@mathowie
Or a QR code for a little site with "here's a photo, and some cool info about what I did & where I'm going next. Also, here are some gift ideas if you're inclined (including Venmo)" to make it a little less gauche.

Happy Pride, Beloved Friends and Family

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Don’t forget your bricks today

#pride #fuckYeahTrans #transPride #trans

What if we stayed up till midnight to watch the logos turn gay? 👉👈🥺

- New "razor blade throat" #Covid strain hits US, in CA and NY
- 7th week of new variant surge in Southeast Asia, still rising, hospitals slammed
- Taiwan’s cases, ER visits doubled again
- Covid now rising in Aotearoa, France, India, AU
- CDC ends #Covid vaccines for kids, pregnant people
- Groundbreaking pediatric study: 41-45% #LongCovid prevalence
- Strong Penn data: Covid vax protects kids from #LongCovid

https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-may-29-130160699

It’s almost June, your yearly reminder that there is no pride without trans and non-binary people. Don’t support orgs that sacrifice them for a buck.

Intended for those new to #bootblacking, this class will give you a look at panda’s kit (it’s more than you need, trust), a detailed step by step guide of how to bootblack from the simple to the extra, and a close up look at those steps in practice!

Tickets: https://forbiddentickets.com/events/pandastory/fa2564a8c7 .

I get a % of sales but have paid for other classes because they are great educators.

#Leather #BDSM

'Keep thinking about the goal': 87-year-old U of Sask. grad hopes to help revitalize Cree language
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/louise-fraser-87-year-old-graduate-indian-teacher-education-program-1.7543175?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Canada @canada-cbcnews

"Indigenous Land defenders are not solely responsible for resisting the colonial death march of extractive industry—the frontlines are everywhere. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t ask for justice. Fight alongside those creating it. Land defenders need immediate material support and brave anti-colonial accomplices."

https://mtlcounterinfo.org/all-eyes-on-the-nehirowisiw-aski/

Announcing: https://justaqrcode.com.

Tired of "free" QR code generators that are full of ads and trackers, that share your data, and that want to sell you something? Me too. Here's my act of resistance: I made a one-page site that works entirely in your browser to generate a simple QR code. And that's all it does. You can download the HTML page and run it locally, even. Read the source; nothing up my sleeves. Just a QR code.

My offer to you -- I will continue to pay for the domain name and web hosting for it, myself. If you find it valuable, you can pay it back by creating your own useful thing for the world and releasing it for free. Let's take back the friendly web, one vexingly-monetized utility at a time!

#QRcode #Free #FriendlyWeb #Resistance

no sorry i dont really use instagram, i can contact you via ouija board, spirit box, fluctuations in temperature, flickering lights, and certain rituals. i am also on mastodon.

Every line is pitch-perfect. McSweeney's, you glorious bastards, you've done it again. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-company-reminder-for-everyone-to-talk-nicely-about-the-giant-plagiarism-machine

In case you needed a playbook for responding to would-be dictators. From the NYT:

"The funny thing is that there’s a playbook for overturning autocrats. It was written here in America, by a rumpled political scientist I knew named Gene Sharp. While little known in the United States before his death in 2018, he was celebrated abroad, and his tool kit was used by activists in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East and across Asia. His books, emphasizing nonviolent protests that become contagious, have been translated into at least 34 languages."

“I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb,” a former Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp’s writing."

"A soft-spoken scholar working from his Boston apartment, Sharp recommended 198 actions that were often performative, ranging from hunger strikes to sex boycotts to mock funerals."

“Dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are,” he once said, “and people are never as weak as they think they are.”

"The Democrats’ message last year revolved in part around earnest appeals to democratic values, but one of the lessons from anti-authoritarian movements around the world is that such abstract arguments aren’t terribly effective. Rather, three other approaches, drawing on Sharp’s work, seem to work better."

"The first is mockery and humor — preferably salacious."

"Wang Dan, a leader of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations, told me that in China, puns often “resonate more than solemn political slogans.”

"The Chinese internet for a time delighted in grass-mud horses — which may puzzle future zoologists exploring Chinese archives, for there is no such animal. It’s all a bawdy joke: In Chinese, “grass-mud horse” sounds very much like a curse, one so vulgar it would make your screen blush. But on its face it is an innocent homonym about an animal and thus is used to mock China’s censors."

"Shops in China peddled dolls of grass-mud horses (resembling alpacas), and a faux nature documentary described their habits. One Chinese song recounted the epic conflict between grass-mud horses and river crabs — because “river crab” is a play on the Chinese term for censorship. It optimistically declared the horses triumphant."

http://nytimes.com/2025/05/21/opinion/authoritarianism-democracy-protest.html

Hey everyone,

A new COVID-19 wave is emerging across Asia, driven by Omicron subvariants NB.1.8.1, XDV, and JN.1, especially in China, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is seeing a surge in severe cases, with 30 COVID-related deaths among 81 critical adult patients in the past four weeks.

The proportion of positive respiratory samples has hit a one-year high.

This wave could give the virus more opportunities to mutate.

Wear N95 masks in crowds and indoors for protection.

incredible reporting, no notes https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/14/uber-to-introduce-fixed-route-shuttles-in-major-us-cities-other-ways-to-save/

Object-oriented gender

GenAI's success is dependent on America's cutthroat and puritanical culture around language. We treat all acts of communication as high-stakes gambling – neurotic risk analysis in low-information environments where a misplaced word can have drastic and irreversible consequences. Given that, it's natural that people want to filter their speech through a content-aware fill.

Which is to say, "AI helps neurodivergent people write work emails" is an indictment of work emails, not praise of AI.

I've been hearing some folks reporting issues with search or placing orders on etsy - if you have any problems ordering from me, always feel free to drop an email to illustratedjai at gmail, and I'll do my best to sort the issue out!