#trans liberation tuesday

[kanagenwrites]

So. Tuesday sucked.

We've all had a chance to come down from the "what the fuck" of it all, and we're starting to see the usual circular firing squad. Lots of lib centrists are doing everything they can to throw trans people, minorities, and basically anyone who isn't a finance bro under the bus, as is (very tiresome) tradition after both victories and defeats in the Democratic Party. I will be 42 years old in a few months, so this is far from the first time I've seen it, and sadly, I'm sure it won't be the last. To the lib centrists and those carrying water for them: This never works. Please stop trying it. Trans issues were not a major motivator; I'll get into that below. Sit down, kids, it's time for Auntie Kana's Fireside Dialectics.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of my followers are significantly younger than me. (Imagine that, an audience that skews young on Tumblr.) A lot of you folks probably haven't been following politics for very long, and you've been able to participate in them for even less time than that. For some of you this is probably your first election as an adult, and it kinda feels like everything blew up in your face, doesn't it? I was about your age for 2000, when the election was nakedly stolen by George W. Bush, and not much older for 2004, when despite his disastrous presidency Bush the Younger rode a wave of 9/11-brained racism to the last popular vote victory the GOP had prior to (likely) this year. So I get it. I really do.

If you're living in the USA you have probably had a subpar education in politics and civics. This is largely by design - education is horrendously underfunded and there is a sustained attack on the ability of teachers to even discuss things like the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the genocide this country was founded on, and so on and so forth. Economic education isn't much better; you very likely got a short lecture on basic supply and demand and an argument-from-authority that "socialism doesn't work." All this combines to leave a lot of folks totally baffled as to how something like this election happens.

But it's pretty simple. It's just material conditions. That's it. What the media isn't telling you (because there's no profit in it, and the media is nothing but a clickbait engine when they aren't open propagandists) is that there has been a massive anti-incumbent wave of elections across the world. How massive? Japan's LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since the establishment of Japan's postwar democracy, managed to lose their recent election.

And why are material conditions so shitty? That's a complicated question, but a lot of it is the fact that we had a lengthy period of low inflation followed by a period of extremely high inflation due to the absolutely botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A bag of Doritos used to be 2.50, and now it's like 6 bucks. That's worse than all the inflation (and naked price-gouging, because there's a lot of that going on too) I experienced in my life prior to 2020, squeezed into the space of a year or two. This smacks everyone in the face every time they buy groceries, and while the government and the Federal Reserve were doing everything they could to manage inflation (and understand what a big deal it is for me, the anarcho-communist, to say that the US actually did an extremely fucking good job of doing it, because every other country on Earth had it worse than we did), they did fuck all to actually improve the material conditions people were experiencing. Wages were not keeping up with the cost of living, and price-gouging wasn't being dealt with.

Remember the 600 bucks Joe Biden still owes you? The American electorate sure the fuck does. Invisible backrooms liberal wonkery does not connect, regardless of whether it works or not, but going back on a promise? People remember that shit.

It's a rare incumbent that could win in an environment like this, especially when tied to a track record of doing exactly fucking nothing to actually help people from the perspective of the vast majority of the population. Kamala Harris was not that incumbent. She was a singularly uninspiring candidate who failed to connect with voters so thoroughly that she was on track to lose her home state in the 2020 Democratic primary. Nobody liked her (except a few very eager and very loud fans in the K-Hive), and speaking as someone who lives in California, I am not surprised she ate shit. She was a terrible choice for VP and a terrible choice of successor for Biden, but because Biden('s handlers) insisted on pretending he wasn't obviously declining before our very eyes, Harris, a singularly uninspiring candidate, had three months to build and run a campaign.

And it was still weirdly close.

Now, there's two possibilities: Either she actually ran an amazing campaign and it's incredible that it was even this close, or Trump is just so loathsome that even in a massively anti-incumbent environment he didn't bring anyone new to the table. Given that Trump is on-track to receive less votes this time than he did in 2020, and how many of those votes seem to have been cast for Trump and no one else down-ballot, I think it's more of the latter than the former. Trump brought the usual suspects, while Kamala successfully drove away voters that even Joe fucking Biden and Hillary fucking Clinton were able to bring home. Not on the left, not in minority demographics, but across the board. After all, if things are horrible and you're being promised that "nothing will fundamentally change," (literally an early-presidency quote from Joe Biden, whose agenda Kamala Harris 100% aligned herself with) and keeping in mind that the average American voter is not nearly so plugged into the minutiae and the day to day of politics (as evinced by the sudden peak in google searched for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on Tuesday), why the fuck would you bother to vote?

Hopefully you have a better idea how we got here now. The question, of course, is where do we go from here? I will probably continue posting about this from time to time, especially if there's interest, but my advice is this:

We are still here. We will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on. Plan accordingly.

Things will get fucked up. Things will always get fucked up. That is the nature of things no matter who is running the government. Plan accordingly.

Organize. Develop parallel structures of power and assistance, because the government is likely going to be even more useless to directly assist you than it already was. Our greatest strength is each other, and our ability to care for and help one another.

I have been here before. You will be here again. It always feels like it's the worst thing ever to happen. That never really goes away, but your ability to deal with it, to plan around it, to endure it, and to rise up again on the other side of it and say "No, fuck you" is entirely under your control and within your capabilities. And you will get better at it as you do it. And you are not doing it alone. None of us are.

Do not give up. Do not surrender. This isn't the end, or the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning: it just is.

Now go watch a video of a cat doing something cute, or read some smut, or whatever gives you joy. You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself. That's General Order #1: Take care of yourself.

Solidarity, y'all.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.” But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win. Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often. If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

[...]

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter. And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times.

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him. But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible. [...]

The fake story about Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, for example, started with a Facebook post citing second- and third-hand sources, Gertz told me; it then “circulated on X and was picked up by all the major right-wing influencers.” Only then did Vance, a very online dude, notice it and decide to run with it. And then Trump said it himself at the debate. But it started in the right-wing media. Likewise with the post-debate ABC “whistleblower” claims, which Gertz wrote about at the time. This was the story that ABC, which hosted the only presidential debate this election, fed Team Harris the questions in advance. This started, Gertz wrote, as a “wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster.” Soon enough, the right-wing media was all over it.

Maybe that one didn’t make a huge difference (although who knows?), but this one, I believe, absolutely did: the idea that Harris and Joe Biden swiped emergency aid away from the victims of Hurricane Helene (in mostly Southern, red states) and gave it all to undocumented migrants. It did not start with Trump or his campaign or Vance or the Republican National Committee or Lindsey Graham. It started on Fox. Only then did the others pick it up. And it was key, since this was a moment when Harris’s momentum in the polling averages began to flag.

[...]

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country. I trust that you’ve seen in your travels, as I have in mine, that in red or even some purple parts of the country, when you walk into a hotel lobby or a hospital waiting room or even a bar, where the TVs ought to be offering us some peace and just showing ESPN, at least one television is tuned to Fox. That’s reach, and that’s power. And then people get in their cars to drive home and listen to an iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. And then they get home and watch their local news and it’s owned by Sinclair, and it, too, has a clear right-wing slant. And then they pick up their local paper, if it still exists, and the oped page features Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro. Liberals, rich and otherwise, live in a bubble where they never see this stuff. I would beg them to see it. Watch some Fox. Listen to some Christian radio. Experience the news that millions of Americans are getting on a daily basis. You’ll pretty quickly come to understand what I’m saying here.

[...] The reason? The right-wing media. And it’s only growing and growing. And I haven’t even gotten to social media and Tik Tok and the other platforms from which far more people are getting their news these days. The right is way ahead on those fronts too. Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Michael Tomasky of TNR explains it perfectly: Donald Trump won due to the right-wing media apparatus feeding lies to the voters.

[mariacallous]

A well-known Georgian transgender model has been murdered, local officials said, a day after the government passed legislation that will impose sweeping curbs on LGBTQ+ rights in the country.

Georgia’s interior ministry said Kesaria Abramidze, 37, was believed to have been stabbed to death in her apartment in suburban Tbilisi on Wednesday.

Georgian media later reported that a man had been arrested in connection with the crime.

Abramidze was one of the country’s first openly trans public figures. Her death follows controversial legislation on “family values and the protection of minors” that will allow officials to outlaw Pride events and censor films and books.

The law, which was approved by the Georgian parliament on Tuesday in its third and final reading, includes bans on same-sex marriages and gender-affirming treatments. It is expected to be another point of contention between Georgia and the EU as the country seeks to join the bloc.

Critics argue that the bill, initially introduced by the ruling Georgian Dream party in the summer, mirrors laws enacted in neighbouring Russia, where authorities have implemented a series of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ measures over the past decade.

Although the motive behind Abramidze’s murder remains unclear, her death was swiftly cast by Georgian civil society as part of a state campaign against minorities in the country.

Under the Georgian Dream party, which has taken an increasingly anti-liberal stance, the country has seen a rise in violence against LGBTQ+ people.

Last year, hundreds of opponents of gay rights stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in Tbilisi, forcing the event to be cancelled. This year, tens of thousands of people marched in the capital to promote “traditional family values” at an event attended by the ruling party amd the deeply conservative and influential Orthodox church.

“There is a direct correlation between the use of hate speech in politics and hate crimes,” the Social Justice Center, a Tbilisi-based human rights group, said in its statement reacting to the murder.

“It has been almost a year that the Georgian Dream government has been aggressively using homo/bi/transphobic language and cultivating it with mass propaganda means,” it added.

On Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, called on the Georgian government to withdraw the “family values” law, warning it would harm Georgia’s chances of joining the bloc. The legislation would “increase discrimination & stigmatisation”, he said on X.

After Abramidze’s death, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic party chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee in Germany, echoed that call. “Those who sow hatred will reap violence. Kesaria Abramidze was killed just one day after the Georgian parliament passed the anti-LGBTI law,” Roth wrote on X.

The introduction of the law comes just five weeks before parliamentary elections that many see as a litmus test of whether Georgia, once one of the most pro-western former Soviet states, will now drift towards Russia.

The country’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose functions are mostly ceremonial, is expected to veto the law before it comes into effect. However, Georgian Dream and its allies have enough seats in parliament to override her veto.

Earlier this year, the Georgian Dream also pushed through the divisive “foreign influence” law, which western critics argue is authoritarian and Russian-inspired, and has derailed the country’s EU aspirations.

Meanwhile, tributes have started to pour in for Abramidze, who represented Georgia at Miss Trans Star International in 2018 and had more than 500,000 followers on Instagram.

“Kesaria was iconic! Provocative, wise, incredibly brave! A trailblazer for Georgia’s trans rights,” Maia Otarashvili, a Georgian political scientist, wrote on X.

Zourabichvili said the murder should be a “wake-up call” for Georgian society.

“A terrible murder! The death of this beautiful young woman … should not be in vain!” the president wrote on Facebook.

[thebreakfastgenie]

https://www.tumblr.com/thebreakfastgenie/766051466520690688/thats-exactly-what-im-hoping-for-too-im-voting

I think a deep flaw in the online left is that they're basically comparing the current far left with a far right wing that's made every effort to entrench themselves for decades by comparison.

They keep mentally thinking that both sides are equal in power, and thus the thing that will clearly help them succeed is the moral purity of their cause.

Except that's not the case at all. Because the reality is that the far right has done far more work to make their hate normalized than the far left has ever done for their beliefs and entrench themselves into actual positions of power, both due to a combination of cruelty being easier, and simply doing far more work by comparison.

The far right has spent years sticking their ilk amongst the populace, from the highest ranking positions to the lowliest high ranking positions possible in order to indoctrinate as many people as possible to their cause.

The far left by contrast has done diddly squat. They're the arrogant punk kid who waltzes in expecting to kick ass and take names and be lauded and praised for it simply because of who they are, while ignoring that either everyone is a neutral bystander who doesn't like grandstanders with more bark than bite, or an ally of the guy they're coming in to sock the face of.

And that's bitten them in the ass time and time again, because while the big evil guy is unpopular, he's also entrenched and just needs to win once to smack the upstart down.

But unlike actual main characters, the far left is so convinced of their righteous superiority that rather than wising up and building a real base of power and catching the far right off guard for a knockout blow, they just keep on throwing themselves over and over again with the same idea expecting different results.

Yeah... I think there's a combination of not understanding how asymmetrical it is and an attitude of "it's not fair!" Like, no it's not, so it goes though. We've watched the far right become so deeply entrenched they've taken over the mainstream conservative party. The right played the long game on the courts and the left was complacent about that for way too long. It's also a huge thing in local elections. The right has paid way more attention to school boards and other positions like sheriff that are elected in many places, even up to state legislatures. Far right candidates winning these elections really helped entrench the far right in addition to the material effects they've had on people's lives.

I think part of the problem is just that electorate is a lot more conservative than the left is willing to admit. There isn't a hidden groundswell of support for the far left. You have to do the work the hard way and a lot of leftists aren't willing to. You know that Contrapoints quote about wanting to "endlessly critique power?" She was right on with that. I think there are elements within the left that romanticize the perpetual struggle. One might say

He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl And he's always at home with his back to the wall And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on his cross

On the other hand, a lot of voters like the far right and want them to win. They may not like them for rational policy reasons, because a lot of voters don't vote for those reasons (I know, it's maddening, but so it goes) but they like them.

One of the reasons I tend to align myself with liberals rather than leftists is liberals get stuff done. I've seen tangible progress from liberals within my lifetime. There are so many structural advantages favoring the right that it's a huge fight to keep them out of power. We can turn the tide but we have to do the work.

I don't know how much sense I made I'm a little groggy.

[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.

[voltronthelostlion]

Voltron: The Lost Lion Timeline | Volume I

Voltron: The Lost Lion Timeline | Volume I

Hello everyone, Steph here! For my sanity, while rewriting this fic, I have decided to make a fun timeline with the events of Voltron including (Y/N) :) I did not come up with this on my own so here are the resources I used! I meshed them together to my liking.

Violethowler An Updated Guide to the Timeline of VLD

Romelluka Voltron Canon Timeline

My Google Doc

Pre VTLL:

13,000 years - The first emperor of the Galra lit the flame at the Kral Zera.

10,650 years (approx.) - Coran is born.

10,600 years - The Castle of Lions is completed.

10,027 years (approx.) - The trans-reality comet appears and Zarkon first meets Honerva.

between - 10,027 and - 10,018 - Zarkon and Honerva get married.

between - 10,025  and - 10,018 - Allura is born.

the same year as Allura’s birth - The rift creatures break out and Voltron is finished.

the Purple Lion (Violet) is created in secret with the remaining ore and an experimental strand of quintessence.

10,000 years - Destruction.

Daibazzal is evacuated and destroyed by King Alfor.

Emperor Zarkon, Empress Honerva, and his royal whore die [quintessence resurrects them].

Altea is obliterated shortly after.

Coran and Princess Allura enter cryostasis.

Many Alteans perish.

Lotor is born.

(Y/N) is born shortly after.

9,990 years (approx.) - Sendak confides in (Y/N) that when he is older, he is going to explore the universe.

(Y/N) is ten.

9,984 years (approx.) - Rez’or fails.

(Y/N) is closer to fifteen than she is to sixteen.

She becomes a prisoner of the Galra Empire.

9,982 years (approx.) - Sendak proposes to (Y/N).

(Y/N) is almost eighteen.

9,981 years (approx.) - (Y/N) is “exiled”

(Y/N) is closer to nineteen than she is to eighteen.

Shown as dead.

Sent with a squadron to be butchered by orders of Emperor Zarkon, but manages to fight her way out and escapes.

Crash lands on Planet Solitaire and is in cryostasis for ~10,000 years.

9,500 years (approx.) - Lotor is exiled.

9,000 years (approx.) - Lotor’s Altean Colony is established.

Timeline (VLD seasons 1&2; VTLL Chapters 1-16):

0 years - CANON START.

Monday, 09/01/2414: Shiro lands on Earth and is rescued from quarantine by Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. This triggers (Y/N)’s pod to open.

Tuesday, 09/02/2414: Shiro, Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge find the Blue Lion and leave Earth. (Y/N) and Violet arrive on Planet Arus. She meets the Paladins, Princess Allura, and Coran. Sendak attacks Arus. Voltron is formed for the first time. (Y/N) sees her first sunset.

Wednesday, 09/03/2414: The Paladins train to figure out how to form Voltron outside of combat with Coran and (Y/N). Keith + (Y/N) nightmare scene. 

Thursday, 09/04/2414: Nightmare scene continued. Everyone meets the Arusian natives. Myzax Robeast. Sendak attacks the Castle of Lions that night during the celebration with the Arusians in the Castle.

Friday, 09/05/2414: Retake the Castle of Lions from Sendak while Hunk and Coran retrieve a new Balmeran crystal. Lance is placed in a healing pod.

Saturday, 09/06/2414: Lance wakes up. The Castle of Lions takes off from Arus and liberates Shay’s Balmera later that day following an encounter with Rollo and Nyma en route (aka (Y/N) riding with Keith for the first time).

Sunday, 09/07/2414: Hunk takes Shay to watch her first sunrise. 

Tuesday, 09/09/2414: The Paladins begin downloading Sendak's memories; Allura is forced to destroy her father's AI.

Wednesday, 09/10/2414: Season 1, Episode 10

Sunday, 09/28/2414: Season 2, Episode 6; Keith, Allura, and (Y/N) leave the Castle Ship to see if they are the reason they keep getting tracked; Violet’s return.

Thursday, 10/23/2414: Keith turns 19

Saturday, 10/25/2414: The Paladins coordinate with the Blade of Marmora to attack Central Command; Shiro and (Y/N) disappear from their Lions.

Tuesday, 10/28/2414: Chapter 16’s Third Person POV; three days later; (Y/N) turns 19; Prince Lotor is summoned from exile to lead the Empire while Emperor Zarkon recovers.

What does this mean?

Chapters 1-16 of VTLL occur from September 1st, 2414 to October 28th, 2414.

(seasons 1-5 take place ~6 months; seasons 1-6 are over 1 full year)

Fun Notes:

Shiro is born February 29, 2388; he is 25 at the start of Chapter 1

Keith is born October 23, 2395, so he is 18 at the start of Chapter 1

Krolia leaves Earth when Keith is almost half a year old

Hunk is born January 13, 2397, so he is 17 at the start of Chapter 1

Lance is born July 28, 2397, so he is 17 at the start of Chapter 1

Pidge is born April 03, 2399, so she is 15 at the start of Chapter 1

Galra Glossary:

Phrases

Vae pan radyr o vaer se’tar

You are a betrayer of your blood. 

Radyr se’tar.

Blood traitor.

A'nah Sava Am, Nissin'terai Kana'ya.

Forever with me, don't forget, wherever we are, we are not alone.

Eu a'a eri radyr se’tar.

I am no blood traitor.

Eu gaol vae a'nah, via't pa'eni.

I love you forever, life partner.

Vrepit Sa.

Killing Thrust.

Palen Bol.

Enlightening Pain.

Tei’rah alesul. Vae pal lider. 

Hail the Chosen One. You shall be leader. 

Words

A'a - no

Ales - choose

Alesul - Chosen One

A’nah - forever

Bol - pain

Erai - were

Eri - am

Eu - I

Gaol - love

Ga’oki - darling

Lider - leader

O - of

Pa'enii - partners

Pa'eni - partner

Palen - enlightening

Pal - shall

Pan - are

Radyr - betrayer; traitor

Sa - kill

Se’tar - blood

Tei’rah - hail

Vaer - your

Vae - you

Via't - life

Via't pa'enii - Life partners

Via't pa'eni - Life partner

Vrepit - thrust

Altean Glossary:

Units of Time (same for Altea and Daibazzal)

Quintant = 1 day

Deca-Phoeb = 1 year

Phoeb = 1 month

Dobosh = minute

Varga = hour

Tick = a tad longer than a second

movement = week

[actualhumancryptid]

I don't like what this portends, because it looks like we're following the anti-trans fucking horror show overseas. Unblocked article below.

Sean Parnell and Olivia Ireland January 28, 2025 — 4.52pm

Queensland has become the first state to restrict hormone therapy for young people, ordering public health facilities cease offering such interventions to new patients with gender dysphoria.

Health Minister Tim Nicholls on Tuesday said the immediate “pause” was justified on safety grounds, due to allegations around the authority for services provided to 17 young people in far north Queensland.

But Nicholls said the restrictions would also allow Queensland to conduct its own review of the medical evidence around puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone therapy provided to people under the age of 18.

Nicholls said an external evaluation of the statewide Queensland Children’s Gender Service, completed last year under the former Labor government, had wrongly set out to determine “how is the service delivered, not whether the service ought to be delivered”.

He said a reviewer had yet to be appointed, but would be consulted on the terms of reference and be required to report back within 10 months.

The Queensland LNP last year joined Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in adopting a policy to ban puberty blockers.

The WA Liberal Party wants to follow Queensland’s lead if it wins the state election in March, promising to ban puberty blockers while awaiting the findings of a review to determine whether the ban is warranted.

Other states also offer hormone therapy as part of gender-affirming healthcare, with some variation in the consent and approval processes.

Before the Queensland election in October, LNP leader David Crisafulli called for an evidence-based approach while at the same time claiming Queensland was out of step with the rest of the world.

The UK government banned the routine use of puberty blockers in December.

In announcing the review, Nicholls said there was “widely contested international evidence” around the use of hormone therapy for young people with gender dysphoria.

“Queensland has not yet undertaken its own considered review of that evidence,” he said, noting that France, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden had also imposed restrictions.

However, Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown on Tuesday declared Queensland “an outlier state”, while Eloise Brook from the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) warned the LNP government was putting young people at risk.

“Hormone treatments for the small number of young people who need them are essential health care,” Brook said. “The evidence shows that denying access to this care will cause young people immeasurable trauma, contributing to depression, anxiety and in some cases self-harm.”

The federal Labor government and Coalition opposition said it was a matter for the states.

But, with an election due within months, and an apparent lack of national consensus, Queensland-based Deputy Nationals Leader Matt Canavan called for a federal ban.

“The drugs they use have not been tested and approved for gender transition services and young children are not mature enough to make such life-changing decisions,” Canavan said.

“We should not treat our kids as guinea pigs.”

The evaluation of the Queensland Children’s Gender Service heard patients and their families “reported the care is extremely comprehensive, considered, safe, and evidence-based,” and staff did not coerce or rush decisions.

The incoming Queensland LNP government put a stop to work implementing the recommendations from the evaluation – which had highlighted “long waitlists and demands from consumers to access the service” – and the further expansion of the service.

The local allegations around the “apparently unauthorised” provision of services in Cairns will be the subject of two separate investigations, Nicholls said, with those findings also to be considered in the broader review.

Nicholls said the allegations were raised in May 2024, investigated locally, and relayed to him in December.

“While this review is taking place, there is a need to maintain confidence in the public health services … so today I am also announcing an immediate pause on new public patients receiving hormone therapy for those who are under the age of 18,” he told reporters.

Nicholls said patients already receiving hormone therapy would be able to continue – there were 547 in mid-2024 – and other services would still be available to young people with gender dysphoria.

A spokesman for the state’s Labor opposition said the government’s decision “impacts some of our most vulnerable”.

“Ultimately, it should be a medical discussion and decision between an individual and their doctors, not one made by politicians,” the spokesman said.

It is not the first time the Queensland LNP has been criticised for its health policies. After a campaign mired by debate over abortion laws, Crisafulli took the extraordinary step of banning parliament from discussing the issue.

[jothb]

The reasoning for cisheterosexual patriarchal violence has nothing to do with upholding a millenia old tradition of the oldest form of class oppression, nor with nurturing the far right beliefs at the core of liberal democracy for material gain of the ruling bourgeois class It's actually because trans women post about fat tgirl puppy tuesday on tumblr

[onlyifyoubadd]

Virtual Support Groups Free and Open To All:

Below is a list of Wildflower's upcoming post-election support groups for the week (as well as a few from other groups):

Spaces Offered By the Wildflower Alliance

GENERAL DROP-IN SUPPORT (open to anyone): Monday, November 11, 6-8p Eastern (5-7 Central, 4-6 Mountain, 3-5 Pacific, 2-4 Alaska, 1-3 Hawaii): – Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89658808286 or Meeting ID 896 5880 8286

BLACK-SPECIFIC DROP-IN SUPPORT (facilitated by and for Black people): Wednesday, November 13, 6-8p Eastern (5-7 Central, 4-6 Mountain, 3-5 Pacific, 2-4 Alaska, 1-3 Hawaii), Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81744035650 or Meeting ID 817 4403 5650

GENERAL DROP-IN SUPPORT (open to anyone): Friday, November 15, 6:30-8:30p Eastern (5:30-7:30 Central, 4:30-6:30 Mountain, 3:30-5:30 Pacific, 2:30-4:30 Alaska, 1:30-3:30 Hawaii), Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84182802546 or Meeting ID 841 8280 2546

BIPOC DROP-IN SUPPORT (facilitated by and for Black, Indigenous and other people of color): Saturday, November 16, 2-4p Eastern (1-3 Central, 12-2 Mountain, 11-1 Pacific, 10-12 Alaska, 9-11 Hawaii), Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86157504290 or Meeting ID 861 5750 4290

GROUP FOR WOMEN AND ANYONE ELSE DIRECTLY IMPACTED BY REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE, MISOGYNY, TRANSMISOGYNY AND/OR MISOGYNOIR: Saturday, November 16, 6-8p Eastern (5-7 Central, 4-6 Mountain, 3-5 Pacific, 2-4 Alaska, 1-3 Hawaii), Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84465141698 or Meeting ID 844 6514 1698

Spaces Offered By Other Groups

Thursday, November 14, 5:30-6:30p Eastern (4:30-5:30 Central, 3:30-4:30 Mountain, 2:30-3:30 Pacific, 1:30-2:30 Alaska, 12:30-1:30 Hawaii): Post-Election Community Call with GLAD Law, Share your questions and join GLAD Law for a conversation about what we expect in the incoming Trump administration and state legislative sessions, what rights, protections, and resources are available now, and how we plan to keep working together to advance justice and keep our communities secure. REGISTER HERE: https://www.glad.org/events/post-election-community-call/

Post-Election Support Group for Trans and Nonbinary Folks, Tuesday, November 12, 7:30pm Eastern (6:30 Central, 5:30 Mountain, 4:30 Pacific, 3:30 Alaska, 2:30 Hawaii) Join the Trans Advocacy & Care Team (TACT) for a pop-up virtual support group. This loosely structured, non-judgmental space is for trans and nonbinary individuals to share and process their feelings around this election season. Facilitated by Kiyo Faas (all pronouns) and Taj M. Smith (he/him), the group welcomes everyone, regardless of voting status or political perspective, to come together in support and solidarity. REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/.../post-election-support...

Vision Change Win’s Post Election Safety Planning Panel, Tuesday, November 18, 6pm Eastern (5pm Central, 4pm Mountain, 3pm Pacific, 2pm Alaska, 1pm Hawaii). REGISTER HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../WN_Xr4-BNHfQGahF6blweTi1Q...

Grief, Love, and Liberation: Honoring the Winding Path, Monday, November 25, 7pm Eastern (6pm Central, 5pm Mountain, 4pm Pacific, 3pm Alaska, 2pm Hawaii), Join FORGE for a 2-hour workshop that explores the unexpected twists and turns of grief, love, and liberation. We’ll visit the traditional landscape of losses, both known and unknown, then move beyond to uncover how grief weaves through our lives—from the anticipation of coming out to the bittersweet feeling of moving to a new home. REGISTER HERE: https://forge-forward.zoom.us/.../WN_Qsz...

Additional post-election resources can be found as gathered by the Trans Lifeline HERE: https://translifeline.org/preparing-for-the-election.../

[kafus]

i think part of my isolation as a woman and a lesbian is my childhood sexual trauma having a severe effect on my queer experience and just. well. life experience in general. problem is any time i see any other person who is openly a woman and sexually traumatized online they either weaponize this to be the “i hate men” type or god forbid a TERF, both things i absolutely do not agree with or even remotely align myself with, or they’re incredibly sex repulsed and take that out on other people by basically being a christian purist but with a “progressive” coat of paint, which despite being incredibly sex repulsed myself i also do not agree with whatsoever. obviously i am not alone in my experiences, i think i’ve just gotten unlucky in meeting only the worst kinds of people. it doesn’t help that now i’m afraid of other women and feel judged and broken in their presence. i don’t understand why the most seen and heard i’ve ever felt in my queer experience is by trans men even though every time i consider it, i come to the conclusion i am not a man.

it’s so tiring dude. i had a conversation with a lesbian who understood me somewhat one (1) time, a childhood friend who i can’t talk to often anymore but we were catching up, and it actually changed my life and convinced me to start using he/him in addition to she/it without taking away from my identity as a woman/lesbian and convinced me to ask the person i liked out. and i am so thankful for that but like. to them it was nothing. to them that conversation was a normal tuesday. they are so liberated and comfortable in their identity. but to me that one conversation that was nothing big to them has eaten at me for months and changed my life. there is something deeply wrong and repressed about me and i don’t know how to get out

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost:

The first-ever mobilization of trans voters around a presidential candidate took place on Zoom on Tuesday, as around 1,000 transgender people, including lawmakers, advocates, health care workers and celebrities, logged on to show support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency. Trans Folks For Harris was one of numerous identity-based webinars to support Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. Over the last few weeks, many LGBTQ+ advocates have embraced Harris, touting her decadeslong record of supporting LGBTQ+ rights, and her decision to make Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who transformed the state into a “trans refuge,” her running mate. This came just after Advocates for Trans Equality released a report showing that 75% of eligible trans voters turned up to the polls in the 2020 presidential election, compared to 67% of the general U.S. population — and that trans voters make up a crucial part of the electorate.

“We know our rights and our progress are on the line, but so is our very sense of belonging,” said Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who was elected as the first openly transgender state senator in the country. If McBride wins her bid for Delaware’s open House seat, she would become the first transgender member of Congress. “We have the opportunity, but more importantly, the responsibility in this election to show a trans young person who fears that the heart of this country is not big enough to love them too, that no matter what extremists say or do, our next president and vice president continue to have their backs,” McBride continued. The Harris-Walz campaign has yet to release any concrete policy plans on civil rights ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, but advocates say Harris and Walz have demonstrated their commitment to supporting LGBTQ+ rights, access to abortion and the rights to bodily autonomy overall. A draft of the Democrats’ platform, which was released in July, outlines their fight to restore reproductive rights, address racial inequalities, and protect democracy.

“It’s a step forward to ensure that trans people, especially Black and Brown trans women, have the representation and the resources they need to live with dignity and pride,” Zahara Bassett, CEO of Chicago trans advocacy organization Life Is Work, said on the call. “We need to make sure that our future is one of equity, justice and liberation for us all.” Harris was one of the first elected officials to publicly back marriage equality in 2004, and she refused to defend Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, in 2008. As a prosecutor, she also led the charge to end the so-called gay and transgender “panic defense,” a legal strategy often used to seek a lesser offense for perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ+ violence or murder by claiming that the victim made same-sex sexual advances. In June 2023, Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, and the site of the historic 1969 uprising of LGBTQ+ people fighting back against police raids in the New York City bar. And earlier this week, Harris released a video on X outlining how former President Donald Trump vastly restricted LGBTQ+ rights while in office — and how he would do so again if elected. Trump has already promised to roll back several policies, including blocking access to gender-affirming care for minors and rescinding the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that expand protections for transgender students. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, introduced a bill in the upper chamber to criminalize gender-affirming care for trans youth.

[...] Today’s embrace of Harris is in stark contrast to how some LGBTQ+ voters remembered her last bid for president in 2019. Back then, some advocates took issue with Harris’ tenure as a prosecutor for how she pushed for criminal penalties for parents of truant children and which led to the arrest of many Black and brown people. Many also noted how as attorney general, Harris’ office denied an incarcerated trans woman’s request for gender-affirming care. Harris has since apologized and said she takes “full responsibility” for her office’s actions. But still, not all LGBTQ+ voters are convinced. Harris’ support for the Biden administration’s policies towards Israel’s war in Gaza has alienated some of these voters. In the Democratic primaries this year, hundreds of thousands of voters cast “uncommitted” ballots as a form of protest to push for a cease-fire and end U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.

For the first time in American Presidential history, an organized mobilization effort for trans Americans to support Kamala Harris’s Presidency bid has cropped up, featuring a Trans Folks For Harris Zoom call. 🏳️‍⚧️

[mariacallous]

Another month to go: can we bear it? Brainless dishonesty, puerile insults, false accusations, the whole charade takes us for idiots. The more desperate they get, the lower the Tories drag down the tone of debate.

The week begins “woke”, with Kemi Badenoch challenging Labour to follow her into an anti-trans gesture to change the Equality Act to something the law already broadly does. It looks glaringly empty in the worsening cost of living crisis, when an extra 100,000 households will see their mortgages shoot up between now and election day.

Labour seeks to shrug off these diversions as it evades Tory attacks, while methodically staying calm and attempting to stay on message.

And for Rishi Sunak, the woke thing is a tough sell. Voters will not easily be persuaded that Keir Starmer is secretly a snowflake warrior while he talks defence of the realm, nailing down that “triple lock” on nuclear weapons, and promising that nuclear submarines will be built in Barrow. All that tells the electorate is that this party is no longer led by a man who refused to sing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain remembrance service.

Immigration is on Labour’s grid, too, with the plan to bring it down by boosting skills training at home. Forecasters expect it to fall anyway. So Keir the woke warrior? Good luck with that.

It may seem an age already, but voters are not yet concentrating on the election, say the focus-groupers. If you, the reader of political columns, are bored rigid by hearing of Starmer’s toolmaker dad and nurse mum, it remains true that most voters still say they don’t really know him. So, in Tuesday’s TV debate between the leaders, expect Starmer to use every chance to describe himself. Most voters don’t watch prime minister’s questions, so they’ll observe these head-butting duels with a fresh eye. Neither leader floats like a butterfly or stings like a bee, but Starmer usually prevails. Sunak plans to exploit some kind of underdog status, but that too is a tough sell when he is PM, he was chancellor, he is so obviously vulnerable on every flank and so clearly to blame – in full or part – for everything ill-fated in these wretched Tory years.

The runes are being read. Both parties were alarmed by the mighty electoral calculus MRP poll predicting just 66 seats for the Tories. It raised no cheers in the Labour camp, where there is gnawing fear that complacency will stop too many people from bothering to vote, or will give potential Labour voters licence to vote Green. It could also complicate the calculation in “blue wall” seats, where Labour people need to turn out and, as a way to oust the Tories, vote Liberal Democrat.

But that same poll caused flat panic in the Tory camp, where the campaign seems solely focused on stemming the flow of rightwingers to the hardline church of Reform. That panic will heighten after the screeching U-turn on Monday in which Nigel Farage took control of Reform and deigned to run as an MP, hoping it will be eighth time lucky.Sunak and his chancellor beseech elderly voters with wafted pension bribes, and tickle their fancies with absurd plans to force national service on Britain’s young people. Badenoch’s transgender pitch was a ploy to discomfort Labour, but more than that, it was a desperate attempt to head off further defections by those who prefer their extremism full fat rather than semi skimmed.

In many ways, this is the election we expected. But that is not the same thing as saying that – on the evidence so far – this is the election we deserve.

Amid the promises, there needs to be a reality check, not least about the public finances. In the Financial Times last week, the International Monetary Fund exposed the hitherto unmentioned, and unmentionable, gaping £30bn hole awaiting the next chancellor. A field of fiscal landmines has been laid by Jeremy Hunt, with zero expectation he will ever be expected to navigate them. One report suggests he sees a nicer post-election life for himself presenting at Classic FM. So be it: so long as they don’t let him present the financial reports.

Both parties in this election pretend not to hear the voice of Paul Johnson, truth-teller-in-chief at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who warns that pledges of no new taxes and no spending cuts, while shrinking the national debt, are impossible to fulfil. Labour ignores him for now, promising to clear the backlog of people waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment, and raise employment from 75% to 80%, though Johnson warns “we never got close” to that rate. We need a reality check. We’re getting magical thinking.

Think, too, about all the issues that aren’t being properly addressed in this election yet. Brexit is parked, with Labour keen to avoid accusations of cosying up to the EU, and the Tories desperate to hide from their Brexit failures.

Also missing in action: social care, the plight of the 1.6 million frail people denied the help they need. Both parties bear the scars of Theresa May’s 2017 election plan and Andy Burnham’s 2010 scheme, both of which exploded mid-campaign.

The burning planet should be the burning question but it isn’t, despite Labour rightly making green energy its engine for growth and its prime spending priority. Sunak ditched net zero, warning: “Labour’s decarbonisation proposals will cost £3,297 per household.” That’s Toryism at its most despicable, lying about the need for climate action for no electoral gain. But one way or another, we should be talking about it.

Here we are again, at the pinnacle of our democratic process and yet, again, failing to find a way to grapple honestly with the great issues. Democracy is worshipped, but its potential is eroded and its practitioners reviled. Whose fault is that? MPs or the public? Voters who think they stand aloof from “lying” politicians might ask themselves how much they are to blame for demanding the impossible – Swedish-level public services on US-level tax rates.

I don’t blame Labour for this; it is up against the great Tory lie factory. Always facing that wall of sound from the howling, dominant Tory media – its volume turned up now by GB News. The wonder is that Labour ever gets a hearing, ever wins elections. If it is staying muted now, the process makes that sensible, because discussing difficult dilemmas thoughtfully would do little more than provide ammunition for the enemy. After years in opposition, an election – in this Britain, at this time – is a perilous moment for Labour to seek to reshape the entire way we do politics.

With polls swinging strongly towards a Labour win and a social democratic future, with voters apparently ready to rebel against the devastations of austerity, maybe there is scope for boldness. Maybe Labour should trust polls showing that a majority would pay more tax to revive public services. Maybe it should be more expansive in the knowledge that voters broadly agree with the party over Brexit, tax, social care, poverty, benefits and the climate.

But, with a great victory within grasp and the chance of a different future for this country, is it reasonable to demand that it take that risk?

[mayra-quijotescx]

I gave zero days' notice and peaced the fuck out from employment with them exactly three years ago today but if I ever stop giving HPL shit, either they got completely overhauled* or I died. So let's get into it!

I've been going downtown at least once a week for the past month to help sling water bottles and fill plates with our local FNB, who you may know from 1. refusing to let people suffer the slow and painful social death penalty of starvation for being unhoused and 2. having our walking bruised ego of a mayor declare war on them for same. The group took their 56th ticket last night. For more info, check out this excellent Texas Observer article.

And every time I went I noticed that Central had fancied itself up; new bike racks, orderly clusters of tables and chairs, big fuckoff flatscreen displaying Library Updates...

...and I also noticed that it looked mighty closed for 7PM on a Wednesday.

So I got nosy and I pulled up the hours tonight. And uh.

You could say they've changed.

Here let me just

OLD SCHEDULE (barring natural disasters... it did happen) Monday thru Thursday: 9AM to 8PM Friday: 9AM to 5PM Saturday: 10AM to 5PM Sunday: 1PM to 5PM

it was also an emergency cooling center back then and isn't now but ohhhhh we won't get into that because I'll never shut up

NEW SCHEDULE Tuesday thru Thursday: 9AM to 6PM Friday: 9AM to 5PM Saturday: 10AM to 5PM Sunday and Monday: CLOSED

like

excuse me

Now I understand that the system has been hemorrhaging workers for years due to mismanagement by a business-class administration creating a work environment so toxic it could give the gnarliest sludge in the port imposter syndrome, so this could be a literal inability to retain enough staff to keep the main branch open, but admin has also been shamelessly vocal for years about how much they despise the local community (which is the downtown unhoused community) and wish they could be more choosy about who they serve as a (begrudgingly) public service, so this is equally likely to be a policy choice to further cut off who I cannot stress enough is their main patron base at that location and who will continue to be, barring outright revolution, whether the precious petty bourgeoisie who made the baffling choice to all take public service positions like it or not.

Anyway, they can quit bellyaching about wanting more families at their ~public asset~ (snarl chomp growl biting them biting them biting them) because even with the original hours, my former coworkers and I puzzled over how to get even families willing to pay for parking to brave the freeways and traffic to get to us before closing. At 8PM. Now? Virtually the only way someone with kids is getting there before the gates get slammed shut is if they're sleeping outside. And those aren't the families the gossamer-skinned Apple-exec LARPers in admin want to serve. So they can truly shut the fuck up about Making Central Family-Friendly(TM).

And FNB doesn't start distributing until a solid hour and a half at most after closing time, assuming the library was even open that day to begin with, so they can shut the fuck up about it ~making them look bad~ too. Just my $0.02, adjusted for inflation.

-

*Harris County Public Library workers, if you're reading this and willing/able/planning to launch a hostile takeover of the HPL system, I will support you in every possible capacity, up to and including giving my life in the line of duty. Call me. My one condition is that I want to plant a giant trans flag in the middle of the Central Plaza when we finally liberate it from the tyrants. And I want the director to watch.

[dankusner]

defund UT if it keeps LGBTQ, gender studies

Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, wants to "completely" defund the University of Texas if it doesn't close its Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and LGBTQ studies program.

A state lawmaker is calling on the Legislature to "completely" defund the University of Texas if it doesn't shutter its Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and LGBTQ studies program, which he has decried as liberal indoctrination that taxpayers should not fund.

The demand by Rep. Brian Harrison on Wednesday comes after a barrage of posts on X from the Republican lawmaker from Midlothian that draw attention to public universities' LGBTQ+ and gender-related course offerings, despite no law barring such curriculum.

After an "undercover" visit to the UT campus Tuesday, Harrison criticized the university's exhibit on "Black queer ecstasy," which showcases art that has often been excluded from historical representation;

Pride flags flying around campus; books on gender, transgender issues and queerness; and event flyers for roundtables on Black feminism, transgender people's well-being and multiple resource posters for LGBTQ+ people.

This isn't the first time Harrison has called for LGBTQ+ studies to be removed at public universities, and he's promised it won't be the last.

Harrison has pitched himself as a tireless defender of liberty against diversity, equity and inclusion at a time conservative lawmakers are attempting to assert more control over higher education for its perceived liberal bias and as the Trump administration seeks to rid "gender ideology" from federal agencies.

In doing so, Harrison has amassed 45,500 followers on X whom he calls "liberty bots" — more than triple the followers Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows has accumulated.

Multiple lawmakers, including Harrison, have filed bills this session to restrict course content on diversity and LGBTQ+ studies.

Harrison does not alone have power to cut state appropriations to UT.

That decision would have to be approved by the House, which is expected to vote on its budget proposal early next month, and the Senate.

In its recently approved budget proposal, the Senate does not call to defund UT.

In an interview Wednesday, Harrison told the American-Statesman that his impromptu visit to UT was spurred by an event hosted by the Department of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies on disparities in health outcomes and gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary people of color.

"The voters of Texas do not want their money spent on gender ideology," Harrison said.

"It's a very visible embarrassment. The state of Texas is supposedly run by all the Republicans down here. We can't do the basics."

UT and the head of the LGBTQ studies program declined to comment.

The chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Department did not return Statesman requests for comment.

But queer organizations doubt Harrison's threat has standing.

Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in the state, said government intervention in what universities can teach could constitute viewpoint discrimination, a violation of the First Amendment.

It would also infringe on the academic freedom that makes UT "top of their class," he said.

"Freedom requires that we allow ideas that are different from our own, ideas that might even make us uncomfortable," Pritchett said in a statement to the Statesman.

"Harrison wants conformity, but Texans believe in Freedom at all costs."

Harrison said painting his demands as government censorship is "absurd," saying anyone can study anything as long as taxpayers aren't funding the material.

Still, Mariah Adeeko, a UT student and communications director of the Queer and Trans Black and Indigenous People of Color Agency, a student group running without university financial support after a 2023 state law banning DEI in higher education went into effect, said they believe Harrison's threat is performative.

"This is scary for my community, absolutely, but for the Republican Party because they're showing their hand," Adeeko said.

"It's telling us that state officials, people who are passing laws, don't understand who we are, and they're using that lack of understanding as their primary basis to deny us the right to have well-being and our needs" met.

Harrison and other lawmakers should talk to queer students and organizing groups if they want to understand what being transgender and being queer in Texas means, Adeeko said.

Until then, LGBTQ+ people will continue fighting against legislative threats.

"This isn't like the power boss (go) girl slay he thinks it is. It's worn out," Adeeko said of Harrison's crusade.

"It's really just trying to dog pile all this hopelessness onto the people they go after, and it's not working."

Adeeko said Harrison has a duty to serve queer and transgender Texans as a state representative, and the queer community will continue supporting one another until then.

Harrison's visit to UT, according to his X thread, included entering inside buildings, sneaking into a conference and stealing a pamphlet on nonmedical gender transition resources that he called "one of the most disturbing things I've ever read."

UT is a public university, but there are rules on who can access its buildings for security purposes.

According to the university's emergency management website, "with few exceptions such as museums, libraries and during certain events, university-owned buildings and facilities are not considered open to the public."

When asked if he had legislative support to cut UT's budget if the programs remain, Harrison criticized state elected members from the Republican Party for not publicly supporting his demands and said that many lawmakers privately agree with him.

He said he will continue demanding that public money not be used to fund LGBTQ+ studies and will look to find support.

"The voters of Texas do not want their money spent on DEI, they do not want their money spent on liberal gender ideology," Harrison said.

"It's past time the Republican government of Texas grows a backbone."

[ttsnewsarchive]

This post is a section of the February 28th The Trans South Newsletter.

Southern and LGBTQ+ Events

no affiliation, just interesting finds

This includes both advocacy and social events.

More southern events wanted! Both work and play are welcome! Please DM or comment if you have tips for events in March, April, or May 2025

In this section: Events for March and April

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

March

All USA. March 7. Join Us: Emergency Strategy Session – Protect Our Cultural Heritage from Section 106 Rollbacks | "Cultural Heritage Partners is convening an emergency strategy session. Join us on Friday, March 7 at 1:30 PM Eastern to help formulate the legal and advocacy response. Together, we can fight back and stop this unprecedented attack on our shared heritage."

All South. March 11. SONG's Won't You Be My Gaybor? Launch Call | Join us on Tuesday, March 11th at 7 pm EST/ 6 pm CST as we launch a regional effort Knocking Our Blocks across the South, starting with your very own neighborhood, country road, or holler. Register here, recruit 3-5 friends to the launch call, and SONG will provide you with all the materials, swag, and support you’ll need!

All South. March 26. SONG's New Member Orientation | SONG is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South. "Join us as we visit the history of our co-founders and the methods in which we organize in the South and provide an orientation to the infrastructure of this organization."

Nashville, TN. March 28 - 30. Tennessee Game Days | Come play some board games. That's all.

The World. March 31. International Transgender Day of Visibility | Acknowledge and celebrate living members of the transgender community.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

April

Dallas, TX. April 22-27. 12th Annual National Black Trans Advocacy Conference & Awards Gala | "This year, we’re embracing the theme “Redefining Our Resilience: I Am UnErasable” to set the tone for a transformative 5-day experience of education, advocacy, and celebration."

--

Return to the Main Newsletter

If you're an adult trans person in the U.S. South, join my Tumblr Community: The Trans South.

If you're a teen trans person in the U.S. South and you create a youth community for trans southerners, let me know and I'll link to it in The Trans South.

[bllsbailey]

More Trans Terror? Texas Police Thwart 'Mass Casualty' Plot

An apparent "transgender"-identifying homeless man allegedly plotted to carry out a "mass casualty" attack on police in Texas, targeting white officers specifically, similar to the 2016 shooting that a black extremist perpetrated against Dallas police.

According to a Corpus Christi Police Department (CCPD) press release, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s local field office was tipped off about 21-year-old Seth Gregori a.k.a. "Andrea" Lozano making terroristic threats against CCPD personnel, white officers in particular.

Authorities have heard that Gregori identifies as "transgender," Townhall can confirm. "Transgender is what we're hearing," Townhall was told.

A local law enforcement source told The Daily Caller that Gregori is "transitioning" between genders. Based on information that the CCPD received from the FBI, "it's our understanding that [Gregori is] transitioning," a CCPD officer said.

At a Tuesday press conference, CCPD assistant chief Todd Green told reporters:

"The name we have on the arrest warrant is Andrea Lozano Gregori, but he also goes by Seth, that was his, I guess, given name, birth name. I can't tell you for sure whether he has transitioned, but he is in the process—he identifies as a woman. How's that? At this point in his life, he apparently identifies as a woman but is biologically male."

KIII-TV, an ABC affiliate in Corpus Christi, added an editorial note to their reporting on the thwarted anti-white terror plot:

"There is confusion over the gender of Seth Andrea Gregori [...] The name Andrea is commonly a female name in the United States, but it can be a typically male name in Italy, and Gregori is often an Italian surname. 3NEWS initially chose to use he/him pronouns as we went with what the FBI and CCPD were using. Moving forward, we will use they/them pronouns until we get better guidance."

According to documents obtained by Townhall, the CCPD's arrest report lists Gregori as female while the Nueces County Sheriff's Office booking sheet has him marked as a Hispanic male.

Gregori was arrested Monday on an active warrant—issued February 10—for making a terrorist threat toward a public servant.

According to an affidavit in support of Gregori's arrest, which refers to him as "Andrea/Seth," a CCPD detective embedded on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force initiated an investigation on February 6 when a source called the Corpus Christi FBI office to report that the suspect had texted him about being in possession of an "AR-15 platform pistol" and wanting to kill CCPD officers.

 Gregori arrest affidavit  by  mia.cathell 

The source said that Gregori's cell phone contained six months of messages showing a lengthy history of him expressing a desire to recreate a "Dallas-style" ambush on police, in reference to the 2016 mass shooting.

On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson, a black nationalist, ambushed and shot several Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers, killing five and injuring nine, marking the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Johnson, who ranted about racism online and followed the Facebook pages of black separatist groups, such as the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Riders Liberation Party, shouted "Black supremacy! Black liberation!" during his shooting rampage.

Of the "thousands" of texts exchanged with Gregori, the tipster flagged "the worst" and most recent. The source sent CCPD screenshots of their texts, one in which Gregori said he planned on doing the "same thing Micah did," fantasizing as far back as before 2021, and that he thought about it "as much as I could like Micah planned for years," according to the arrest affidavit. Gregori then allegedly sent a picture of an AR receiver.

Spanning 71 pages of evidence, the correspondence showed "clear planning, intent, and steps taken to ambush and kill police officers in Corpus Christi, Texas," the probable cause statements said. The trove of texts included 19 images of the Dallas crime scene and of Johnson. Gregori had also allegedly sent a series of photographs he had taken while "surreptitiously" stalking local police officers, along with messages narrating him reenacting the 2016 shooting, unbeknownst to the officers in the images.

That day, Gregori was found at Mother Teresa's homeless shelter possessing a backpack carrying a fully loaded AR-15 pistol, purchased three days prior, and a box of ammunition, per police. Gregori allegedly bragged about being friendly with CCPD officers who work security at the homeless facility and "fooling" them to gain their trust so they didn't see him as a threat.

Upon being located, he allegedly fled on foot. In police custody, Gregori reportedly revealed he had plotted to commit the shooting spree downtown; however, Gregori said he would have spared innocent bystanders because he's "a sharpshooter" and only intended to take out CCPD cops. Gregori allegedly admitted he had wished to target "white" officers only, leaving the "black and Mexican cops alone."

This week, police picked Gregori up Monday on the arrest warrant executed at 600 Elizabeth Street, the address of CHRISTUS Spohn Hospital.

Gregori was booked into Nueces County Jail on state-level charges of resisting arrest, search, or transport; evading arrest or detention; and making terrorist threats with the intent to impair public services, place the public in fear of serious bodily harm, and influence government activities (a third-degree felony).

He is currently being held on $70,000 bond. An affidavit of indigency was filed Wednesday.

Federal charges may be filed down the line, CCPD said.

"We believe this was an attack that was probably going to happen, and fortunately, we were able to stop it before it did," the assistant CCPD chief said at Tuesday's press conference. "This one had the earmarks of something really tragic all over it."

On social media, FBI Houston applauded FBI Corpus Christi and their local police partners for thwarting "another mass casualty attack."

#BREAKING FBI Corpus Christi and local partners have thwarted another mass casualty attack!#FBI Corpus and @CorpusChristiPD arrested Seth aka Andrea Gregori today on state charges filed by @NuecesCoDA after he planned an attack on police similar to the 2016 Dallas ambush. #CCTX pic.twitter.com/0JtCCJFRIu— FBI Houston (@FBIHouston) February 24, 2025

Gregori has a criminal record involving multiple misdemeanors, according to court records reviewed by Townhall.

In December 2024, Gregori was arrested for criminal trespass, but the case was disposed of.

In May 2023, Gregori was charged with fleeing a police officer. At the time, he had long hair and appeared more feminine, according to a mugshot posted by a third-party public records website. Gregori is scheduled to be arraigned on March 7 in that case.

In family court, a woman tried to obtain a protective order against Gregori, though that 2023 case was dismissed.

The court docket for a 2022 traffic case called Gregori by "she" and "her" pronouns.

In 2018, a then-teenage Gregori and his older brother, Jonathan, were reported as runaways. Both were eventually located.