Nine Volunteers Are Ensuring Anyone In The U.S. Has Access To Over 1,200 Books With LGBTQ Themes And

Hey tumblr.

I want to share a post from The Guardian that was published today.

“Inside the building, staffers said that Doge cultivated a culture of fear.

“It’s an extreme version of ‘who do you trust, when and how?’” said Kristina Drye, a speechwriter at the agency, who watched dozens of senior colleagues escorted out of the building by security. “It felt like the Soviet stories that one day someone is beside you and the next day they’re not.”

People started meeting for coffee blocks away because “they didn’t feel safe in the coffee shops here to even talk about what’s going on”, she added.

“I was in the elevator one morning and there was an older lady standing beside me and she had glasses on and I could see tears coming down under her glasses and before she got off her elevator she took her glasses off, wiped her eyes, and walked out,” she said. “Because if they see you crying, they know where you stand.””

Everyone should read this article about “DOGE” tearing apart USAID (and then read more reporting about how they are being allowed to do the same to other US federal entities). Elon Musk and his minions are violating our highest laws and destroying lives and livelihoods in the US and abroad. USAID is less than 1% of the federal budget— this isn’t about cost-cutting or “investigating fraud”. It’s about cruelty and seeing how much unlawful devastation and psychological warfare they can get away with, with the intention to repeat this process at one federal agency after another. They already have access to IT systems at the Treasury, NOAA, and other agencies, and have taken over OPM (essentially HR for the federal government), using the latter to send demeaning and threatening e-mail blasts to civil servants.

I’m urging everyone who reads this to recognize what’s happening here and how abhorrent and frightening it is. I wager that even most people who wanted Trump back didn’t want a centibillionaire technocrat making unilateral decisions on which parts of the federal government to “feed into the wood chipper” (as he has described his team’s actions at USAID in a recent post on X, The Everything App).

Please call your elected representatives and urge them to act against Musk now— before his actions make our legislative branch totally irrelevant.

I’ve been seeing posts about Musk’s coup-in-progress going around on here, but I feel like a lot of people still aren’t aware of the extent of it, and I really want to help get the word out. I’m heartsick for all the civil servants at USAID and beyond. Some of them, their unions, and some Democratic congresspeople and others are speaking out, but these workers need us everyday Americans to speak out for them, too.

Thank you for reading. And anyone who isn’t American, please keep us in your thoughts.

For all the messages not to comply in advance, I think equally important is to not declare defeat, ever. Yes, this shit is fucked. Yes, it's beyond alarming. But part of the Trump playbook is doing so much, so fast, that opponents get overwhelmed. There's too much for any one person to address all of it, so I guess they just win by default. Except no, they fucking don't.

It is not the responsibility of any single person to keep up with or counter every action from the administration.

Just like last time, it's going to take thousands of people doing hundreds of thousands of difficult, boring, largely unseen, or all of the above, tasks to keep American government from going completely off the rails. Throwing up your hands and declaring that we're already off the rails and barreling straight off a cliff? Not helping.

Feel what you need to feel. Vent to your circles. But then remember: despair is as dangerous as apathy if it leads to the same end result.

Yeah sure we’ve all binged a long fic, but have you ever read a WIP and followed someone’s life?

Tidbits of information - (“I graduated today!”) - and small joys (“It’s my birthday!”) and you get to be there to say “This chapter made me cry, happy birthday, thank you for gifting us this”.

I remember reading this fic of someone at the end of high school, older than me then. They seemed infinitely wise, spoke of their future career and getting into the college they wanted. I remember them posting on days they felt like nothing could bring them down - and on days the whole world did and it’s the aftermath of a hospital visit. Cancer, I think it was, their father. I got to the end of the story, I know their father was fine, but also they got to finish their WIP. I graduated three years later than them, still dutifully wrote thank you notes in every comment. I wonder if they remember me, or just the collective of people reading the story as it updates.

Four years ago I was into my first year of university, my first year of figuring out being out in public spaces. I made excuses as to why my name didn’t match my paperwork and read a fic on the train, the same five chapters over and over again for the next years as I thought the story abandoned. It updated this week after such a long hiatus, I left another thank you comment.

There’s an author I love, they update their stories like a clockwork. When they don’t, I check their blog, just to see if their doing alright, not because I feel like they owe me, just to ensure whether I better get out my laptop to write that really detailed university level essay chapter analysis to get them smiling when their day sucked.

And then, once, when I was 17, I read a fic that hadn’t updated in over a decade. I wasn’t even in primary school when it started posting. On the last chapter, I left a comment that, in retrospect, was horribly rambly and most likely full of grammar mistakes. The author replied and though I couldn’t see their face, I thought of them crying. They were married now, had children, and hadn’t thought about this fic in years. They went through their files again, found another half written chapter and an outline. I got two new chapters to read that year.

And then, recently, someone told me they got back into writing original fiction because of my comments. I get to read nearly weekly chapters.

I love binge reading a finished fic, but nothing is ever going to top the feeling of anticipation of waiting for a chapter, the pure joy when someone tells you I was done with this, but you made me think of it again, so this is for you.

Anyway, I think we should romanticize reading WIPs more, growing up alongside the authors writing the stories we love.

just as a general reminder

learn how to fact-check for yourself, cause soon enough, most online sources won't be reliable

I really wish they translate the Only Friends novel

FYI: This has spoilers for the novel

So, some context, the novel was written after the script was finished and the author said that they rewrote part of the story to fix holes and issues so many parts so in general, the novel may give out a different subtext to the series.

For example, Top was portrayed more as a player in the early parts of his relationship with Mew, Boston's dad is portrayed as a progressive politician standing up for the common people, the Boston's scandal was more a "this country is stupid and having a son that has a gay sex life is wrong" rather than what's presented in the series.

Okay, so what I'm getting at here is that the novel ending is different, Boston is not just thrown away, he reconciled with the group, he gets an ending that is more deserving than in the series.

I think this is because the author had time to rethink parts through and correct any issues which makes the novel a better version of the story in my opinion. And I want non Thais to be able to experience this as well, which is why I want them to translate the novel.

Also side note; Mew's insecurity in dating in the novel also stemmed from his mother, one is a comparative literature professor and the other a SEA Write (an important prize of literature here) award writer, so his insecurity comes from people recognising him as the son of the SEA Write writer rather than someone he truly is, which makes my heart warms a bit, I don't know why

But yeah, I want them to translate the novel so bad

a bishop literally asked trump to have mercy because we are all human beings and conservatives are acting like she put a pistol to his head