"Friends outside of Minnesota please read. I'm sharing a post written by a personal friend and medical doctor:
Friends outside MN, you need to know what is happening here. Everyone knows that ICE shot and killed a woman here on Wednesday. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on:

• ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.
• ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.
• ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.
• They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.
• They are smashing windows in cars and homes.
• ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.
• They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.)
  I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later.
  
  But the community is fighting back.
• Protests are happening every day.
• Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.
• Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.
• Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.
• Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.
• Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.
• Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.
• Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.
• Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.
• Mutual aid money is going out to folks who can’t make rent because they can’t work or because a breadwinner was abducted, or who need a warm place to stay after their home’s windows were smashed.
  
  THAT is what is happening here. This fight is ongoing and it’s horrifying to watch. But we are not backing down. To my friends in other cities and states, don’t think for a minute that this won’t happen in your town. It will. Be ready. Learn from us, as we have learned from Portland and Chicago and New York. Fight back. Don’t let us get to the last line of Martin Niemoller’s poem.”
  
  -Grant Boulanger

my awesome 3 mile chain. and yes it's alive

my awesome 3 mile chain. and yes it's alive

First Steps (1890) by Vincent van Gogh

"I CANT HANDLE THIS" *handles this*

i bet it feels so good if you're a little cat to put your head upside down like that

actually when i was a strapping young dyke of only 2 years old i grabbed hot chocolate from the microwave, which had been boiling this beverage for 5 minutes straight, and spilled it all over me. severe burns but i was a really cool two year old and swagged through it. anyway when i got older my mother told me they had used pigs skin for the graft and so that's what i told my friends in school. ever since then my nickname in highschool had became hotdog skin. only once i was a strong and hearty lesbian did she reveal to me that it was just normal skin not pig skin and they were joking with me. i was out here telling people i had pig skin as an interesting icebreaker my entire academic life. my entire world upturned. ah well yet again i swagged through it. for women everywhere

There are ten trillion pictures of flowering trees to the point where they sometimes seem trite and overdone. But then you see a tree in full flower and go holy shit this rules and I've gotta show this to everyone so they can experience the same magic and wonder and there are ten trillion and one pictures of flowering trees

https://twitter.com/vagina_museum/status/1628046312275935232

you say "i mostly just think people should be free to live their life as they please" and somebody will respond "oh so you think EVIL MURDERERS should be allowed to EVIL KILL PEOPLE" and its like.....

first of all obviously not, thats such a bad faith argument for the sake of arguing and i think you know it is

second of all its weird thats the first thing you thought of? its weird that you went to such an extreme? since you allowed bad faith arguments into the discussion i could argue its reasonable for me to think you might wanna evil murder someone based on how quickly you thought of that

third of all and perhaps most importantly. evil murderers already evil kill people. not being allowed to hasnt stopped them so far. thats uh. thats why its called murder and not silly joes knifey knifey end a lifey power hour fun time

I can clearly remember the moment I first realised my mother and I were living on completely different planes of existence. I was 7 years old and I came home from my school's first track and field day having placed second or third in every event. the teachers had been making jokes all afternoon about how many times they had to call my name. my friends thought I was cool as shit. my enemies thought I was cool as shit too, come to think of it. I was proud as hell. so I get home with the entire front of my shirt covered in ribbons like I was a military dictator who'd awarded himself every medal, I walk into the kitchen and tell my mum all about my day, and she goes "oh, that must be disappointing not getting any firsts." and I'm like no?? first of all the first place ribbons are red and I don't like red. second of all look at me. there's literally nowhere left on my body for accolades. I am fucking Jacked of All Trades. how could this possibly be a disappointment.