Hey do y’all remember when Boeing fucking killed a guy last year. And we all said “huh I guess Boeing fucking killed a guy” and then went on with our lives. And everybody knew that Boeing had fully just fucking executed a guy and nothing came of it. Like there was no police investigation no justice no nothing. Like literally EVERYBODY knew that Boeing had full on murdered a guy to silence him and there wasn’t any consequences for them. Kinda crazy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/27/white-house-pauses-federal-grants/

So, the facts are, most universities in the US are kept in business by grants. Professors and researchers apply for grants, grants pay their salaries, their equipment, their space, their travel, and their students. This includes Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Project Assistants etc. this is true across pretty much all academic disciplines. Often what this means is, the professor does their thing, their TA teaches the bulk of classes, students get taught, all while the university makes a profit.

If you kill grants, you kill all of this. This will give universities the excuse to cut tenured faculty, because the university can't afford them directly. This will cut grad students, because this is the only way grad students are paid for. With no grad students, many classes will suddenly not have teachers. Classes will be cut, teachers fired, and the universities will likely have to increase tuition to make up the difference. Knowing universities, they will not cut the number of incoming students coming in (that's their money!) so now classrooms will be packed to the gills with professors that are both underworked and underpaid.

This is just one segment of the people being impacted by this week of horseshit, but believe me, colleges will be permanently altered.

But isn't this just temporary, you ask? Possibly. Much of this is likely to be permanent, definitely in my field. This is coming from the executive order that includes

So anything that can be argued as "woke", "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies" will not be funded. You can tell those words are squishy to the point of meaningless, but that's the point. Anything can be squished into those categories. Certainly my ecology work is toast.

Anyway if you see a scientist or an academic or a doctor or what have you, please be kind to us. This is... unprecedentedly bad

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

I wrote this short comic immediately after experiencing a hate crime inside the Wing Luke Museum (Seattle's Asian American history museum). I didn't sit down to make the comic until over a year after it happened, but now it's done. I have exorcized the feelings. And what a day to do it.

I forced myself to finish this so I could get back into comics as a processing tool. It's a little stream of consciousness but I hope it made sense. Took huge inspiration from the work of Benjamin Adam.

one of the hardest parts is that you cannot engage in arguments without an honest partner. a person has to be genuinely willing to consider your point of view. when elon saluted, you have eyes and you saw it too. when they're saying "nooo it wasn't that," it's not honest. they also know it's the nazi salute, they're just seeing how long and how far they can push you.

i cannot stress this enough: know when to step away. know when it's just a troll. know when you're putting energy into the wrong areas. it is so fucking tempting to get into hour-long debates. i got caught in one literally hours after it happened. i am not coming to you from a place of calm suggestion: i'm mostly reminding myself, partly out of desperation.

like you, i feel incredibly, unspeakably upset. if nothing else, i feel fucking gaslit. i keep returning to how cliche passages from 1984 have become. i keep thinking - how fucking stupid do you think we are? i keep thinking - holy shit. he's going to get away with it.

lately when i get really upset about something like this, i instead look for volunteering opportunities in my community. this has been genuinely amazing and has helped me feel like i'm actually fucking doing something. yes i still make the posts and i still doomscroll. these days, though, i take "invest in your community" as a demand, not a suggestion. going to library events. checking in with friends. helping others.

it does actually help; turning nebulous anger into something real and useable. i am still learning this, by the way. but i have noticed that when i am pulled down to their level, i walk away feeling incapacitated, red-black with rage, blurry with stress and the horrible sense of an inescapable destiny.

and meanwhile, every time i instead try to move forward positively, with the real intention just being i'm going to help someone today if it fucking kills me - change happens like, immediately. the hour of effort i spend helping out people in my community has massively improved my burnout and anxiety.

to be honest it is all still burning a hole in me. the casual acceptance of white nationalism under barely-coherent threadbare excuses. the ceaseless unbearable rage and unfocused helplessness are still present but, like. these days i get up, i make coffee, i go help somebody. i fucking put my back into it. rather than saying to myself when is someone gonna do something - i am someone. and i am going to fucking do something. perfect is the enemy of good. i am not trying to be perfect, i'm trying to do good.

i don't know if i'm ever gonna, like. change anything on a real level. but i do know i fucking tried. and it is slowly, kinda - helping me feel better.

ICE raids happening in Chicago on Tuesday January 21st. Get organized and get prepared.

Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever

If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.

ALT

from Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch

Just learned about Bull Press, a tabletop publisher that focuses on games that are prison compliant (no hardcover, no dice, no maps), and their catalogue seems sick as hell. Def gonna pick smth up when I get paid next. They do a lot of donation work with books for prisoners programs!