Team #FeedBabies: Breast-feeding & Formula Thread

July 9, 2018: A twitter thread With minor edits to fix typos or phrasing that 280 characters made unclear.
(2022 note: I use moms, women, and breastfeeding in this piece because the majority of existing legislation and proposed legislation is based on biological determinism and does not recognize non-binary and trans parents who have given birth. I see you, I recognize you, you are valuable.)

Trigger Warning: A thread on the commodification and conscription of women’s bodies. You’ve been warned. Exploring relationships between childbearing, work, coercive control, breast feeding, formula, gig economies, capitalist exploitation, colonialism and colonialist paternalism…

Continue reading “Team #FeedBabies: Breast-feeding & Formula Thread”

Luxuries Bought With Others’ Lives: NPCs, Dehumanization, and Pandemic Ethics

Opening monologue:

This is Free City.
Look at this guy. He’s one of the sunglasses people.
And the people who wear sunglasses? Are heroes.
They have a devil-may-care attitude and they run this town.
Bombshell:You are so hot.
Revenjamin Buttons, dropping into driver’s seat: Oh, I know.
See? That’s not even his car. Or his wife.
For the sunglasses people, they get to do anything they want.
They go on all sorts of missions, they got cool hair, cool clothes.
I mean, laws aren’t really laws to them.They’re more like mild suggestions.
Like, I don’t think he’s gonna return that car.
Or that nice lady.
See what I mean? Hero.

A still from the movie Free Guy, featuring Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. Image copyright (©) 20th Century Studios or related entities. Used for publicity and promotional purposes.

Thus begins Free Guy. 105 words of thesis statement.

Continue reading “Luxuries Bought With Others’ Lives: NPCs, Dehumanization, and Pandemic Ethics”

Foundations of the #MoneyLaundry – A Twitter Seminar

Originally a Twitter thread. January 4, 2020

I note here: there will be homework, because seriously, you’ve gotta have basics.
Do the reading. I’m not sending you at books, just articles. I’ll screenshot if it comes from a high word count source.

Money laundering is the process of
evading taxation
and/or
legal obligations such as payroll taxes
and/or
Obscuring the documentation of income from illegal actions or sources. It’s a crime of its own, but money laundering is what makes crime pay.

Continue reading “Foundations of the #MoneyLaundry – A Twitter Seminar”

After the Shaking Stops – a compiled twitter thread

Original Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/czedwards/status/1325257381257879555?s=21
November 7, 2020

Hey all —
At the end of trauma (or when you know the trauma will be ending) everything feels incredibly shaky.
You’ve gotten used to the feeling of the earth shaking, and when it stops, it takes a minute for your emotional equilibrium to catch up.
It’s normal.
It’s OK.
You’re OK.

Continue reading “After the Shaking Stops – a compiled twitter thread”

Recycled Satanic Panic 3: Displaced Anxiety and Role Playing

Twitter thread found here This was also an extemporaneous thread, rather than pre-composed, so this post will correct any egregious lack of clarity. Twitter is my first draft.

Another way conspiracy displaces real anxiety

Oregon’s fires have a LOT to do with power lines. But it’s easier to blame (and try to shoot) Others.

Social media disinformation on US west coast blazes ‘spreading faster than fire’ | Oregon | The Guardian

Continue reading “Recycled Satanic Panic 3: Displaced Anxiety and Role Playing”

Recycled Satanic Panic 2: The myth of Stranger Danger & (white, child) Trafficking

Twitter thread, found here (minor grammatical fixes included for clarity. The twitter thread was an off-the-cuff first draft, not polished.)

Trafficking?
1) It applies WAY more to the guys at Home Depot you hire for $30/day to tear out the weeds, not children.
2) And the women who sew all the cheap crap you wear.
3) And the people who pick your vegetables.
4) And teens thrown out of their parents’ home & forced into sex work to eat.

An anonymized NextDoor thread spreading fear that children shouldn’t be outside, lest they be abducted.
Continue reading “Recycled Satanic Panic 2: The myth of Stranger Danger & (white, child) Trafficking”

Babylock Ellegante BLG Beeps Forever In A Boot Loop

A Babylock Ellegante is a former top of the line sewing-embroidery machine. I think it debuted around 2008, and apparently, it was… well, it was First of Its Name, and some people thought it was lemony.

I bought mine used in 2015, and I admit there are times it has behaved oddly. Most of these have actually been user error, when I finally figured out what was happening. But it’s no worse behaved than most machines I’ve owned.

Continue reading “Babylock Ellegante BLG Beeps Forever In A Boot Loop”