pancakeke:

News from the past 24 hours (10/5 to 10/6) because everything Happens So Much:

The CDC has finally officially stated that COVID may be transmitted through air despite that we’ve basically known this all along.

The CDC offered to do contact tracing for the White House and notify all those potentially infected. The WH said turned them away. There are many reports of those who came in contact with positive cases only learning that they were exposed from news reports, not by any WH contract tracers.

Trump returned home to the White House and took his mask off pretty much immediately despite still being contagious and standing near other people. He then posted a bizarre video telling people not to fear COVID while also making dubious claims about his health. Here’s a transcript.

BothFloridaandTexas online voter registration websites broke before the registration deadline. Residents of Florida were given an extra day to register.

Facebook removed a post Trump made claiming COVID is less deadly than the flu. He posted the same to Twitter, which only obscured the tweet with a disclaimer and did not remove it.PBS has put the past few years of flu deaths vs less than a year of COVID into a graphic to show the disparity.

Vice Commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Charles Ray tested positive.

COVID exposure may have reached the Pentagon.

Trump sayshe’s killing any coronavirus aid package until after the election,tanking the stock market immediately. He is prioritizing the SCOTUS nomination and by extension, an overturn of the Affordable Care Act. This will throw I believe 20 million Americans off their health insurance.

Facebook banned QAnon across all its platforms to “bring to parity what we’ve been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements” and limit the “ability of QAnon and Militarized Social Movements to operate and organize on our platform.”

Up to 123 people at the Capital are COVID positive.

The St Louis couple who waved guns at passing protesters have been indicted.

The White House dropped their opposition and agreed to the FDA’s standards for release of the COVID vaccine, meaning it will not be rushed out before election day. The FDA has also created a new landing page about the vaccine.

Stephen Miller (senior advisor for policy for Trump) tested positive. There are now 23 people connected to the White House with positive COVID tests. Mid afternoon it was only 21, here’s a graphic. I can’t find an updated graphic but even if I did it would probably be outdated soon.

I’m probably missing stuff but man I got other shit to do.

tsscat:

aro-as-in-straight-as-a:

tsscat:

zadier:

apparentlyeverything:

gaymenaredivineincarnate:

afro-elf:

afro-elf:

you can’t…. reclaim……………. proud boys

i know we are always tempted to “stick it” to hate groups symbolically but you could do that by kicking their asses, disrupting their operations, spreading awareness of the dangers they create, and driving them into nonexistence

Yall are so fucking used to using the image of gay men as a joke and to troll people that yall think gay men reclaiming proud boys is just “sticking it” to hate groups. 

Gay Men: We’re going to de-platform a white supremacist group from social media sites by flooding the tag with images of gay love and proclamation for an inclusive community that values diversity, says no fascist and white supremacy, literally fucking up the algorithm when someone looks up Proud boys. An online movement spear headed by Gay men of color

This is literally a form of disrupting their operations and spreading awareness of the dangers they create… what exactly is the problem? 

It’s time people start coming to terms with their inherit biases they have with gay men. Because like yall just irksome. 

Also, it’s not an example of “reclaiming” a term at all. “Proud boys” has never been slur used against gay men. Gay men have been spamming the tag to disrupt it being used by white supremacists. It’s an entirely different thing.

Also, aside from the point that this *is* intended to disrupt operations and raise awareness, other people on this post are pointing out that KPop stans and other groups do this kind of shit all the time, and get praise for it, but the minute gay men do it, it’s “uh, why aren’t you going out and kicking their asses” like ok, sure I’ll just go start a fight with an armed neo-nazi that will definitely go well for me, thanks.

And remember that trump literally just spoke to them directly in a presidential debate telling them to “stand back and stand by.” They were celebrating and selling merch with that slogan and is themost high-profile mainstream mention they’ve ever received and it was perceived to be praisefromthe president. The takeover of the twitter tag is a way to bury them and preventmore people from becoming interested in them and their hateful views. The purpose wasn’t a trite “reclaiming it! yay! this is for gays now lol!” the way the critics of the tag takeover paint it; it was about flooding the proud boys tag with lots of images of loving wholesome gay people just living their lives. Wedding photos, vacation photos, photos with their kids, etc. Just a nice celebration showing what real happy gay life can look like as an active refutation of what the proud boys stand for. It’s deplatforming and burying bigoted content and doing it with a smile. It was “disrupting their operations” and taking a step towards “driving them into nonexistence”. That’s literally what they did.

I can’t believe white people are trying to make things about themselves again. Yes, the Proud Boys are homophobic. But LGBT people are not their primary target. Do you know who their primary target actually is? PEOPLE OF COLOR, especially Black people. All of Proud Boy’s self-described initiatives all involve racial politics. They are a WHITE-SUPREMACIST GROUP.

When these white-supremacists see white gays “reclaiming” Proud Boys, they see their fellow whites. That’s why WHITE people cannot reclaim WHITE-supremacists. It’s fucking hilarious that you guys are trying to call the opposition to this “homophobia” since SO MANY lgbt poc have expressed how this is wrong.

In the whole “hijacking” of the Proud Boys tag, can you find a single visibly brown or black gay person in Proud Boy gear? Is there a single person who is even not white? NO, because really it’s just full of white people who are trying to use a marginalized identity to deny their own complicity in white-supremacy.

TLDR: white people cannot reclaim white supremacy. Get out of your own asses.

Signed, a brown gay

You make an important point that should not be ignored, white gays and their involvement with white supremacy is indeed a dangerous problem. Should they continue to “wear proud boy gear” (which i haven’t seen yet, only using the hashtag, but i’m not discounting), that would also be a big problem. I won’t deny that the immediate response to white gays tagging themselves as proud boys is indeed concerning if not aware of what they are doing.

However.

Isn’t this a good thing? White gays are stepping up to specifically derail proud boy communication. The otherwise relatively-organized proud boys are being bombarded with images of gay men that fuck up their communication systems, what is already on that tag, and jumble the message they are trying to put out there. These men are stepping up as gay people in defense against white supremacy, and indirectly using that privilege to protect them. And as another has so succintly put it, this idea was offered by George Takei, an asian gay man.

This isn’t reclaimation. This is defense and confusion tactics. Saying it’s “reclaimation” is mistaking the invasion of the proud boys tag as reclaiming, when it’s an invasion.

It ISN’T a good things because gay white supremacists anyways exist. And the “confusion” will only be harmful towards poc.

We’re not gonna commend you for your fake allyship, we’re now going to be even more scared bc now you can’t even tell if someones wearing Proud Boy gear ~ironically~ or on purpose. It’ll allow Proud Boys to hide in plain sight more if anything.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/gay-aryan-nations-members-are-fringe-fringe

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/06/how-alt-right-leaders-jack-donovan-and-james-omeara-attract-gay-men-to-the-movement.html

What’s Attracting Gay Men to the Fascist, White Nationalist Alt-Right?

Gay Aryan Nations Members Are the Fringe of the Fringe

@aro-as-in-straight-as-a ALSO George Takei did NOT tell you to do what you were doing. George Takei wanted to flood the tag with stuff that had nothing to do with proud boys NOT HAVE YOU WHITE GAYS FUCKING LARP AS WHITE SUPREMACISTS HELLOOO

It’s honestly fucking disgusting that youre trying to use him a prop to defend your white bullshit.

pippastrelle:

ghostzzy:

reminder to myself about the process of drafting & revising:

• first drafts are for making it exist
  
• second drafts are for making it functional
  
• third drafts are for making it effective
  

This is the most important thing I’ve learnt in writing my novel. Have fun the first time but know your first pass isn’t going to be perfect

monstermoviedean:

i saw a post today where someone stated that they often can’t tell real information from misinformation online. i am not here to make fun of that person. that being said, the ability to figure out if information is real or not is a critical skill for everyone who uses the internet. you need to be able to do that on your own. it’s great if you can get help or if people will tell you what’s real and what’s not, but you also need to be able to do it by yourself. simple, easy tips under the cut.

Keep reading

neurodivergent-noodle-deactivat:

rantsofabookworm:

neurodivergent-noodle-deactivat:

your annual reminder:

• don’t support autism speaks this month
• don’t “light it up blue”
• don’t use the puzzle piece symbol

however!

• do support autistic content creators
• do support “red instead” and the infinity symbol
• remember to listen to the voices of marginalised autistic people!

happy autism awareness/acceptance month! go tell your local autistic pal that they’re awesome! if you’re autistic, remember to practice some self-love!

all of this, yes! just one question what do blue and red symbolize for autism related things?

blue is the colour used by Autism Speaks to represent autism as “a boy’s issue”

red is the colour used by autistic self-advocates to push back against the blue, because it’s a gender-neutral colour, and anyone can be autistic

zakuro-san:

laboradorescence:

maritimegothic:

i think a big thing that disconcerts adults about learning new skills is that learning as an adult means you are very aware of how bad you are at the beginning in a way children aren’t.

i picked up the saxophone when i was 11 and played until i was about 17. by the end of it i was first chair in our highest ensemble, a district honor band player, etc. but at the beginning – and this is important – i was bad. for the first year or so, i had no rhythm, i couldn’t make my tongue line up with my fingers, i was consistently sharp, etc. etc. other kids actually made fun of me for my lack of skill.

but 11 year old me didn’t care. 11 year old me practiced, but she also thought that being able to play the pink panther made her incredible (i shudder in retrospect). i mean, i was aware i wasn’t a master, but my skill level didn’t deter me from wailing out those notes in a way that i’m sure had my band director questioning his career decisions.

right now, i’m trying to pick up the guitar. it’s a very different instrument from the saxophone, and i struggle a lot with things like strumming patterns and barre chords. and sometimes i don’t want to play, because i know i’m bad at guitar. and sometimes i beat myself up when stumbling through a poor acoustic rendition of Everybody Wants to Rule the World because it’s not how i want it to sound. and it’s made even more frustrating because i can navigate the saxophone so smoothly.

but then i remember that i have to think like a kid. i might not be the best at guitar by any stretch of the imagination, but every little bit of progress is still progress.humility is a big part of learning, but if you treat a practice session like your own private concert, it becomes so much more fun, even if you’re bad like i am.  when you’re first picking up a skill, whether it be an instrument, or a language, or a fine art, no one is expecting you to be the yo yo ma of that thing. forget about how little you know about the skill and think instead about how much you have to learn – that’s fun! do your best!!

i find that as you get older, people think that you have less of an excuse to be bad at things, no matter when you started learning them

but after you get good suddenly people start praising you for “being ahead of the curve”

the instant you can start divesting yourself from this horrid world of expectation, the easier it becomes to try any new thing

Guys this is so important!! Give yourselves some slack and just keep on trucking! Just focus on yourself and be proud of what you have achieved so far. Even if what you achieved is a little thing, little pieces pile up eventually to something big! You’re doing great, keep it up :D

z0mborb:

some of you may’ve heard about that fancy “bionic reading” typefont thats supposed to be easier for neurodivergent people to read (if you’re unfamiliar, it bolds the first few letters of each word to make it easier to follow)

well guess what, its locked behind a $500 a month API to write in because fuck you!

introducing, Not Bionic Reading! it is literally just the bionic reading typefont but for free. god bless neocities

Not BR

anyone who can, pls reblog!

mage-propaganda:

Loving men is fun and good actually. Men can be soft and wonderful and caring and kind. My boyfriend has actually improved my life and I don’t get why I would feel bad for that. If I see any fellow bisexuals pull the whole “too bad I have my (yuck) boyfriend when I could have a good woman :((“ bs one more time I will scream.

Men are hot, they’re handsome, they’re pretty, they’re wonderful. They’re spectacular, they’re soft, they’re caring, they’re silly, their laughs are like music. Men give some of the warmest hugs, and the best snuggles. This goes for ALL men - yes, even the “fat” man you saw, even the punk guy with the tattoos and piercings, and men of color. Men are WONDERFUL. Men aren’t inherently violent, dangerous, angry animals. Can we please stop vilifying men and men who love men please?