#queer zine fair

[fanzines]

The Midwest Queer & Trans Zine Fest will take place on October 21st & 22nd, 2023 at Open Book in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. For more info, reach out to the folks at Open Books, who are hosting the event.

#zine #zines #fanzine #fanzines #Midwest #Queer Zine Fest #Queer Zine Fair #Midwest Queer And Trans Zine Fest #minneapolis #minnesota #zine fest #zine fair #fanzine fest #fanzine fair #queer #queer zines #queerzines #queerzine #queer zine #trans zine #trans zines #trans fanzine #trans fanzines

[deadeyedfae]

#queer artist #transgender #small artist #transfem #artists of tumblr #lgbtq #furry #zine #lgbtqia artist #furry oc #gay #lesbians #lesbian #convention #craft fair #THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE CONFIDENCE BOOST!

[allisonanne]

FRUITING BODY // CUT-LINE is a zine focused on my experience with endometriosis and surgical intervention in the form of a hysterectomy (and related procedures) as a fat, queer, nonbinary person with depression. debuts tomorrow at the midwest queer & trans zinefest in minneapolis, minnesota -- available online next week

#endometriosis #hysterectomy #trans zine #trans zines #queer art #queer zines #zine #zines #zine fair #zine fest

[catboyriot]

I have TWO zines debuting online tomorrow for BAQZF!! 🎊Get Ready!!! Starting tomorrow, shipping for paper goods is FREE on my site until the 18th!

catboyriot.bigcartel.com

#furry art #furry #catboy #original character #mixed media #sketchbook #anime furry #zine fest #zine fair #queer zines #zines #zine #baqzf2023 #baqzf #bay area queer zine fest #furry zine #comic #furry comic #queer comic #sketchbook zine #shop update #store update

[stonerzines]

Hi hi hi!

I’m one of the founders/creators and current co-organiser of the SAD Fair! We’ve grown a lot in the past 4 years and I’m so honored every day to see what kind of community we’ve built where we can celebrate and financially support disabled artists around the world. We are one of the first, if not *the* first zine fest/craft fair to go completely virtual, and we’re staying that way! Here’s a bit about us:

The Sick And Disabled Zine & Craft Fair (SAD Fair) is a grassroots week-long virtual craft fair centering disabled, chronically ill, MAD, and neurodivergent zinesters and artists from around the world. Now in its fourth year, this access-centered zine and craft fair will feature free live events, workshops, virtual "tables", and a virtual sensory room. This event is open to ALL! Allies are welcomed and encouraged to attend!

This fair is for people to display their work and build community, in a space that pushes back against popular narratives of illness and disability being inspirational or sad. The fair is free to attend, with free crafting and learning opportunities, as well as plenty of low cost zines and art to buy.

Our project is rooted in revolutionary love and need for community care, representation, and art. As sick and disabled queer and trans people, art is how we have explored our lives in a society that tells us we are inferior, especially as we go into the fourth year of a global pandemic that disproportionately impacts the sick and disabled community.

Many of us have been excluded from in-person craft fairs due to inaccessibility and inadequate COVID-19 safety measures. Our experiences are unique but not isolated, and our ability to find connections through art is what motivates us to pursue projects like this zine and craft fair.

Anyway, come check out the Fair this year! We are going to have so many amazing vendors and I’m so so proud to be continuously involved in this project. Also vendor applications are currently open, as well as workshop host applications!

You can also support the Fair financially if you have the means by ko-fi (link), PayPal ([email protected]), GoFundMe (link), or venmo (@stonerzines with “SAD Fair” in the notes). Just because it’s virtual doesn’t mean it’s cheap 😅

#support disabled artists and share with nondisabled people #disabled artist #disabled and proud #virtual sick and disabled zine and craft fair #neurodivergent artist #the pandemic isn’t over #support disabled artists #disabled and queer #artists on tumblr #artwork #small artist #art #shop small #disabled tattoo artist #zine fest #craft fair #chronically sick #chronically ill #virtual event #covid cautious #covid conscious #SAD Fair

[theftshrubbery]

i recently made a mini zine from a project at university that talks about my sexuality and stuff :)

i’ve put them on my etsy and it would mean a lot if you can check them out!!!

you can visit my etsy here :)

#my art #this project meant a lot to me #and took a lot from me emotionally LOL #i also sold some of these at a fair yesterday FOR THE FIRST TIME #MY FIRST FAIR!!!! #i’m still weirded out by promoing my etsy #art #illustration #digital art #procreate #zine #handmade zine #queer artist #wlw artist #wlw art #lesbian #lesbian artist #etsy promo #8 fold zine #etsy #etsy artist

[ortie-pnk]

[English below]

Hey ! Cette année je participe à un fest de zine avec freaks !

C'est le Wild Zine Saloon #4 qui aura lieu à St Malo le 18 et 19 août !

J'aurais des prints, des linographies, des patches et au moins deux zines ! En plus de tous ceux de freaks !

____

Hey ! This year I will for the first time expose in a zine fair with my friend freaks !

It's the Wild Zine Saloon #4 wich takes place in St Malo on 18 and 19 of August.

I will present prints, linography, patches and at least 2 zines ! And there will also be all of freaks work !

#punk #queer #diy #zine #zine promo #zine fair #st malo #france #french artist #patches #prints #linoprint #linocut

[demolitiondecay]

i LOVE meeting mcr people irl, i can just say shit like “i went to the clown show and the piss & vinegar show” and they will know what i mean. insane person to insane person communication

#went to a queer zine fair and had a very detailed conversation about gerards outfits with one of the zine makers #absolutely incredible day. i love life #mcr #me.txt

[txttletale]

bundletober #7: this party sucks

hello and welcome to bundletober, the numinous ritual that shall call down the damnation of angels upon our deserving heads. today's game is this party sucks by beating the binary

i won't beat around the bush: i was primed to not like this game much, which is maybe uncharitable--but games making a big deal of how 'queer' they are in their marketing copy always puts me off. this might stem back to my love-hate relationship with thirsty sword lesbians and that game's chronic tone problem, or i might just be a cynical bitch. but this party sucks surprised me in a good way. it's a pretty simple game: it's about a single protagonist (control of whom rotates around the table) going to a bunch of parties to try not to think about their ex, having a bad time, and then thinking about their ex. it's the kind of razor-sharp concept that i think TTRPGs should tackle more (or, rather, that the hundreds of TTRPGs tackling should get more attention) and imo it pulls it off well.

i've been talking a bit on the horizon machine blog about safety tools and which ones i like and don't like--this party sucks does something surprising and invents a brand new safety tool that i actually like a lot. i mean, it's by the author's own admission half safety tool and half play aid and half joke. but it does all those things really well

the IFCOBPC card is a really funny and fantrastic concept and it fits perfectly in this game -- it's a game about a queer awkward twentysomething and that also seems to be the obvious target audience, and it's a play and design space i haven't seen explored--a way to signal this kind of over-the-table emotional response without a complex mechanical framework or the extremely serious and weighty context of x-cards & the like

the other thing i like about this party sucks is that it's specifically three-player. this is a game for three people to play, there are three books, you rotate them round once each, and everything in the game is designed for that. i like this kind of restriction, because it's much easier to design tightly around three people than, say, '3-5' -- and it shows! the division of play roles into the Protagonist, the Venue, and Other People at the party makes perfect sense and gives everyone a fair amount to do. as someone who was a 'forever DM' back when i still played d&d, i now adore games that clearly delineate and distribute narrative power and responsibility.

one last thing--this party sucks has an epilogue mechanic, a real ending. and i love that! ending one-shot games in a satisfying way can often feel difficult, and having a set of prompts asking you to decide on what happens after the game is over is a great way to provide guidance for that. ultimately, though, as much as i talk about tight design, what really made the focus on queerness in this party sucks work for me when for the most part it doesn't in thirsty sword lesbians is the tone--there's a frank first-person tone, no attempt to put on a narratorial persona, only the designer talking about the game from what is clearly and unabashedly their own perspective.

if you want me to look kindly upon your game as a labour of love, talk openly about that love and about that labour in the game's text. you're allowed to do that--often, it will make that game better.

this party sucks is available for purchase as a digital download or a physical zine from itch.io

#tattletxt #bundletober 2023 #ttrpg

[girlwithhorn]

Hi everyone!

My name is Mia, I'm a soon-to-be 30yo comic artist and essayist living on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung country aka Melbourne, Australia. My pronouns are she/her. Here's my website. You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram.

Most of my work can be found on my Medium. You can support me by buying my e-zines off Gumroad or subscribing to my Patreon, although fair warning that my updates are currently intermittent and my webcomic is on hiatus.

Here are some of my comics and writing:

SAMSARA DREAMIN'

My action-horror feel-bad epic webcomic about a trans girl and her psycho wolf boy on the lam in Buddhist hell. Currently on hiatus due to work/life balance with plans to resume around October. Please check the content warning in the About page.

APPLE/SEED

A sci-fi comic about life under neoliberalism and talking to your ex. Made for Liminal Magazine.

Mount Macedon Hiking Guide

This is the one that blew up it's probably how you got here lol. A how-to guide to climbing mountains and grieving the dead. Made for the Emerging Writers' Festival.

Lone Shadow

My Reuben Award-nominated comic about Sekiro and queer phenomenology. A companion piece with YOU, DEFEATED, an essay on Dark Souls and trans grief.

Winner Winner

A comic about children at the end of civilisation, inspired by Taiyo Matsumoto and Katsuhiro Otomo.

#pinned post

[fanzines]

Issue 4 of sissy boy - an awesome 12-page queer zine, by U.S. zinester Charlie Welch, which I picked up at the Paris Ass Book Fair.

#zine #zines #fanzine #fanzines #queer zine #queerzine #queerzines #queer zines #mini zine #minizine #minizines #mini zines #paris ass book fair #queer zine fest #queer zine fair

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #linkdump #linkdumps #junk fees #fcc #ai #ai hype #labor #unions #hamilton nolan #history #cfpb #privacy #online harms #ai snake oil #anne dagg #anne innis dagg #obits #rip #mobile #net neutrality #5g

[allisonanne]

excited to share the second issue of SOFT SUTURES, a zine printed in black ink on a lovely grey paper. 12 pages, with 11 brand-new collages made especially for this issue! debuts at Midwest Queer & Trans Zinefest this weekend in minneapolis, and will be available online following the fest! for those who support my monthly zine project at the ten-dollar level, you'll be getting a copy too! check out bio.link/allisonanne if you'd like to sign up for that! i made the first issue of SOFT SUTURES in october 2020 before the online Twin Cities Zine Fest that year, but found myself unable to return to the project for a bit as it was linked to a pretty tumultuous time. revisiting the project now was really fun--an opportunity to see how much my art & publishing practice has developed since then. i'm really thrilled to have the second issue out at last. the work in this zine was made during the height of post-surgical hand inflammation & nerve pain issues, and it was really interesting to adapt my creative process to that (including a totally different way of holding tiny scissors)! i'm really pleased with how it all turned out. SOFT SUTURES no. 2 functions as a little bit of an abstract visual diary, as often happens. losing myself in an analog project while taking a bit of a breather from social media has been really nice.

#collage art #collageart #paper collage #analog collage #collage #found materials #abstract art #artists on tumblr #abstract #artist #zine fair #zine promo #zine #fan zine #fanzine #art zine #zine preview #zinefest #queer artwork #queer artist #queer #queer zines #queer zine #collage artist #handcut collage #mixed media #collages #surrealism #kunst #kunst und kultur

[catboyriot]

I'm excited to announce that I have a virtual table at Bay Area Queer Zinefest this month!! To celebrate, shipping on all paper goods in my store will be FREE from Sept 13th-20th! Come check it out from anywhere and enjoy the fest!

#baqzf #baqzf2023 #furry zine #zine fest #zine fair #queer zines #queer zine fest #bay area queer zine fest #zinefest #zinefest2023 #furry art

[stonerzines]

Here’s an image version of my pinned SAD Fair post!

#undescribed #virtual sick and disabled zine and craft fair #support disabled artists and share with nondisabled people #support disabled artists #artists on tumblr #artwork #art #small artist #disabled artist #disabled adult #disabled and proud #disabled tattoo artist #disabled and queer #chronically ill #chronically disabled #chronically sick #crippunk #cripple punk #crip punk #queer crip #crip artist #queer cripple #cripple shit #neurodivergent artist #shop small

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

How Steve came out to Robin (It's before season 4 and after season 3):

Warning: Smutty talk, a little bit of underage drinking, past stommy x carol.

They're hanging out at Steve's house and hanging upside down on his couch as they watching TV.

"At this point, it seems more likely that you're going to have sex with a guy than I'm going to have sex with a girl," Robin said. "I mean, it's not a big deal. There's no rush. I can wait. . .oh, who am I kidding. . . Julie Christie is unnecessarily pretty. . . "

"I guess you're going to have sex with a girl then," Steve giggled.

They might have gotten a little drunk. Robin rushed to sit up and ended up falling off the couch.

"You had sex with a guy?!" Robin asked. "Is that what you're saying to me, Stephanopolis Harrington?

"Not my name, Roboobin!" Steve exclaimed. "I mean, technically. I guess. There was a girl in between us, though, and our dicks touched. . . Does that count? Does that mean I'm gay now?"

"I don't know, did you get, you know. . .," Robin leaned closed to whisper. "Hard?"

"I am NOT talking about this with you, Boobin!" Steve yelled.

"Who else are you going to talk about this with, Hardington?" Robin giggled. "Get it?"

"Ugh, yes, fine. . .just a little bit, and it was only because Carol was there. . .probably," Steve said.

"You touched dicks with Tommy H?" Robin asked.

"How do you know it was Tommy?" Steve asked with a gasp.

"Dingus, do you know any other Carol?" Robin asked.

Steve scrambled off the couch and knelt in front of Robin.

"Does mean that I'm - what's that word from that zine - ?" Steve asked.

"Bilingual?" Robin asked. "No, that's me."

"Bicycle?" Steve asked, and then they both giggled.

"Bisexual!" They said together.

"No. No. I mean, I don't think so," Steve said, scrunching up his nose.

"Have you ever thought about doing stuff with a guy before?" She asked.

"I thought about kissing Tommy just to shut him up sometimes," Steve said. "And don't straight people on some level think all people are fuckable?"

"No, you bisexual dumbass, you're not straight at all!" Robin giggled.

"Neither one of us is straight!" Steve giggled.

"Hell yeah! Queer five! One for hand for the lesbian and two hands for the bisexual!" Robin laughed. "And so. . .the queer platonic soulmates lived queerily ever after!"

The next morning, Steve woke up with a killer hangover to find that he and Robin had swapped clothes again. He headed towards the kitchen to find Robin on the island snuggling with a squash.

"It's always some sort of fruit or vegetable," Steve muttered. "Robin! Wake up!"

"I got the baby! I'm a good godmother!" Robin groaned.

"It's not any of the kids, Robin," Steve said. "Let the squash go."

He would laugh if his head didn't hurt so much. Robin opened her eyes and burst into laughter, and then she slapped her hand to her forehead, groaning.

"You should look in the mirror," Robin laughed.

Steve wandered into the hallway and looked into the mirror hanging up on the wall. He rolled his eyes. Written in Robin's lipstick on his forehead were the words. BI DUMBASS.

"It's not fair," Steve whined as Robin came up behind him. "You got to come out when you were sober!"

"Aw," Robin said, squishing his cheeks. "My poor bi baby."

"You know, Eddie Munson came into Family Video the other day, and there was some chocolate on his lips. I just thought that it was one of those impulsive thoughts, you know?" Steve said. "But I really wanted to lick it off."

"How did I ever think you were straight?!"

#stranger things #steve harrington #stranger things s4 #robin buckley #maya hawke #robin & steve #platonic soulmates #platonic with a capital p #steve harrington coming out #bisexual steve harrington #brief mention of #steddie #eddie munson #joseph quinn #eddie stranger things #steve x eddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #stranger things ficlet