ceoln @ceoln@social.cleverlibre.org

Headed to my Soros-backed deli for some bagels and lox.

🚨 This an absolute dream panel with authors I hugely admire!!!
@marthawells ,
@ursulav ,
@kjcharles and yours truly talking about comfort reads - why they're important, what we need in a book for it to be one, and how we write them. It's gonna be AWESOME https://fountainbookstore.com/events/25262

Amor and Psyche, detail #midjourney #AIArt

One of my be biggest mistake that a lot of people make when facing up against authoritarians and conservatives is to assume that these people just need to see the truth, that they are making mistakes and just need to be shown that. It doesn’t work like that. They aren’t interested in truth or justice. They care about power and a hierarchical social order above all.

The very idea of humans being all fundamentally equal and deserving is wrong and unnatural to them. You can’t argue with them about how for example legislation will unfairly harm some people. That’s an intended and necessary outcome for them, not a problem to be addressed.

And they believe everyone thinks like they do, so they assume any attempt at making the world more fair and just must be a trick to replace or surpass them in the social hierarchy. To them, the hierarchy is eternal and natural, and dismantling it impossible in the same way that going faster than light is physically impossible.

I finished my bears! I love this sweater so much. 🐻💜

Pattern is "Unbearable Hoodie" but modified to exclude the hood. Link to pattern and my modification notes on my Ravelry project: https://ravel.me/gizmometer/uh

#knitting

Soros donated $1 million dollars to @ColorOfChange@twitter.com, a group that supports supports progressive prosecutors.

@ColorofChange@twitter.com later spent some money supporting Alvin Bragg

But the idea that Bragg has significant connections to Soros is bunk

@TexasObserver

We think the story of the week HAS to be: @TexasObserver saving itself. #WeGotUs! International coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/29/texas-observer-closing-gofundme

See how the effort to put the TO on a new footing is going: https://www.gofundme.com/f/laid-off-texas-observer-journalists-and-staff

Just goes to show: the future of journalism is about news organizations directly supported by the people they serve. 🙌

Congrats to the @TexasObserver !

Missed this little news item yesterday via Oliver Darcy: the NYT, LA Times, Buzzfeed, Politico, Vox Media, and The Washington Post announced they will not subscribe to Twitter Blue or reimburse their employees for Twitter Blue subscriptions.

All made statements similar in content, but I think The Washington Post said it best:

Safety first!!!

#Downtown #FunnySigns #Jokes #SmileOfTheDay

Today is the transgender day of visibility. To those of you out there publicly, I see you and support you. To those who may be trans in their hearts or in secret, I support you too. I hope everyone can be their truest self in peace.

@seldo Y'know what? I never met Andreesen but I know Jamie Zawinski, who worked with/for him and wrote Netscape Navigator (the ancestor of today's Firefox: Andreesen coded up NCSA Mosaic, the ancestor of Microsoft Internet Explorer). Zawinski isn't a billionaire or a VC. Instead of going ride-or-die after billions of dollars he opened a goth night club and late night pizza joint. Nice guy. I wish Thiel et al had copied him instead of Andreesen. We need goth night clubs more than billionaires!

It's #TransDayOfVisibility today so make sure all the cis people you meet today give you $20 as is tradition

#trans

Generation 1.59dc0694 #aiart #art #ai

On this #TransDayOfVisibility I think it’s important to remind people that we exist in your communities and in the workplace and in the world as regular people. You may see and interact with us or benefit from our labor without ever knowing it. We’re people just like you. We have the same kinds of hopes and dreams as you do. We just want to be happy and safe and loved and free, just like you.

#OnThisDay in 1889, the Eiffel Tower opened in Paris. Not to be outdone, London decided to get a new tower of its own + held a competition to design it, with some interesting results! See more designs, and learn about the fate of the winner, here: https://buff.ly/2HLKVhU #OTD #eiffeltower #paris #architecture #design

Personally, I want to shut up about gender forever and not have to worry about it. I long for a world in which being trans is completely unremarkable and posting online about it would be as mundane as posting about going to the dentist. I don’t really want to have to be visible to be worth having rights and freedom and safety and to feel normal and accepted. Until that time though, we’re here and we’re queer, get used to it!

@cwebber

Speaking of donating for trans causes.

I'd like to offer Lambda Legal as a worthy donation target.
https://lambdalegal.org/

They did a live stream yesterday talking about the their various actions and successes against the anti-trans laws getting passed.

But they could use more money to hire more staff to try and block even more anti-LGBT laws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I9iGQ5UBog

Unsurprisingly a queer legal group had a bunch of trans and gender variant members.

Feeling inadequate because everyone on Mastodon appears to be a professor or a doctor or a rocket scientist?

Follow me and feel better about yourself, for I have the intellect of a clever potato.

Research #midjourney #AIArt