The Thing Is People Often Talk About How Minecraft Steve Is The Most Whitewashed Character Since Jesus

People are way too mean to Jake Sisko about his outfits :(( his fuckass outfits are one of the best parts of the whole show. Seeing non starfleet federation citizens. Seeing futuristic fashion. Having fun with colours and patterns. Seeing his fashion sense change from a child to an adult. He has more fashion sense than any of the muted militarised "something you could find in abercrombie and fitch" ass outfits of modern trek shows. Where is your zest for life, where is your idealism? Only Quark has more drip.

Found this comic on Twitter and really liked it, so I spent a whole day working on this dub and stayed up way too late editing the video.

Comic source

I forgot to post this on trans day of visibility.

see you next year, loves.

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won’t radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that’s generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these “self-sufficiency” skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the “good old days,” a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here’s a complete list of the safe resources I’ve found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it’s like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

“Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy” by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs – in this case, indigenous American beliefs – can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the “Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline”

Note: the “crunchy to alt-right pipeline” is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use “crunchy” spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

“The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline” by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it’s a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I’ve personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

its different bc the government didn't want us to think about police brutality against unions <3

WHERE is todayborday

I'll sit next to the big fella and respectfully ignore him by taking out my copy of 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' by Ernest Hemmingway

You arrive at the train station, its a bit past 7 and sun is beginning to set, but the train is late. So You find your way to the benches but all of them are full, save for two seats. One is next to a pale older woman with long flowing red hair in an elegant green green, she is reading a book on Irish History and wears golden spectacles. The other seat is next to a man in a long trench blue coat, he has tan skin and dark slicked back hair, in his pocket is a pistol, you glance at the schedule board and see it will be 30 minutes till the train arrives. Where do you sit?

And another thing I find hilarious about Garak is that - he is such a snob.

Like, Quark's too vulgar and loud for him, close range fighting is "undignified", no one can set a foot on the station without having this middle aged Cardassian criticizing their fashion choice right in front of their Bolinian salads or whatever, he debates epic literature at lunch, he has had Shakespeare for like 5 minutes and he is already quoting it during life or death emergencies.

And it's absolutely hilarious because this man chopped up his countrymen for a living.

News about the Europa Ice War, from the guy who started it

For context in case someone missed it: this past week has had an explosion of fiction and art being posted to Twitter and to a lesser extent a few other social media sites, accounts and memoirs of a brutal eternal conflict on Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

At first people thought this was a spontaneous fic situation like Goncharov, but it turns out to have been viral marketing for an (upcoming?) tabletop roleplaying game zine that got wildly out of hand (up to and including some indirect acknowledgment from a NASA social media account).

So it's less unreality and more, fanfic I guess.

...And now I really badly want to get my hands on that zine, I was already starting to brainstorm how to translate the thing into an RPG and turns out I won't even have to lmao.