Latest Posts by kyn-elwynn - Page 3

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

Based

buntana era is over sorry yall but u aint getting a halo 3 mod. you can thank microsoft. fuck microsoft.

the fact that we are firmly in a time where conservatives are like "the actual founding fathers, who were slaveowners, were not racist enough for my taste" is wild

buying microsoft products funds genocide

Michael Rosenbaum has a phenomenal podcast that I have been on once before when I was promoting Still Just A Geek. He was one of the people I hoped I could talk to about It's Storytime With Wil Wheaton, because I knew he'd get it, but mostly because I just really enjoy his company, his energy, and how safe he made me feel when I was there.

I am his guest this week. We taped this the day after my podcast released, which feels like a lifetime ago, but was really just a month or so.

We talked a lot about my recovery from child abuse and exploitation, how I show up for myself whenever I am able, and how I'm doing the best I can to be the parent I never had.

We also talked about my new podcast, and a lot of stuff that isn't in this big old bag of trauma I'm lugging around.

Here are some quick links for you to check us out

YouTube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts Website

“omg peoples mental health is so bad they don’t shower??” girl some people have such bad mental health they kill themselves

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

they took 14 vials of blood from me

"jesus was actually a radical Palestinian activist of colour" stop trying to sell Christianity by slapping a progressive coat of paint on it. it's still preaching even if you don't recognise that and think you're just trying to fight back against conservatives or whatever. I promise you ~global christendom~ would not be fucking redeemed if everyone just learned the *true* meaning of his message (but for real this time)

When the health food store unionized, something wild happened that I thought was just a goofy one-off, but makes more sense now.

There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.

I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?

There were enough of us to be like "Absolutely the fuck not," and put a stop to it, but I was absolutely flummoxed that people involved in a union would say that out loud. Working with more leftists now, it makes sense.

i hope whoever actually shot that CEO is having a good day.

Do you get it now? Without due process, everyone is at risk. How are you going to prove your citizenship otherwise?

A large part of the reason families were bigger in the past was because marital rape was not considered rape and birth control/abortion methods were ineffective, dangerous and/or illegal. We can dance around this and act like our great great great grandmothers just loveddddd being mamas so much that they decided out of their own free will to have 11 children. We can pretend that they DECIDED to have big families because it was a financially advantageous decision so they could have more labor around the farm. But a lot of children in the past were fundamentally unwanted and not conceived out of love, children were not a choice women got to make. We need to admit that and stop pretending historical women were inherently more maternal because they were impregnated at the age of 15 and kept having babies until they were 40. That did not make them loving mothers, it did not make them ‘the divine feminine’ and it sure did not make them happy.

“If we truly believe in bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice at this place and time, his supporters need to become pariahs. They should not be welcome where good people gather. They need to be held accountable for unleashing this hell on the rest of us. […] As in other times of historic fascist regimes, there is no ambiguity left now. The lines are starkly drawn, the factions clearly defined, the opposing values unmistakable. On one side of this battle for the soul of our nation, the safety of its people, and the welfare of the planet, is the sprawling interdependent community of those committed to healing, kindness, and the common good. And on the other side stands this historically unredeemable would-be king and those who regardless of the story they tell themselves, still inexplicably stand alongside him. Compromise is not an option, and because of that many of us are going to need to lean into our convictions and move away from people we know, love, and once respected. Sadly and tragically, that’s just how this has to be.”

—

For America’s Survival, His Supporters Must Be Ostracized

Never forget and never forgive the people who did this to us.

There is one particular scene in Monstrous Regiment that I love that isn't being talked about enough so I figured...maybe I should talk about it.

'Then go!', shouted Polly. 'Desert! We won't stop you, because I'm sick of your...your bullshit! But you make up your mind, right now, understand? Because when we meet the enemy I don't want to think you're there to stab me in the back!'

The words flew out before she could stop them, and there was no power in the world that could snatch them back.

Tonker went pale, and a certain life drained out of her face like water from a funnel. 'What was that you said?'

The words 'You heard me!' lined up to spring from Polly's tongue, but she hesitated. She told herself: it doesn't have to go this way. You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.

'Words that were stupid', she said. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.'

It is such an incredibly powerful scene. I've read the book dozens of times and every time I low-key expect there to be a fight even though I know there won't be because that's how it goes, right? But Pterry is showing us, it doesn't have to. Right here, right now it's in your hands. You can choose not to. You can back down when you are wrong or even when you're right. Polly has good reason to be mad at Tonker but so does Tonker for her actions and Polly chooses not to escalate. They're in this together. Fighting amongst themselves accomplishes nothing and backing down doesn't make her weak. On the contrary, it's a strength because anger is easy. Polly isn't wrong to be angry, but there is a time and a place and she has the wisdom to recognise that this isn't it.

You're allowed to be angry! But you don't have to get swept up by it, you can choose a different path. And hell, that just goes right to the most important thing Discworld taught me. Through Vimes and Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany and occasionally even Rincewind.

Being good isn't something you are, it's something you do. It's something you have to choose to be, over and over again, every single day, every single decision. And it's hard. It's not some nebulous quality you either possess or you don't it's something you have to decide to be and work at hard at all your life but it's up to you. You can always choose to do better, to be kinder, to apologise, to say something, to not say anything, to do the right thing even when it's hard or unpleasant or inconvenient for you. Your anger isn't wrong or misplaced and sometimes being angry is the only right reaction to have, but it's a weapon too and you decide where you aim it.

You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.

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.

💜🐶 Kess is sparkly

@lingerie_addict has a really cool thread on ancient fashion over on twitter.

Those source links are here

cambridge.org

Youtube

ucl.ac.uk

i think as adults it’s our responsibility to be nice to kids and treat them with the respect we wish we got at that age and im not kidding or exaggerating in the least

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

Hey did you know that you can’t escape fatphobia even after death? The article talks about how these donated bodies are used for first year anatomy students to study the body, and how the 'perfect' body for that should be 170-180 pounds.

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

“Imagine if instead of imposing LIBERATION DAY tariffs, then shifting from a trade war with the whole world to a trade war focused more specifically on China, Trump had done the thing he actually talked about on the campaign trail: 10 percent across the board tariffs on every country. It would have sucked and been stupid. It would have been a magnet for corruption. And to the extent that Trump proceeded corruptly, as he is doing now—offering exemptions to friends and bribers—it would have tested global faith in American trustworthiness. But, for the most part, I suspect the world would have absorbed the blow and hoped for a reprieve in four years. We would have drifted into recession, maybe a deep and long one, but eventually climbed out of it. Trump’s numbers would have dropped steadily. Democrats would have had to decide whether and how to offer relief. It would have been a self-inflicted wound, but a survivable and reversible one. What Trump’s done instead has ramifications far beyond its regressive fiscal impact and the coming blow to aggregate demand. It needs to be stopped not because of the economic harm it will bring to seniors, but because it’s anathema to national values, and threatens to end the American age. We aren’t a mafia state. We don’t have dictators in America, and if anyone tests that principle, we align to stop it, not to make life under it a little less painful.”

— It’s The Tyranny, Stupid - by Brian Beutler - Off Message

Crow Time - Statue 1

Please like, comment, follow!

It brings me joy! It validates my bird obsession!

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

[PART 3!!!!]

[Read Crow Time] [Patreon]