Nec Hoc Nec Ilud

* They have just purged most of the higher echelon career diplomats in the State Department, including folks who've been there since I was a toddler, people who've served through Nixon until just now. I know I keep saying this, but this is all absolutely terrifying. They've basically summarily fired most of the people who simultaneously know what they are doing and had the power to effect things.

It looks like they are trying to get rid of them so no one knowledgeable who actually cares about the best interest of the United States will be in the way of Exxon and Putin's foreign policy directives in the wake of Rex Tillerson's arrival.

* "Did a dictionary diss Trump team's 'alternative facts'?:" http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/alternative-facts-dictionary-conway-234005

* If you've got time and spoons, now looks like a really good time to call the White House to object to us returning to a policy of torture, rendition, and black sites.

* Props to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand for having the most spine amoung the senate Democrats. I am disappointed in all the rest of you. Be better. Your country needs you.

* "Donald Trump is now president — here are 8 guides to help you resist his agenda:" http://brigdh.tumblr.com/post/156329735276/yourenotaloneinthis-the-movemnt-donald-trump

* NoDAPL. "It’s important that donations are made to a variety of these campaigns:" https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/156428233978/thepoliticsoffrybread-me-non-natives-esp

* People responding to yet another attack on using inclusive language in the queer community: https://vaspider.tumblr.com/post/156256903546/how-about-you-dont-use-the-word-queer-to-describe

*****

* Suicide Crisis numbers: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/153016816845/non-us-crisis-line-list

* "Donald Trump is now president — here are 8 guides to help you resist his agenda:" http://brigdh.tumblr.com/post/156329735276/yourenotaloneinthis-the-movemnt-donald-trump

* "free advice if you're going to any of the various protests, marches, etc. this week.:" https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/156113948218/free-advice-if-youre-going-to-any-of-the-various

* "Healthcare Resources:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/156106364557/healthcare-resources

* Victim of a Hate Crime? Report to the police first, but also report here to help the SPLC track incidents: https://www.splcenter.org/reporthate

* Trans Relief Project: http://transrelief.com/

* "Donate to the SPLC:" https://donate.splcenter.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=463

* "A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support:" http://jezebel.com/a-list-of-pro-women-pro-immigrant-pro-earth-anti-big-1788752078?rev=1478710019591&utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

* General Charities list to help groups being targeted in Trump's America: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/153111297079/charities-that-may-need-some-love-in-the-upcoming

* Where to donate to help Immigrants: http://colinfirth.tumblr.com/post/152963467726/carecen-la-center-for-community-change

* Ways to protest: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174f0WBSVNSdcQ5_S6rWPGB3pNCsruyyM_ZRQ6QUhGmo/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true#

* More ways to protest "So here’s the deal:" http://the-cimmerians.tumblr.com/post/153516131819/so-heres-the-deal

* "10 ways we can help Standing Rock Indian Reservation.:" http://browngurlwfro.tumblr.com/post/153755459138/dooder-tooder-this-is-a-photo-my-friend-posted

* "List of Standing Rock Resources:" https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/152671392633/list-of-standing-rock-resources

* NoDAPL. "It’s important that donations are made to a variety of these campaigns:" https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/156428233978/thepoliticsoffrybread-me-non-natives-esp

* "How to help Flint, Michigan:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-help-flint-michigan

* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com

* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help

* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com

* This is the patreon of an RL friend with etsy link: https://www.patreon.com/karjack

* Tianjin Disaster Update: 3 and a half thousand people are homeless in the blasts in China. The extent of the toxic contamination, the composition of the chemicals released, and the ongoing danger to humans is unknown.

* "Say goodbye to the weirdest border dispute in the world:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/01/say-goodbye-to-the-weirdest-border-dispute-in-the-world/?tid=sm_tw

* "11-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion gives birth in Paraguay:" http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-11-year-old-baby-paraguay-20150814-story.html

* "13 Photos Capture How Exhausting It Is to Deal With Daily Discrimination:" http://mic.com/articles/122928/13-stunning-photos-capture-how-exhausting-it-is-dealing-with-micro-aggression?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

* "Reminder that journalists know exactly what they’re doing:" http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/126741446992/reminder-that-journalists-know-exactly-what

* "Animas River: EPA's Colorado mine disaster plume flows west toward Grand Canyon:" http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_28608746/epas-colorado-mine-disaster-plume-flows-west-toward

* "Why Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of Salmon Dying In The Northwest?" http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/29/3685149/dead-salmon-pacific-northwest/

* My body was being incredibly inconvenient on top of Hector stealing sleep.

* Rosewater is so good, it breaks my heart hardly anyone saw it. The story is important. What happened in Iran in 2009 is important and what is continuing to go on is something we should be paying attention to especially with the bombardment of commercials lying about the Iran Deal and intended to demonize the Iranian people, turning them into a cartoonish monolith, instead of a country full of human beings with different opinions and motivations. What happened to Maziar Bahari is important, as is the oplight of journalists held and often tortured in countries all over the world. It is incredibly important that we talk about torture and detainment, as a country that still has people in Gitmo. It's a world wide problem, but we are assuredly part of it. I think as a country we need to look at torture with open eyes and remember that torture is flat out wrong and why.

You would think it would be triggery, given my long history with interrogation, but I am actually grateful for media that does it well. Ordinary Americans have so little experience of it. As stupid as it sounds, it was a huge help to me when TNG did the Captain Picard being tortured episode. It finally gave me some common ground, some common language with regular people. I am absolutely not saying what happened to me was as bad as what is done to adults. They were not allowed to touch me. They did not have complete physical control of me and I could go home every day after it was done, and the multiple times a day intensive interrogation designed to break me only went on for four years. After that it was sporadic, and the sexual threat ended. At thirteen being interrogated only a few times a week was no big deal (although there were periods when it was intensive again through out my teens), and again, what was done to me for most of a decade was nowhere near as intense as what is done to adults in prisons all over the world. Still though, it is oddly validating to see the same techniques used against me are condemned elsewhere as human rights violations. It is strangely validating to see other people's resistance techniques. Just as it was validating as a an adult to see techniques for both interrogation and resistance to interrogation laid out by actual interrogation and resistance professionals who went public once my country started torturing prisoners. I have always been proud of my nearly a decade of resistance, of my survival, of not having been broken. It was amazing to see that at eight I was able to derive for myself so many of the rules professionals suggest for surviving such a thing. i know none of this will mean anything to any of you. I know from long experience that no story can make ordinary people understand what it feels like to have so many people with so much power over you set on breaking you down, what it feels like to live that truth, that there is no rescue coming and that the only control you have is to not give them any handles to use to lever you open. The only control you have is over what reactions you show. How can I possibly make that real to someone who's never spent few months being endlessly interrogated over stupid felt tip pen marks on a calendar? How can I explain that I was thirty before I could make myself write anything on a calendar even though I knew no one was going to do that to me again in a way that is real and visceral to a listener? I was a child who invented my own language in middle school so i could write fiction without fear of anyone using my words against me, because any open expression of thought or feeling could be used by interrogators. even when I started writing English again, I deliberately fictionalized everything and always made true things look like fiction. It was safer. Still, all these decades later, each true thing I say about myself in livejournal is a quiet act of defiance, a survival rule broken on purpose. I am what my resistance made me, and I can not imagine the person I would have been without it. But no matter how often I tell this story, I know that it will mean nothing. It will sound like lies and exaggeration, so seeing something I can identify with on screen that can speak to people, can be listened to and on some level understood, is as much validation as I will ever get in this life for the strange shape of my childhood.

* Big Eden turned out to be delightful. It's a gentle Romantic comedy that happens to have gay protagonists and takes place in a small town with a northern Exposurish feel. I think my mother would have loved this. I was not sanguine, but the tumblr review is glowing and by the time I was done sewing my sheets back together I was in utterly charmed. This isn't my genre, but it made me happy. Every time there was an opportunity to make the movie worse and less interesting, they did something else. I know that this sounds like faint praise, but it's not. I really sat there thinking, oh no! This next moment is when they will ruin it! And then they didn't! This film had a light touch I wasn't expecting. I came because I was promised a gay Native American amoung the main characters and some Tim DeKay, I stayed for a movie that was way more nuanced than I was expecting from something that looked to be standard. Eric Schweig's performance was quietly seductive. Why have I never heard of him?

This film was made in 2000, and I had never heard of it, despite my keeping an out for LGBTQA stories in TV and movies my whole life. I wish that there were more movies like this, films where the gayness and in one case Nativeness of the characters are important to who they are, but not the most important things about them. Pike is shy, generous, kind, thoughtful, quietly clever and observant, an amazing cook. He also happens to be gay and native. All of those things happen to matter in this story. We need stories about our history and about coming out, sure, but so often that's all there is as far as movies, if you exclude gay best friends and desexualized comic relief. It's been getting gradually better over the course of my life, but I still say we need more variety and more kinds of stories. how is it 2015 and the only movie we can give our transmasculine teens to watch is "Boys Don't Cry?" Again, our history is incredibly important, but where is the transmasculine rom com, the transmasculine action hero, the transmasculine police procedural detective, the trans masculine superhero? Where is the transfeminine spy thriller, the transfeminine hospital Drama, the transfeminine romantic lead in a fluffy rom com where no one dies? Where are the bi characters doing anything but being unreliable seducers? Why do they take the few canonical asexual and hyposexual fictional and real life historical characters and insist on making them sexual and giving them love interests? Why the fuck can't we have some stories with no fucking so asexuals can see themselves on the screen for once? Things are getting better for Gay and Lesbian characters, but there are still relatively few stories that end happily with the queer characters still all alive at the end. Things like Big Eden are important because they are ordinary, and there is still so little ordinary for our kids to see on TV and in the movies.

* "At Times, It is Almost Hard to Believe That Women Still Feel Unwelcome in Geek Spaces:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985058230/at-times-it-is-almost-hard-to-believe-that-women#notes

* On Gender Bias and Pen Names: http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125972703630/thank-you-for-your-thoughtful-answer-i-was-going#notes

* "Some Things Your Local Librarians Would Like You To Know:" http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/125985640725/some-things-your-local-librarians-would-like-you

* Ebays, 5 auctions, 2 No Bid:

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* A list of LGBTQA Charities to donate money to instead of seeing the racist Stonewall Movie that decided to portray a black trans woman activist as a cis white man. http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673

* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com

* Trying to stay afloat until September: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws or Lethran@gmail.com

* In Queensland, Australia, eight children were found dead and the mother of seven of them hospitalized for stab wounds in a mass killing in Australia.

* "Why It’s Not Surprising That Americans Support Torture:" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/why_americans_support_torture_we_accept_the_abuse_and_cruel_punishment_of.html

* When I see the last footage of Tamir Rice, I see a child playing by himself in a snowy park. The police who murdered him looked at that same lone child and saw an adult man with a large gang of thugs attacking them. I think this is fundamentally wrong with our country in a microcosm.

* The Prosecutor in Ferguson has publicly admitted he knew Witness #40 was lying, but put her on the stand anyway which is suborning perjury and illegal. He ought to loose his licence and face criminal charges, but I'm not holding my breath.

* He murdered an unarmed seven year old in her sleep, and it's completely legal because she was black and he was a cop. "Judge Drops Involuntary Manslaughter Charge Against Cop In Aiyana Stanley-Jones Shooting:" http://newsone.com/3058986/judge-drops-involuntary-manslaughter-charge-against-cop-in-aiyana-stanley-jones-shooting/

* "Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix.:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/

* "What the Eric Garner Grand Jury Didn’t See :" http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/eric-garner-grand-jury-didnt-see?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

* "Chris Rock Pens Blistering Essay on Hollywood's Race Problem: "It's a White Industry":" http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223

* I had stopped giving a fuck about AHS: Freak Show, and then they gave us Pepper's story. Ouch.

* I don't wholly agree with this, but there are plenty of things to think about. "The Carnival Logic of “American Horror Story: Freak Show”:" http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/08/new-abnormal?mbid=social_tumblr

* Katharine Kerr needs our help.: http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/604572.html

* Our Financial Situation continues Scary: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws

* "Panama Canal expansion could pose health risk for Newark, NJ:" http://on.msnbc.com/1w6SFzX

* "Dick Cheney Defends the Torture of Innocents:" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/dick-cheney-defends-the-torture-innocents/383741/

* I support the right of Athletes to protest police murders on camera.

* The Doctor from Massachusetts who survived ebola is going back to Liberia to save more lives.

* TW: Suicide, Domestic Violence. It looks like the Pennsylvania shooter likely killed himself in the woods with his knife. It's sounding like he was controlling and prone to threatening to murder his family, but people ignored her repeated complaints about the domestic violence. he murdered his ex-wife and her family, just as he said he would.

* “After police shot & killed John Crawford in Wal-Mart, they threatened & harassed his girlfriend for over 90 minutes:" https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/544248692136759297

* The police want to remind you that one second is plenty of time to carefully assess the threat posed by a black man talking on his cell phone and carrying store merchandise in an open carry state, order him to put down the gun, and for the man to respond. Similarly, the police in Ohio claim that hard interrogation of the partner of a murder victim for 90 minutes when they know she and her partner literally did nothing illegal is standard police procedure and there is no plan to change it or discipline the murderers, let alone arrest them for shooting an innocent man for doing nothing illegal.

* "What do toys teach kids about gender roles? :" http://on.msnbc.com/1w6Aj1U

* "A Not-Always-Happy Holidays:" http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/522202.html

* WTF, Amazon "Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation.:" https://graemereynolds.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/hyphen-hate-when-amazon-went-to-war-against-punctuation/

* Where was I Monday? Doctors and post office wore me out and I ended up crashing when I got home. I am a little freaked out as postage was twice what I expected. That was the money to feed Hector for the rest of the month. We have about two days of the goosh he will willingly eat left and I'm not convinced I'll be able to scrape up another $20 or so from anywhere.

* I just found like ten emails gmail was hiding from me. *facepalm*

* Internet friends who need to move fast: http://www.gofundme.com/ip2els

* Our Financial Situation continues Scary: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws

* Police Continue to take down the barricades in Hong Kong. As of today there is only one protest area left.

* The UK economy is 9% smaller than it otherwise would be of it's extreme wealth inequality and here in the US we are losing 7%. Don't worry, both the UK Conservative and the US Republican economy are planning to take strong action to further shrink the economy by taking even more from the poor to give to the rich. A cherry on top is that here in the US the Republicans wrote a repeal of a key part of the weak legislation passed to prevent another collapse like the one under Bush into the budget extension and Democrats were so spineless as to let them. After all, imagine how much more damage a second world economic crash would do to ordinary human type people while once again benefiting the wealthy.

* "Taking Responsibility for Torture:" http://www.newyorker.com/%E2%80%A6/n%E2%80%A6/taking-responsibility-torture

* TW: Rape. I wrote a rant about the CIA torture that got eaten. I can't come close to writing one as good, but here are the basics. The CIA systematic tortured people, some of them picked up for crimes such as trying to warn about terrorist threats for no good reason at all. Their own documents show they got no useful information, which is what interrogation experts were saying all along, but systematically lied about it. They anally raped people in our name with taxpayer money. They committed these horrendous crimes against humanity and there are still not going to be war crimes trials for those who tortured all these people including 26 completely innocent ones, nor for those who ordered it to be done.

* "Tamir Rice: The story behind the senseless killing, character assassination, and resulting cover-up:" http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/02/1348833/-Tamir-Rice-The-story-behind-the-execution-character-assassination-coverup-of-a-senseless-murder#

* To be honest I am still struggling to find ways to write about the police drive by hit on 12 year old Tamir Rice and the media claims that he deserved to be murdered because he was the victim of domestic violence that do not consist of long strings of expletives.

* "No, college isn’t the answer. Reparations are.:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/05/29/no-college-isnt-the-answer-reparations-are/

* "Federal Guidance on Single-Sex Classes Confirms Schools Must Respect Every Student's Gender Identity:" http://transgenderequality.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/federal-guidance-on-single-sex-classes-confirms-schools-must-respect-every-students-gender-identity/

* Smart commentary here. "Walking Dead, Season 5, Episode 8: Coda:" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2014/12/walking-dead-season-5-episode-8-coda.html

* Internet friends who need to move fast: http://www.gofundme.com/ip2els

* Our Financial Situation continues Scary: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws

* What's Wrong with Zero Dark Thirty:

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* Richard Engle talks about his kidnapping:

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* Wayne LaPierre wants to reminds you that guns don't kill people; video games do. Riiiiight.

* The Vatican is putting the fox in charge of the chickens: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/world/europe/rev-robert-w-oliver-to-lead-vaticans-review-of-sex-abuse-claims.html?_r=1&

* "U.S. Shooting Deaths Since Sandy Hook Top 100:" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/us-shooting-deaths-sandy-hook_n_2348466.html

* "My One and Only Comment about “Plebgate”:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2012/12/my-one-and-only-comment-about-plebgate.html

* "Busting a Cyberstalker: How Carla Franklin Fought Back—and Triumphed:" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/12/busting-a-cyberstalker-how-carla-franklin-fought-back.html

* There's some things in here about street harassment and proselytizers that I think it worth sharing generally: http://greenwick.livejournal.com/165798.html

* Horrifying medical equipment of the past: http://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/2012/12/05/the-12-instruments-of-deathmas-fa-la-la-la-la/