okay so i work in the deli of a grocery store, yeah? and today i got this guy who came up with his two twin children, around five years old. he walks up to the counter, carrying one kid in each arm, and loudly goes "oh, no, i forgot what i wanted!" and turns to the boy in his left arm and, in a perfect blues clues style voice, goes "caleb, do you remember what i wanted?" and the boy goes "half pound of yellow cheese!"

i, obviously, say "you've got it little sir!" and slice up half a pound of yellow american cheese, handing it to the little boy, who looks it over, nods, and tucks it in his lap.

then the man goes "well, we can't just have cheese on our sandwiches. but what else can we put on there?" and the little gurl in his other arm goes "half pound of ham!" so i nod and say "yes ma'am! what kind?" and she points at a random cut of turkey, so her father nods and says "like she said, honey ham!" i cut half a pound of honey ham, hand it to the little lady, she looks it over, nods and puts it in her lap.

then the man goes "now, what should we have for the side?" and the kids both simultaneously start cheering "macking cheese!!!" and the man spins on his heel and marches off, presumably to find the macking cheese.

later, the little boy comes wandering back to the counter while his father looks on and loudly and proudly proclaims that he wants to know where the mustard is. i point him to the correct aisle, he nods, says "thank you mister deli woman" and walks away.

shitty little comic about how i haven't been feeling like making anything recently

Anyway, fellow sex-repulsed aces with moral OCD that might be triggered by the "you MUST be horny and write porn and be sexual or else you're functionally a conservative" wave on this site, because I know it's making mine act up something fierce:

• No you don't
• Your discomfort with sexuality and sexual themes is morally neutral and does not make you even remotely similar to Moms for Liberty
• Porn is not the only thing they're trying to censor
• Porn is not the only thing they're trying to censor
• One of the most challenged books of the 2020s so far is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, a memoir of a trans AROACE person
• You do not need to write or draw things that trigger you to be a politically progressive artist
• You do not need to be sexual to be a good person
• You have stories that need to be told too, and your stories are as vital to fighting censorship and protecting free expression as any other queer story
• We're all in this together and together is the only way we're all getting out of it

its actually crazy how much local art events and other potentially interesting stuff i completely miss out on just because the orgs all post on instagram and facebook only. two standouts among the worst fucking platforms in the world with the most egregious ui and slop saturation, so dogshit that id be unable to use them regularly even if i wanted to. stop it you all. get on tumblr or something

One of my professors told us that as a teacher, you WILL cause harm at some point in your career. You will say something hurtful to a student or grade unfairly or make a harmful assumption. You learn about these things and try to avoid them, but if you teach long enough you will do something that’s harmful to a student. It’s a numbers game. It’s inevitable.

And that’s why it’s important that you learn how to react in a healthy and productive way! The example she gave was from her own teaching — she had an assignment where students made a presentation with photos that showed their relationship with math over their life (I studied math education). A trans student reached out and told her that they were uncomfortable using pretransition photos. In response, she changed the assignment! By the time I was in her class, it was “make a presentation with photos and/or memes” — a small change but definitely more inclusive!

I think this illustrates why it’s important to say something when you experience microaggressions. I, a trans person taking this class, had a more positive experience because a different trans person spoke up a couple years before.

But also, I think that harm is inevitable outside of teaching too. I think that if you have friends or family or interact with people regularly, you WILL hurt someone eventually. And you have to be comfortable with that possibility in order to respond in a healthy way.

choosing how many !s to put at the end of the sentence and how many 3s to put in a <3

i don’t know how to explain to my non-jewish audience what it means that two torah scrolls were destroyed in an arson attack but what i can tell you is that during the los angeles wildfires, three staff at the synagogue in pasadena made 4+ trips each back into the building to rescue torah scrolls while the fire was close enough that ashes were falling in the parking lot.

what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.

we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wood cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.

the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the us even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.

this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and five torah scrolls were damaged, with two of completely destroyed.

i don’t know how many books were burnt, how many jewish holy texts and how many stories of jewish life and philosophy and love and resilience flew up with the smoke. i do know that the library was where the congregation had shabbat services and torah study. it was a sacred space. this is not the first time that people who hate us have destroyed our sacred spaces and our holy texts and our torah scrolls in order to terrorize us. i dearly wish it was the last.

Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:

1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.

Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."

2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.

3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.

But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.

But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.

The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.

As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:

"Fuck you. Make me."

I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.