Tweet 1: I Can See A Lot Of People Either Avoiding Plan B & Ending Up Pregnant Or Attempting To Take

“The common pattern throughout human history, including communities where significant elements of exchange existed, was for production, exchange and consumption to be embedded in a context of social relationships, religion, love and family life. If anything, the common denominator throughout human history — even in our society, despite the capitalist state’s attempt either to destroy it or harness it as an auxiliary of the cash nexus — has been what Graeber calls “the communism of everyday life.” Every society in human history has been a foundation built out of this everyday communism of family, household, self-provisioning, gifting and sharing among friends and neighbors, etc., with a scaffolding of market exchange and hierarchies erected on top of it.”

— Kevin Carson, The Communism of Everyday Life

Ok cosplayers, it has come to my attention that a lot of you don’t know what this stuff is. Sit down and let me learn you a thing. This stuff here is called Frog Juice (there’s no real frogs in it). It’s originally for stuff like vinyl signs (my dad owns a sign company, so I grew up with this stuff), but it’s even more useful for a wide range of cosplay stuff. 

Since it’s designed to protect outdoor vinyl signs, it can do a whole hell of a lot. It dries super fast (three minutes until it isn’t tacky) and shiny, so it’s perfect for anything that’s supposed to look like metal, ice, gems, etc. It’s incredibly strong and weatherproofs your stuff against ANYTHING, rain, snow, UV rays (so it doesn’t fade in sunshine), sleet, hail, whatever. It’s flexible too, so your foam will still bend and move with you without cracking. Not only that, but since it’s an aerosol, you can’t miss patches and it leaves no brush strokes, and it goes on so thin you can’t see it’s there. It doesn’t smudge, smear, scratch, or leave fingerprints, so your stuff can go a whole weekend at a con and still look brand new. 

The kicker? It’s cheap, and a can will last you forever. I kidnapped this one brand new from my dad, and I’ve so far used it (in double coats, which is unnecessary, but I like to be on the safe side) on a full set of armour, three pairs of bracers, a top hat, pauldrens, two bows, and a pair of greaves. And there’s still plenty in the can. Did I mention it can also be used to seal foam in a single, flexible coat that can then be painted over, so you don’t have to spend two days messing with glue and whatnot?

TL;DR - If you need a foam sealer, a top coat, weatherproofing, or any kind of shiny finisher, GET SOME FUCKING FROG JUICE (the brand I use can be purchased here: http://www.signwarehouse.com/FL-CC-p-FL-FROG-12Z.html)

Not even half a day after the ceasefire, armed Israeli soldiers are once again shooting rubber-coated metal bullets and throwing stun grenades at unarmed Palestinian civilians in Al Aqsa mosque while they were praying, just like they have been doing to the worshippers there multiple times these past 2 months.

Source: X

Despite their enormous ecological values, new research reveals we don’t understand how most arachnid species are faring right now – or do much to protect them.

Spiders need our help, and we may need to overcome our biases and fears to make that happen.“The feeling that people have towards spiders is not unique,” says Marco Isaia, an arachnologist and associate professor at the University of Turin in Italy. […] A new paper by Isaia and 18 other experts digs into the conservation status of Europe’s 4,154 known spider species and finds that only a few have any protection at the national level. Most have never even been adequately assessed or studied in detail, so we don’t know much about their extinction risk or their ecological needs.

Italy, for example, is home to more than 1,700 spider species, but fewer than 450 have had their conservation status assessed and only two have any legal protection in that country. Greece, meanwhile, has nearly 1,300 spider species within its borders, but scientists have only assessed the conservation needs of 32 of them. None are legally protected. […] “What surprised us most while assembling the data was the extremely poor level of knowledge about the conservation status, extinction risk and factors threatening the survival of European spider species, despite Europe being one of the most studied regions of the world in terms of biodiversity,” says Filippo Milano, the study’s lead author […].

And of course, this is not unique to Europe; other countries and continents fail to protect arachnids, and for similar reasons.

“Spiders are understudied, underappreciated and under attack by both the climate crisis and humans affecting our environment,” says spider expert and science communicator Sebastian Alejandro Echeverri, who was not affiliated with the study. “These are one of the most diverse groups of animals that we don’t really think about on a day-to-day basis. There’s like 48,000-plus species, but my experience is that most people don’t really have a sense of how many are in their area. In the United States, for example, we have just 12 spiders on the endangered species list out of the thousands of species recorded here.” This lack of information or protection at the national level affects international efforts. At the time the research was conducted the IUCN Red List, which includes conservation status assessments for 134,400 species around the world, covered just 301 spider species, eight of which are from Europe. That number has since increased — to all of 318 species from the order Araneae.

As we see with so many other wide-ranging species, a transnational border is often not a spider’s friend. The paper identifies several examples of species protected in one country but not its neighbor, despite being found in both places. According to the paper only 17 spider species are protected by conservation legislation in two or more European countries.

“Animals aren’t limited by our political lines on a map,” notes Echeverri. […]

And maybe, along the way, their work can help inspire people who fear spiders to look at them in a different light — or even to help look for them, like the Map the Spider project that asks citizen scientists to upload locations of the complex webs woven by elusive purse-web spiders. […]

“Focusing on spiders has been a very important choice […],” Isaia says. “You may study their web, their venom, their bizarre behaviors, the interactions between different species, their role as predators, their amazing taxonomical and functional diversity, their key role in the maintaining ecosystem equilibrium. You may also use them as sources of inspiration in architecture and visual arts. Aren’t these good reasons to find them attractive?”

——-

Headline and text published by: John R. Platt. “We Need to Talk About Spider Conservation.” As republished by Salon, 23 May 2021. Originally published by Platt at The Revelator, 10 May 2021.

French senator Claude Malhuret sums up the world made by the current American administration, 5 March 2025

The #1400challenge - How to turn stimulus checks into collective power | Inhabit

The last year has demonstrated just how razor thin our margin of survival is—from the brutality of the police to the viciousness of the virus, from the absurd ups-and-downs of the economy to the glaring incompetence of the government.

Now that they’ve been forced to send some cash our way, we’d like to propose a little something they maybe didn’t expect. The idea is simple: what if we took our stimulus checks and put them towards collective use?

In recent weeks Inhabit has been collaborating with groups around the country to put together a series of kits called the #1400challenge. The result is a handful of introductory guides for a variety of collective projects—from soundsystems and meshnets to pop-up dwellings and community gyms.

Each project is based on a proven and replicable idea, a working model that has already seen action in the streets and in neighborhoods. And each could be a jumping off point for new designs, new skillsets, new encounters, and newly expanded frontlines in the battle for the future.

No doubt many of us will have to spend our checks on necessities like groceries, rent, medical bills—all the bullshit it takes to stay alive in this bullshit world. But for those who can, and especially for those who want to pool resources, the opportunity is clear: invest in collective infrastructure that increases our shared capabilities, that augments our ability to live and to fight.

Here’s our wager. We have to translate isolated, temporary solutions to individual problems into the material and ethical basis for building collective power. We need autonomous solutions that scale at the level of neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Our power together unlocks more potential than we have alone.

It’ll take more than a stuck container ship to break the hold of the economy over our lives. Design and build new ways of living together, that lessen our dependence on their system at the same time that we cultivate trust in one another. Leverage all the means at our disposal—including their cold hard cash—to bring out the beauty, dignity, and creativity of our shared existence.

Read more…

If you want even more ideas, check out my #practical tag

Beethoven — Fur Chiken

Noticed something a little funky in the world around you and want to figure out what's up? Especially if there might be something you ought to be doing about it? Not sure what information sources to trust these days? If you're in the US, federal agencies like NOAA, USGS, EPA and more collect massive amounts of scientific data every day, much of which is publicly available online - if you know where to look.

A PDF version with clickable links is available for free on my itchio page (quakeandquiver); I'll add a direct link in a reblog.

Hey. Look at me. Please leave yourself a note somewhere you'll see it later that says "it is going to take years if not decades to get the United States government to the level of functionality it had in November of 2024." If we elect a democrat in 2028, we are not going to be up and running by 2032.

Please make sure you have a reminder in your phone reminding you to not look at 2028/32/36 Democratic candidates and say "why are they not promising/delivering Cool Shit?" because you are going to understand that to get Cool Shit we must have competent people running a decently funded government, and we are not going to have that.

We are not getting UBI. We are not getting single payer healthcare. We are not getting free college or free preschool. We are not redistributing wealth on a large scale. We are not getting free internet. We are not getting ranked choice voting.

If we are lucky, we are going to get an IRS that can collect taxes, qualified schoolteachers, research grants, Social Security, and a government that thinks maybe it should be a priority for people around the worlds to not have AIDS, malaria or TB.