That last panel looks so peaceful. Sure they’re tired, but they’re genuinely enjoying themselves. Props to the artist for being able to convey such an interesting expression.
I do not ask this lightly, the Missouri AG’s office has started a site to build a list of trans people. Clog the system. That’s the life of a trans kid who gets another day on this earth. Spam the fuck out of it, it’s not sophisticated. You don’t need to use a real email. Post as much as you’d like
Hi! Transgender Missourian here. DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT SUBMIT ANYTHING TO THIS SITE.
This is not to “collect a list of trans people”. This site was created to collect fake complaints specifically about the Transgender Center at Washington University Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. It was only uploaded because the A.G.’s “investigation” into the Transgender Center turned up nothing, so they want people to submit lies to justify shutting down the Center (which is the only one in the region).
The far-right A.G. complied and immediately opened an “investigation” into the Center.
We heard nothing for a month, demonstrating that the “investigation” found no evidence to support the government’s transphobic agenda. THAT IS WHEN THEY CREATED THIS WEBPAGE. THEY WANT PEOPLE TO SUBMIT THINGS. THEY WANT LIES. THEY WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING CRUEL ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE.
Investigations by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Missouri Independent, and NPR, who interviewed an enormous number of patients from the Center, found no evidence to support this former employee’s transphobic claims, nor evidence to support banning trans healthcare altogether (of course).
THE FAR-RIGHT STATE GOVERNMENT IS FISHING FOR FAKE “EVIDENCE”. DO NOT GIVE IT TO THEM.
Please actually learn about the situation and check with the people on the ground before you spread misinformation like this. Although some people may have good intentions, this will hurt trans people.
If you see this misinformation going around, please correct it (I’ve seen 3 posts like this in the last day).
As a fellow lover of libraries (and as a librarian) feel I must share the heart breaking story of the loss of my rural university's library system.
I live in Vermont, a beautiful state full of many wonderful libraries (Story walks were actually invented in our state capital, at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montepelier!)
Unfortunately, Our State University system (VSU) wants to permanently close down our University Libraries state-wide. There will be no more physical libraries for students to utilize, no librarians to help us or to connect with. Students and members of our communities will be losing a precious resource and public space. Our library system will be digitalized, online only. This will have devastating effects not only for the students and our campuses but our rural communities too.
If you'd like to learn more, here's an informative post from a fellow student!
I don't know if there's much we can do at this point, but if you can, please help us raise awareness. We love our libraries and don't want to lose them. Thank you, Neil Gaiman.
I *knew* that companies have been trying to shift blame for damage to the environment onto regular people’s buying habits, but it has still somehow been a shock to research a topic and find the internet totally dominated by the narrative that “consumerism” and the desire to buy more stuff is entirely responsible for pollution and landfill waste, instead of factors such as planned obsolescence.
It’s insidious—this widespread idea that average people are too greedy, and that’s what fuels climate change and pollution. Not greedy companies.
“Consumers shop for clothes to stay on-trend and throw away perfectly good old clothes.” “Consumers only wear clothes a few times before throwing them away.” “A huge amount of landfill waste comes from clothing that consumers throw out.” “Consumers replace their wardrobes arbitrarily to stay on-trend.” “Consumer demand for ‘fast fashion’ is rising spite of the environmental impacts.”
Statements like this make it sound like regular people want to buy and waste vast amounts of resources, and normal people’s unchecked addiction to shopping is causing environmental devastation. It’s horribly misleading when products are being deliberately designed to break or wear out within one or two years and to be impossible to repair.
Instead of “Americans are buying way more clothes than they did 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!”
Where are the articles entitled “Clothing brands are selling poorly-made clothes that have to be replaced much more often than 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!”
Then note that fast fashion is decoupled from the demand economy. What this means is that clothing items are generated based on algorithms determined by corporations. They’re not driven by current demand, or consumption, or consumer desire: they’re driven by prediction of how much the corporation can sell. Because the items are practically worthless, the corporation risks little by generating extra/unwanted items. So if they generate 10,000 unwanted tops, they can simply destroy them again and send them to landfill. They don’t have any motivation to recycle, donate, or give away these items. It does not matter if 15 more people swear to give up fast fashion and -15 items are purchased. The machine of fast fashion operates independently of consumer demand, because its settings are set to increasing profit, not what people claim to want or what’s good for their workers or what’s good for the earth.
If your goal is to live a better and more connected life - a life that will be resilient and joyful in the face of coming changes - you absolutely can, should and must avoid fast fashion. Do it for your soul. Do it for your ethics. Do it because an informed, caring person cannot do anything else. Do it because wearing these items would make you feel ill. That is what I, and my household, do. It is good for us, but does not liberate you. I do not call it activism, but a way of living in the world.
But if your goal is to break the machine, you cannot break a machine whose settings are “infinite profit” by pressing on levers marked “consumer demand.” Those levers aren’t even connected to the economic machine. It operates on separate principles. I’ve written about this before: there are plenty of ways to break the machine, but “declining to interact with it” is not activism and won’t kill it.
In science policy we do a lot of stakeholder mapping, which really shows where power lies, and here’s a proposed European strategy for forcing fast fashion into the circular economy. Interestingly, as with many circular economy things, the levers involved include end-of-life pressures: if you stop textile manufacturers from burning their surplus items for their own convenience, they’ll have to find other solutions. If the countries being used as dumping grounds for textile waste effectively organise and resist, it will be less economical to be wasteful. This is how you influence economies: cut down the current systems that insulate corporations and allow for infinite growth on a finite planet.
Consumers certainly have a role to play, but in my opinion, this role isn’t as easy and smug as buying/not-buying fast fashion. Instead, consumers must grapple with and influence material desire. Why is it so nice to buy new things, and how can we change that? Can you get those feelings from a community clothes swap, or would we actually be happier if our psychology just hated the whole concept of new clothes? For people who enjoy bullying: instead of bullying people for buying clothes, which is cruel and unkind, why not bully the entire concept of consumption? In the healed world, we won’t be entertained by watching a video of someone opening a large bag of new clothing; we can start living in that world today.
Further, consumer desires actually do influence investors. It’s less sexy but involves more money being moved around. Ideally the healed world won’t involve markets that float untethered on the power of random beliefs, but if you’re into it for now, you might as well look into how the complex network of investment keeps undesirable business practices afloat, how much that relies of delicate forces of confidence, and how quickly industry pivots to follow investors. Long story short, investors have more money than you do, but only because of psychology.
In conclusion, these machines are complex and don’t care much about your $5. This is neither a reason to despair, or to run out and buy Primark. It is a reason to become educated.
Alternatively, you could simply have a Revolution and break all of this down, which would be a fascinating change and would certainly be something new.
What I find frustrating about these discussions is that no one wants to mention the other reason why people buy fast fashion - price.
I would love to spend £20 on a good quality t-shirt that will last a decade if not longer, but I don’t have £20. I buy what I can from charity and second hand stores, but what’s available is limited and rarely in my size. I can get a plain t-shirt that fits well and is made from recycled materials at Primark for £2 to £5
Same with having kids. They grow fast, and some of us don’t have the money or storage space (or certainty that we’ll be living in the same place in a month let alone a year), so you can’t invest in clothing that grandkids and great grandkids will potentially wear. Fast fashion will kit out your child in t-shirt and joggers that will last until their next growth spurt for less than £5, and when every penny counts that is a lifesaver
Just a reminder that on the web version of Tumblr you can turn off infinite scrolling in your dashboard settings.
And you should.
(also turn off “Best Stuff First” if you’re sensible)
Inifinite scroll uses the same idea as gambling- variable reward. You’re on the hunt for the perfect post that gives you that dopamine hit but the idea that that perfect post might be the next one keeps you scrolling to infinity
Tiktok does this EXTREMELY well which is why I had to uninstall it. It’s so easy to get caught in that feedback loop ESPECIALLY with an algorithm involved
