Ace Trainer

REMINDER: luigi mangione has been accused of killing the CEO, not convicted, and the evidence presented is extremely questionable. luigi mangione is NOT the claims adjuster until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law, and the widespread presumption of his guilt makes it much more likely he will be falsely convicted.

So JKR is anti asexual now to

Anti-asexual discourse has always been a canary in the mine when it comes to anti-LGBTQ stances. First it's trans people, than ace people, then gender non-conforming people, then bi people... it will just keep going until it's every queer person.

I looked up the tweet to confirm it was real (because even now it was shocking), and she doubles down (as she always does) in follow up tweets.

It’s always felt like the way TERFs hate Asexuals is related to the fact that we kinda fuck with their narrative by existing.

They can’t spread transphobia on the back of gender essentialism that says people with penises are animals with no impulse control, if simultaneously it’s generally understood that some people (which includes some people with penises) just don’t have that sexual impulse.

If asexuality is real then a lot of Radfem rhetoric starts falling apart.

have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

here’s mine

ah here’s the link guys

I based this on a comic I saw on tumblr and obviously on the characters and setting of the "Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want To Be A Magical Girl" pilot animatic by Kiana Khansmith.

(For some reason YouTube links don’t get traction on tumblr, so let’s see if this works!)

Animated in Procreate Dreams.

HUH THIS IS SO PRETTY??? Beaaaaaauutiful animation oh my goddd. amazing work

"Before 1914, the earth had belonged to all. People went where they wished and stayed as long as they pleased. There were no permits, no visas, and it always gives me pleasure to astonish the young by telling them that before 1914, I travelled from Europe to India and America without a passport and without ever having seen one."

-Stefan Zweig

Borders as we know them are a recent concoction.

The passport system as we know it dates to the First World War. ICE was founded in 2003 as part of the so-called "War on Terror," a disaster for freedom in every way.

These institutions are neither timeless nor beneficial nor inevitable.

https://crimethinc.com/borders

JUST FOUND OUT THAT IT’S INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY TODAY!!

hoping that april 6 is treating my fellow ace people well because we own this date 🔥 friendly reminder that you are valid and deserve all the best. don’t let anyone say that asexual people or people who fall under that umbrella aren’t part of the lgbt community. we are. and we always will be 🖤🩶🤍💜

Aika's fine guys dw

i taught a baking class for 12 year olds today and we made your garden variety chocolate chip cookies, but i’m a big believer in Questioning Everything and the who/what/where/why/when/how behind things, so the first part of the class was purposely letting the kids do things the wrong way, to show and explain why we do things the way we do.

“why do we bake cookies at 180 for 9 minutes when we could do 400 for 2 minutes?” -enter the godawful lump of coal with a still gross wet and uncooked inside

“why do we have to scoop out little cookies instead of doing the whole tray?” -ok well that one you can technically do if the spread is even. you just end up with one giant, structurally unsound cookie. “PLEASE CAN WE MAKE GIANT COOKIES” (we did make 1 giant tray cookie)

we talked a lot about why consistency is important, but i don’t think it really hammered home until i said “okay everyone gets ONE cookie, that’s fair, right?” and then handed out cookies of hugely varying sizes. + baked one fat lump of a cookie that still wasn’t done at the 9 minutes, vs the regular one i put in that came out charred by the time the first was actually done.

we also made a row of cookies where each one had one single differing ingredient omitted, like a cookie with no flour, or a cookie with no butter, and laid them all out on a single tray to bake together to see how each ingredient affects the outcome.

two of the little girls added cocoa to their cookie doughs until it matched the colour of each others skin to make best friend cookies, and that almost made me tear up a bit 🥺

got briefly distracted (…for over half an hour…) talking about how eggs form when someone cracked an egg and it had 2 yolks

expertly tolerated being asked how old i am (just turned 31 the other day) which was immediately followed by asking if i watched the moon landing live on tv

was so focused on keeping track of all the kids that in the end i forgot to make a cookie for myself, but it’s ok because one of the girls gave me this

tiny……….

the class went well and they asked if i wanted to do another one in a couple weeks and i said yeah, and they’re taking uh… fuck, what’s the word for inventory when it’s people?? attendance?? whatever, they’re trying to see who’s interested to get a feel of if it’d be 1 three hour class again or if there’s too many kids so we’d do a couple classes. anyways, i love the emails from Concerned Parents.

“will there be knives involved?” we are baking cookies.

“what temperatures does the oven get to/will it be hot enough to burn?” we are baking cookies.

“will there be [insert ingredient used in cookies]?” we are baking cookies.

“are you using fahrenheit or celsius?” ??????? d-does it matter?? it’s going to get Hot. (also celsius; this is ontario)

“are the ovens childproof?” no?? i’m assuming you’re asking if i’m going to let your kids reach into the ovens while i’m staring out a window in another room. i will not be allowing your children to use the ovens. they will not be left unattended. 

“why is the library baking class taking place at the high school?” the library does not have 10 ovens. the library does not even have 1 oven. the high school has many ovens.

“what if i don’t want my child to have cookies? can you let her make muffins instead?” this is a baking class for cookies. we are baking cookies.

“cookies aren’t healthy. why don’t you make [insert whatever]” do you know how many cookies i can make with a $40 budget and a trip to the bulk store? we are making cookies.

“who needs a class to bake a cookie, why not teach something more valuable?” IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE COOKIES, KAREN, IT’S ABOUT FAMILIARIZING CHILDREN WITH THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAKING/COOKING/FOOD, ABOUT TRYING NEW THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES AND REALIZING THAT THE MISTAKES ARE NOT ONLY OKAY TO MAKE BUT VALUABLE IN AND OF THEMSELVES, FAMILIARIZING THEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS CAN COME TOGETHER TO FORM A NEW AND BETTER WHOLE, ALL WHILE HAVING TRYING TO INJECT A MODICUM OF JOY INTO THEIR LITTLE LIVES. SORRY THAT THERE ARE CONCEPTS AT PLAY YOU CAN’T SEEN TO UNDERSTAND HERE. MAYBE YOU SHOULD COME JOIN AND I’LL LET YOU MAKE A FUCKING COOKIE.

(Quds) At Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebration, Ibtehal AbuSaad — a Palestinian employee — interrupted the event in a powerful protest against the company’s complicity in the Israeli genocide unfolding in Gaza.

Facing Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, AbuSaad didn’t hold back: “Shame on you,” she said firmly. “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide.”

Her voice cut through the celebration as she condemned Microsoft’s role in enabling Israeli occupation forces through artificial intelligence technology.

“You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate while Microsoft is helping kill Palestinian children?”

Her act of courage joins a growing wave of tech workers and global voices calling out Western complicity in Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians — the majority of them women and children — have been slaughtered under a brutal siege.

people who complain about "rainbow capitalism" have good points but they're also some of the most obnoxious people to crawl out of the woodwork during pride

because there was a time, really not all that long ago, where you wouldn't see a single goddamn thing with a rainbow (gay) on it. there was no pride merch at the store, companies didn't put up pride flags, there sure as fuck wasn't clothing with pronouns on them or fun (cringey to you) accessories and shoes and all manner of wearable items & collectable items. flags, drinks, signs. there was nothing at big stores, you weren't going to see makeup brands or any brand supporting gays, there wasn't going to be even empty support from alcohol companies - ESPECIALLY not ones beloved by stereotypical rednecks.

these companies might not mean any of the things they say during pride, but i personally don't care all that much. we haven't had this shit long enough for me to be tired of it, to be over the joy of seeing these sections and items for my community just.. out there in the world. loud and easily accessible.

for one month we are EVERYWHERE. we have visibility and we have gay power because the threat of losing hateful dollars apparently does not stand up to the threat of losing gay dollars. these places could roll back their pride stuff, could stop and bow to angry conservatives. and sometimes they do. but a lot of the time they don't. and i'm sorry but that means something to me. this outcome wasn't something i ever imagined as a small-town midwestern kid in a conservative family.

progress is being made. whether you're happy with the pace of it or not it IS happening and i myself am thrilled by every little win we get

It's important to call out rainbow capitalism being harmful where it applies and to push for actual support, not just empty words and gestures. But it's equally as important to remember that this visibility, even if conditional to some extent, is still a huge and relatively recent win. One that deserves to be celebrated and recognized. And while it has its issues, it'd opened a lot of doors.

Behind every rainbow-coloured piece of plastic with a big logo slapped on top of it, there are more and more people who don't have to live in fear of being beaten up because they dare to exist in public spaces owning something that vaguely resembles a rainbow. Behind every soulless and poorly designed T-shirt pushed by Target or Walmart or whatever, there are artists who can happily make their Pride-related merch and sell it at cons and on the Internet.

I remember being a young queer person, 10 years ago or so, and seeing a rainbow pin for the very first time at some convention among the merch sold by one of the smaller artists. I remember seeing it and being so incredibly happy. 3 years later, at that same con, nearly every stand and artist had at least one rainbow-coloured item. And after 2 or 3 more years, rainbow pins and other stuff was no longer restricted only to spaces like conventions and Pride marches. If you were lucky, you could get it in one of those small souvenir shops or in your local mall! And trust me, only a few years earlier that was absolutely unimaginable.

What we see as normal now was so difficult to even hope for not so long ago. It's actually a little insane to realize how things changed in so little time. It's easy to take it for granted. That's precisely why we can't take it for granted, though. It may seem small and silly, but that's how it works. Once you set things in motion, once you introduce something and treat it as normal, as something that just exists in common spaces, it's nearly impossible to go back to how things were. That's why conservatives push so hard against it, too! They know, on some level, that it's a losing battle. There's no going back and that opens so many more possibilities for the future.

Step by step, we'll get there.

Yes, but... Rainbow capitalism can be a bellweather. In June 2024, I saw a lot less Pride merchandise out in stores that could be consistently trusted to have a good display in prior years. In the last few months, I've been seeing less and less rainbow things among general products, and I've been seeing the little Progress flags in some storefront windows vanish during renovation or even just a routine seasonal deep clean, and not come back afterwards. I genuinely would not be surprised if June 2025 came with no seasonal uptick in Rainbow Capitalism. It's kind of scary how fast the corporate weather can turn

Respectfully: It's the canary in the coal mine that social support is regressing dramatically and if that isn't the focus, if alarm bells aren't being raised in that direction, you're looking the wrong way. It's focusing on the symptom, not treating the highly treatable disease directly.

this happened to my friends Jonathan and Thomas actually

I did not know this, but it makes so much sense, and it's SO good to learn fanfiction history.

Is THAT where "No [X], we die like men" comes from?????

respectfully sir. What??

i wish there was an easier way to tell the difference between an "if it sucks hit da bricks" situation and a "sometimes being an adult means doing things that you dont wanna" situation

The best answer to this that I've seen is "You are free to do whatever you like. You must only live with the consequences."

"If it sucks, hit da bricks" is for when you realize that you actually definitely can live with the consequences of Not Doing The Thing.

"Sometimes being an adult means doing things that you don't wanna" is for when you've thought it over and it turns out you would strongly prefer NOT to live with the consequences of Not Doing The Thing.