As we near the end of aromantic awareness week, I offer up my spicy takes as your friendly neighborhood aroace:
Romantic attraction is one of the many beautiful experiences you can have as a human but it’s just that— an experience. Not an end goal or a threshold. Lived experiences are not universal because we have the wonderful privilege of living on a planet full of different kinds of people.
Tbh romantic relationships look fun when done right. But you know what else is fun? Eating a really good muffin. Reading a story that blows your brains apart. Telling your friends a deez nuts joke and hearing them collectively groan. All rich moments of joy are meant to be cherished.
Sing it with me: platonic relationships are not lesser, weaker, or cheaper than romantic ones. I hope everyone reading this gets to someday experience a friendship so stalwart and loving that it anchors you through the worst and best of your life. I hope everyone reading this will have someone in their life who cherishes how beautiful they are to their core, regardless of mutual attraction or the obligations of courtship rituals.
Sex jokes made by the aro and ace communities are superior.
If you’ve ever identified with aromanticism, then hats off to you fellow traveler. You are seen, you are respected, and you are loved. Have a nice end to your week y’all.
If you live in the US and want a way to follow good non-right wing news for free, consider:
Subscribing to PBS News on YouTube (they have a news hour every night/half hour on weekends, broken up into smaller consumable segments. Sometimes they live stream national events like the inauguration. You don't have to watch it all, but pick and choose what to watch & when. Like, say, only watching the half hour weekend segments).
Subscribing to NPR News on whatever podcast app you have (they do 5-minute news updates throughout the day; you usually only need to listen to it 1x/day to get highlights).
Subscribe to nonprofit investigative online news source ProPublica; you can sign up for either daily, weekly, or top news stories sent to your email. You can also follow them on sm.
Okay this one isn't free, but if you have any extra money, don't underestimate how important or endangered local newspapers are. Subscribe if you can. Some papers will also send you short summaries if you're a subscriber, and you can also follow local papers on social media.
Remember that just generally getting deluged with news on social media is not good for your mental health, and is much more susceptible to misinformation or propaganda. Getting news online works best when it's supplemental to verified news sources; usually as grassroots, on-the-ground info from people you know and trust who are living out a certain experience.
You can keep a particular online space "safe" from politics without hurting anything, provided you make routine space for good, responsible news in your schedule.
AND that you make sure to follow a diverse group of people and support their inclusion in that space, even if you're online for a niche interest (in almost any online hobby, there are lots of people who are not at all the same class, race, ethnicity, gender identity, from the same place, etc, etc). Honor, protect, and value a wide variety of voices even in your online hobbyist spaces, while also making regular time for real news? You'll find yourself with a decent snapshot of information from both the top down and the bottom up about how the world works and is impacting a wide variety of people.
Without feeling like you have to absorb/respond to everything happening every single moment of every day. For the next 4 years
Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.
If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."
We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.
And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.
In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.
P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3
EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings
EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.
Took this from Instagram because this is urgent US folks.
You need to call and email your reps no matter if you live in a red or blue state. This cannot be allowed to pass.
It will prevent anyone who has ever changed their name from voting (including their last name)
The threat was loud and clear: Report your so-called “DEI” employees or else. What exactly “DEIA or similar ideologies” means is up in the air, but the message was out there. And so was the email address of the DEIA snitching hotline. Fake emails quickly started to roll in. ‘I don’t care, fuck these McCarthyite bastards,” one BlueSky user said, with an screenshot attached of an email to the hotline where he ironically reported Donald Trump and JD Vance for being “put in their positions solely because of their race and/or gender despite the fact that they are wholly unqualified for their jobs and, in some cases, have criminal records.” “Anyone have a script to fire off a billion e-mails an hour??” another user asked in the replies. “Anyone can email anything of any size even if it crashes the site,” one X user noted. The scope and effectiveness of this latest phase of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade remains to be seen.
Okay, so I try hard to cover global queer history, and this isn't marking a stop to that, but I am aware that most of my audience is American, and I want to address them very directly right now.
Google Removed Pride Month From Its Calendar App, and Stonewall National Monument's "LGBTQ" status was changed to "LGB" on the government website. This is the beginning of the erasure of queer history, not the end. I don't know what the future of the United States looks like, as someone who studies queer history and has done so for many years, I want to share some tools with you.
Now is a good time to prioritize local queer history, Making Gay History is a great project, so is the Digital Transgender Archive, but also check your city and see what resources there are.
Read and buy books about queer history. I have an affiliate list with some of the books I personally recommend.
If you use Google Calendar, repopulate that resource with so much queer history with a free queer history calendar plug-in, it has names from queer history that you can also learn more about for free when they come up. As the author of these articles, feel free to save them, print them off, whatever makes them freely accessible as suppression get's worse.
Use your local library. Email the board about book bans, request banned books, request queer books, and make your voice heard.
Make queer art. Share queer art. Protect queer art. Here is some public-domain queer art to use as you wish.
Keep up with queer news, THEM and Pink News are both great resources.
All of these tools are currently freely accessible with an internet connection. Queer history is a community responsibility, do your part.
This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy
The Ketamine King Musk has shutdown the IRS's Free Tax Filing system.
Of all the things a government could off, a way to Freely calculate and file your taxes seems like a good one. But the richest man in the world thinks we shouldn't have that.
every time you see a headline like this
I want you to remember these ones
btw while people continue to fight the system don't forget about Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt), a charity that buys and forgives medical debt. on average a donation of $10 will forgive $1,000 of medical debt.
To anyone wondering if it's worth it to tear down fascist posters or whatever. I spent a few months last year engaged in silent battle with another student at my school who was putting anti trans stickers up everywhere. I had it down to a system where every night I would walk the five block radius they went up in, and tear down all the ones I could reach, and use a stick to put duct tape over the others. Like, within hours of the stickers going up, I would have already purged the whole zone. I knew the basic schedule of whoever put them up based on when and where the stickers appeared. I probably could have found them in person if I'd wanted to. And I told all my classmates and friends what the stickers looked like and got them to rip them down too. And after a few months of this, the stickers slowed, and then stopped forever.
My point is, a lot of this fashy or right wing stuff is one local weirdo. And if you pay attention, and do a little light organizing with your friends, you can basically make their efforts into a giant sisyphisean exercise in misery. You control your streets!
I feel like pirating media that isn’t sold or offered anywhere legally anymore shouldn’t be called piracy. Girl thats archaeology
Okay all -- few quick thoughts about the Elon Muskifying of the government, especially the takeover of the Treasury and associated financial data for every single US citizen and organization, that we are learning about in detail today.
Don't panic. This sounds bad, because it is bad. It's really, really bad. It's outrageously fascist bad. But we've still gotta take a deep breath and get through it.
This is the kind of shock-and-awe exercise of untrammeled fascist power where they are absolutely counting on gleefully terrorizing, paralyzing, and stunning you into mounting no resistance, or just giving up and giving in. They are literally live-tweeting it in real time and boasting about all the access and influence they have right now. They want you to know about it and feel like you can't do anything, so you might as well let it happen.
We have to show them that's not true.
TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE. Because it's Sunday night, I've gone ahead and contacted my state Attorney General and both senators by email (but come Monday morning, we should all be calling). Here is the email that I wrote to my AG:
Dear Mr. [AG],
As you will be aware, today (February 2, 2025) the Trump administration has granted wide-ranging access to sensitive US Treasury data, including the personal and private information of [state] citizens, to Elon Musk's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Musk is an unelected private citizen who has no legal right to access this data, and is engaging in extensive intimidation and coercion to fulfill his personal and harmful ideological agenda. The present and material harm that this causes to US citizens, [state] residents, and basic laws of government, privacy, and financial security is direct, unconscionable, and actionable. I strongly urge you, in your capacity as [state] Attorney General, to file direct suit against the Trump administration, Elon Musk, the "DOGE" office, and any identifiable individuals who have taken part in this action, in order to protect consumer data, citizen privacy, and basic faith and trust in government.
All the best,
[Qqueenofhades]
Short! To the point! Doesn't waste time, tells him what I want him to do, how Elmo's nonsense directly harms the residents of my state, and why he should take action to stop it! And frankly, given how on-the-ball blue-state AGs have been thus far, they're probably already working on it. You are very welcome to copy-and-paste this message and fill in your AG's last name and your state as appropriate. Super easy to do. Takes five minutes. Call tomorrow.
If you are in a red state, your voice is particularly important right now. The Trumpsters are counting on and are even emboldened by blue state pushback, but you really need to make it start coming from Republican strongholds. Congressional Republicans will only feel the slightest amount of unease about docilely enabling this BS when it starts threatening their own personal power. Hit them where it hurts.
Other lawsuits are coming. Marc Elias, Democratic lawyer extraordinaire, is well aware of this situation and has noted on Bluesky that more lawsuits are in the works. He often wins his cases. This does not mean that you shouldn't loudly make noise elsewhere, but please remember that this is one of those 24-hour periods where, as noted, they are counting on demoralizing you with a nonstop blizzard of bullshit. It does not say anything about how this will play out long-term or the opposition that can and will be mobilized to stop it.
Once again: courage. Take the small steps that you can do today. Then take a breath and get off social media for a little while. Try to take the long view. One step at a time, we will get through this.
Courage.
i hope every single one of you outlives these hateful fucks on the news right now. i hope each and every one of you is able to find joy and support throughout these tumultuous times and i hope you get to live so fiercely as yourself. i hope you wake up one day to news that you’ve outlived those pieces of absolute shit and whether that brings you joy or relief or hope or what have you, i hope you live to see that day
oftentimes when you look back on media you enjoyed as a child it's like hello why did they let a 14 year old fight a dragon? but star wars holds up. luke is 19. his reaction to losing his whole family is to say "alright, let's do this. I'm gonna learn to meditate and hire a sexy drug dealer and his friend who's a furry to be my uber across the galaxy so I can blow up a fascist government" that's something only a 19 y/o would do
You've gotta love Jews more than you hate Nazis.
You've gotta love trans folks more than you hate TERFs.
You've gotta love your unhoused neighbors more than you hate the billionaires.
You've gotta love immigrants more than you hate ICE.
You've gotta love queer kids more than you hate christian fundamentalists.
You've gotta love fat people more than you hate the diet industry.
You've gotta love disabled people more than you hate the insurance companies.
You've gotta love your fellow humans more than you hate the worst that humanity has to offer. You don't have to like every person you're fighting for, and you sure as hell don't have to give up your righteous anger, but hate is ultimately corrosive.
You've gotta love.
If you’re an American federal employee and got an email saying “it’s ok to quit your job.” Do not, for the love of everything, quit your job. This is purely a scare tactic to get rid of as many people as possible without legal consequences.
For no reason here is a library story
It confuses me how normalized it is to be so anti human. The fact that two countries voted no to food being a human right. The fact so many people are against universal healthcare. The fact that it’s normal to believe some people don’t deserve housing because they’re poor, addicts, mentally ill, or any combination of the above. I find it so hard to comprehend that humans who have experienced hunger, thirst, cold, and illness would wish these things upon others, or at the very least not care. It frustrates me beyond belief.
These are the exact values we’re taught as children, to believe all humans are equal in worth and needs, and yet at some point you’re expected to grow out of that illusion. You’re expected to accept that this is what life’s like, that the world is unfair, and attempting to fix it makes you weak and childish.
"guys we're so cooked" "it's wraps" "the end is near" shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up. i say that with love because you are probably saying it out of distress and hopelessness, but for your own well-being and for everyone else's, please stop saying this shit.
no we are not "cooked." and by saying that, by the way, you are giving more power to the neo-nazi oligarchy in charge.
they want you to abandon all hope of a better life. they want you to believe "oh well, it's over, we might as well stop trying to fight back and just resign ourselves to despair forever."
every time you get on tiktok and comment "guys we're so cooked haha it's over," you are feeding into the mindset of hopeless compliance. you are, unknowingly, spreading this infectious idea that just because we've lost one battle, we've lost the entire war.
your words matter. i am saying this out of love and concern for our future, but please stop choosing words of defeat.
#1 rule of freelancing is that you have to be dead fuckin serious about getting paid. do not assume everything is going fine and they will pay you eventually. follow up as many times as you have to until the money is in your bank account. if you catch yourself thinking, “oh, i don’t want to bother them…” kill that thought and b o t h e r them. send uber-polite, grandma-is-watching e-mails along the lines of, “Hi! Hope this note finds you well. Just wanted to check in re: the status of my payment. Do you know when the funds will be available?” every few days until you get your money.
also if you’re freelancing for a client based in new york city they’re legally required to pay you within thirty days of receiving your invoice so put a note on your invoice that says, “Per the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, payment is due within thirty days of completion.” if they go over that deadline or they just don’t pay you at all, you can file a complaint with the city’s department of consumer affairs and have your lost wages recovered. go w/ christ brah.
what is the meaning of life pls
Gay sex and punching Facsists
and my personal favorite:
i love getting validation as a lefty but also learning about new fun ways it continues to suck
Executive orders do not change the Constitution or laws passed in Congress.
Push back. Use your voice. Stay engaged.
DO NOT SUBMIT IN ADVANCE.
There are more of us than them.
Delicious in Dungeon and The Magical Mixture Mill
Might serve as a prequel to the game when you're still adventuring!
u know what makes me cry..... that one van gogh quote about life changing for the better..... “many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. and it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘what do i care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ yes, evil often seems to surpass good. but then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. one morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. and so i must still have hope.” yeah..... Crying....