Notices by Queer Like The Slur (coolandnormal@aus.social)

Hot tip: if you see a woman doing something, don't walk up and order her to do it for you.

This used to happen constantly when a woman staff member was doing the ironing at the clothing stores where I used to work. A random man would stride up and say "you can do my shirts next, thanks!", this would happen at least once per hour. I had forgotten about this until I got out my crochet while sitting alone* in public.

*alone is key. I sit doing crochet with other people all the time and strange men never approach to make orders for socks. But as soon as I sat alone today: men. Old white men. Everywhere.

After ordering socks he immediately started on how he was raised in a better time before washing machines and dishwashers and hot running water and it was a much better way to live and the women were better then.

I think I need to get more visibly queer so old white people stop dumping this particular trauma on me.

He kept saying "it's a better way to live!". I didn't inform him that he's allowed to not own a dishwasher. I've never been able to afford one, there's no law that you have to have them.

I'm starting to understand why old ladies who sit on porches traditionally keep a pea shooter beside the rocking chair.

Alright, knowers of consumer law, please take me through which crime this is (maybe point me to the relevant legislation?)

Went to drop my car off for service. The receptionist said if it's over $1000 there is an extra fee. I asked how much and she said she didn't know. She pointed to a laminated piece of paper on the bench which also said there's a fee for transactions but didn't say how much. I asked if it was a percentage, she said yes. I asked what percentage, she said maybe 7%, actually maybe 1%. I asked what the fee is for and who it is charged by, she said "it's just bologna". I asked her to confirm that she would not be telling me how much this fee is, but that she would require me to pay this fee to get my car back, she confirmed this.

This was in Mount Gambier SA.

Which crime is this? Thanks!
#Law #ConsumerLaw

I actually think people do it to flex how easy it is to vote here. "just watch my umbrella and towel for me will you love? Just popping over to the sausage stand to vote"
#ausvotes

They have an entry in their live feed explaining why social media is flooded with pictures of australians voting in tiny brightly coloured underpants. The explanation is basically... They are australian.

:awesome_rotate: not Al Jazzera explaining what budgie smugglers are and why we vote in them

Interviewer: do you perform well under pressure?
Me: depends if the source is genuine
Interviewer:... What?
Me: I perform brilliantly on the fire ground, in the emergency room, fantastic at safely evacuating people from buildings. But if someone tries to pull false urgency in the absence of actual danger I tend to stop taking their judgement seriously...
Interviewer: Security!

Petition to make Spider Fucking a thing like Yak Shaving, except you can opt out.

Yak shaving is an unanticipated task that turns out to be absolutely integral to doing the thing you needed to achieve.

Fucking Spiders, I propose, looks exactly like yak shaving except that on closer inspection *you do not have to fuck the spider*.

This is why it always pays to stop, not get frustrated and look very carefully at every yak before you begin shaving it. Check that it isn't a spider. A spider you are not here to fuck.

We don't talk anywhere near enough about how the tech industry is fucking with the general public's understanding of consent.

Fairly often I will opt out of something that would have been obviously reasonable a few years ago, and people will look at me like I drove a truck through the room.

Things like:
- I won't be appearing on camera today
- I don't wish to speak on a recording to be published on the University website
- I won't be giving my personal details to an overseas third party just to use a notepad tool in one meeting

I see this seeping through into attitudes about consent in other everyday life contexts. People are so used to being walked all over by their tech that they're increasingly shocked by boundaries.

@jimbob their non-government-love-ceremony is going to be wild. We're all going to be there in fursuits taking covid precautions around the straightedge vegan punch

The whole experience of the fedi is just yelling "hey nerds, I found something interesting..." into the abyss and the abyss going "fuck me, that is interesting"

500 recycled bricks:
- shows you your actions have direct impacts on the world
- proves to you to can create things you imagine
- allows to you make plans, try them, judge them on your own terms, change them, decide if you have improvement on your own terms
- recycled
- bricks

Therapy:
-CBT (not the fun kind)
-still Freud in 2024 for some reason
-problematic access and funding issues
-no bricks

It never ceases to amaze me how good it is for mood, self esteem, creativity and achievement to just have all the resources required to do the thing you're attempting.

Maybe you need therapy, but maybe you just need 500 recycled bricks.

I just realised I made this sound like it's run primarily by guys. It's not, it actually primarily revolves around couples with no kids (or no kids at home anymore).

There's a less valid argument here that this will all fall apart when people lose interest/capacity and therefore is it not sustainable.

On the first point, good. People should stop doing voluntary stuff they no longer have the resources or motivation to do, boundaries, rest and self care are good actually.

Secondly: the idea that since it could spontaneously stop any time, and probably will, that is inherently by definition unsustainable.

On the same token one might argue singing a song in a group is an unsustainable thing to do. Because you cannot sing the same song together forever without stopping.

You must rest when you're tired, then perhaps sing a different song, maybe with different people. This doesn't make singing songs an unsustainable practice. Most people in sustainability would agree singing songs in groups has a lot of offer sustainability from many angles.

I see the very valid argument that without administion and formal structure, continuity remains only when as the community has capacity to do it.

My argument is that's how things work anyway. You can have all the committee structure in the world, but the actual work is an emergent property of the community's capacity. If you burn out your people, you lose your collective service either way.

Edit: if anyone screenshots this one toot out of context and makes it about dismantling government, I will punch you right in the bicycle horn. This whole thread is specifically about small community groups.

First you grow the beans, then people eat the beans.

University: no no no no, first you count the beans.

Still rent free: the time I did an assignment on my local bike repair/recycle non-organisation and the sustainability tutor gave only negative feedback about how my proposal wouldn't work in real life.

It was an observational report on something that was and is working in real life.

Me: this is how bikes get repaired and recycled in this one small town.
- The junkyard guy leaves nice ones out by his gate for a day or two before dismantling them for scrap.
- there are several people in the town who know they can come past regularly and take anything by the gate
- there's a guy who takes any bikes he thinks we can salvage, they are almost always kids' bikes, there are just more of those
- a rotating group of friends and people who want to learn about bikes work on them
- when they're finished we distribute them by word of mouth: is there anyone around 6-8yo who wants a purple bike?
- the bikes seem to come with lifetime servicing. No one mentions this until the bike needs servicing, then they just say 'we better get onto servicing your bike, hey?' and it happens
- you can do a trade-in/upgrade. Kids swap their bikes for bigger bikes, people service the little bike and give it to another kid
-there is no name, no official location, no contact details for this, it's an ephemeral property that emerges from the community every day that the community has capacity to do it. It is fascinating and I am glad to have witnessed it.

Sustainability tutor: so first off this could never happen without NGO administration, start there