Cats Be Like

My review of Listen, and why it's better than Blink.

Last year I did a few write-ups and drawings about some lady fighters from history who fought openly as their gender (there are plenty of disguised-as-a-man soldiers and plenty of trans soldiers, but those are outside the scope of this series).  This is by no means an exhaustive list; there were plenty of great figures that my schedule didn’t permit me to tackle (at least not yet).  But as Women’s History Month gets started tomorrow, I thought y’all might enjoy reading about some of history’s toughest broads.

This is literally the kind of monstrous atrocity Stalin and his lackeys pulled in the gulags.

Trans Woman Dies in ICE Custody On the First Day of Pride

"For weeks, she pleaded for medical help."

A Salvadoran trans woman died in ICE custody on June 1, the first day of Pride Month. 

Johana Medina was a migrant from El Salvador. She was seeking asylum in the U.S.

Known to her friends as Joa, Johana passed away Saturday night from complications due to HIV/AIDS. Her death was announced on the Diversidad Sin Fronteras Facebook page on Sunday. 

In a statement, Casa Migrante trans leader Grecia, who was close with Johana, said that ICE agents ignored Johana’s pleas for help as her illness became worse while in custody.

Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs is a stop-motion cartoon from Wes Anderson about how dogs are man's best friend. The film nearly reviews itself from th...

Wherein I review Wes Anderson’s ridiculously charming Isle of Dogs, and reluctantly examine the question of cultural appropriation I’m so not properly handled to discuss.

Launch the nukes, humanity deserves it.

We’ve Always Hated Girls Online: A Wayback Machine Investigation

Searching for a teen girl who was once internet famous for her coding skills, a former fan uncovers a story of harassment.

It wasn’t the graphics, or the jokes, or the N*Sync lyrics people had a problem with. It was that view counter, at the bottom of her home page. That view counter was into the hundreds of thousands, and that made some people very, very angry.

It’s an interesting reminder of how small the internet was in the late 90s. That this middle school girl could reach so many people by simply understanding how to make a website look good is remarkable. Her website truly didn’t have anything spectacular or unique or even that interesting on offer. Her popularity was based almost solely on her design abilities, and that is damn impressive. She was at the forefront of a revolution none of us were even aware was happening, and she was internet famousbecause of it. “I started it a long time ago, when the Internet was like slowly becoming popular, and webpages were like…whoa,” she wrote on her FAQ page. “Heheh so I think my page was like ‘extraordinary’ then, and it got people kinda hooked on it…now its just like any other webpage, but people come to it anyways.”

People came, in droves, and they signed her guestbook, and in their messages they berated Sara for her popularity. She wrote in her diary about the people who were harassing her about her extraordinarily high page views. She lamented (half-heartedly) that she wished she’d never added a view counter. She defended her popularity, and then down-played it, and then defended it again. She angrily, reluctantly, offered advice to other webmasters on getting views for their own pages: sign other people’s guestbooks, update often.

And then, the next entry, the mea culpa. The apologies for getting angry, for writing “all that stuff.”

If the internet is an archive of the things we make then it’s also an archive of the abuse we endure there, and our apologies for feeling outraged.

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alizalichtxo

I hope everyone will read this and share it. I posted the full piece. Hamza Howidy is a Palestinian from Gaza City. He is an accountant and a peace advocate. I follow Hamza on X and his tweets are very important. Unfortunately, he is being blocked. In his words, “But the protesters aren’t interested in peace. Some of the groups have been blocking Palestinian peace activists like me—and I am from Gaza, the very place they claim to care about! Instead of blocking peace activists, they should be inviting us to join these protests and guide them in the right direction—a place without hatred with a focus on calling for the release of the hostages who have been held captive by Hamas for more than 210 days.”

Black Panther

[SPOILERS, but come on, you've seen this one already, right?] You are a good man with a good heart. It is hard for a good man t...

My review of Black Panther -- and why it’s the finest film of the MCU.

Register to Vote Online in Georgia - Vote.org

Register to vote online with Vote.org. Fast, free, secure and nonpartisan. It takes less than 2 minutes to register to vote. Get started now.

The runoff for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats is January 5th. This will decide who will control the Senate, and if Georgians deliver for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock the same way they delivered for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they will deliver control of the Senate to the Democrats. Why does that matter? Well, if Republicans and Mitch McConnell retain control of the Senate, they will be able to effectively suffocate anything and everything that the Biden Administration is planning to do in order to heal this nation from four years of Donald Trump. Republican control of the Senate will immediately kill any hopes we have of progressive policies getting through Congress and to President Biden’s desk and will prevent the confirmation of Biden’s appointees. It means that Mitch McConnell will be rewarded for the brazen hypocrisy of filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court just days before the November election.

Georgia, we need you again. And we know that we can count on you. If you were part of the remarkable voters that flipped Georgia from red to blue and elected Joe BIden and Kamala Harris, don’t forget to vote on January 5th. If you didn’t vote because you didn’t think it would make a difference, it did. And you can still make a difference. If you live in Georgia, you have until DECEMBER 7th to register to vote in the runoff election. But don’t wait…do it now! You can do it online, right here, and it only takes two minutes. If you weren’t old enough to vote Donald Trump out of office on November 3rd but turn 18 before January 5th, you also have until DECEMBER 7th to register to vote! 

Georgia was instrumental in electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and, more importantly, evicting Donald Trump from the White House. On January 5th, America needs you one more time. Take the power of Senate control from the hands of Mitch McConnell. It will make Mitch McConnell sad. Don’t you want to make Mitch McConnell sad? VOTE on January 5th. You can still register in Georgia until DECEMBER 7th. 

We’re sorry that you have to put up with two extra months of campaign ads, but we appreciate you and we know we can count on you, Georgia. Register until December 7th. VOTE ON JANUARY 5th!

We need to hit our goal of $80,000 by February 1, or we won’t be able to:

Upgrade our stock footage to HD for a theater-quality production

Professionally compose sound production for an original soundtrack

Finish the film in the next few months

Show the film at space industry conferences in 2015

Begin premiering the film in theaters nationwide

Release all stock/archival NASA footage by the end of 2015

Send copies of the film to Congress

Reward our backers

This project needs your help. If we don’t successfully reach out funding goal, the campaign is reset back to zero and we have to start all over again.

Please share and support our Kickstarter campaign any way you can, and urge larger or more widespread donations from everyone you know. A little goes a long way, and there’s strength in numbers.

Use your voice so we can let the world (and Congress) hear it. Join in the #FightforSpace.