Small Town Murder Mystery Where It Eventually Turns Out That Literally Everyone In Town Is A Member Of

There’ve been a few responses to/reblogs with tags on my post about DIY clothing embellishments that basically boil down to ‘I’d love to do this but I’m scared it’ll turn out bad/I’m not a good enough artist’. And I get it, I really do! I also want my art things to turn out nicely. But also…making it badly is sort of the point of punk DIY. 

Listen. We live in a world that would dearly love to charge you a subscription fee for breathing. The bastards are doing everything they possibly can to figure out how to turn art - stories, visual art, music, textile/fibre art, sculpture, crafts and creations of every kind - into a neat, discrete, packageable commodity, a product they can chop up into little pieces and stick behind a paywall so they can charge you for every drop of it you want to have in your life. 

The whole sneering idea that ‘everybody wants to be some kind of creator now’ and anything less than absolute mastery right out the gate is somehow shameful and embarrassing is a tool those bastards are using. It’s a way to reinforce the idea that only a set group of people can create and control art, and everybody else has to buy it. 

But art isn’t a product. Art is a fundamental human impulse. Nobody is entitled to a specific piece of art (which is where this message gets skewed into pitting people who love art against the artists who make it, while the bastards screw us all and run away with the money). But making art belongs to everybody. We make up songs and dances and stories, and paint things, and make clothes, and embellish them, and carve flowers into our furniture and our lintels and our doorframes, and make windows out of tiny pieces of coloured glass, and decorate our homes and our bodies and our lives with things we make and make up, simply for the love of beauty and of the act of creation. Grave goods from tens of thousands of years ago show that ancient hominids gave their dead wreaths of ceramic flowers, tattooed their bodies, beaded their shoes. Making things for the sake of beauty and enjoyment is one of the most ancient and human things we can do. 

The idea that we can’t, that we have to buy shit instead, because art is a product and you have to have the bestest prettiest most perfect product, is the enemy of joy. It’s the death of culture. And it means that, instead of whatever it is that you cherish and enjoy and value, you get whatever inoffensive (and to whom is it inoffensive?) bland meaningless samey-samey crap that the bastards want you to be allowed to have. What are you missing and what are you missing out on, if you don’t make or modify or decorate anything for yourself, if you don’t think you can because the product at the end won’t be polished or perfect or marketable enough? What do you lose? What do we lose? 

It is a desperately vital and necessary thing for you to make shit. For you to know that you can make shit, that you don’t have to just lie back and take whatever pablum the bastards want to force-feed you (and charge you through the nose for). That the bastards need you more than you need them. 

Become ungovernable. Be your own weirdly-endearing punk little freak. Paint on a t-shirt. Sing off-key in the shower or at karaoke night or at open mic night. Make up a story where you get to meet your favourite fictional character and you guys hug or fuck or punch each other in the face. Make art. Do it badly. Do it frequently. Do it enthusiastically. Do it for love and joy and creativity and fun and the spiteful joy of thumbing your nose at some smug motherfucker with a Swiss bank account who wants to track your heartbeat and location for the rest of your life in order to automatically pump AI-generated beats matched to your mood into your earbuds for a small monthly subscription fee of $24.99/month. It is literally the only way we are ever going to have even a chance to save art and our own lives from the bastards. 

So. Paint that t-shirt. 

(Also support artists where you can, and buy your music from Bandcamp.)

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

I am not in France right now and i miss my bread so much

reblog to give warm bread to your mutuals

i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.

so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.

Sidecar

Ilan Pappé, The Collapse of Zionism — Sidecar

Six signs of breakdown.

Hamas’s assault of October 7 can be likened to an earthquake that strikes an old building. The cracks were already beginning to show, but they are now visible in its very foundations. More than 120 years since its inception, could the Zionist project in Palestine – the idea of imposing a Jewish state on an Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern country – be facing the prospect of collapse? Historically, a plethora of factors can cause a state to capsize. It can result from constant attacks by neighbouring countries or from chronic civil war. It can follow the breakdown of public institutions, which become incapable of providing services to citizens. Often it begins as a slow process of disintegration that gathers momentum and then, in a short period of time, brings down structures that once appeared solid and steadfast. The difficulty lies in spotting the early indicators. Here, I will argue that these are clearer than ever in the case of Israel. We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism. And, if my diagnosis is correct, then we are also entering a particularly dangerous conjuncture. For once Israel realizes the magnitude of the crisis, it will unleash ferocious and uninhibited force to try to contain it, as did the South African apartheid regime during its final days.

This is an incredible article by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé that argues successfully that Israel is facing a collapse that will come soon than expected

Here's how you can help Palestine!!

Educate yourself and spread awareness with the help of these sites:

Al Jazeera - This is a news site that gives constant updates and information on Palestine.

Decolonize Palestine - This is a website that informs you about the history of Palestine, debunk myths, and gives out a lot of resources to look into.

Visualizing Palestine - This site creates infographics that can help people visualize the statistics from data collected about Palestine. They are free to download and share around.

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights - This website includes numerous campaigns and resources you can look into and support.

The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive - This site features a collection of many things from Palestine that archives documents, letters, and other items that show the lives and experiences of Palestinians.

Ways you can donate to/support families in Palestine:

Arab.org - Just do your daily clicks and you get to donate for free. Please take the time to donate to all of the causes.

Gaza Funds - Every time you refresh the site, it leads you to a different GoFundMe page for the people who need help.

Care for Gaza - This is an organization that sends aid out to Palestine, you can find more in their Twitter/X account. They also have a PayPal.

eSims for Gaza - You can send an eSim to people in Palestine to help them connect and reach out.

Emergency Relief for Gaza - This is a campaign that gives food, medical supplies, and other humanitarian aid to families from donations.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) - They also give medical aid to the people in Palestine and you can also support by donating to them as well.

Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) - Donate here to give funds and support to the children in Palestine as they specialize in pediatric care.

Google Docs/Spreadsheets:

Make sure to look at the other tabs within the spreadsheets as they lead to more options/resources!

Help Gaza - This is a spreadsheet with a list of fundraisers for different families/causes that need support! Look through and donate when you can!

Operation Olive Branch - This is a spreadsheet with many links and ways to help in the project! There are campaigns, fundraisers, volunteer work for other parts of the causes and such! Make sure to check it out!

★RESOURCE LINKS AND INFO★ - A google document made from Twitter/X user: para_docx. This includes links, resources, and information for the other ongoing genocides as well.

Some of these documents intersect and have similar resources and links, but I'm adding them just to make sure as they may also have some that aren't listed in this post either.

Free Palestine.

Do it

Anyway if this post reaches 30000 notes I'll sit down and professionally film a Goncharov movie scene you can send to people who claim it's not real. This is completely serious, I've made movies before and I'm willing to do it for the memes.

Reblog if it’s okay to befriend you, ask questions, ask for advice, rant, vent, let something off your chest, or just have a nice chat.