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okay. holding ur hands as i say this. look me in the eyes. i know this is overwhelming so here's where we start. if he wants you dead then your first act of resistance is survival.

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Alright, folks. It looks like we're going to war.

I do not mean that we should do violence. But I do think that as Americans, soldiers are our best mental model of organized, entrenched collective action.

What this means for you, day one:

You are not a hostage. You are vital manpower. We need you. I don't want you to die because god, that's awful - but also, every person we lose weakens our cause.

Your body is the machine which gives you the power to resist. It is your civic duty to eat and sleep to the best of your ability. Fuel your body. If you can't sleep, close your eyes for a while and get whatever rest you can.

Don't stay on the front lines. Soldiers get leave for a reason - it's because it makes them more effective. Take time away from the fight. Exhaustion, burnout, and PTSD are doing no favors.

There is no shame in being too disabled to fight, or in being wounded in action. If you're too depressed, traumatized, hurt, or otherwise disabled to take part at any point - that is ok.

There's plenty of work to do on the home front. Make sure your people are fed. Check in with them. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Pick up litter. If you can't fight, or you're on leave, then do what you can on the home front. Keep things running, so others have the time and energy to fight.

Leave no one behind. Homeless folks, disabled folks, BIPOC folks, the very young and very old - we know that the most vulnerable populations are going to suffer most in this conflict. Call out bullshit when you see it - but remember who the real enemy is. Fascism is too important for the left to eat itself again.

I don't know what fighting is going to look like. I don't think it will be violence, and I don't want folks to do violence. I'm using the language of warfare because I think it's easier to imagine what that looks like. We're going to do something.

Our mental image of collective action is really passive - we're just going to march and look really upset and they'll feel guilty and change.

That hasn't been working. The alt-right doesn't feel guilty when they see the harm they've done, and they aren't swayed by marches and protests. We need a new plan.

If anything, I think this election may have been a referendum on deprogramming the alt-right by convincing them that their cult is insane. It didn't work.

We need some kind of active resistance. Smarter and more experienced folks than me will come up with what that looks like. But for now, day one: eat something. sleep. We're going to need you.

[uswe]

looks like october is…. octover

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And what about it

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Very specifically the origin story as written by a government safety worker with a secure retirement and unlimited access to decent coffee.

‘We are warning you this is hot because we crippled a woman and would rather mock and discredit her than pay her medical bills’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

‘This sign is here to remind you that dangerous areas are marked out with the different grey paint, because the safety yellow that indicates safe zones was ugly to our Scion of apartheid overlord. Death count: 2’

[uswe]

So there's something I want to say re: intentionally withholding your vote, and I want to do it without coming across as condescending or dismissive.

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

All this to say: In my direct experience as an organizer, abstaining from the vote sends a message. That message is not "You need to try harder to win my vote." It's "Don't waste time on me."

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pls tell me what ur great grandparents did for a living in the tags if u know... mine were dairy farmers, bakery workers and a security guard lol

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I'm not saying there are parallels, but...

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do u think omegaverse acknowledges covid-19 and the generation of people who permanently lost their sense of smell like how are they all scenting each other now is the omegaverse economy in shambles

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dark science beyond belief

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Guys, Netflix is going to make a modern day adaptation of Dorian Gray and they're making Basil and Dorian brothers

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inspired by the quiz i saw for the countries!

take this quiz to see how many USA states you can name in 10 minutes, because i was curious to see if i still remembered. i got all but blanked on wyoming, maryland, and oklahoma. (and i only got nebraska, missouri, and mississippi in the last 10 seconds. when i blank out i BLANK out.)

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News - If you live in the US, you can now watch all 200 episodes of the original 90s Sailor Moon anime on Viz Media’s Youtube channel for free! Viz also added all of the Inuyasha TV series and movies, as well as more recent shows like Death Note and Hunter x Hunter. 

[uswe]

“Living weapon” covers a lot and all of it is hot

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this is the funniest fucking billboard possible. who the fuck paid for this

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I flunked out the first time! The second time there was one semester where I had two classes with the same professor and ended up writing him an email ‘I owe you three papers. I don’t want to write three papers. You don’t want to read three papers. Can I combine any?’

This was apparently passed around not just the department but the college and I was made infamous. And I wrote one paper for two classes https://www.academia.edu/12249821/ADHD_And_The_Good_Life_the_compounding_effects_of_underdiagnosis. This was several years before my own diagnosis- I was just mad about the inequity.

Anyway I got lucky and got school hyperfocus and my driving need to complete things carried me through a masters. I got diagnosed the first year of my PhD program and it basically recontextualized my whole life. @alwaysboth has been very tolerant of my ranting about it for literally years - and was also part of the ‘failed by academic structures’ crew.

Anyway I went to one of the most accessible public schools in the country for undergrad and their options for online and asynchronous classes were what helped me actually finish undergrad. But it was the structures, not adhd accommodations. I’m pretty sure even they don’t really know how to accommodate ADHD.

In hindsight it's very insulting to be told that flunking out of college due to adhd is actually "quite common"

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Not sure if I am broken by dint of burnout or grad school or overwork or disability. I would like to create again. But my notes document with fic ideas has been untouched since my performance review and realizing I need to publish more papers.

Probably a therapist would help? But a dentist is more urgent. Also nagging the plumber.