Kirki Akrivou

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

We're looking for 10M - to reach the 3.5% tipping point, at which there will be positive changes!

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Octavia Butler couldn’t see the future. She saw what was happening in front of her and, in addition to studying the past, was able to imagine where it would lead. It’s important to tell the truth about her because mythologizing her is a disservice to her legacy.

CNN is hopelessly broken.

1. This "expansion" would require military invasions of several allies in violation of international law.
2. It would violate several treaties.
3. The Louisiana Purchase was the sale of land by a colonial power (France). These are sovereign nations.

I will keep advocating "cash cash cash" because one major thing that demoralizes me is how I don't have disposable income to give to GoFundMes, and to a much lesser extent, Kickstarters and charities.
With cash I can choose to send someone $5 instead of splurging on a takeout.

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants said they had housing. Participants in Denver's basic-income program reported having more-secure housing, though results were similar in the trial and control groups.

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1k/month. A year later, nearly half had housing.

They also had fewer ER visits, nights spent in a hospital, and jail stays.

The report estimates that this reduction in public service use SAVED the city $589k.
www.businessinsider.com/denver-basic...

Saed is supporting his family of eleven people—including three children aged 5, 3, and 1 year old respectively—with food, a tent to make the winter survivable, and medicine for his mother's eyes.

You don't have to be able to donate a lot to help. Every little bit will add up: gofund.me/8070e966

Please don't call what RFK Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya are going to do medieval. It's not medieval. It's nothing like the Middle Ages. People in the Middle Ages were happy to try all kinds of things to not die of the plague and if you'd given them antibiotics and vaccines they would have loved it.

While I celebrate my employer's commitment to the humanities, I do fear that this trend toward the disappearance of the humanities elsewhere is a reality that no number of Ivy initiatives and institutes will prevent.

Major red flag was how their insistence on “health is holistic” usually involved a lot of expensive quack and woo, but never addressed the real totality of “holistic”, which is “what living in this society is doing to you”.
But no one abled and ableist was ready for that talk.

If struggling to feed yourself, foodbank is king

Asian markets usually have the best prices in town for vegetables and cooking spices.

Rice and beans are your friend, and easy to flavor

Frozen are good and cheaper than fresh vegetables.

Dairy goes far nutritionally

Want Meat? Chicken.

The other thing about the focus on “male loneliness” is that it’s such a fatalistic mindset and yet there’s only pandering to it.
I remember learning “in the case of a divorce in later years, men are either going to remarry quick or go into a swift decline” and it’s just..accepted?

the writer collective renaissance era is *happening*

We're probably all underestimating how powerful a player the fossil fuel lobby is in the AI "revolution."

There are so other many reasons to oppose the use of generative AI that it almost doesn't matter that its end product is almost always shit.

I feel like Cinema Sins style criticism has metastasized into this idea that stories are windows into alternate universes that need to be logically coherent above all else and I hate it so much

Star Trek: small stakes and one-offs are where all the characters and worldbuilding is made.

If there's no room in the season for the small and mundane, if everything is the Fate of The Galaxy Depends on Us, then there ends up being no characters or world worth investing in.

Probably not helpful in the “tips to achieving stability” bit but I routinely make $0/month via royalties, and 60/month via Patreon.
I’m disabled and chronically ill so literally the only reason I’m alive is because I live with my parents and they pay for groceries and utilities.

I was trying to explain to my partner why this has felt like a dam breaking, and so much of it is this: bipartisanship politeness has been valued in a way which would only make sense if NO ONE's life is at stake—and my whole life it's been invoked to avoid facing the reality that shit has gone BAD—

I think it was based on Assassin’s Creed because the main game company is based in France.

Project 2025’s Plan to Eliminate Public Schools Has Already Started We are in a new wave of public school closures. Yours could be next, write Jessica Alcantara and Laura Petty.

Project 2025's plan to get rid of public schools has actually already begun, as school districts around the country increasingly shift public money to private and for-profit schools, and permanently close down public schools in underprivileged areas.

time.com/7001264/proj...

Strange Horizons is a magazine that has been doing A LOT of groundwork for marginalized authors and it is, at its core, an international magazine that makes a difference in the Anglophone market. They deserve the recognition for their work that's spanning decades <3 <3

There is something you can do. Right now, the media is aiming to keep us in a state of alarm. For ratings. The polls have not measurably moved. You already know your vote. Unplug and let the media giants squawk in an empty room. Maybe if they lost their ratings, they might actually do news again.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A critizen who adapt in this way is teaching power what it can do.

Do not obey in advance.

Pretty amazing they can legislate my uterus but not any of these things

As I’ve said for years, health care isn’t a free market because you can’t choose not to buy the product - the alternative is pain, suffering or death. You know who else gives you that choice? The Mob, and we call it extortion.

Digital memories are no memories at all.

We need degrowth communism and we need it now.