Joy Sullivan, from "(Luck I)", Instructions for Traveling West

what i've been up to the past 20 minutes

THE ERA OF VANISHING HAS BEGUN

They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.

Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.

She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.

Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.

They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.

A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS

Alireza Doroudi is gone too.

He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.

ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.

Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.

Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.

They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.

WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME

While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.

In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.

In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.

And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.

This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME

Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.

This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.

They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.

The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.

This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.

They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.

SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.

There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.

ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.

They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.

We cannot let them win.

This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.

This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.

Let the record show:

They took people.

And we did not look away.

We saw it.

We named it.

We raised hell.

And we did not stop.

(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)

Prudence + definitely not being annoyed or uncomfortable, not even a little x)

Hey i’m a fashion design student so i have tons and tons of pdfs and docs with basic sewing techniques, pattern how-tos, and resources for fabric and trims. I’ve compiled it all into a shareable folder for anyone who wants to look into sewing and making their own clothing. I’ll be adding to this folder whenever i come across new resources

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16uhmMb8kE4P_vOSycr6XSa9zpmDijZSd?usp=sharing

Updated just now with new hand sewing resources (mainly buttonholes) and textbook pdfs on fashion history, fashion illustration, and thinking through designs!

OP I owe you my life

OP you are the greatest person currently in my life. You beautiful, thoughtful creature.

And if I said o brother where art thou is the only odyssey adaptation to correctly understand the gods. What then.

I'd ask for an elaboration because dang I wanna know. I only read the odyssey recently, been a while since I last watched obwat, I'd love to hear an analysis of the parallels bc I can't remember enough to pick out characters as deity parallels.

The thing is I don't think there are deity parallels because the supernatural is clearly the Christian God and Devil and this is because OBWAT was written by people who never read the odyssey, they just threw it together based on vibes! and because of that they created a form of supernatural narrative where it's unclear if supernatural happenings are truly the work of a deity or devil, or if they're just a manifestation of humanity. Much like the Homeric epics.

we’re all boring to someone, annoying to someone, ugly to someone, but it’s not that deep

Just FYI...

Thank goodness someone is providing this information, as we can no longer count on the CDC providing accurate information about the spread of contagious diseases under Trump and JFK, Jr.

It's almost like Trump and JFK, Jr. want to make Americans sick.

Reblog to let prev know their presence is wanted

{insp.}

Tomato soup and grilled cheese (<3)

John + Rodney

I had no intention of watching SGA way back when it started airing. But somehow I stumbled into @sheafrotherdon’s A Farm in Iowa ‘verse when she was still posting it on LJ, and… I’ve probably watched the show through five+ times at this point.

This episode, though. *chef’s kiss* My favorite.

ShadowDragon sells a tool called SocialNet that streamlines the process of pulling public data from various sites, apps, and services. Marketing material available online says SocialNet can “follow the breadcrumbs of your target’s digital life and find hidden correlations in your research.” In one promotional video, ShadowDragon says users can enter “an email, an alias, a name, a phone number, a variety of different things, and immediately have information on your target. We can see interests, we can see who friends are, pictures, videos.”

The leaked list of targeted sites include ones from major tech companies, communication tools, sites focused around certain hobbies and interests, payment services, social networks, and more. The 30 companies the Mozilla Foundation is asking to block ShadowDragon scrapers are ​​Amazon, Apple, BabyCentre, BlueSky, Discord, Duolingo, Etsy, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, FlightAware, Github, Glassdoor, GoFundMe, Google, LinkedIn, Nextdoor, OnlyFans, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Strava, Substack, TikTok, Tinder, TripAdvisor, Twitch, Twitter, WhatsApp, Xbox, Yelp, and YouTube.

GOOD NEWS FOR CRAB FANS EVERYWHERE

Please click through and read the article. It just keeps getting better and better.

"Can you describe your prior work experience?"

"I'm a professional crab botherer."

Fuck yeah!!!!

Crab detected! ✅