what if data and weyoun met and weyoun saw data paint and watched curiously and then said: my people have no sense of aesthetics. sometimes i wish things were different.

and data said well as i am an android i posess no such sense as well. however i do have excellent ballance. and kept painting. and then data said many art theorists would argue that aesthetics as a concept are actually counterproductive to art, as the pursuit of art should include expressing emotions and evoking sensations in the viewer, and the traditional sense of beauty inhibits this.

and then he kept painting (some sort of surrealist disembodied head floating through a geometric maze of connected rooms) and the next thing he said his voice sounded a little different, quieter: as an android, i have no emotions to express. but before weyoun could reply he turned around and handed him a painbrush and said: perhaps you'd like to try, mr. weyoun?

and then there's a cut. cue A plot. next scene we see weyoun and data paint side by side quietly. close up on weyoun's canvas. it's a writhing dark mass of fuzzy shapes and distorted figures. inside of it you can make out thousand of little faces with their mouths twisted open in fear or screaming, eyes open, closed, some without arms or legs, clutching their injuries. dark fluid streaks down from them to the edge of the canvas, dripping to the floor, like tears or blood. in the background, a mountain of corpses. if you step away from it, the whole composition makes a sillhuete of a founder.

that is most illuminating, said data.

i have titled it "a very cool party together forever with rainbows", weyoun replied proudly

bending time and space to let them hang out

As someone living in Minnesota, if you think both sides are the same, and Trump is only doing openly what Obama did quietly, I will simply say I don't remember minority-owned businesses having to keep their doors locked during the day to stop ICE from coming in and taking everyone.

Connor Storrie's run around the horn with TODAY's Al Roker

this current wave of mid 2010s nostalgia is so laughable. yeah dude we need to retvrn to the days when closer by the chainsmokers was the biggest song in the world and we were all drinking "unicorn flavored" milkshakes

How can this be “nostalgia” that was literally like last week??? The only thing I’m nostalgic for is Obama as President. THAT feels like it was 30 years ago. Everything else from about 2012-2019 gets jammed into the month and a half before covid started in my memory. And we all know covid only started like two years ago.

I’ve actually been fucking your son for 10 years. Thank you for pasta

A sign to tap

if you're saying with your whole chest on hedy lamarr's internet in the year 2025 (or, i guess, the year 2026 if you're reading this post after tomorrow) that there's "no sapphic representation in mainstream media" and "all the shows and movies are about gay men and they're made for straight women who are evil fetishizers", i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is a skill issue for you personally. statistically we are living in a golden age where there are a shitload of stories being told about queer women doing all manner of things, and crucially after many years of the only stories about queer women being essentially tragic romances and coming-out stories, studios and streamers actually started greenlighting stuff that's about queer women DOING THINGS, where the conflict does not arise solely from the circumstance of our sexuality. and now i'm seeing so many zoomers on social media move the goalposts and whine about how "that's not 'sapphic media' that's media about characters who just happen to be sapphic" AND YES THAT'S LITERALLY THE POINT. FOR YEARS WE SAID "THIS SHOW/FILM WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN IF THERE WERE LESBIANS IN IT" FOR A REASON. AND NOW WE GET THE LESBIANS AND YOU'RE SAYING THAT'S NOT ENOUGH BC... REASONS?! ohhh my god girl GROW UP

pluribus, yellowjackets, killing eve, the hunting wives, a league of their own, vida, dickinson, the morning show, industry (which also has a juicy m/m plotline because MULTIPLE TYPES OF QUEER PEOPLE CAN COEXIST IN THE SAME STORY), sex lives of college girls, irma vep, the last of us, gentleman jack, the favourite, ammonite, portrait of a lady on fire, kajillionaire, princess cyd, love lies bleeding, tár, causeway, in the company of women, drive-away dolls, honey don't, bottoms, am i ok, bodies bodies bodies, benedetta, the little hours (lmao two EXTREMELY different nun movies and i would even throw in the first omen as a chaser), disobedience, the color purple, eileen, tahara, shiva baby, do revenge, fancy dance, the prom (movie sucks but i maintain the broadway show is one of the best and funniest new musicals of the past decade), the fallout, my old ass, can you ever forgive me, duck butter, titane, booksmart, vita & virginia, colette, happiest season, the wedding banquet (which was ASS and my least favorite movie i watched this year but serves as proof that queer filmmakers can make absolutely dogshit movies about lesbians that don't get them sent to director's jail on sight! there are no repercussions for absolutely terrible media made for the gays, by the gays!)... that's not even counting all the stuff i didn't list, all the cartoons that i don't watch because i'm an adult with no interest in those things but which are constantly being touted as "good sapphic representation" (nimona, the owl house, arcane, she-ra, the mitchells vs the machines, god knows what else), the YA adaptations i don't watch for similar reasons, the fact that apparently maya hawke has been playing a lesbian on stranger things for years (news to me, but ofc it's telling that people start melting down about how homophobic the show is bc it didn't give their m/m pairing the ending they wanted), the fact that bridgerton is going to have a main f/f plotline next season and straight women are in SHAMBLES about it. like i'm sure y'all are already cherry-picking examples out of everything i've listed to talk about how you can't watch X Y Z bc it's Problematic or Got Canceled (which every fucking streaming show does, it's not a lesbophobic conspiracy it's the industry being unable to make money in a post-netflix landscape), but the point is that THERE IS SO MUCH RIGHT NOW. HAVE YOU WATCHED IT ALL?! NO?!?! OKAY THEN!!!! we are literally living through a golden age of media by, for, and about queer women. if you can't find a few shows or movies that tick your boxes, that's entirely on you.

saw a post that claims that STEM smart people are smarter than humanities smart people because “any math student who speaks english can flip through an english book and understand it, but i’d like to see an english student do college math.” i have to say 1. holy disingenuous comparison batman, and 2. as someone who ta’d the english side of an english/biology fusion class, no the fuck they cannot. forget a collegiate level, we were struggling to teach these STEM major upperclassmen how to identify what’s on the page and articulate the themes on a high school level. the course texts were two YA novels and a handful of short stories. meanwhile all the humanities students were chugging through the biochemistry at what my colleague reported was an extremely respectable level. turns out that understanding what you’re reading is a skill just like any other, AND one with transferable applications

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

having lunch and someone's watching cnc videoes loud as fuck style so i'm just here chewing my food while there's sounds of water jetting and steel screeching in the back

Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it's actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It's never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it's like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I'm like. This is a genuine societal issue

there is no ao3 curse

there is a statistical likelihood that anyone existing for a long enough time will have Weird IRL Problems on account of that's how life works, and that if those people are writers, they will tell you about it

"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

Here's an AP news brief with a little more info. It's limited in the way major news outlets are right now but provides context that supports the personal account shared.

FANDOM, THE TWIN CITIES NEED YOU

Alpha News, our local fascist outlet that "leaked" Jonathan Ross's video of him murdering Renee Good, which also pushed George Floyd conspiracy theories, with an anchor married to loathsome fascist police union boss Bob Kroll (Liz Collin), has set up another doxx line, this time for ICE observers.

WE NEED THEM TO BE OVERWHELMED WITH USELESS INFORMATION.

Please help us! We are under occupation!

Their post about it:

This is something you can do 100% remotely that is VERY HELPFUL to stop observers from being intimidated out of doing this vital work. It is not an exaggeration to say spamming this line will save lives: the more observers we have, the fewer people ICE can abduct, abuse, murder, and send to concentration camps.

PLEASE REBLOG AND SHARE.

FYI, the page was apparently down for a while but it’s back up, however, when I try to submit a tip (with a photo of Jan 6ers beating an officer), I keep getting “There was a problem with your submission. Please review the fields below.” even though I’ve filled out all required fields. So idk if it’s actually accepting anything right now or not. (3:40pm EST, Jan 14)

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

world heritage post

I HAVE to reblog this eleven million note post. That’s the most notes I’ve ever seen on tumblr. Also my name is Jade, not Amanda.