Notices by Ari 2 Sheds Jackson (arisummerland@beige.party)

Photos from neighbor brunch this morning.

Yeah. Weird stuff. I know.

In honor of #WorldPoetryDay, here is one of my faves from 2023.

https://arisummerland.ghost.io/world-poetry-day/

@Daojoan

This. Exactly.

I don't know if Sarah is on Mastodon; if she is, I would appreciate an @

I'm going to ask a #computer question:

Give me your takes on: system 76,
MNT reform, lemur and darter pro.

Go!

Thanks everyone for the hugs and comments on my dark posts yesterday. I'm not gonna take them down; they are content-warned.

I don't necessarily have a glimmer of hope today, but I had some decent rest overnight, and I don't have work pressures today (well I have some meeting notes I need to clean up and send off).

Regardless of if my friend wants to go, I'm going to go sit by the county lake later this afternoon.

I often amuse myself when I make lists. Two things that are on my Lake List today are water for bees and peanuts for crows. I will take a shallow pie pan and pick up some rocks to put in it on our picnic table so if bees decide to visit us, hopefully they will find some refreshment.

I'm determined to befriend local crows if they'll have me, and one of my friends tells me that raw unshelled peanuts are the way to do it.

It's not terribly warm out today, but that's what layers are for!

Other people have posted reminders to check on your autistic, neurodivergent, queer, POC etc.
friends.

Please do, and make the time to listen.

Allow us to feel what we feel. Allow us to rage, or cry, or dissociate. We need safe harbor.

Many/most of us are not okay. Not in the slightest.

I can't speak for everybody, of course; but the reason I'm more quiet these days except for trying to make some stabs at humor -- especially with my new hashtag (and hopefully a bot, if I get approved) -- is:

Things are looking really grim for us.

This is not 2017. They didn't not expect to win. They did win, and they had a plan. And now they are dismantling the government as we have known it. I will not see that repaired in my lifetime.

I was angry as hell in 2017. I marched. I signed petitions.

We're way beyond that now.

We're beyond righteous anger and virtue signaling how "against" everything we are and how aghast and insulted we are.

We're beyond signing petitions and marching and carrying signs, no matter how good a person it makes us feel. It is crunch time.

Fascism is fucking here.

The United States government is effectively an oligarchic autocracy full of boot-licking toadies and politicians whose families are literally being threatened if they oppose the wannabe dictators, and there isn't any way to magically make that disappear.

We can't go back even to October of last year. Do you notice the lack of opposition voices in the Democratic Party? It's because their families are being threatened by the goonies who are loyal to the orange shit stain.

The Democrats fucking failed. But you already know this.

It doesn't matter that I was yelling about fascists in 2016. Me being "right" 10 years ago and yet nobody listening then doesn't solve any problems. That is just a high horse straight to hell.

They are coming for me and for my people, so it is only a matter of time before I'm one of the people you know who has disappeared.

A friend of mine who worked in Russia for five years talked about that with us last Sunday. Everyone they knew knew somebody who had disappeared.

I am stuck in an incredibly red state in the middle of this fucking country, chained to my house and my animals, incapable of just picking up and making a move to say, France or what the fuck ever. I can't even make a move to another state that might be more of a safe harbor, because my mother is here, so I am stuck here with her as long as she is on this planet.

I don't have the resources to move, especially not both of us.

Nothing I have ever done or learned in my life has led me to be able to plan for this. As she is a cishet white human being, she's not threatened the way I'm threatened -- though, being female, and not having a birth certificate in her current name, she is threatened with disempowerment soon if the SAVE act is passed.

I am hunkering down, not really staying sane at all, drinking way too much, and not even hoping for the best at this point.

They're going to force me to be female, which I am not. I will never get my gender affirming top surgery. I have resigned myself to that at this point.

They're likely to force me to cede everything I actually own, too -- especially if that crazy thing in project 2025 comes to pass where the closest male relative is the one who ends up owning everything.

I've already apologized to my nephew about this.

I'm not going to get married again. I'm not going to become a tool for the fascist state, either, oppressing other people (like the aunts in Handmaid's tale).

I will willfully take my own life before that kind of bullshit happens.

Yes, it is that bad. No I am not being dramatic, and no I don't need to fucking calm down.

It's funny how many people told me to calm down 10 years ago, and now they don't even remember that they said that offensive shit to me.

I have no hope of ever traveling overseas ever again. I have no hope of ever taking an actual restful vacation ever again.

I know for a fact that we're going to exceed 2°C of warming permanently probably next year, so we're all in the same goddamn climate change boat, with a pile of fascist shit on top.

Yeah I'm tired. Yeah I need a hug. Yeah I need to cry in somebody's arms for an hour. That's not gonna happen. I don't have those kind of friends. I don't have a partner. My dogs just freak out when I get upset.

I'm just gonna watch my soccer game in an hour and then try to get some goddamn sleep and hopefully go to the lake tomorrow with my friend where maybe touching grass will save my sanity for a few hours.

This too shall pass, but probably not in the way that any of us want it to.

If you've read this far, bless you. Thanks for worrying about me.

I've decided that because I don't really like #gardening, but I AM gardening this year, that I'm going to allow myself to harness the power of my anger, irritation, and dislike of gardening (and the state of the world) and channel that all into gardening -- the best I can.

I'm calling it "spite gardening". Not because I hate plants, but because I dislike oligarchy and I dislike being so beholden to capitalist food systems, bit I also hate sweating, I can't be in the sun for long, and I'm protective of my hands bc of my main career (which isn't farming).

But I'm going to do it "in spite" of all of that, as well as try to harness my own spite -- of it and the world rn -- to find the energy to do it. Anger can be a good fuel if directed correctly.

I hope, anyway.

It may require caffeine. Especially when I'm getting up at 4:30 AM in June to beat the heat. I will need to be judicious with that added substance. It and I don't always get along.

Basically, I'm going to trick myself into doing this, set up systems for bleary mornings to get myself out on the land with the plants, and then, hopefully, I'll find out that I'm actually enjoying it at some point.

We shall see. I am lucky that I have some intelligent co-conspirators on this project. But my own 40 x 50 plot isn't gonna grow itself!

@RamenCatholic ummm... happy birthday? And I love you?

I am OG Gen X, gonna get to two years shy of 60 this year... WTF?

Tonight I was reminiscing with someone I know from the neighborhood about a show they're going to have in April that will be the 40th (?!) anniversary show of our old punk rock venue that was out in a cornfield east of town.

Damn! 🧓🏚️

@_L1vY_ @UROCKlive1 this, unfortunately, exactly.

One of my friends talked to a cashier at the grocery store today and the cashier had no idea what was happening. Like zero idea. At all.

This is going to hurt so much.

@hellomiakoda thanks and sorry. I'm feeling a little venty today. I'm in a deeply red state as well. Access to these things was nigh-on impossible before Monday. Now, 🤷 i'm old enough that it may never happen.

I hope your friend stays safe. ☹️

@hellomiakoda Had I made clear strides before this in FTM transition, perhaps I could've gotten everything switched to "M" ahead of time. But I haven't had surgery, I'm not on hormones, and M is still not my designation. It's X. So! I don't exist. 🤷

@hellomiakoda

As a "Pride" present to myself in 2023, I had my birth certificate changed to X by my birth state.

This is not the state I live in now, which passed a draconian "Women's Bill of Rights" in 2023. 🤬🤬🤬

I did not get a chance to change my passport with the state department or update my records with Social Security before yesterday, however.

I didn't have the money, and tbh, I wasn't sure what was going to happen once November 2024 rolled around.

So, I waited.

That was... well, I def missed my chance to fight them on home ground.

Prior to 2023, my current state allowed "X" as a gender marker on driver's licenses. I have a friend with one of these coveted items.

Now, I'm worried that if they go anywhere -- in their car, or if they happen to travel on transportation that requires ID -- they are going to be detained. ☹️

I said to another friend today (the same notary who witnessed my papers for my birth state), when they checked in:

"Thanks. I'm no longer a person, but also, everyone in the United States is now female. Yesterday was shock and awe, but not unexpected."

I feel we are going to have to read very carefully and find all of the absolute ridiculousness in the shitstorm of babble that is coming from these ignorant, uneducated, single-minded, sadistic bigots.

Finding these little loopholes and points about which we can laugh (and also bogging them down in the courts re them) is the only way we will stay sane.

That, and unconditional solidarity.

@AllysonShaw @PhoenixSerenity I love that perspective, of Meta mediating everybody's relationships. I am going to start bringing that up in conversations when people bring up Facebook and what they've seen on Facebook etc. that is a very important perspective, I think. Thank you!

@AllysonShaw @PhoenixSerenity "Sinister" is a good word for it! It feels greasy and horrible, especially if you have not been immersing yourself in that environment constantly.

I still go on there sometimes -- lately because I'm trying to promote a friend of mine's contest that he's in. The only way people can vote for him is on Facebook. I hate that!

The whole experience feels abhorrent to me.

I will try scrolling to get information or updates about real people and the ratio is about seven ads/bots/promoted posts to every one post from somebody I actually know.

When FB first started out, and when I was on it originally in 2009, it was amazing. A diary site that a number of people and I wrote on had imploded, and we all made an exodus to Facebook to stay in touch. I would see those people's posts, I would see people that I knew, my best friend and I would chat, those days were glorious!

Now, this is glorious. I just don't have a whole lot of people whom I know in real life here. I'm trying to get them over here.

Instagram started getting as bad a couple of years ago as well. I opened a new account to promote a foster dog that I thought I was going to get, but didn't really populate it because I didn't get the dog.

Since I was only following like six people on the new accounte, everything else I saw was ads. 🤬

I've missed out on information about people dying, funerals, celebrations of life, and also good things like weddings, concerts, etc. (Though I do not go places where there are crowds anymore because of the pandemic.) Yet so rarely do any of those folks remember to reach out and go, Ari might want to do this thing, too!

@PhoenixSerenity Well-said.

I hear the same 99.9% of the time. "it's the only way I can stay connected with people" etc. (BS, I say! It is a choice, and it is a detrimental one.)

I experienced, in real time, the precipitous drop in "social" connection when I purposefully stepped away from Facebook and Instagram.

Fortunately, two years out now, some people whom I cherish have started realizing that I'm not around there, and are reaching out in other ways.

Those are real friends.

I love your term "slow time"!

I am going to start including it in my communications with people.

Hey, do you want to go hang out in slow time? 🥰

@VulpineAmethyst Ohhh, 100%. A group that I'm associated with had a repeating event a year or two ago that was exactly this: only open to women and "non-binary" people? Not cool! A large portion of the queer minority in said group is actually transmasc. Zero percent of us would've felt comfortable.

Quick question for #Tech Fedi and those of you who work in offices and have to do this kind of thing:

A group that is just starting to organize needs an online way to post documents, chat, etc., and I would like it to stay away from Google if it all possible.

Google groups doesn't work with people who don't have Gmail addresses, so I need something that is inclusive of Gmail addresses and other domains.

A text chain won't cut it because we need to be able to invite new people and we all need to see the documents, notes and be able to change a workflow document/spreadsheet as well.

I was going to suggest Slack, but I haven't used that enough at this point to know if it would suit our purposes for messaging and sharing documents.

I have no idea what hashtags will work here, so boosts and suggestions for hashtags are appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

@nat thank you also for posting alt text for all of these!

@akamran @timixretroplays 100%. I was actually so excited to go get out my calipers and do this…

@Infoseepage Yes, it was a disappointing amount of beast!