Katherine Villyard @kvillyard@librem.one

The woman who sued McDonald's after suffering severe burns from hot coffee spent years as a "frivolous lawsuit" punchline -- but returning to the case makes it clear that instead, it's a cautionary tale about the dangers of believing corporate disinformation campaigns:

https://www.truthorfiction.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit/

RT @rbreich
News flash: If you criminalize providing gender affirming care for trans youth, you're not the party of "limited government." You're the party of social control. And cruelty.

I think sometimes white straight cis neurotypical people forget that there’s fan cannon because we don’t have representation like y’all do so we have to make our own. Samus is trans for the same reason Piccolo is black and Wednesday is autistic. We want to relate to characters that we like just like you get to. So just let us enjoy things please

The "parents' rights" movement is a war against education, designed to keep a whole generation ignorant. This scares me more than anything else.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/06/slavery-was-wrong-5-other-things-educators-wont-teach-anymore/

What is true... is true!

Today on the first day of Women’s History Month I learned that after no fault divorce was finally legalized in 1970, female suicide rates dropped 20%🤯

The "strong 1950s family unit" that the GOP is nostalgic about ignores record high female suicide, suffocating domestic violence, & zero female financial autonomy.

But maybe that's GOP's goal all along?🤔
#WHM2023

Today, American Nazis are planning a nationwide “Day of Hate”, targeting Jews and Jewish places of worship, businesses, and homes. They want to “send a message.” They want to make us afraid.

Today is a very good day to punch a Nazi.

Want a FREE ebook? It’s available here for a limited time: https://storyoriginapp.com/giveaways/7d75f5ba-4e74-11ed-b9b7-8b4e5d55c782

4.8 stars on IndieReader, a Booklife editors pick, and Kirkus liked it, too.

#books #freebooks #sff #sffshortstories #booklover

Tell your friends. 😉

This is really bad and people outside SFF short fiction need to recognize it for the dead mine canary it is (thread in link)

RT @ ShackletonCI@twitter.com

If you aren't in the SF/F industry this tweet might not look like a big deal.

This is a crisis.

Clarkesworld is the fastest/most efficient publisher for responding to story submissions (also one of the best-paying).

They have been overwhelmed by AI-generated spam. https://twitter.com/shackletonci/status/1627730312925966336?s=46&t=7ihhpI7dUuwK4WRKfLbNog

服了

Love to see how mad the Onion is here. More folks should be this mad about this.

If you want a really solid critique, it's actually here too. They put their *all* into this piece and while it's sarcastic as usual, it really does cover *so many* aspects of how horrible the current trend of "news" in this space has been.

Go read it:
https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997

It's easy to see how Twitter's anti-woke obsession drove away key user segments in a matter of months, and made the business not viable. It's harder to see how newspapers have done the same exact thing to themselves, slowly, over 50 years, as the demographics of who buys news, has changed beneath their feet.

If your business depends on everyone paying a monthly fee, to hear rich white men lie about and harm them... I don't know how to tell you this, but that business is not long for this world.

Banksy put up Valentine's Day art of a woman who seems to have pushed her abuser (presumably now dead) into a freezer. She has a black eye and a missing tooth. But "not long after it appeared, the district council dismantled it — prompting an outcry from residents who called it overreach by their local government at the expense of art that could draw tourists to Margate, Kent."

I've seen people say things like "the GOP's latest culture war is meant to distract you while they [something evil]." I think this is unhelpful framing.

First, their "culture wars" almost always have real world implications. Objecting to drag shows, trans gender affirming care, and "woke environmentalism" all have very real world consequences for everyone.

Second, even the dumbest culture war battles the GOP starts - e.g., "M&Ms aren't sexy enough - are part of a broader campaign of bodily control over women and other minorities.

The GOP's "culture wars" are not a distraction. They're part of the right-wing assertion of hegemony over bodies, politics, and policy, and should be recognized as such.

#BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #politics #hegemony

Elon Musk is flooding people’s Twitter feeds with his posts because he’s just that insecure.

Imagine if he were allowed to put a chip in your brain. No thank you!

For any trans people who need to hear this:

Your body is beautiful. You're worthy of being desired, if that's something you want.

Whether you choose to transition (and in whatever direction you want), and wherever you are in that process -- you're seen, you are believed, and I'm proud to be your sibling.

When you look in the mirror, you deserve to hear, "Hey, Beautiful." If you don't hear it in your voice, hear it in mine.

Your strength is incredible. You come from a long tradition of transgender people, stretching back to the earliest days of humanity.

Let the haters shout into the void. You don't need to. The Void already loves you. ✨​

(cis people please boost)

Hot stuff! Postcard from my collection, mailed 1907.