Lauren

jesus fucking christ

read this, do not - or maybe do? - read this in a hallway corner while doing political work, unless you can keep both heat and emotion off your face.

But read it. Filthy, transcendent, violent, upsetting, brilliant.

Join us if you can: Feb 13-15. It helps repair my armor to face the Horrors.

Even if you can't join us... don't forget to be awesome! 🤘

The "community" part comes w/ the 48h livestream: It's packed full good vibes. I've never seen so many people on the internet stay so nice to each other in such large quantities. The schedule is up; I'm really looking forward to @tylerthrasherart.bsky.social and @electrolemon.bsky.social this year.

But if you do choose to donate, the perks are really cool! They're already live here for your perusal, and are very art-forward. I get the Digital Download Bundle every year and am never disappointed. I'm treating myself to the "Nerdfighter Art Perk" this year for the first time!

Hank & John speak often about attention as currency. In a world where brands are competing for your time, emotional investment, and attention, even the act of passive viewer participation MATTERS. You do not have to spend money to have a financial stake in this event. Your attention is valuable.

The other half of money raised goes to charities voted on by YOU! Common recipients are orgs supporting LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants/asylum seekers, incarceration justice, climate justice, etc. You can vote here: projectforawesome.com/videos

Every year, P4A hosts a 48 hour livestream to raise money for charity. Half the $$$ goes to predetermined recipients: Save the Children & Partners In Health, vetted and reputable folks who are embedded in impacted communities and have the connections to make our funds go the furthest.

The 2026 @projectforawesome.com is coming on FRIDAY!! If you're feeling particularly bleak about the world - and I know you are - please treat yourself to a few hours of community with enthusiastic strangers who are all in one place to help decrease world suck. Here's how it works 🧵⬇️

Just finished a multi-week battle with Microsoft because they dinged my employer's sender-IP as a suspicious/spammy for no discernible reason. I've been in email marketing for 15 yrs and never seen it like that before. Your rationale is awwwwfully tempting.

The weirdest part about this new Discord ID stuff is the footnote about how if your algorithmic behavior is sufficiently adult-ish they won't card you. Like, okay, can't wait to see if my behavior reads as a 41 year old based on the data set they possess. Nothing about that is unsettling at all.

Can I say the weirdest part of this for me is that MY parents live down the street from her actual NM home and I know what the exterior looks like?? I am so confused, CAN OUR MOMS BE FRIENDS? (Not really. Just. What the fuck.)

A 2 panel sketch disgram of a 1 meter tall pod. in the second panel, an oval section pops off and a demonic little face with short tentacles flies out, crudely drawn.

My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

YouTube video by Demi Adejuyigbe Cause & Effect: Short Film

cause & effect

Carbon fiber foldable walking stick

Happy Black History Month!

It costs 0$ to Repost a Black disabled queer small business! It could lead to my next sale.

These carbon fiber foldable walking sticks are lightweight and strong. You can fit them in a bag! And they come in 3 great patterns!!!

Store: Bibipins.com

the unhinged laugh that would have come out of me...

This year, get her what she really wants for Valentine's Day

Vengeance

I used to think a lot about public bathrooms because of commuting in Boston. Unexpectedly getting stuck somewhere for 90 minutes when there's no place to pee is wild.

Jessie Diggins, Olympic cross-country skiing gold medalist, from the Twin Cities: “I want to make sure you know who I’m racing for…”

A comic in black/white/blue. Lucy rolls her bike through an alley, by a crew building a fence. Narration: My neighbors hired a crew to rebuild their fence. Crew member: "Do you need us to move our stuff out of the way?" Lucy: "Oh! No, you're all good, thanks!" Lucy: "Have a good one!" Crew member: "You, too!"

Narration: I was teaching when my phone started lighting up with alerts from the rapid response network and neighbor chat. Lucy's back is to us as she shows a group of enthusiastic children something on a notebook. Behind her, her phone in her bag is buzzing. Narration: By the time the lesson was over, they were already gone. Lucy is reading messages on her phone. Messages: Alert: black SUV Sighting: be on alert for... Confirmed abductionL alley between ----- and ----. SUV plates... We tried to get them inside, but it was too... ...Contacting an I.R. lawyer. Heading to Broadview later today.

Lucy is riding her bike home. Narration: On the ride home, I kept thinking "If I'd been there, could I have warned them? Would my ICIRR* training have helped?" *Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Get trained and know your rights at ICIRR.org. Narration: I'd taken the training after Halloween, when the violent ICE raids had locked down our schools and driven our neighbors indoors. (Image of a halloween bucket in the shape of a jack-o-lantern) Narration: Halloween is fun here-- The community filling the streets and opening our doors to one another. But this year's was tense, frightened and subdued. Haunted.

Lucy is standing in the alley, staring at the newly built fence. Narration: When I got home, it was all done. The other two guys who had gotten inside in time stayed and finished the build. The new fence is superimposed with the brief exchange from earlier in the comic ("Have a good one" You, too") Narration: I see it every day and think about how those guys built this in the spot where strangers in masks took their friend. Narration: How many other places in our communities are similarly haunted? (Drawings of sidewalks, buildings, streets and windows)

"Haunted"
#IceOut #IceOutComics

what if instead of every writer having an individual premium substack we had lots of writers working together for one publication. you might have editors, too, and designers. and only one regular fee, instead of seventy billion! wonder who will invent that. sounds like it’d be good

It sounds like it DOES matter :0

Pinned lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Aug 19, 2021 Almost three years ago, my editor called me early one November morning. A wildfire had sparked near a town called Paradise, he said. Could I go? (1/13) 0:02 / 0:10 lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 47m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

My father, a 70-year-old daily journalist for 20+ years and thrice Pulitzer nominated, was very excited when Bezos took the helm at the revered WaPo. "It will save journalism," he was certain.

It is an ongoing work of immense self control to not rub his folly in his face every time we talk.

Cackling at the sheer quantity of Master & Commander answers (which is also my favorite dad movie, and my dad's favorite dad movie) - but may I also posit All the President's Men

In an interview with NPR, Melinda French Gates confirmed that she ended her marriage with Bill Gates because of allegations contained in the Epstein files.

I do believe in redemption. I believe that people can make mistakes, learn from them, and improve. But I also believe that there is work involved in self-improvement, whether it be therapy or redirection or...it's all therapy. It's just different ways of doing therapy. Humans are fancy animals.

Ah the US American health care experience of "two month waiting list" for a primary care appointment

Woke up with what I'm pretty sure was a BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) episode and now I'm just sitting here in vaguely wrung-out misery like... I don't have *time* for this.

FUCK, that is GORGEOUS