Notices by Eldan Goldenberg (eldang@weirder.earth)

mu.zaitcev.nu's timeline consists mostly of Gab content, and much of the rest comes from prominent transphobe instances. If your instance is blocking Gab, you're also better off without this one.

And here is some tiny #florespondence from the Mount Si conservation area.

All done. All requests from Gab's user agent are now blocked as per https://social.mootech.eu/@maxine/102412789235076104 and kiwifarms' IP address range as reported in https://glitch.social/@kyzh/102435853605463552 is also blocked.

I don't want to oversell either measure--anyone can get round them by starting an account on an instance we trust and not drawing attention to theirself--but these at least put a higher barrier between :weirder_earth: and the most :DumpsterFire: instances than mere blocks would. #WeirderAdmin

I'm seeing others share alternatives to Amazon as a way of taking the Prime Days strike further, so I want to share my own faves. The last thing that I used Amazon for was sending birthday presents to my brother & nephews in London, because that's so much more efficient than shipping them from here. But a couple of years ago I found https://www.hive.co.uk/ - just like the US https://www.indiebound.org/ , it lets you order from local bookshops there and have things shipped.

These aren't the only ways to get involve, but they're the ones I have at the top of my list right now. Please do what you can, and if you have other ideas please share those.

As an immigrant myself, whose foreignness is obvious the moment I open my mouth, I am afraid to get too directly in ICE's faces. So I'm signing up for the "deportation defense" side of things, which is focussed on spreading word about targeted individuals/families to get better outcomes for them, faster: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/waisn-deportation-defense-webinar-trainings

I hope it can also be a way to recruit more people into this campaign.

As I understand it, "rapid response" involves actually going to ICE actions to observe, document and connect victims to legal support. Here's a link to trainings coming up for Washington's: https://weirder.earth/web/statuses/102299666107798737

The other responses I know of are much more local, but I bet if you're elsewhere in the US there are equivalents. The Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network is organising "rapid response" and "deportation defense" teams to help keep individuals out of ICE's clutches. This also has a systemic effect by making it harder and more expensive to fill the camps.

First of all, a coalition of groups led by some Japanese-American orgs is organising an action at Fort Sill this weekend: https://twitter.com/lindasachiko/status/1140636081353871361 (sorry about the :birdsite: link, it's the best I have). If, like me, you can't go in person, there is also a fundraiser to support from afar: https://www.gofundme.com/japanese-american-protest-at-fort-sill

I wish I could point to some magical action that would stop this grotesquery on its own, but there is no such thing and the absence of that is not an excuse to do nothing. I'm assuming that you're already talking to your elected reps about this, so here are some additional things you can do (these tend to be local to me - please reply with equivalents where you are and I'll boost those):

Speaking as a Jew: what :vomiting_statue_of_liberty: wants to do with Fort Sill is to make it into a concentration camp, like it was for the Chiricahua Apache in the 19th Century, Japanese immigrants during WW2, and like Dachau, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt etc were for my people then. This is not an exaggeration or a trivialisation of the Holocaust, it is a chilling parallel.

We said "Never again", and it's happening again. We must act (...)

Weather report for location (my front porch)

BTW, don't confuse the "womens' art" feed that has sadly turned out to be transphobic with @womensart - that one is run by a trans woman and exclusively boosts the women artists of the Fediverse. In fact, if you're looking for substitutes for the now discredited account, it's a pretty good start.

#florespondence from Ostia Antica, which was the port city for ancient Rome.

I want to revive something Teju Cole used to do on birbsite: everyone post photos of whatever's blooming around you, tagged with #florespondence and where you are. Please boost and take part. Making it a reply to me is optional but I'll always enjoy florespondence from all over. Here are the #Seattle daffodils that prompted me to get things started.

PB: remember that one of Orwell's key insights was simply that the language we use matters.

Some numbers:

1) Jeff Bezos personally possesses $130 BILLION and the poor diddums can't figure out what to do with it. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/05/03/26132883/what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-jeff-bezos

2) The amount of additional resources required to end homelessness in King County is $214 million / year https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/more-affordable-housing-only-way-to-solve-seattles-homeless-crisis-new-report-says/ ie 0.16% of Bezos's pile.

3) The tax bill over which Amazon has thrown a tantrum and is trying to extort the city is only even 10% of _that_ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-pauses-plans-for-seattle-office-towers-while-city-council-considers-business-tax/

Fuck this guy.