogan demanded the same thing in 2023. One would hope that this is him regretting that decision and opting to do better this time, but more realistically he's just less principled than he likes to think and makes these decisions mainly on the basis of culture war grudges and how personally pissed off he happens to be today.