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Crow Time - Statue 1

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It brings me joy! It validates my bird obsession!

[Holy crap there's a Part 2??]

[PART 3!!!!]

[Read Crow Time] [Patreon]

It's a heist. Elon is the fraud. DOGE is the fraud. The coders destroying databases are the waste.

“Oh boo hoo you shouldn’t ask your friends for favors we’re all adults”

I just spent three hours pulling up carpet and staples for a friend’s home renovation and we all did nothing but chat and joke and have wonderful conversation the whole time.

Helping somebody move or renovate or giving them a ride to the airport is functionally the same as going mini-golfing or playing a board game: it’s an activity that you do that is made more fun by having good company, and which provides something to talk about when the conversation lulls.

Dude, kids literally want to go outside and do stuff sooooo bad, and I think anyone who says otherwise should stop and take a second to think about why they view the younger generations as unable to separate from technology. Spoiler alert: it's not their fault. There is nowhere to go.

A skatepark recently opened up near my house, and that place is always FILLED to the BRIM with kids on the ramps and hanging out. I'm not even sure how some of them are able to get there, but they must, because I see them every day.

I'm 16 and I don't have a job. The main hangout places for my friend group are the mall and getting ice cream somewhere, which is good and fun, but I don't always want to spend money. Hell, we sometimes meet at the local pharmacy to buy candy and stuff.

Again, kids want to go outside and do stuff, but when everything is either far away or costs money, they don't have much of a choice.

now say it with me: authors/artists dont owe you moral purity. an author/artist job is not to hold you by the hand & tell you exactly what is Good™ & what is Bad™. you should be able to think for yourself

Proud to reveal the FURRY FOUND FOOTAGE ZINE cover done by my partner Gentlemonster !!

This 65+ page digital zine will be released in mid to late May! Stay tuned!

So the "don't call trans women dude" discourse is back on my dash, and I just read something that might explain why it's such a frustrating argument for everyone involved.

TLDR: There's gender-cultural differences that explain why people are arguing about this- and a reason it hurts trans women more than you might think if you were raised on the other side of the cultural divide.

I'll admit, I used to be very much on team "I won't call you 'dude' if it feels like misgendering, but also I don't really grok why it feels like I'm misgendering you, especially if I'm not addressing you directly." But then I read an academic paper that really unpicked how people used the word 'dude' (it's Kiesling (2004) if you're curious) and I realized that the way I was taught to use the word was different from the way most trans women were taught.

... So the thing about the word 'dude' that's really interesting is that it's used differently a) by people of different genders and b) across gender lines. This study is, obviously, 20 years old, but a lot of the conclusions hold up. The gist is, there's ~5 different ways that people use the word "dude":

marking discourse structure- AKA separating thoughts. You can use the word 'dude' to signal that you're changing the subject or going on a different train of thought.

exclamation. You can use the word "dude" the way you'd use another interjection like "oh my god" or "god damn".

confrontational stance mitigation. When you're getting in an argument with someone, you can address them as 'dude' to de-escalate. If you're both the same gender, it's homosocial bonding. If you're different genders, it's an attempt to weaken the gender-related power dynamic.

marking affiliation and connection. Kiesling calls this 'cool solidarity'- the idea is, "I'm a dude, you're a dude. We're just guys being dudes." This is often a greeting or a form of address (aka directly calling someone dude).

signaling agreement. "Dude, you are soooo right", kind of deal.

Now, here's the important part.

When [cis] men use the word 'dude', they are overwhelmingly using it as a form of address to mark affiliation and connection- "hey, we're all bros here, dude"- to mitigate a confrontational stance, or to signal agreement.

When [cis] women use the word 'dude', they're often commiserating about something bad (and marking affiliation/connection), mitigating a confrontational stance, or giving someone a direct order. (Anecdotally, I'd guess cis women also use it as an exclamation - this is how I most often use it.)

Cis men use the word 'dude' to say 'we're all guys here'. It is a direct form of male bonding. If a cis man uses the word 'dude' in your presence, he is generally calling you one of the guys.

Cis women use the word 'dude' to say 'we're on the same level as you; we're peers'- especially to de-escalate an argument with a cis man. Between women, it's an expression of ~cool solidarity~; when a woman's addressing a man, it's a way to say 'I'm as good as you, knock it off'.

So you've got this cultural difference, depending on how you were raised and where you spent time in your formative years. If you were assigned female at birth, you're probably used to thinking of the word 'dude' as something that isn't a direct form of address- and, if you're addressing it to someone you see as a girl, you're probably thinking of it as 'cool solidarity'! You're not trying to tell the person you're talking to that they're a man- you're trying to convey that they're a cool person that you relate to as a peer.

Meanwhile, if you were assigned male at birth and spent your teens surrounded by cis guys, you're used to thinking of 'dude' as an expression of "we're all guys here", and specifically as homosocial male bonding. Someone using the word 'dude' extensively in your presence, even if they're not calling you 'dude' directly, feels like they're trying to put you in the Man Box, regardless of how they mean it.*

So what you get is this horrible, neverending argument, where everyone's lightly triggered and no one's happy.

The takeaway here: Obviously, don't call people things they don't want to be called, regardless of gender! But no one in this argument is coming to it in bad faith.

If you were raised as a cis woman and you're using the word the way a cis woman is, it is a gender-neutral term for you (with some subconscious gendered connotations you might not have realized). But if you were raised as a cis man and you're using the word the way a cis man uses it, the word dude is inherently gendered.

Don't pick this fight; it's as pointless as a French person and an American person arguing whether cheek kisses are an acceptable greeting. To one person, they might be. To another person, they aren't. Accept that your worldview is different, move on, and again, don't call people things they don't want to be called.

*(There is, of course, also the secret third thing, where someone who is trying to misgender a trans woman uses the word 'dude' to a trans woman the way they'd use it to a man. This absolutely happens. But I think the other dynamic is the reason we keep having this argument.)

404 Media

DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA

Employees at Elon Musk's agency have been told "OMB is asking us to stop generating new slack messages starting now."

This is enormous. Please spread this news.

FOIA is the Freedom of information Act, which allows citizen oversight of government activity. It means you can request to see government records. This is so ubiquitous that all federal employees take yearly training about it. What this means is that DOGE knows they are committing crimes as they decimate the federal workforce and compromise its systems, and so they are now moving to exempt themselves from all FOIA requirements so no one can see what they are doing.

Leaving MAGA -

They Left MAGA - Leaving MAGA

They Left MAGA Steve Vilchez Chicago Read His Story Erica Roach New York Read Her Story Justin Yu California Read His Story Deanna Raper Nor

This is an interesting thing. Looks like testimonies of people who left the MAGA movement- how they got into it and why.

Leaving a cult is really hard, so I really respect the people who are speaking from this place.