i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

For those of y'all in the US:

Text RBG to 50409, or to resistbot on Messenger, Twitter, or Telegram, to send a petition to ask our leaders to wait for inauguration day to choose a Supreme Court nominee, following the precedent set four years ago

I'm cynically not sure how much good it will do (or how necessary given who my representatives are) but it felt better than doing nothing.

Edit, mainly here and not in comments because I didn't want to ruin editability of Alex's updates, lol -- And yes, it's high demand right now GEE I WONDER WHY ahem. The text version had me queued for maybe an hour, but it eventually let me do it.)

I have been too busy a) watching all the drama, and b) being roped into providing tech support for my mom, to catch up on my reading page, so I don't know how well talked about this is, but given that it's made fucking international news...

Ravelry, as of yesterday morning, has instituted a policy banning support of Trump or the current administration. Because it is unequivocally support of white supremacy. And because Casey and Jess and the other rav TPTB are made of fucking awesome. I mean, it's basically an extension of the "no hate speech" rule, but it makes a very clear line in the sand and stands there like Captain America ready to punch nazis.

There has been (predictable) backlash. Everything from "its meeeeeean to call all Trump supporters racists" (which the policy didn't; someone could not care about the racist aspects of the administration, but that is tacit support) and "I will delete my account" (from people who haven't used the site much, and also in many cases need to ask how) and "so much for free speech and inclusivity" (because rav is the government, totes, and because it's so important to be nice to racist assholes) and "keep politics out of my knitting" (as many people have pointed out, knitting has been political for a long time; as I pointed out in a twitter thread, being a queer disabled woman means I don't have the option of apolitical spaces) to Russian bots and spammers.

And I do feel sorry for those political conservatives who are decent people and do not support trump, because I imagine they feel the same frustration that I feel, as a sometimes Christian, to the frothing homophobic forced-birth assholes that claim to be Christian. But one key aspect of this policy is it *explicitly* is not about conservatives or republicans -- hell, it doesn't even prevent trump fans from being members, just from actively trump-ing, although I suspect the vocal trump supporters are going to leave -- and it explicitly says that it is not ok to try to entrap people into violating the policy, or to antagonize people.

Honestly, it treats Trump fans a hell of a lot better than most trump fans treat anyone who is not cishet white Christian. Not that they see it that way.

Anyway. Back to the main point, which is this: I am fucking proud of Ravelry for doing this, and although I can't provide the staff (all five of them) and main-board volunteers with sufficient booze for the whackatroll they've been doing in the last ~36 hours, I can love them fiercely.

I haven't been following my reading page so this may be common knowledge -- but:

Avoid the book "To Siri With Love" AT ALL COSTS. It is an ableist POS written by an abusively anti-autism "mom".

Good #actuallyautistic review here:

https://storify.com/KaelanRhy/boycotttosiri

I know I've mostly gone radio silent on social media since, oh, last Tuesday; but I wanted to say holy jumping crabcakes you guys, "The Arrival" (sci-fi first contact movie out in US theaters right now) is fucking *amazing*. (With a bonus of "lingistics that didn't piss me off"; there was a tiny smidgen of the multlingual-linguist thing, but otherwise good.)

...the current Humble Bundle is a bunch of Star Wars games, including KOTOR.

Not that anyone on my flist likes either computer games or Star Wars...

Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:

At the moment, Amazon has Firefly for $5.99 (88% off!), and Serenity for the same price (only 54% but still)

and also the HP 8-movie collection for $39.99 (49% off)

No idea how long these will last but it might be relevant to some of y'alls' interests.

SBTB is also doing a series of daily giveaways for Thanksgivukkah, and today's giveaway includes a $50 amazon giftcard nom.

Hey guys,

IFOPA - the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association -- is holding a raffle to raise money for FOP research and programs/services for the FOP community.

FOP isn't a very common disorder, and so it doesn't get a lot of attention; but for those who have it, the research is extremely important, given how crippling the condition is / can be. If you want to know more about FOP, the post here covers, er, what it's like for one person, at least. http://ifopa.org has more information as well.

Tickets for the raffle run $5 each, or $25 for a group of 7 tickets. You are also more than welcome to donate more, or donate separately without being part of the raffle. Prizes and a better description of the raffle can be found here. Tickets can be purchased online, or by phone (number on same page), or by contacting ysobel

There will be four winners of the raffle, which will conclude at the beginning of November. But there will also be a more important winner: IFOPA, and the FOP community.

If you can spare it, please consider purchasing a ticket (or more than one). And please feel free to boost the signal!

LJ is going to be making gender information a) required, and b) binary, with no option for other gender identification (despite requests for same as far back as I've been *on* LJ, which I missed posting about my anniversary of) or for not choosing to specify.

More information here: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/366609.html

(Also, this seems an appropriate time to mention that I have metric buttloads of Dreamwidth invite codes. Where the awesome ptb are doing their best to treat users like, y'know, actual people, not just targets for advertising.)

For those of you using core1 styles imported from other sites, please see http://dw-styles.dreamwidth.org/5062.html for why your style is now somewhat broken. ^_^

(I do encourage people to shift over to core2, as it is Made Of Awesome, but I also know not everyone will.)