Vent Art

suck, and i cannot stress this enough, my cock to the fucking base

The people who are in power right now want us to be quiet and cowed. So we need to be noisy and defiant to show that we are not going anywhere. And we need to show each other that we are going to survive this — even if it gets dark.

"Flaunt and Flail": Queer Art in the Age of Techno-Fascism (my latest newsletter!)

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

this guy really always had something to say about almost everything and nearly all of it is still completely relevant almost 200 years later. fascinating stuff.

If anyone has taken their eyes off what's happening to federal workers in the US right now, here's some highlights that we're hearing from our comrades across the government who have not yet been fired:

In one building (hosting multiple agencies), the locks on the bathroom were changed so employees no longer have any access to a bathroom during the workday. People are peeing in trash cans.

Elsewhere, multiple agencies have reported that hand soap is no longer being supplied in the bathrooms.

Toilet paper supplies have not been adjusted to meet the needs of a vastly increased number of in-office employees.

Employee-owned coffee and coffee makers have been stolen or thrown away without notice (it was already illegal for taxpayer dollars to be spent on supplying federal employees with amenities like coffee, so many offices have coffee supplied by pooled employee funds).

Meanwhile, many offices don't even have potable drinking water (recurrent legionella outbreaks), so employees have to bring their own water from home.

Despite an explosion in the number of workers in offices, cleaning budgets have been slashed and many offices are not being cleaned regularly enough to remain sanitary. Pests like roaches and rats are a problem.

The firings continue, legal and illegal. Entire programs are being cut. Managers have no idea when they might lose staff. Employees are getting fired at 6pm on a weekend or finding out when they're unable to log into their computer or when they receive a shipping label in the mail to return their equipment.

Through all of this, the DOGE employees in federal workplaces are enjoying incredible and expensive luxury: AI-powered sleep pods, entire dormitories so they can live in federal buildings, nurseries for their children on site, free food and beverages, laundry services, and who knows what else. They have special security to restrict access to their areas of the buildings, including armed guards.

And I'm not just saying this to lament how bad it is for federal workers. I'm saying this because, as workers are reporting this to one another, the response is, inevitably: "This is illegal." "Yes, but who would I report it to? OPM? They're a DOGE puppet. OSHA? They've cut OSHA. The Inspectors General? Cut. The NLRB? Cut. My union? No longer recognized."

There is no one left to enforce these laws, so taking away access to basic sanitation is now effectively legal. They are doing this to federal workers, who historically have been some of the best-protected workers in the country. They are doing this specifically because it demonstrates to the public sector that it is now legal to do these things to their own workers.