Jessica Jones (she/they) 🍉📚

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

I’m just imagining how many families could have been supported to remain intact with the money spent on this ad.

Adoption is a capitalistic enterprise. This isn’t about giving pregnant people options; it’s about the “domestic supply of infants” not currently meeting demand.

And here’s what a lot of folks aren’t ready to hear.

THIS is why the US is becoming a fascist state. There’s fascists in every country. But what allows them to take hold here is that we don’t have an opposition party.

If we don’t refuse to vote for these people anymore, this won’t end.

I'm so glad you found belonging <3 The more I learn about human development through the lens of adoption, the more I see that I **couldn't** know what I didn't know. It can feel unbelievably heavy to integrate info about ourselves that the vast majority of people learn before they have memory of it.

It's ostensibly to protect the privacy of biological mothers, but it's really for the comfort of adoptive parents and to prop up an extremely flawed industry.

I'm actually fortunate to have been born in Colorado, because I grew up in TX where a court order is still required to unseal a file.

Even cars come with a Carfax to show a vehicle's history, and we get recall notifications when a problem is identified by someone else with the same model. No one is a blank slate, but adoptees are treated like one.

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.”

That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

I opened my envelope in a closet, still feeling like I was doing something illicit.

And not only am I having to jump through fiery hoops for this information about my closest genetic relationships, I am doing this while reconciling with the fact that I will never have a chance to meet these people.

There is grief in every direction for adopted people.

To be clear, the biological relationship is not disputed by the state. Just the legal one.

Because the way adoption is conducted in this country, it is a complete legal severance of relationship.

The only reason I now have this document is because she died 25 years ago, permitting release “for genealogical purposes.”

I will be doing the same this year for a biological aunt that died before 40.

Two very close relatives died early, and I am not legally entitled to know cause.

This document was necessary to create a family tree that I used to acquire the death certificate for my biological grandmother, who died relatively early at 59, because I am still not legally entitled to a medical history.

I got my original birth certificate from Colorado in 2018 after years of being shut out by the agency that facilitated my adoption.

I don’t think many non-adopted people will ever be able to fully understand how surreal it is to see information **about yourself** that was hidden by the govt.

🚨🚨VA RESIDENTS: Want to do some advocacy from home this weekend?

HB301 will give VA-born adopted people the right to access their original birth certificates and will be heard by the full VA House **before Fri 1/30**.

More details and email templates below

by maintaining the belief that the victims of state terror must have somehow deserved or caused what they got, we do our part to help sustain the terror regime’s existence.

TincherSealedWitnessDec012426.PDF

This witness to Alex Pretti's murder not only refutes the governmen't story, but says she is afraid to go home because federal agents might arrest her. This is what it feels like to live under state terror.
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

If his main site is still down with all the traffic, DreamHaven is also on Abebooks, which is linked in the thread.

I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows. I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.

Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...

This is a stunning resource, beautifully presented - congratulations to Ros Smith Kathy Acheson and their team emwmlibrary.com

The Case for Child Liberation Through Children‘s Books In troubling the idea of childhood, there is perhaps no better place to go than children’s literature. Children’s literature is where stories of childhood are produced, ostensibly, for children; it…

Sharing a practice of reading with children is also a practice of listening to children: “What are you thinking about? What are your questions?“ @lalouverouge.bsky.social

Image of the tops of books in a herringbone pattern. They are in a rainbow gradient. The center of the image has a green textbox with the words "Resources for fighting book censorship, library challenges, and more."

A massive thread of resources, history, information, and material to help you not only fight and understand book censorship but protect the incredible democratic institutions of public libraries and public education.

This is updated regularly!

Photo of Alice Wong, an Asian American disabled woman in a power chair. She is wearing an orange and black tiger-striped sweater, black pants, a bold red lip color, and a trach at her neck. In the background is a gray cement wall with greenery. (Photo credit: Eddie Hernandez Photography)

This is Alice’s friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice’s wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing. Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin. We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.

So saddened by the news that we have lost Alice Wong. It was an honor to know her and learn from her. May the lessons she shared continue to guide us for years to come.

narrative of hosting an admin party for everyone to sit together with snacks, be merry, pay bills and make doctors appointments and manage life

props to WSJ for once on a useful notion, ADMIN PARTY for everybody

i can’t believe a good thing happened we should do this more often

Every time someone’s t-shirt campaign gives my neurodivergent, sensory-spicy brain a v-neck option that keeps fabric from touching my throat — I bless them, and my odds of supporting go up about 75%.

*sigh* that feeling when I’m both glad we can help and also despondent that we market ourselves in line with upholding oppressive capitalistic norms. An all-too-familiar feeling in public libraries, unfortunately.

This is the proudest I have felt to be a Texan in years.

Cardboard box on a rock in a garden that says free plums & propaganda. Inside the box are French plums and postcards by Marc Fischer that say Losers Attack Our Libraries, Fight for Librarians

Free plums and propaganda.

Imagine if a student can pay $20/month to be able to say to their computer, "Please log in to Canvas for me and complete all the assignments due today."

That might be the case as of today if OpenAI's agent is allowed to access learning management systems.

Yet we can't abandon online learning.

June 28, 1969: Stonewall Riots Police arrived at the Stonewall Inn and arrested anyone found to be cross-dressing, resulting in mayhem and what are now referred to as the Stonewall Riots. This was a milestone in a long history of L...

#tdih 1969 Stonewall Riots in NYC.

Police attack patrons at gay bar who resist.

Often called spark that launched the gay rights mov't, the history is longer.

See @nyhistory.bsky.social & Throughline ⬇️

Defend right to teach this history.

Poster via @justseeds.bsky.social of Sylvia Ray Rivera