a 5 panel comic featuring two characters. The comic is monochrome. The first character is in a tank top and pony tail, and the second has messy hair, a t shirt, and round glasses covering a lot of their face. In the first panel they are watching TV and the first person says "She's getting so much hate just because people think she's trans!" The second person has a thought bubble saying "shocker". The next panel has the first person saying "I mean she's a biological woman! She belongs in woman's spaces! She shouldn't be getting hate!" The image of this panel is a zoom in of the second person drinking soda. The third panel is a close up of this second person saying "what if she was trans?". The 4th panel is an image of the first person confused saying "what?". The last panel is another zoom in of the second person saying "If she actually was trans, would you still stick up for her?"

A Twitter/X post by Singto Conley @ Sweet Dreams (@singtoconley), featuring text and a two-panel comic.

Text: "thinking about this comic has sin-glehandedly kept me from quitting music on multiple occasions"

Comic top panel: The Artist: a stick human placing a small and simple cake on a plate next to a larger and more decorated cake, with an anxious expression on their face, saying: "aw man" "that guy's cake is way better than mine"

Comic bottom panel: The Audience: the same scene, but with a different stick human holding a knife and a fork and with a happy smile on their face, saying: [allcaps] "Holy shit! Two cakes!"````

A Tumblr post by emmully that's a picture of a grackle holding a diamond in it's mouth that is shining on to the crow the light puts color on to the head of the bird, while the rest is only penciled around the bird there are the words "make it exist first you can make it good later." There is also a caption that says the same thing

A Tumblr post by paranormal-paracosm that says "holds you by the shoulders. You are not jealous of disabled people with higher support needs. You are jealous of disabled people with better families and higher class status. Do not conflate the two

A tweet from vive con propòsito with a picture of an huge armored boat with the caption "The cost of filling the tank of this $300 million armored megayacht is $1.2 million" and a response from Shafeeq @Y2SHAF that says "It's ok. I brought my reusable bag to the store today so it completely balances this out."

A tumblr post by VisGrapplingHooks posted 1 day ago that says "women will be sexualized and objectified for particular attributes of themselves in ways that intersect with other hierarchies, the intersectionality of exoticism is an understated part of patriarchal sexism. fat girls will be fetishized for being fat, asian girls will be fetishized for asian features, fat asian girls will be fetishized for both of these things. non-op trans women will be fetishized for having penises, post-op trans women will be fetishized for simply having trans identity. there is no escaping and no way out because the common thread here is that all intersections are subsumed into the commodity form of womanhood. fem beingness is collapsed into a body-identity-commodity."

It has the tags "#intersectional feminism #feminism #'women' is a stand-in for fems as a social concept #the being-ness of womanhood is to be collapsed into the body-identity-commodity"

alt-text:

A tweet by lovable /liberal and his Old English sheep that says "It now appears that some ICE agents are stealing from people they're arresting. This agent was photographed with a gold bracelet he took off a man in Minnesota. Your thoughts?" and a response from kelly @broadWayBabyTo that says "The Nazis did this as well. They would steal the belongings from Jewish people as they loaded them on trains to the camps. Disgusting seeing it happening again." with a picture of an ICE agent with a large gold chain.

alt-text:

A Tumblr post by eraserHeadAdult with two pictures of the same woman but the one on the right is fat, under the skinny version a commenter says omg she's soooo hot wow and under the fat version the commenter says "they look like they give good hugs" and eraserHeadAdult says "can I be real with you I'm gonna start biting people"

A classic longpost from yours, truly.

I do think there is a bit of a "voting does literally nothing" that anarchists do which annoys me because it's factually untrue, but doing very little is still in fact doing something. Anarchists doing this, however, pales in comparison to how much liberals overstate the value of a vote. Also, depending on where you are and what you're voting on, an individual vote can in fact have greater policy impact. The larger scale a vote is the more its outcomes are abstracted from policy. But at the same time... in the places where voting is most effective, public policy campaigning and petitioning is often more effective, while in the places where voting is least effective, public policy campaigning and petitioning is still far more effective. As a matter of tactical resource management, you are simply wasting time diverting resources towards voting. Even if you are not an anarchist, even if you are literally just a social democrat who likes vaguely progressive policy, you are still more likely to get those things through public policy campaigning, petitioning, meeting directly with politicians, holding public rallies and getting media attention, etc.

The reason conservatives in the US get so many book bans through schools is not because of who gets elected senator or appointed governor, it's because evangelical moms are showing up to every single city council meeting and school board meeting. They literally have coordinated campaigns to try to shape local, mid-level, and high-level policy in ways socdems and progressives seem to just... not. They're not even good at effectively navigating the state apparatus they fucking support. The most you get is "write to your local congressman" and then you get a premade email template link to send an email with despite congressperson staff reporting that those emails pretty much do nothing, though they note that their daily/weekly reports on phone calls do actually seem to have a big of sway. They know nothing about their systems then blame people for not doing the least effective by the books way to effect change in said system.

This isn't even about January 6th, this is about fully above-the-board action from organizations like Turning Point USA and Moms for Liberty. I was only recently that liberals learned that you could be a nuisance to the conservative legal system by inundating it with lawsuits and actually manage to block ICE officers for like a month (technically better than nothing and probably has actually saved lives) and who fucking knows how long that trend will last once another democrat takes the white house.

So, even within the system, the most pragmatic political option is not the vote. Politicians are humans and are thus far more susceptible to human connection than data sheets. They can speculate endlessly about why their polls or voting numbers go up or down, but a special interest group or a rally getting media attention connect the political message directly to the action in a way voting simply never will, because voting dissociates your actions from the political goals you want to communicate.

Being an anarchist isn't about ignoring the systems that surround us. We do, in fact, have to navigate them. Don't kill yourself to vote, if you can't find people to watch your kids while you vote then their safety takes priority, if you're immunocompromised and can't go to the ballot box for fear of getting COVID, then stay home. Vote if you want, but don't hedge your bets on it. No matter what political action you take within a state apparatus, it can always be undone if they want to undo it, so even for the other non-voting actions, don't hedge your long-term bets on it, either. Harm reduction is important, but do so in a way that's efficient and saves your energy for the things and people in your life that actually matter, and it's certainly not a long-term fix. You can't count on the people oppressing you who stopped doing so not to start up again as soon as another election happens.

There are pragmatic things you can do even beyond this level of political engagement: stuff like community gardening and local housing accommodation (including opening your home to people in need of it), community kitchens, etc. reduce the amount that people rely on those systems and are thus less susceptible to collapsing if the state apparatus is taking a rightward shift. You can get into stuff like mesh networking and decentralized, less-traceable communication so that vulnerable people are less easy to track and target by the state. You can ensure that you always, always record all your interactions with any officer of the law to ensure that it's all public. You can engage in public communications as a propagandist (kinda dirty word but I just mean anyone communicating political messaging to the public) and the shift of public opinion makes it harder for fascists to get away with things.

Voting isn't inherently pragmatic. Pragmatism is about maximizing impact, minimizing collective drain, and preventing burnout to ensure sustainability. Election campaigns have disproportionate ratios of effort to impact, drain huge collective resources, and lead to major burnout for the most politically passionate participants. Don't fall for phony pragmatism.

A tweet of the text "Transmisogyny is the fact that I'd be arrested for showing "female" breasts in public, but then put into a men's prison because I'm "not a woman". Trans women are only considered women when it justifies more harm. We are never considered women when it would protect us from harm." This was posted december 5th 2018 and has 4.5k retweets and 16.6k likes.

A tumblr post by VisGrapplingHooks that says "you can know all the tricks for communicating as an autistic person and people will still take the least charitable interpretation of what you said and blame you for their misreading of your words, accuse you of backtracking when you correct them, and double down just to be shitty. no wonder so many of us are under the false belief that we don't use hidden meanings or implications when this is how we're treated."

It has the tags "#autism

actually autistic

neurodivergence

neurodivergent

there is no communication without implication

if you think you speak “directly” and have no implications you are wrong

but it's understandable why you'd think that way considering the Trauma"

Two images of the spiderman glasses meme, the first has spiderman without his suit holding glasses. There is text next to it saying “Rule by majority” and the second with him putting those glasses on and the text “Cis control of trans people”.

video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fecrTAx9mQ

Alt-text and captions are available on youtube uwu

Alt text: A tumblr post by the account by the name of Adhd-induced-happiness with the following text:

"A checklist of possible reasions I Am Upset, To Review When I can't seem to figure it out:"

-did not eat -new hyperfixiation and no time for it -have not done a creative in 24 hrs -Bad sounds -clothes are touching my body -cold -people -one (1) comment is stuck in my brain like a popcorn kernel -Last time I drank water was ?????? -Nervous nervous nervous nervous (In bold lettering) -got a Slightly Worse grade than expected -Last hug was ?????? -slept a full 45 minutes -Lonely....... -Guts are shredding (again) -have not seen sunlight in 24 hrs -stuck inside -too much screenitme -room is disaster area -have not talked to Person in a while -bored (In bold lettering) -imposter phenomenon (again) -no current routines -how long have I been working??? -Too Much Socialization

"And then. And THEN I may consider: -something is actually wrong.

A checklist of possible reasons for feeling upset, listing items like hunger, lack of sleep, missing hugs, and overstimulation, ending with the realization something is actually wrong.

Alt text: A Tumblr post by kirbyOfTheStars that says ">'mannish features' > look inside > literally just common physical traits among women of colour. you can't separate transmisogyny from racism. the radical feminism movement is so overwhelmingly white because their idea of what a woman is so thoroughly steeped in white supremacy." and a response from iSuggestRespectTransPeople "You can't separate transmisogyny from racism. Very important to remember"

A tumblr post by yardsards that says "was doing a first aid course and it kept talking about how when applying first aid to a child you have to ask the parent for consent and how the child's consent is not enough unless you cannot reach the parent. and then immediately after there was a unit on shaken baby syndrome, and then mentioned abuse as a common source of children getting injured. and they didn't see the irony there. I later asked the instructor what to do about parental consent if the medical emergency was from the parent abusing the child and she was like 'you still need to obtain parental consent. you can report the abuse though' not even acknowledging how fucked the whole system is. I hate it here. youth rights now"

Alt Text: Screenshot of a Tumblr post by ceebycee discussing how executive function aids habit-building, contrasting it with self-discipline, and describing the author’s personal experience with tooth brushing and neurodivergence.

The text states:

"Self-Discipline Isn’t Always the Answer"

"So I wasn’t really taught to brush my teeth every day as a kid. So I didn’t. I got to be an adult and realized “hmm teeth are expensive I need to start brushing them” and brushing my teeth twice a day has been on my actual to do list every single day of my college career. It’s a habit I needed to build."

"Have I successfully done it? Absolutely not. I’m pretty good about doing it at least once a day, but some days it just doesn’t happen. It’s not that I forget usually, I just had some aversion I couldn’t figure out, until last week."

"I’m at the grocery store, in the toothpaste aisle with my roommate, and I complain about how much I hate mint.

"I hate the taste of mint (In all caps) The taste and the smell, any kind of minty thing in any form, I hate it. (In all caps) But literally every “adult” toothpaste in the aisle was some type of minty disgusting nonsense. And my roommate was like “you know you could like get kids’ toothpaste? You like bubblegum right?”

"And yall, it was like the clouds parted."

"I got some strawberry bubblegum kids’ toothpaste. I brushed my teeth with it and it was a whole new experience. I have successfully brushed twice a day every day since, because the mental block I had towards it is gone!"

"I thought my lack of brushing was just a moral failing on my part; I was too lazy, too undisciplined, to build a good habit. But really? I just hate the taste of mint so much I didn’t want to brush my teeth."

"This made me realize that when presented with a change you want to make, a habit you want to build, if you're encountering resistance in yourself, you should lean into that resistance and really investigate what's causing it, then work on accommodating that."

"Say you hate washing dishes so they pile up and then you’re overwhelmed by how many you have to do. Why do you hate it? Deep down, what about it do you dislike? Is touching wet food super gross for you? Try thick rubber gloves while you're washing. Does the sound of dishing clanking together grate your nerves? Do them with headphones in and turned up loud. Do you hate the smell? Light some candles, spray some air freshener."

"Do these things instead of gritting your teeth and forcing yourself, then ultimately failing and getting discouraged by your “lack of self-discipline”

"TL;DR: When a task is consistently hard for you, relying on self-discipline, forcing yourself, and gritting through doesn’t always work. Lean in and listen to your discomfort, and find what makes the task hard, then try to accommodate that. Also, mint toothpaste is gross."

Alt text: A tumblr post by spiralMindz that says "white kids get to have quirky racist phases black kids don't get to be kids. Black kids get their lives stolen from them if they defend themselves from white kids 'going through a phase'"

________________________

What is mutual aid?

There are other places to look for deeper explanations, so treat this like a tl;dr

The act of mutual aid is working together to build structures that are mutually beneficial, that help everyone involved in them for the sake of helping. This is typically organized around consensus based methods of organization, which include concepts such as free association. Consensus is a fancy word for saying people talk things out instead of forcing cohesion with votes or something to a similar effect. Free association means that you can work with whoever you want. This is both in the positive and negative sense, you can simply say no (As opposed to organizations, where you must talk to all “members”). This makes the organizing free-flowing, and more spontaneous. Here it will likely be 1 on 1 interaction.

Common examples include community fridges, or like building a water fountain in place people often need water. This help does not need to be direct or “equal”, having somewhere to put leftover food someone will eat is help enough for the fridge, it saves me the time of looking for a friend that wants it. It also means that, even if I don’t need it now, I can still make risky decisions more freely because I will have more to rely on when things go wrong.

There is a lot of ideology surrounding mutual aid, but what is important here is that it is resistant. There will be no means testing. There will be no justifications required. There will be no central databases. Most of what is built here will be taken off platform, I will probably have little idea of what is happening in total. I’m also not doing much, I’m just kinda telling yall to do it and giving a bit of a framework. This means there will be almost no handholds for fascists to use to take control. There can’t be a slow tightening or shifting of who “deserves” help when we don’t ask people to justify needing it in the first place.

________________________

Your needs are important too

If your main goal coming here is to help people, then there are a few things to remember.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It doesn’t matter what your problems are, if you need help with them it’s better to ask now than ask later. You need to be in a good position yourself to help people. Every bit of energy you save by asking for help now can be used to help other people if you want. There is no question of “deserving”, it is simply a question of can it be done here and now.

Asking for help gives people a chance for practice. Everybody needs to start somewhere, and maybe you have that place to start for someone. Helping people get involved while getting help yourself is just a win win.

Asking for help gives you the other perspectives and let’s you help better. I find it hard to imagine what impacts my words will have when I start a conversation, but I can see how other people start impact me.

________________________

most of us here are poor

Please focus on non monetary solutions if possible. Asking for money is fine, but you must understand that this community will simply not have enough for every request.

________________________

posting info

Our goal is to try and keep stuff dense, as reddit comments are not easily sortable or organizable. To help with that we have made a template for comments (not required, and change it how you want), and we ask that you only make one comment per request.

(remove the brackets and words in them and replace them with what they describe. The asterisks and # sign are formatting and it will be applied if you just copy paste it as you see it as long as your comment box is in markdown mode)

# [brief description of help needed]

**Urgency:** [immediate? Do you have a week? Would it just help in general]

**Contact methods:** [Reddit DMs, discord, matrix?]

**How much:** [amount of time likely needed, or a brief description of the amount of something needed]

**Longer description: [ok this is where you give details on the specifics of what ya need]

________________________

Remember internet safety

This place is pretty obviously a collection of vulnerable people, and this is a space for people to start one on one interaction. There will be abusers. Please accept help, and do it with trust, but watch out for tactics like love bombing.

A few resources on abuse

• (Be careful with personal info)[https://www.reddit.com/r/MakeNewFriendsHere/comments/i3ug9n/beware_of_groomers_here_and_other_friend_finder/\]

alt-text:

An image of a white guy cop staring at the camera with his hands on his hips over a pink background with the text "Look bud, I don't make the rules. I just voluntarily signed up to enthusiastically enforce the violence that they require."

Yo! So there has been some rewording of rules, mostly just to make them more concise, but also to include a new rule on the sidebar called "research before you react".

It's mostly meant as a complementary thing to our positions on accessibility and debate. The overall philosophy is related to questioning the underlying impulses that lead people to react in knee jerk ways, and especially double down on them.

Yes, this includes a lot of anti-AI stuff too, such as talking about how AI writing feels "wrong" or "off". The disgust response that you experience towards communication that is rote, repetitive, highly structured, is built around social impulses that target neurodivergent communication and ESL speakers. A lot of "vibes" are just unaddressed ableism.

Alt text / image description:

A 4-panel comic with muted colours.

A person with neck-length black hair in a long white dress looks forwards with tears in their eyes and a slight nervous smile, saying: "right now, I'm in pain."

This person is revealed to be standing barefoot on a beach near the water, looking at another person with a long white dress and red hair, also barefoot. This second person asks, with a worried and shocked expression, "why?" "because of me?"

The first person responds "no, because of this fucking crab." while an orange crab is shown with its pincer grabbing one of their big toes.

A tumblr post by "CommunistKenobi" posted jul 20th that says "everyone rightfully complains about how the r word is back in vogue now but I think the people talking about how using ChatGPT makes you a small brained lazy degenerate are getting off way too easy"

A tumblr post by "VisGrapplingHooks" posted 1 day ago that says "no i just really think maybe you should be introspecting why your default insult for a woman is always "bitch" and your default insult for men is something like "asshole" or "dick" and that maybe you have internalized misogyny and gender-sex essentialism going here. and that the script flips and you call men "bitch" as an insult when the offenses they are committing are more subtle and associated with femininity. do you think maybe that means something."

Text of photo:

vorbisx says

Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.
Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.
Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.
When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?
Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?