Notices by leif (studiofox@beige.party)

i woke up feeling very "familiar" with the situation and it took me a minute to sort out why and it was this notion:

"the government (and world) is not your friend and you're living a subversive life"

this is odd because the last time i felt this was during the cult years which was also the exact opposite to how i'm living now.

it's a fucked feeling but also comforting? like, now, maybe, i can apply all the nonsense in a reverse engineered beneficial way?

i'm composing all of this scattershot while i go about my day so this will be a continually/randomly updated thread for a while. 1/xxx?

the one thought that needs to be forefront is that you must exist and will exist.

first - you exist because you are important.

---

*friends:

you exist as a member of a community.

your existence benefits this community.

even if you find yourself alone - your community exists and loves you.

*enemies:

you exist in spite of them.

you exist to spite them.

you exist to be a thorn in their side that reminds them every time they try to rest that they're monsters.

---

above all, however, you exist and will exist. do what you need to do to keep existing and work towards existing even better.

this is more of a "no shit" but corporations aren't your friends.

it makes you feel all nice inside when a corpo trots out rainbow merch but this isn't love and it isn't your community.

this is a corporation trying to make money and your value is directly related to how much money you bring them.

budweiser is a beautiful example of this. they half-heartedly tried to do some lgbtq+ friendly things and got slammed by the right.

PR + revenue loss = "trans who?"

so...

either hold the knife to corporations' throats and make them do your will

or

side-step them altogether (this is getting harder and harder, obs)

and

if you can't do either, do as little with them as possible.

i've seen this in other posts but it bears repeating:

if you are able to hire, house, or in any other way aid a member of the community - do so.

even a place to meet weekly and just talk about things will do wonders for everybody.

as things progress there will be fewer and fewer places that are hospitable to them and with that the mental toll of being an "outsider" will severely hurt them - not to mention the physical toll of being cast out.

the end result is the breakup of community and the loss of morale.

the fediverse (i think) already does a good job of mutual aid, however, it won't be enough.

to expand on aid:

if i read the EO correctly it seems that groups that receive government money will be forced to accept its definitions. ie. anything semi-touching on trans anything will be cut if the group wants government money.

this is where i grew up. my school, church, etc. all refused any sort of government aid because to do so meant playing by their rules.

we were always fundraising. growing up, i sold so much random stupid stuff to anybody that i could that, i believe, it ruined future me on ever being able to make a buck.

make an organization and funnel bake sale money into it and then dole out the money for aid. sell cookbooks, chocolate, trinkets, flowers by the side of the road, anything and everything.

the key is to find the line between legitimate fundraising and being a grifting asshole.

regardless, the ultimate goal is to help the community function and continue on.

we've been in it but we're really in it now. there's absolutely no point in shoving people's heads and forcing them to look at the shit we're in.

we all know the shit we're in.

information sharing is crucial but dooming isn't. dooming is a morale killer.

also, the cruel "well looks like *this group* is finally finding out, hahaha" is disastrous.

what's the end goal here? because it certainly isn't one that includes people into the community and cause.

good on you, you suffered more in the suffering game. give me 10 seconds and i can find someone suffering so hard that it makes you look like a baby and then what?

point is, there's no end or bottom to people's suffering. nor is there some sort of victory in being the person who "had it worse".

on that same note, pointing out the absurdities of the enemy doesn't help either. all of this "mask off" talk or "see they really are nazis!" stuff is a waste of time.

it's a nice hope but it's a waste of energy.

we know they're nazis and they know they're nazis (or, rather, the modern equivalent - republicans).

no amount of shouting "see! look!" is going to change a thing. Elon won't wake up one day and be like "shit, really?! fuck. i will change! i am a changed man!"

Musk could have, quite literally, gone up on stage dressed as mini-hitler and he would have received the same amount of applause and defense from the people who did it then and are doing it now.

the result of their words/behavior is to provoke you and make it all into a laugh. this, in turn, encourages people who wouldn't have - say - played hitler in the past to do it because it "makes the libs freak out"

next thing, all of the republicans are jerking their arms up in the air all the time because "ha! lolz! leftists mad!"

finally, it becomes another part of the process of initiation into the right.

people who are sitting on the fence during all of this are going to fall off in one direction or another.

the job is to pick up the people who fall our way and help them.

scolding, pedantry, etc are simply not useful or beneficial to anyone but the enemy.

adding to this - be leary of fiefdoms and gatekeepers.

anybody that's been on fedi for longer than 2 minutes should already be familiar with *discourse* and *meta* but one more time:

be cautious around people who claim much influence and knowledge. the urge to build a tiny influence kingdom is great for a lot of people and many fall into it.

watch people for a long time before making a decision. how do they handle different situations? more importantly, how do they hand being challenged?

@multiverseofbadness ok but can you *really* have a website without 10,000 javascript libraries compiled into a single source?

elf got a hay poke or something in his eye so we’re at the vet. elf, however, has gone to his happy place and/or needs a reboot - bro has mentally left the building.

little dude has a cataract. oof.

@multiverseofbadness i played on the best video game console of them all -- my imagination!

@multiverseofbadness oh yeah. i'd add that the rest of the linkedin folks are writing "how the leopard's eating is good for you, actually" posts

i wanna say tarkus is why i believe armadillos to be mechanics.

@multiverseofbadness but miracle whip has that ZIP!

All these news stories having to explain what pagers are to the fetuses is turning me to dust.

Bad tube context - one of my grandparents’ old radio/phonograph dealies.

Back in the day when you could just crawl into the radio and work on it yourself. Didn’t need no computers or nothing.

Oh dear, now I have nostalgic fedi sads.

@BeAware I guess? Sort of adjacent, at least. I was looking at that and then just going down memory lane of all the servers that I’ve known and all the admins that have broken.

I have to say, no one does public breakdown/freakouts like fedi admins/mods*. Like when they go — THEY GO.

I’ve been on the internet a long time and have associated with my share of whackos but, I tell you, there should probably be some sort of psych study on this phenomenon.

*not all admins/mods