Listening rn and I love it so far!

Week 7 thread is up!!!

Let me know if I missed anyone!

Sorry for my official response to this being late again, but I especially liked this chapter and there’s so much here that’s still relevant:

The sexuality of some trans people cannot be easily categorized. When the borders of sex and gender are not fixed, neither is the definition of what constitutes gay or lesbian or bisexual. That’s exactly what scares some people about trans liberation. They feel like the earth is shifting under their feet: “Here we’ve finally established communities and a movement for women who love women and men who love men, and trans people seem to turn all that upside down.”

That’s why some people fear trans inclusion. They are afraid they’ll no longer have any turf to stand on. And so they fear losing those lesbian/gay borders. But it’s important to remember that those demarcations do not depend on being able to clearly define each individual as lesbian or gay. These rough boundaries delineate the scope of oppression; these are the perimeters of collective fight-back.

This seems to still be a thing among some in the queer community, though not sure how widespread it still is. I think ze makes it clear here why broad queer acceptance is so important, as opposed locking people into specific categories.

We are not just gay, lesbian, bi or trans people. Our populations include many oppressed nationalities, people with aids, women, youths, elders, people who are unemployed, homeless, Deaf, disabled, prisoners, people dependent on welfare, SSI, Medicaid, and Medicare.

Today we are witnessing a violent bipartisan attack on all our standards of living. This slash-and-burn policy will affect millions of people all over the country, including many lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people. Is it any wonder that we are seeing a simultaneous rise in scapegoating?

I’m reminded of those assclowns on sites like who attack pro-Palestinian queers because “Hamas would hate them” or whatever. Not going to rant about that here but this chapter explains pretty well why support for other oppressed groups is so important.

I also wanted to say that when I originally read this, it was the first time I really read in-depth about Sylvia Rivera, who I absolutely love. I was feeling pretty depressed and broken at that time and here was someone who lived through far more difficult circumstances and kept pushing forward in spite of that, which was pretty inspiring. Right after reading I ended up doing a bunch of extra reading about STAR and this compilation book of her speeches. Might be good for a reading club even at some point in the future, if anyone else is interested.

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025207

STARTING NOW GET IN HERE

Starting in about an hour!!!

https://youtu.be/gcSaW6JUnUc

Starting in about 4 hours!!!

deleted by creator

I don’t quite get what the second twitter screenshot is?

Awww :( I’m sorry. I want to read Capital myself but given how dense it is I’d need to be very committed before I start on it.

So the first time I read this was my first real exposure to Sylvia Rivera and I went on a deep dive afterwards. She’s amazing and I’ll probably start on the collection of her writings next.

Researching events related to that is what led me to find this speech!

Here’s the full Portrait section from the text for anyone who hasn’t read it: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Trans_Liberation:_Beyond_Pink_or_Blue#Portrait:_Sylvia_Rivera_-_“I’m_glad_I_was_in_the_Stonewall_riot”

And here’s specifically the part where she talks about meeting Huey P. Newton:

Later on, when the Young Lords came about in New York City, I was already in GLF (Gay Liberation Front). There was a mass demonstration that started in East Harlem in the fall of 1970. The protest was against police repression and we decided to join the demonstration with our star banner. That was one of the first times the star banner was shown in public, where star was present as a group. I ended up meeting some of the Young Lords that day. I became one of them. Any time they needed any help, I was always there for the Young Lords. It was just the respect they gave us as human beings. They gave us a lot of respect. It was a fabulous feeling for me to be myself- being part of the Young Lords as a drag queen - and my organization [STAR] being part of the Young Lords.

I met [Black Panther Party leader] Huey Newton at the Peoples’ Revolutionary Convention in Philadelphia in 1971. Huey decided we were part of the revolution - that we were revolutionary people.

I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist. I was proud to make the road and help change laws and what not. I was very proud of doing that and proud of what I’m still doing, no matter what it takes.

I was trying to find more info about the meeting but so far haven’t found anything else that covers it in detail.

I can assure you, this is not a serious weapon and as I mentioned elsewhere it’s really just something small I thought would be fun to make and print.

Well yeah. You might as well buy a CNC mill with that money :D

They do (I think) have a student or non-business version for cheaper but it’s still relatively pricey, especially compared to free.

I haven’t tried SW, but from my experience with Creo, the workflow is very similar to FreeCAD. Designing 2D sketches driven by an algebraic constraint solver, extruding / pocketing them, and repeating indefinitely.

This is basically Solidworks too but has a lot of different tools for doing specific things and also has some pretty powerful simulation addons if you need to do anything like make load-bearing parts. Also is good for setting up custom workflows and alternate configurations and a bunch of other potentially useful stuff.

I’m kind of surprised to hear Blender CAD is in good shape. It always seemed like a cursed project to me, but I haven’t taken a close look in a long time. Not to say Blender itself is bad. Like you said, It is probably the most capable free software program when it comes to doing 3D sculptures and such. I’ve only dabbled with it in amateur game development, and in that discipline it is incredibly solid.

I’m talking about this specifically: https://www.cadsketcher.com/ I haven’t used it in a bit but when I did it was pretty easy to learn. Probably not something you’d use for really complex models but seems great for stuff like 3D prints.

The main reason I haven’t used it much at home is because of issues running it in WINE on Linux. Rebooting to run it on Windows was too inconvenient for me to invest much time in it.

Solidworks might also have this issue… Not sure the best way to run it on Linux. I wonder if Proton would work for it?

Ari Ben-Menashe has been saying this for years: https://www.mintpressnews.com/ari-ben-menashe-israel-relationship-jeffrey-epstein/263465/

She also told Maria Farmer that Mossad had killed him, which is interesting.

This would be such a great setting for some leftist BL fanfiction

I use solidworks because it’s familiar to me and tbf it is a very nice CAD program and has a ton of neat features, but honestly I would never pay for it. Others I’ve tried include Freecad, Fusion 360, and Blender CAD Sketcher. Freecad felt difficult for me but this was awhile back and I didn’t spend a ton of time trying to learn it. Fusion 360 feels like it lacks features compared to SW and now they keep your files in the cloud which sounds horrible. Blender CAD Sketcher is surprisingly easy to use and would probably be useful for more creative modeling since it is a Blender add-on, but it handles models different from Solidworks. I’ve heard Freecad is a lot better now, so I’ve been meaning to DL it again and try it out.

EDIT: One more thing… Solidworks is pretty easy to pirate of course, so is worth trying out.