Notices by GeePawHill (geepawhill@mastodon.social)

Dear Canadian friends, European friends, Mexican friends, South & Central American friends:

I so hate to say this, but I need you to know, from a US citizen: do not come.

I love you,
I know you love me, and that is not faltering.

When the rule of law collapses, *everyone* is at risk, and the rule of law is collapsing here.

The bottom line: it is not safe. I'll miss you terribly, but you must not come.

Special note to my Canadian loves. Teach the others what "elbows up!" means.

Elbows up!

Ya know what I'm tired of? For each thing, people who feel moved to say that thing won't do the trick.

Boycotting Target won't do the trick.

Federal judges won't do the trick.

American Cheese Singles won't do the trick.

Holds on nominees won't do the trick.

Booker's astonishing speech won't do the trick.

Look. No one thing will do the trick.

But one thing, and one thing, and one thing, and one thing, that might do the trick.

We need you to act, we need you to support the acts of others.

(Three Strom Thurmond sidenotes. 1) His eldest child was born out of wedlock to a black woman who worked for his family. The woman was 16 at the time. 2) He served in the Senate until he was 100 years old. 3) He was a notorious and well-known creep and groper, and once groped Senator Patty Murray on an elevator, not realizing she was a freshman Senator.)

@StillIRise1963 tbh, I'm a little crabby hearing allegedly left-leaning people talk shit about what he just did, which was remarkable.

3) "Entitlement" is meant as a slur. But Social Security is individuals loaning money, and asking to be repaid for their principal and their interest. None of those people using that word as a slur call the same situation "entitlement", when *they* call in their debts.

4) Social Security is one of the tightest most fraud-proof systems a government has ever made. If fraud happens here, it may, sometimes, it is *miniscule*. Less likely than getting struck by lightning.

A few notes about Social Security.

1) It isn't insolvent. To the extent that it's close, it's cuz prior administrations have taken funds from it.

2) Whatever insolvency could be fixed by a single simple action: changing or even eliminating the income cap on contributions.

(1/n)

My government *disappearing* student critics.

If that doesn't make you understand what these people intend, I don't believe anything will.

Framing the universities and/or lawfirms as "capitulating" is the wrong framing in my view. What they are doing is actively collaborating.

Look, Columbia furiously persecuted its student protestors during the *Biden* administration. They're not buckling under, they're doing what they've already done: actively working for the suppression of dissent.

True Canada story. I once had a gig outside Toronto, and I was not independent then, and I was sent to the gig. And for whatever reason -- this was back in the oughties, before everything got so crazy -- I was randomly pulled for a passport inspection.

And the woman asked me why I was there, and I said, I have a gig. And she perked up her ears. "You have no work visa."

I said, "No what?"

Yes, I'm aware that was all very naïve.

I said, "Oh, sure." I even named some of them.

She says, "So then why can't *they* be doing this work? Where are *they*?!?"

And I said, swear to God I was not tryna be clever: "They're all gigging down in the states right now."

She *burst* out laughing, filled out a six-month work visa, stamped it, and sent me on my way. :)

So she grilled me. I had to show her my business card. I had to show her my company's website that mentioned my name. I had to describe the kind of work that I did.

So she leans back in her chair, and she fixes me with her deadly Canadian glare. She asks, "And are there any Canadian persons who could do this work?"

I'm thinking of Dave Astels, Joe Rainsberger, and several others. I had many Canadian friends who were in the same trade as I, some of them world-class at that trade.

Alt-text or it didn't happen.

I realize that you're 23 and you live on a phone and that you're happy reading a phone screencap with a 4pt font.

And you're upset about what's on the screen, I know you are, and we are allies. I want to know what you're upset about.

But I can't.

I'm not 23, and I can't read a screencap. On my 26" monitor it is 2 inches wide.

Ya wanna make allies? Make messages allies can read.

@skinnylatte God yer such a babe, Adrianna. Tell your partner I said so.

They target trans-folk *precisely* because they think cis-het folk will look away. Cuz cis-het folk basically don't *get* it. We can't, really. They're counting on us not defending those who aren't like us.

I'm not looking away.

I have friends and family who are trans. I don't get it, sure, I don't, and I'm not claiming to.

What I *do* get is that these evil fucks are hurting people I *love*, cuz the camps always start with the minorities we don't get. *Always*.

I'm not looking away.

There is no evidence, none, nada, bupkus, zip, zero, zilch, of any kind whatsoever in any country anywhere in the world of a transfemme or transmasc person doing a crime in the bathroom.

Nothing.

Oh, my dear non-US friends, I just hate to say this.

Don't come. Don't make plans to come.

When a country loses its sense of the rule of law, you should avoid it.

Nobody, and I mean *nobody*, is safe when the rule of law collapses. It is collapsing here.

Look. I know it's bad. It's really bad. All I want to do, myself, is lay down in a place that is warm and quiet and dark.

But politics is not a game with a clock. It ain't over until we leave the field.

Don't walk off the field.

Hang in there.

Reminder: You don't know, *can't* know, your effect on the world. The math is too hard, the logic is too hard, the causality is too complex to chart.

Be kind.

I miss Buffy sometimes. I have a new gee-kid, he's just 12. When he's 14, we'll share the only-when-together blood oath and watch Buffy from beginning to end.

If preventing a shutdown is so desperately important to Senate Democrats, I just have a fairly straightforward question: why are they letting DOGE -- an operation expressly designed to shut down government all across our country -- say and do whatever it wants?