The Only Way Out Is Through.

The only way out is through.

You are inconsistent. You do not need to have a grand unified theory about what to do about Michael Jackson. You are a hypocrite, over and over. You love Annie Hall but you can barely stand to look at a painting by Picasso. You are not responsible for solving this unreconciled contradiction. In fact, you will solve nothing by means of your consumption; the idea that you can is a dead end. The way you consume art doesn't make you a bad person, or a good one. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish that.

Claire Dederer, Monsters

kinder than man, althea davis

Are you registered to vote?

In Texas you must be registered to vote 30 days before the election

PROJECT 2025: WHAT IS IT AND WHAT CAN I DO? AN POST WITH LINKS AND INFORMATION.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS PROJECT 2025? I KEEP HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT IT.

At this point - you've heard of it. And you're probably trying to understand what exactly it is. How does it affect you? Your American friends and family? What does it all mean?

PROJECT 2025 is a Conservative Playbook to essentially take over the American government and reshape life as Americans know it. Conservatives refer to it as a "comprehensive transition plan" to take place during the first 180 days of presidency. It is a 900-page document [of which I read] and can generally explained as complete and utter religious bullshit and agenda.

It is best summarized by the subreddit community r/Defeat_Project_2025 : "Project 2025 is a plan by The Heritage Foundation to reshape the US into an authoritarian theocracy, bring about religious tyranny. It threatens the freedom and liberty we fought for and vowed to defend. They plan to ban abortion, cut LGBTQ protections, reverse climate policy, environmental regulation and more, endangering our future. HF inserted policies and staff going back to Reagan. Trump accepted 64% of their "Mandate for Leadership" plan - proof, which Project 2025 builds off. 70 Heritage Foundation Alumni served in his administration or transition team."

HEY, THAT ACTUALLY SOUNDS REALLY SCARY. WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE GOALS OF THIS PROJECT?

Once again, we turn to our friends in r/Defeat_Project_2025 for a rather terrifying list:

Use religion to shape policy

Fire 50k federal workers, hire loyalists

Direct the DOJ to investigate enemies

Hamstring the FBI, reduce autonomy

Dismantle the DHS

Use National Guard for law enforcement

Military recruiters in secondary schools

Make children take a military aptitude test

Military forces assigned to the border

Defense funds for undocumented camps

Harder to get asylum

Gut the EPA

Rollback climate change protections

Axe 3 US Department of Energy offices

Eliminate the Department of Education

Eliminate public funding of PBS and NPR

Eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion measures

Replace equality measures with "anti-white racism" policies

Outlaw porn, equate it with LGBTQ

Register teachers, librarians providing "porn" as sex offenders

Close telecom, tech firms that spread "porn"

Affirming a Trans child's gender becomes abuse

Throw Trans folk out of the military

Exclude "gender ideology" from public schools

Lock in rigid gender roles at birth

Decry single moms & gay marriage

Try to ban abortion & contraception

Bust all public sector unions

President will control the FCC & FTC

Raise political contribution limits

Hamstring the Federal Election Commission

Bolster bogus voter fraud claims

Insane, huh.

WHAT CAN I DO?

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! Now, more than ever, your vote is needed.

YOU CAN VISIT THE DEFEAT PROJECT 2025 WEBSITE HERE.

YOU CAN JOIN THE DISCORD AND GET CONNECTED HERE.

YOU CAN CHECK OUT A LIST OF MAJOR RESOURCES FROM THE SUBREDDIT HERE.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: YOU CAN SPEAK UP. YOUR VOICE IS A POWERFUL WEAPON. TALK TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO VOTE BLUE - TO DO THEIR RESEARCH AND UNDERSTAND THAT PROJECT 2025 WILL AFFECT EVERYONE - NOT JUST QUEER PEOPLE.

Damn, girl, you don't gotta shoulder the burden of propagating the species all by yourself 😍

(Giant Hogna wolf mum 🖤)

Oops, found something beautiful, better think about this all day.

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Your body is an ancestor. Your body is an altar to your ancestors. Every one of your cells holds an ancient and anarchic love story. Around 2.7 billion years ago free-living prokaryotes melted into one another to form the mitochondria and organelles of the cells that build our bodies today. All you need to do to honor your ancestors is to roll up like a pill bug, into the innate shape of safety: the fetal position. The curl of your body, then, is an altar not just to the womb that grew you, but to the retroviruses that, 200 million years ago taught mammals how to develop the protein syncytin that creates the synctrophoblast layer of the placenta. Breathe in, slowly, knowing that your breath loops you into the biome of your ecosystem. Every seven to ten years your cells will have turned over, rearticulated by your inhales and exhales, your appetites and proclivity for certain flavors. If you live in a valley, chances are the ancient glacial moraine, the fossils crushed underfoot, the spores from grandmotherly honey fungi, have all entered into and rebuilt the very molecular make up of your bones, your lungs, and even your eyes. Even your lungfuls of exhaust churn you into an ancestor altar for Mesozoic ferns pressurized into the fossil fuels. You are threaded through with fossils. Your microbiome is an ode to bacterial legacies you would not be able to trace with birth certificates and blood lineages. You are the ongoing-ness of the dead. The alembic where they are given breath again. Every decision, every idea, every poem you breathe and live is a resurrection of elements that date back to the birth of this universe itself. Today I realize that due to the miracle of metabolic recycling, it is even possible that my body, somehow, holds the cells of my great-great grandmother. Or your great-great grandmother. Or that I am built from carbon that once intimately orchestrated the flight of a hummingbird or a pterodactyl. Your body is an ecosystem of ancestors. An outcome born not of a single human thread, but a web of relations that ripples outwards into the intimate ocean of deep time.

Your Body is an Ancestor, Sophie Strand