PROPHETESQUE

Links

Articles 🗴 Writing, Comics, and Cartoons 🗴 Internet References 🗴 Image Resources 🗴 Witchcraft Resources 🗴 Game Links/Resources 🗴 Misc. Links

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Articles

a list of articles i've found interesting for one reason or another and a brief summary of them

• The Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass: a Rolling Stone feature about an undercover cop who targeted an autistic high school student as a drug dealer because of his need to not let other people down. Heartbreaking and infuriating, but as an autistic person, very relatable.
• “Are You Angry With Me?”: Dating as an Autistic Woman: not a woman, but again, a very relatable article from a woman who has struggled dating due to her partners' responses to her being autistic.
• Can Horror Games Tackle Mental Illness Without Reverting to Stereotype?: article on an indie horror game that didn't make waves like the author maybe thought it would, but a good read on the use of ableist tropes in horror.
• Are There "Real" Alignments?: webpage article on alignments used in D&D and breaking them down/taking them further than the base game does!
• Daniel Bryan & The Negotiation of Kayfabe in Professional Wrestling: this one is kind of cheating, since you have to download the PDF, but I'm including it because Brooks' thesis has stuck with me years after reading it, and if you're interested in pro wrestling at all, you'll probably enjoy it too!
• ‘I Thought I Was Lazy’: The Invisible Struggle For Autistic Women: this absolutely nails it on the head wrt autism and not being able to do things for anyone who presents with 'atypical' autism traits.
• Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine: FANTASTIC article about rogue anarchists (including some pharmacists) making their own medicine, including homemade HIV drugs and epipens!!
• For Transgender Converts, Changing Gender and Finding Faith Come Together: several years ago I considered converting to Judaism and this was a very nice article I came across about transgender Jewish converts!
• Trans Horror Stories and Society's Fear of the Transmasculine Body: WARNING: contains spoilers for the movie Hereditary! but this is an absolutely amazing piece about how even when portrayed in metaphor, society absolutely hates the transmasculine body.
• I Resurrected My Dead Friends As Sims To Watch Them Live The Lives They Never Will: What it says on the tin and more: an article about queer grief and coping. Heartbreaking and wonderful.
• Oakland's Hoodslam makes room in the ring for a trans wrestler: An article about the Oakland based wrestling promotion HOODSLAM and its leader, Dark Sheik, an openly out trans woman wrestler!
• Justice for Danny: How a small town pharmacist caught his son's killer: Fascinating story on a pharmacist, whose son died of a opioid overdose, deciding to track down the person behind getting those pills into his community. There's also a documentary on Netflix about it called "The Pharmacist"!
• How Chaos at Chain Pharmacies Is Putting Patients at Risk: hits pretty close to home as a pharmacy technician in retail! fun fact that this article doesn't tell you: it was sourced from /r/pharmacy. Wanna know what my job's like? Click here.
• Rejecting the Misery Narrative for Trans Folks: medium article about, despite what cis media says, trans people DON'T have to live their lives miserable! Whoda thunk it.
• Queering the Cyborg: How the Hybrid Body Can Set Us Free: ruminations on the queer body, cyborgs, and various media therein.
• On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway): STUNNING article on "Transmasculinity, feminism, and the politics of online" that is extremely relevant to my own transition and everything leading up to it. Focuses heavily on intersectionality.
• What Liberal Feminism Leaves Out: another very good article that focuses on intersectionality, and a focus on Elizabeth Warren specifically during the 2020 election cycle.
• Bizarre Spinosaurus makes history as first known swimming dinosaur: CROWD CHEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what it says on the tin, a good scientific article.
• How This Engineer Hacked Together His Own “Artificial Pancreas”: TRANSHUMANISM BABEY!! another what it says on the tin, this one on the shorter side, but still fascinating.
• The Assassination Complex: Article one of EIGHT (!!) on the Obama administration's use of drones to assassinate seemingly random people that it designated "worthy of execution". Harrowing.
• The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement: Fucked up article about how the FBI is entirely aware there is significant white supremacist infiltration of the police in basically every state.
• Where Do We Go After Ferguson?: opinion piece that asks the title question the same year that Mike Brown was murdered by a white police officer.
• I Grew Up in the ‘Most Hateful Town in America’: an account of growing up in a notorious 'sundown town' known nationwide for its antiblack racism.
• How we got here: The George Floyd protests in Columbus: a Columbus-centric newspiece in the wake of George Floyd's murder outlining some (but certainly not all) of the racially-charged crimes that have happened locally.
• Black People in the US Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s: heart-rending article detailing how, as it says, some black people in the Deep South were enslaved over 100 years past the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Atypical Autism Traits (Archived): an archived version of a list of 'atypical' autism traits.
• Pamela Rush exposed the injustice of poverty in rural Alabama. Ultimately it stole her life.: a news story about Pamela Rush, a woman who was part of the Poor People’s Campaign to eradicate the poverty that so many Americans face. She died of COVID-19 and this is a celebration of her life.
• Medicare Part D is giving rise to zombie brand-drugs: fascinating and frustrating in equal parts article about how Medicare Part D (i.e. the prescription drug benefit), because of the way it's set up with its deductible and the 'donut hole', is keeping brand name 'zombie drugs' alive. The copaxone study, linked in the link above, is the meat and potatoes of this and if you know anything about rx drug insurance it's INFURIATING.
• The Enduring, Pernicious Whiteness Of True Crime: the story of a long-unsolved lynching of a man lynched in Georgia, and how cultural bias colors what we perceive as 'true crime'.
• The Coronavirus Is Never Going Away: articles that make you burst into tears. from relatively early on in the pandemic, about how the virus has potential to reemerge from animals and will likely be with us from now on.
• Claudia Conway Isn't Going to Save Us From This Political Hellscape: an article about how "the kids" aren't going to save us, and we have to step up to save ourselves and our community.
• Living With White Supremacy in a Swing State: living in Ohio is hard sometimes, even in a 'progressive' city like Columbus.
• Professional Wrestling Does Not Deserve You: a look at wrestling during the early "Covid era", and fan loyalty, and wrestling as a distraction. fantastic read.
• What Happened To The Kids From Nickolodeon's Nickellennium?: touching, bittersweet article on catching up with some of the kids from Nickllenium, Nick TV's forward-looking 24 hour documentary special that aired on 1/1/00.
• Greening to Georgia: The Fictional Carbon Footprint of the Mountain Goats: fun little feature about how much energy you would use and how long it would take if you visited all the places in the band The Mountain Goats' ouvre.
• Trans men and transmasculine people on testosterone can grow prostate tissue: short article, what it says on the tin. neat!
• Is Madeline Canonically Trans?: short article about how both Madeline, the character from Celeste, and Maddy Thorson, one of the minds behind the game, are both trans.
• Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind: Really good write up about prison abolition, and a woman who's been advocating for it for over 30 years.
• Kentucky Route Zero Feels Like Home – For Better And Worse : KRZ, despite its fantastical setting, hits close to home for a lot of people from Appalachia.
• Art as Discovery, Art as Hope: Kamatani Yuhki, x-gender and asexual mangaka: An artist spotlight on nonbinary and ace mangaka Kamatani Yuhki, creator of Shimanami Tasogare.
• Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes: as a Stephen King fan, it's very easy to admit he has Issues with certain things, and writing 'Magical Negro' characters is absolutely one of them. Great article breaking down why that's Not A Good Thing.
• Stories of desegregation in Columbus schools, as told by Black residents who were there: what it says on the tin, heartbreaking stories of racism in Columbus during desegregation.
• Out trans non-binary wrestler Still Life with Apricots & Pears wants better industry inclusion: note: SLwAaPS goes by Edith Surreal and uses exclusively she/her now! a little article but a nice one on trans/nb performers in wrestling!
• Chronic Fatigue Is No Joke, But Too Many Games Still Treat It Like One: fantastic article about disability portrayal in video games, specifically CFS/ME.
• We Need to Talk About the “Good for Her” Genre: succinct but EXTREMELY good article on how the "good for her" genre much of the time simply lionizes white womanhood and violence, among other things, instead of celebrating women besting their abusers.
• you are capable of writing better horror stories: fantastic article on the horror genre and originality, which segues into a summary of, as the author puts it, "the best horror game they've ever played."
• The Fetishism of True Crime: What Web Sleuths and Medieval Witch Hunters Have in Common: you need a medium account for this one (i know), but it's an excellent read about how true crime simultaneously fetishizes and demonizes mental illness.
• Overworked, understaffed: Pharmacists say industry in crisis puts patient safety at risk: similar to the other pharmacy article linked above, this one is more recent, talking about how giving COVID shots, especially in the beginning, threw most pharmacies into chaos.
• The Lil Nas X Outrage Is Exposing Hypocrites: article discussing the outrage around MONTERO, and also WAP, and how the most vocal critics of both of these cultural phenomenons were almost all huge hypocrites.
• Muscle Memory, or How Two Decades of Fighting Made Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn Hit Harder: writeup of the recent feud in WWE between Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens and how they're destined to fight forever.
• Everyone Loves the McElroys, So Why Is Everyone Mad at the McElroys?: I admit; I tend to go to bat for the McElroys more than I should, also being originally from WV, but this article makes very good points about a lot of fuck ups they've made, especially in regard to the D&D podcasts, and asks the question, "when is a family D&D game no longer a family D&D game?"
• Why Is Esports So Segregated?: really good article on how many of the pioneers of esports in the 90s were black, and how even when they're represented today in esports, they often don't get as much prestige/as many seats at the table as their nonblack counterparts.
• 'Pillbillies,' 'Oxycotinville': Emails from drug exec reveal mockery of Appalachians: infuriating article about some of the hardest hit people by the opioid crisis (Appalachians), and how the high and mighty drug execs referred to them.
• The rise of Indigenous horror: How a fiction genre is confronting a monstrous reality: great article on Indigenous horror, and how the view of horror is different for an Indigenous person than it is for a white person.
• Asking Better Questions: Part One & Asking Better Questions: Part Two: two part article about how asking better questions in tabletop leads to a more memorable experience!!
• Is the Anthony Bourdain AI Voice in ‘Roadrunner’ an Ethical Lapse? Maybe So, but Documentaries Have Been Sliding Away From Reality for Years: excellent article about ethics in documentaries and how we've been sliding away from just plain docus for Years.
• Wrestling is Gay: Out Pro Wrestler Effy Has A Message for Wyoming: real good article on gay pro wrestler Effy when GCW went to Wyoming!
• 'He Is Both Monster and Hero': Black Horror Scholars Tell The Root What You Should Know About Candyman: stellar roundtable article about 2021's Candyman!
• The Overwhelming Thinness of the Queer Rom-Com Renaissance: despite how more queer romcoms are coming out, most people in them are Hollywood Perfect, i.e. thin, which alienates a whole lot of queer people who Aren't!
• The BuzzFeedification of Mental Health: fascinating read on mental illness/neurodivergency and capitalism and how it fucks us all.
• WWE’s War on Terror: great article on WWE's Islamophobia in the aftermath of 9/11.
• THE QUEER AFTERLIFE OF RE-ANIMATOR: THE ENDURING APPEAL OF AN 80S CLASSIC: Re-Animator (and ESPECIALLY its sequel, Bride of Re-Animator) are queer as fuck and here's a look at that! Ft. Spoilers.
• Disco Elysium Is A Phenomenal Roleplaying Game About Trauma: real good article on trauma and the EXTREMELY good video game Disco Elysium (contains spoilers for the game!).
• PISSF****T: about a jacket in Disco Elysium: Another Disco Elysium article, this time on an iconic jacket (also spoilers).
• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other - Sherry Turkle (2011): One of my FAVORITE articles of all time, and yet only a small part of a bigger paper: scientist gives Furbys to kids - the results may shock you!
• Jason Isbell Is Tired Of Country’s Love Affair With White Nostalgia: good article about a white country musician (Isbell) putting black women front and center at a series of big shows; the black women also go more indepth about being a black woman in country and the issues they've faced because of that.
• I was a teenage transgender supersoldier - For a closeted trans kid, Halo’s helmeted cyborg felt like representation: for the longest time, John Halo could have been ANYONE, and that meant everything to a trans woman growing up.
• Your health insurance says, ‘Claim denied.’ How to fight back: FANTASTIC article that slightly demystifies the appeals process for insurance claims.
• Bored Ape Yacht Club is Racist and Contains Nazi Dog Whistles: what it says on the tin! when you know what to look for, it's REALLY obvious what they're doing and it's disgusting tbh. not that you need me to tell you that nfts are bad lmao.
• Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported: heartbreaking article that shows what happens when the company behind a necessary tech for someone simply ceases to exist.
• Rediscovering the Small Web: a HUGE inspiration for this site; an article on rediscovering the small web as opposed to the homogenized corporate web most of us are stuck in.
• The Fisherman's Secret: A Modern Day Treasure Hunt: FASCINATING article about a Californian fisherman who believes he has discovered what could only be gold at the bottom of the ocean...
• His software sang the words of God. Then it went silent.: similar but different to the bionic eyes article above, a heart-rending but beautiful piece on the aftermath of Tom Buchler's death, the one-man team behind the Jewish trope software TropeTrainer.
• Black, gay and graying gracefully in love: extremely sweet article about two older gay black men who have been together for the last 50 years in Detroit, Michigan.
• How Twitter can ruin a life: Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. This is what happened next.: absolutely heartbreaking article about the aftermath of the internet's backlash against Isabel Fall and her story. brings up twitter mobs and reparative vs. paranoid readings of media.
• Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss: an extremely touching article whose byline says it better than i ever could: "In tragedy, music provided solace during the AIDS epidemic, and newly discovered cassette tapes captured two decades of parties and pain." Sound on for this one if at all possible!!!
• Hot Allostatic Load: you ever read an article that tears at your heartstrings while being horrificly relatable? this is that, for me, and for the woman who linked this to me. about mobbing in feminist/queer spaces and the consequences of it, and how we can do better.
• On the Clinics and Bars of Weimar Berlin: as the site says, part one (part two has not been released yet!) of a two part essay series about "transgender women and surgery", and about the fall of the trans and gay scene of Weimar Berlin in the 1920s-30s.
• Black Issues, Policing, and Protest Zines from sherwoodforest: Not one, but many, many zines about important black issues, including queer issues, protests, police/police brutality, and more! I've only looked at a few but everything I've seen has been fantastic!
• Disability aid tutorials accumulated by Pretty Sick Supply (a fantastic website in itself), with instructions on how to make various things that can help disabled people!
• The Gay Asian Activist Whose Theories on Sexuality Were Decades Ahead of Their Time: "In the 1930s, Li Shiu Tong’s boyfriend, Magnus Hirschfeld, was a prominent defender of gay people. But Li’s own research has long been overlooked". A fantastic article about a figure with whom I was previously tragically unacquainted with!
• We Need to Change the Way We Talk About Chris Benoit: BIG cws for murder/suicide/child death and mentions of sexual predators. but a very important article and one that i think more pro wrestling fans should read and take in.
• The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness: once again, big cws for drug use and suicide, among other things. 'Why Didn't Gay Rights Cure Gay Loneliness?', this article asks, and it delivers in spades (though it focuses entirely on gay cis men). heartbreaking and thorough, with plenty of further reading within the article itself.
• Ridding Your Monsters of Ableism: cws for mentions of racism and ableism, but an article about how to spot ableism in your fantasy monsters, and what to do when you find it, and ways to avoid that kind of thing in the first place!
• Common Cyborg: Jillian Weise's gorgeous, gorgeous autobio article/prose of being a disabled woman slash common cyborg in today's day and age, and the difference between disabled people and people she terms "tryborgs".
• Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Year Zero’ Tried to Predict 2022. What Did It Get Right?: a small look at the differences between NIN's imagined future in the Year Zero ARG and what happened in reality. there's a line in here that Really shook me.
• The Erotics of Trent Reznor: now, i don't know if i agree with the author's assertion that Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails were the LAST band to write a true love song, but i really like this article about how Trent Reznor has always been Sexy for maybe not the typical reasons you may think!
• On Hyperpersonalized Sexual Identity: similar to the article "The BuzzFeed-ification of Mental Health" above, this article examines how extremely personalized sexual (but NOT gender, to note) identity does little to help us in the long run.
• A Field Guide To Avoiding Transition By Family Committee & On Transitioning Like You're Opening A Candy Bar In A Crowded Movie Theater With A Really Loud Wrapper: two articles in a series about transitioning, and the roadblocks you may face from family/loved ones in that process. Both VERY very good. I wish I'd had these when I was younger.
• A Legendary Erotic Archive Has Been Out of Public View For Decades. We Found It.: a fascinating read on the newly-rediscovered erotic archives of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality out of San Francisco, and musings on the importance of ephemera.
• Ghost in the machine: inside the internet’s paranormal history: small article on the intersection of the paranormal and the cyber that ultimately was interesting but left me wanting...more.
• The rise of the video game union: extremely good and indepth article / zine about unions in the video game industry, and how to form one! also good as a primer on unions/how to form one in general!
• I Called My Ex Abusive When They Weren't: a fantastic essay by Clementine Morrigan about the difference between a trauma response and actually experiencing abuse, and how not differentiating that can be detrimental to survivors and their supporters alike.
• Unhousing: Foreclosed homes as haunted houses.: as it says: the foreclosed home as the new haunted house, and the haunted house as a metaphor for class warfare and gentrification.
• We Didn’t Have a Chance to Say Goodbye: gorgeous prose about what one woman lost in the wake of the global pandemic.
• I Am a Meme Now — And So Are You: "Maybe wisdom is accepting that you don’t get to decide who you are" from the author of one of tumblr's favorite quotes: "if we want the rewards of being loved, we must submit ourselves to the mortifying ordeal of being known" (it wasn't Einstein or Marilyn Monroe, btw).
• Who Gets To Know Their Body?: TERFs (transphobes who should kill themselves -- NOW!) are starting to target "spoonies" (i.e. disabled people) using similar tactics that they use to target transmasculine people and trans people in general, to little surprise. Hate groups will target anyone outside the norm, eventually.
• “The best jobbers in the country”: The mystery VHS that unearthed Milwaukee wrestling history: the chance discovery of an unmarked VHS tape full of 80s Milwaukee indie wrestling leads one man to discover local (for him) wrestling history. A nice little article.
• A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite. What’s Left?: "Mounjaro did what decades of struggle with managing weight couldn’t. Welcome to the post-hunger age." fascinating article about one man's reaction to the diabetes (and, offlabel, weight loss) drug, Mounjaro, and musings on cultural fatphobia and the pharmaceutical industry.
• The California Problem: a very long but extremely good read about, as the author puts it, video games and capitalism. and queer things. and labor rights. took me about an hour to get through but god was it worth it.
• Inside the Secret Working Group That Helped Push Anti-Trans Laws Across the Country: the mother jones article about the leaked anti-trans emails that conspired to push anti-trans legislation all over the united states. contains links to the emails leaked as well.
• The Internet Is Rotting (12ft link): alarming facts stating that the internet is, indeed, rotting at an astounding and terrifying rate. as the article puts it, "The upshot is the worst of both worlds: Some information sticks around when it shouldn’t, while other information vanishes when it should remain."
• Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content: eye-opening article about what it says in the title, including a short interview from "Claire", whose parents raised her divulging everything about her childhood and her entirely fair resentment about it.
• There is a hidden epidemic of violence against transmasculine people: another eye-opening article about something rarely, if ever, talked about (other than by transmasculine people, of course): domestic violence against transmasculine people. cws for, of course, abuse.
• The Homoerotic History of Re-Animator (Part I) & Bride of Re-Animator: The Homoerotic History of Re-Animator (Part II): two articles in a series outlining the queercoding of the book/movie/etc Re-Animator!! REALLY good and just. chef's kiss tbh.
• Everyone needs to grow up: short but GOOD article on "self-infantilization" and how it can be a precursor to widespread (e.g. even greater than what we're facing now) fascism.
• The making of a detransitioner: "Elisa Rae Shupe was a weapon in the hands of TERFs and Christian conservatives. Now, over 2,600 pages of leaked emails help tell her story". During her time as a TERF/conservative mouthpiece, she lost control of her own story. now she gets to tell things herself. cws for transphobia and suicide.
• Caster Semenya and the cruel history of contested black femininity: great article about why attempts to 'normalize' the hormones of (primarily black) atheletes like caster semenya is WRONG. cws for racism, sexism, and mentioned transphobia.
• Legacy of Gay-n: really good article about how the Legacy of Kain series is in its bare essentials a queer gothic (in the literary sense) masterpiece. to note: i've not played or watched an lp of the series, but i really enjoyed this!
• Transmutations: an owch analysis: fantastic article on the themes of transformation in the games by game dev owch aka Chloe!! i've known of her for over 10 years and while, again, haven't played any of her games, i can cosign that she makes amazing stuff!!
• Tips for baking with brain fog: a nice little article for the spoonies out there! good little tips on how to bake when you experience brainfog!
• A Multiverse Around The Corner (Where Your Dead Friends Live): FANTASTIC article about the inherent flaws of multiverse media, especially when it comes to 'multiverse where your dead friend/family is still alive'.
• Playing God: On Death, Motherhood and ‘Creatures’: really relatable article about what it says on the tin!! i've not heard of the game but man. Man.
• Everything is trending all at once on TikTok: real good article on the cultural zeitgeist re: "aesthetics", and "Everything and anything can be a trend on the internet. Why are we so determined to name them?", and the decentralization of culture.
• Welsh language: Non-binary speakers want gender-neutral help: small bbc article on how nonbinary Welsh speakers, considering that Welsh is a highly gendered language, want language to be able to express themselves in their mother tongue!
• The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe: FASCINATING article on the life and eventual death of former Chicago mobster Ken "Tokyo Joe" Eto.
• A talk: How To Find Things Online: as it says, a 'talk' by v buckenham about 'ai' and how to find information and how that has evolved through the years, framed through video games. really good and also gives me a horrid feeling deep in the pit of my stomach.
• Mourning Porn on Imgur, Mourning Trans & Kinky History: nsfw, obviously, but STUNNING and EXCELLENT article by Devon Price (the author of Unmasking Autism, among other books) about the slow but steady removal of porn and perceived nsfw things over the internet, and how that impacts queer and other marginalized people! REALLY good read.
• In American Indie Wrestling, Bodies Are Cheap And Healthcare Is Not: in 'things i was aware of as a long-time wrestling fan but others may not be', this article by Tim Faust is heartrending to read, about American wrestlers and healthcare and insurance, or lack thereof.
• Studies show top surgery is safe for fat patients, but some surgeons still mandate weight loss: cw for fatphobia but a very good look at how top surgery is statistically SAFE for fat folks!!
• Inside 4chan’s top-secret moderation machine: cws for various 4chan-related things as well as mass shootings but in the wake of various mass shootings by far right users, the joke of 4chan moderation is brought to light.
• Recipes for Disaster: Asphalt Mosaics : a guide to installing unsanctioned mosaics in asphalt streets and parking lots, ala the Toynbee Tiles!
• Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet: SESTA-FOSTA, and its sweeping effects on fandom culture and the internet at large (spoilers: Bad). a bit simplified in areas, but. Yeah
• Doctors Remove Woman’s Brain Implant Against Her Will: a short, heartbreaking article about an epileptic woman who was forced to have a brain implant that helped her epilepsy removed after the company that made it went bankrupt. very similar to the article on this page about bionic eyes, and a stark reminder that for disabled people, the cyberpunk dystopia is already here.
• The wild, mysterious history of sports' most enduring gesture: the high five: a fascinating look surrounding the history of the now-ubiquitous high five, and the myriad stories of its invention! cw for homophobia.
• The Unknown Librarian Who Saved Queer History: a small article on the former (god rest his soul) archivist for stonewall's queer archive, Paul Fasana, and how he helped turn the archive into a real force of nature for queer history!
• How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City: fantastic article about legendary black queer sci-fi author Samuel R. Delany that honestly made me tear up. we've always been here and always will be.
• I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!): posts that make you burst into tears. Though it ends on a hopeful note, this comic essay about the origins of Luddism and its application to modern day "AI" products honestly makes me feel kinda hopeless. This has been going on for hundreds of years.
• The Poet Laureate of Fan Fiction: an interview from 2015 with poet Richard Siken, about fandom and fanfiction and the general state of writing, kind of. cw for incest mentions in the context of Supernatural
• How Queer Pro Wrestlers Are Handling America’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Heel Turn: nice little article interviewing several queer and trans wrestlers on how they're existing while America tries to make them illegal, more or less.
• How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult: i do like the general ideas this article espouses, but it's very... cis het nuclear family oriented i fear, without positing the fact that you can just... not have a nuclear family. but it DOES raise several good points and present alternatives that may not be known to the average American citizen!
• How Some Men Play Dungeons & Dragons on Texas' Death Row: genuinely heartbreaking article about what it says on the tin. men play d&d in prison on death row to stay sane. i cried honestly.
• If You Mold It, They Will Come: How Gosnell Duncan’s Devices Changed the Feminist Sex-Toy Game Forever: fascinating little article about how a disabled man (Gosnell Duncan) innovated dildos, and the resulting chaos in feminist circles.
• How a Big Pharma Company Stalled a Potentially Lifesaving Vaccine in Pursuit of Bigger Profits: file under posts that make you burst into tears. a viable TB vaccine is SORELY needed especially in lower-income countries (e.g. many in Africa, South America), but it was shelved in favor of vaccines for... shingles and rsv. as someone who works in pharmacy and has shilled those very vaccines, i'm disgusted.
• David Byrne and the autistic euphoria of Stop Making Sense: very good little article detailing how the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense is an autistic narrative!! i love it!!
• How Do I Become Less Obedient?: feels like cheating a little bit to put a substack link in here, but it's too good not to share. How to be more disobedient and learning to sit with discomfort, for (primarily) autistic people!! a very good skill to have in this day and age
• The Abortion Absolutist (archive.ph link): WOW what an article, about Warren Hern, the abortion doctor who has, for over 50 years, performed abortions, primarily later-term ones. very vivid imagery mentioned, but no explicit pix. really good article but heavy at points.
• This could be my last report from Gaza: a Palestinian journalist, Tareq S. Hajjaj, writes via telephone dictation to his coworkers, about how he does not expect to survive the onslaught of violence from Israel.
• The stories I never wanted to write: also from Tareq S. Hajjaj, he writes about some of the people he knew who have been murdered by Israeli bombs. As of the time I put this here (11/7/23), he is still alive.
• You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn: good article on why that twee little saying isn't... great, to put it mildly. I don't agree with some of the author's wordings, but overall it's a good point and a good article.
• The Witches of Columbus: COLUMBUS MENTIONED!!!!! no but for real, what a nice little article/interview with various metaphysical shop owners around the city i call home!
• ‘Queerness is part of Palestinian culture. We’ve existed forever’: VERY nice interview in which Elias Jahshan, editor of the anthology ‘This Arab is Queer,’ discusses sexuality in the Arab world, Israeli pinkwashing, and his dream of a liberated Jaffa. (quoted from site).
• How to Do the Dishes: On instruction, habit, toil, and ease.: an introspective article about executive dysfunction (in all but name) and one of its most persistent foes: doing the dishes.
• we have reached rabbit hole rock bottom: an increasingly wild tale of spiritual tiktoks, hyperpop, NFTs, white supremacy, cults and even more NFTs: definitely mind the content warnings on this one. but hoo boy. quirky 'funy' tiktok account a front for racist 'vibes based' cult? more likely than u think. also give maia arson crimew money.
• Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist: in the wake of jezebel's shutdown, an article about "brand safety" and other bullshit buzzwords that now control the internet.
• ‘I am 30 years old and I miss the old internet. The beautiful people are in charge, just like everywhere else’: file under posts that make you burst into tears, once again. real good interview with Marie LeConte about her book about the old internet. i don't agree with all of her opinions, but her assertion that the internet "became the real world when the beautiful people arrived" is just. chef's kiss. video killed the radio star indeed.
• Unmasking: a VERY good article about (primarily autistic) masking, and how to stop doing it, and a way to heal younger self trauma (or at least start on the road to it).
• How I Learned to Hate Transgender People: good but short little article on how (especially but not exclusively) American media tends to portray and mock trans people, not even just in the past, and how it shapes public perception of them as a result.
• How Hyperpop Gives Trans Artists a Voice: oh i LOVE this. black dresses, 100 gecs, dorian electra, and more, discussed as hyperpop giving trans artists the ability to express gender!
• Down the Rabbit Hole: The world of estranged parents' forums: oh man. oh man. Ouch. this hits me really hard but it's a very... necessary read, especially if you are estranged from your parents or have a loved one/friend who is. click through the whole thing with the buttons at the bottom of the article. i don't agree with the whole 'narcissistic abuse' thing tbh bc i know people with npd who are lovely but. Man.
• Hell is Real, Reclaimed: short but neat article about the Hell Is Real sign in Ohio and what non religious people have done to reclaim it as an Ohio landmark!
• Let Gaza Change You: a very good article about indigenous solidarity with Palestine, from Hawai'i to Gaza. Kinship between indigenous people the world over. I myself am white, but the message is important.
• Gaza’s Queer Palestinians Fight to Be Remembered: heartbreaking but important article about the pinkwashing the west is trying to do wrt Palestine and how queer Palestinians have existed and always will exist.