Latest Posts by libraryidealist - Page 2

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

American redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)

{Words by José Olivarez from Citizen Illegal /@fatimaamerbilal , from even flesh eaters don't want me.}

Motivational things to send in the group chat

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

“𝐵𝑒ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑐”.

– 𝑂𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑟 𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑒

I’m sorely I just. This is the most inspirational thing I’ve seen this week.

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

Why the CDU/CSU can go fuck itself

Time for another one of these. a quick(ish) summary for all the non-german speakers about why we're freaking out and the state of our democracy.

Spoiler. its not...good. Not catastrophic (yet). But the alarm bells are very, very loud.

Tl;dr: The CDU, party currently prognosed to win the election, has basically worked together with the afd to get a migrationbill to pass that is very strict. The afd are the nazi party that is getting backed by Musk. This might forshadow a cooperation between AFD and CDU. That would put the far right in power. The current response from the general public are demonstrations against that. Like. there are a LOT of protests currently.

Alright grab a drink and lets go.

First, groundwork: Who are parties and who is the guy we currently all want to punch in the face?

on top: Careful, risk of confusion. on the left: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. Real. On the right: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. comic figure.

This guy here is Friedrich Merz. no, not the guy on the right. the guy on the left. I know. Easy mistake to make.

He's an asshole. He's also the current boss of the CDU and their chancellor candidate. He's very likely to win according to recent polls.

The CDU has a complicated history, but to simplify it: They were in charge for sixteen years before the now broken apart Traffic-light goverment and are responsible for a lot of shit that we're currently dealing with. Like crumbling infrastructure for example. They were more interested, as a party, to preserve the status quo at all costs, than to invest anything. You could argue that a lot of the enviromental issues we are facing and the reason why Germany is currently pretty stagnant, can be traced back to the one and a half decade the CDU was in charge. They are conservative, not a fan of migration and like to throw around 'tradtional values'.

They are, generally speaking, or better were, center right. More on that later.

The other party that is going to be a major pain in the ass to outright fucking dangerous, is the AFD, short for 'Alternative for Germany'.

this is Alice Weidel, she's the current chancellor candidate for the afd. here is her wikipedia article and lets just say her 'controversies' part is longer than her 'political positions' part.

Those are the, to put it bluntly, Nazis. They are dangerous but also a fucking mess. Like, to just list a few of their hits: They've been getting money from dictators (different ones btw, not just one), infigthing is a sport to them, they try to glorify the nazi-regime, the german intelligence agency is watching them because they are officially considered radical right-wing and a threat to democracy, there is a petition to ban the afd and that is a high bar to cross, the demonize immigrants, hate queer people, you know, the usual. Also of course political correctness has gone too far and climate change isn't real and we need to leave the EU. Elon Musk, you know the rich guy who did the Nazi-salute, also has been appearing and is actively supporting them. Just in case we were unclear before on where they all stand.

(btw the whole 'elon is supporting them' thing is pretty scary bc you could argue the reason that the afd is able to win so many votes is bc, frankly, they're good at social media. Do i need to elaborate why that is a dangerous combination.)

to put them into perspective: The afd is too right for the other alt-right parties in the EU parlament. There is a coalition in the EU Parlament for the right, made up of all the right wing parties from other nations and the afd is too right for them. So. yeeeeaaah.

that should do it as background information.

Now. back to current events. where both of these parties are getting more and more support.

For a short history of why we currently have a non-functioning goverment, i made a post about that. Be aware that it was made as a product of its time and doesn't have all the information. For example back then we didn't know that FDP had actively engineered that break up and wanted it to happen for a while. Yes. They wanted to topple the goverment they were in. on purpose. It's been a fun time over here in Germany as well.

anyways, lets get to the meat of things. Since we don't have a functional goverment currently, Merz has introduced a harsh migration bill. This has been in the wake of an attack with two murders, where the current suspect is a migrant. while this is a tragedy, its getting brutally misused by all out rightwing parties to scream about how we need stricter migration laws and that migrants are a danger. Which to be so fucking clear about this, is such bullshit. It's been proven so many times how that is bullshit. I'm gonna be real and not even bother. They're just the newest scapegoats everything can be blamed on.

But because nobody has a majority, all attempts at governing so far have been pretty stalled.

(our goverment currently)

Quick information from the past:

in 2018 the CDU basically stated they wouldn't, in any sort of way, cooperate with the AFD, declaring basically a Brandmauer (fire wall). This basically means that yes, the afd had been given seats in the parlament, but nobody would give them any power whatsoever.

This has been the position of the cdu. It is why people still considered them center-right.

Merz has repeatedly said he didn't care who voted with him. now with a slight majority, 348 to 344, the cdu has won, with the support of the afd. Many see this as the fall of the Brandmauer. It's not good. Merz has more and more talking points that sound exactly like the afd and that is SCARY. There is still a vivid memory alive here about why having a far-right goverment is dangerous. There is a reason why there are currently a lot of massive protests all over the country loudly proclaiming that 'never again is now'.

This also puts for many the cdu from 'center right' to 'right'. There are calls from inside the cdu to 'stop demonizing the afd'. This is scary. This could mean that we get not just a conservative goverment in a few weeks, but a rightwing one. One who is comfortable cooperating with radical right wingers if it suits their needs. To cooperate with a party that even our own intelligence agencies consider a threat to our democrazy.

So. that is why your german mutuals sit there like

Now. To another part. What exactly is that migration bill merz had wanted to pass so desperateldy?

Well first of all it calls for a national emergency, using the beforementioned murder as reasoning, for the danger of immigration. It calls for closing and controls at the borders permanently, not temporary as is curently the case. They want for people without valid ID to be refused entry, even when they are searching safety. People that are already in Germany but need to leave should be thrown in jail until they actually leave.

Which. just to be clear about this. this what the bill they had, that had the support of the afd, says. This is not a wish list. This what they want to be law.

But to be also clear, lots of this is against our current law, against Basic EU law and principle and also a pretty big violation of our constituation.

Which is what makes this situation so fatal. This bill is going to be fought. In court, in politics, with demonstrations on the streets. this bill is controversial. Merz knew that. he knew that a lot of this wouldn't pass. This is a publicly stunt. This is testing the waters. How much will the public allow? how far can he push? Is cooperation with the afd possible for him? How does everyone react?

It was never about immigration or that bill. All the people this is going to impact, all the lives that are going to be lost because of this shit they are pulling - this is to them all just collateral. Its testing how much is possible, tolerated even. The chances of this bill making it law is slim. It needs to pass again in a different body of the goverment with a two thirds majority and that is nowhere in sight.

Also, lets take a look at who voted what:

it was about four votes. So my german friends who also read this - look at this and be aware of who voted what. Who abstained to vote and gave up the four votes it would have taken to stop this. who accepted that to get what they want they would need to get the support of the afd, no matter how much Merz now claims that he still doesn't cooperate with the afd and that there were no talks between them. Look at the numbers. Look how and with who they voted.

To be frank, i am pretty pissed off. I don't think much about wallowing in self-pity and despair. i am pissed off about what is happening. i am pissed off that these people don't have a spine, i am pissed off at the FDP for enabling this in the first place, i am pissed off that we have Nazis in out goverment, i am pissed off that we have people who are willing to cooperate with them. I am pissed off that i need to settle for damage control instead of being able to see something finally move forward.

Now here we come to the less depressing part of this whole thing. And i want you to pay attention to it.

People are protesting. loudly. And in the thousands. There have been ten to a hundred thousands of people all over the country in the last week, protesting against the rise of faschism and the far right. Its all over the country, in different cities. Where the afd appears to talk, so do the protesters. There are 35 afd people to 1300 protesters. People loudly say 'never again is now'. And they show up to back that claim up.

This shit is vile, yes, but it's not going to be unopposed.

I know this all reads as depressing as fuck but do not give into the temptation of falling into despair. This is far from over. Yes those are the alarm bells and they are ringing loudly. But there is still things that can be done. Don't let the afd lure you into thinking this all pointless anyways. It's not. This is all not good, yes, but no reason to fall into blind panic. The bill isn't law yet. Merz is facing massive backlash for his little stunt. This is not a hopeless situation. It's just a shitty one.

a sluge 😔

A bit of a palate cleanser for everyone.

So Kinder, wir gehen das jetzt einmal schnell durch mit der Neuwahl und so. Hier ist die derzeitige Wahlumfrage:

Jetzt einmal kurz schreien und dann aufgepasst:

Das ist jetzt erstmal n grober Richtwert. Statistisch kriegen die Grünen und die Linke wahrscheinlich weniger Stimmen als in vorläufigen Umfragen, während CDU/CSU und vermutlich AfD mehr Stimmen kriegen. Wir nehmen die Werte jetzt trotzdem mal so.

Wir beobachten folgendes: - CDU gewinnt beinahe garantiert - Die FDP kommt nicht über die 5% Hürde - Die Linke erst recht nicht - 14,3% aller Stimmen haben keinen Einfluss auf den Bundestag, weil die entsprechende Partei zu klein ist - Die AfD hat keine Sperrminorität, selbst wenn sie sich mit dem BSW zusammentut

Das gibt uns die folgenden Koalitionsmöglichkeiten:

Bis jetzt lehnt die CDU eine Koalition mit der AfD offiziell ab. Bei den Grünen sind sie gespalten. Die einfachste und fürs Image attraktivste Option für die CDU/CSU ist eine Koalition mit der SPD. Das ist jetzt nicht gerade großartig, aber nicht ansatzweise so katastrophal wie Schwarz-Blau.

Hier ist der Knackpunkt: Wenn durch ein mittleres Wunder sowohl die FDP als auch die Linke in den Bundestag einziehen, sieht die Verteilung plötzlich so aus:

(Grafik stellt ein Szenario dar, bei dem beide Parteien 5% der Stimmen erhalten. Bei Einzug durch Direktmandate weichen die Nummern etwas ab, die Optionen sind aber die gleichen.)

Die "kleinstes Übel" Große Koalition ist nun keine Möglichkeit mehr. Welche Koalition in diesem Fall zustande kommt, lässt sich nicht mit Sicherheit sagen, aber die AfD wird für die CDU plötzlich sehr viel attraktiver aussehen.

Natürlich muss man dazu sagen, dass der Anteil an AfD dadurch schrumpft. Wirklich relevant ist das aber nur im Falle der Sperrminorität, die sie ja auch vorher nicht hatten.

(Wenn entweder FDP oder Linke die 5% schaffen, ist eine knappe GroKo noch möglich. Allerdings ist es wahrscheinlicher, dass die FDP die Hürde kriegt als die Linke.)

Die Zahlen werden sich im kommenden Monat natürlich noch ein bisschen hin- und herbewegen, und die Wahlergebnisse werden nochmal anders ausfallen, aber die Tendenz haben wir ja schon besprochen.

DESHALB:

Die eigene Stimme nicht verschwenden!

Wenn die 14%, die Klein(st)parteien wählen, stattdessen SPD oder Grüne wählen, hätten wir fast schon Chance auf Rot-Grün.

Die CDU wird stärkste Kraft.

Daran lässt sich nicht mehr rütteln. ABER wir können beeinflussen, auf wie viel Widerstand sie trifft. Je mehr SPD, desto weniger CDU in der GroKo.

Überleben ist wichtiger als Reine Moral.

Ja, SPD ist auch kacke. Ja, ich würde auch gerne lieber die Linke wählen. Ja, ich finde auch, dass die alle was falsch machen, und moralisch verwerflich sind, und Dinge tun und sagen, die mich zum Kotzen bringen, und für die ich mich schäme, deutsch zu sein. Ja, ich bin der SPD eigentlich scheißegal. Aber die SPD will mich zumindest nicht fucking tot sehen. Das Gleiche kann ich, als queere trans Person mit Uterus, nicht über die CDU sagen. Und über die AfD sowieso nicht. Und wenn ich Migrationshintergrund oder kein Einkommen hätte, wärs noch dreimal so schlimm.

Wir hatten das grade erst in den USA. So verdammt viele Nicht- oder Protestwähler. Und jetzt haben wir den verfickten Salat. KÖNNEN WIR DAS BITTE VERDAMMT NOCHMAL NICHT NACHMACHEN??

Wählt strategisch. Bitte.

Die Linke kommt nicht in den Bundestag. Deine lokale Furzpartei kommt nicht in den Bundestag. Steck deine Stimme nicht dahin. Steck sie wohin, wo sie was ändern kann. Wenn du SPD halt gar nicht hinkriegst, wähl zumindest Grün. Auch das begrenzt die Macht der CDU und AfD. Und je mehr sich ändert, desto wahrscheinlicher können wir nächstes Mal wieder was Schönes wählen.

ya gotta stop caring what people think and start being extremely weird. but never cruel. i think that might save you

YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY . You will find a WAY ….. you WILL find a way . You will find a way you will find a way……!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY YOU WILL FIND A WAY you will find a Way you will (find) a way you will find. a way you will find a way YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!!!!!

head empty just this fresco:

There are always sure to be more springs…

Giuseppe Pennasilico (detail)

anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??

Woon Young, on Tumblr

• So Super Awesome is also on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest •

catch 22 by joseph heller // mash (peace on us)

Hmmmm hm. Okay. Worldbuilding/story idea.

One million years after humanity disappears, octopi and ravens have independently developed sapience. And one day an octopus child and an elder raven meet at the edge of the ocean.

Where is your mother and father? asks the raven. I have no mother or father, says the octopus, blushing pale. All octopi are children. Once we’re grown, we will mate and we will die. It is the first and the last thing our mothers tell us.

But that’s horrible, says the raven. It’s not all bad, says the octopus. We play, we hunt, we make games for ourselves in the deep. Yes, but who remembers your songs? the raven says. Who passes down your stories?

What is a story? the octopus asks.

And the raven thinks about this question. And finally it says: A story is how you remember things in the past. It is how you know where you come from, and what happened before you were born. A story can be a warning, or it can be advice, or it can be a silly joke told to make you feel good. Someone remembers the story and tells it to the next generation, who remember the story and tells it to the generation after them.

And the octopus thinks about this answer. And finally it says: Can you tell me a story?

And the raven tells the octopus a story. And it’s a good story. And the next day the octopus returns and asks for another. The next day it brings its octopus friends, and the raven brings its raven friends, and many stories are shared on the edge of the ocean.

Months later, the octopus returns to the raven. I am grown, it says. I am returning to the sea to find a mate and lay my brood. I will not be coming back. I’m sorry.

I will miss your company, says the raven.

I have one thing to ask you, says the octopus. In time my children will come to the edge of the ocean. I would like you to tell them a story I have made. And when they have stories of their own, I would like your children to remember them and pass them down to my children’s children.

Of course, says the raven. What is your story about?

And the octopus thinks, and says: It is about an octopus child and an elder raven who meet at the edge of the ocean.

And this story has been passed down to this day.

anon hate

Witty response

夢の中で訪れた水族館 2

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer listed. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

realizing that sticking to the "do it bad" "do it scared" mentality implies theres also a "do it bored"

The poetry in this is that it's from 2021, and the user deactivated.

this year will be wonderful. you will meet new people who will feel like sunlight. someone out there will be lucky enough to meet you. you will see breathtaking views. you will learn so much knowledge from your studies and gain so much wisdom. there will be bad days but you will heal and start again in the morning. you will discover what makes you happy. you will fill up journals with scribbles and messy drawings. you will feel low and make mistakes but they will help you become a stronger person. you will pick up new things that give your life meaning and you will pour your heart into it. you will find songs that speak to you more than anything else in the world. you will grow. this year is waiting for you and it’s beautiful.

part of what makes tragedies tragic is the story being preventable from the outside but unpreventable from the inside

you cant even begin poems with "i will sodomise and facef uck you" anymore. because of woke .

the empty queen: my life is for the people of naboo

star wars meets the eras of feminism, valerie estelle frankel / attack of the clones script third draft, cut dialogue / the phantom menace script / anne carson / judith herman / star wars tales #5, terry moore / constance grady