The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
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shiftercat.bsky.social
The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
@shiftercat.bsky.social
Another cis feminist for trans rights. She/her. Not quite a crone. Bad-faith arguments get you muted, slurs get you blocked. I repost a lot of geekery, some of it NSFW.
https://linktr.ee/shiftercat
Pinned
Beginning a master thread of reference threads. Expect more additions in the future.

Until Bluesky has a Pin function, I may have to bookmark this manually.
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
It was ever thus: remember how it took dozens of women coming forward for yrs for anyone to begin to take seriously that Harvey Weinstein & Bill Cosby were serial rapists?

This image is worth a thousand words but our words are worth virtually nothing as individuals, when it comes to men who rape.
November 27, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
It would be extremely cool if a bunch of people called payment processors over Black Friday weekend to ask why they're telling people what they can and can't buy with their own money. This holiday season, give the gift of calling payment processors over Black Friday weekend
Spoke with a source who told me the call volume is so high, a call center for both Mastercard & Visa is bringing out pizza and ice cream so agents don’t quite amid the rush. Long waits are causing dropped calls.

What you’re doing is working. Call MC & Visa.
November 27, 2025 at 4:25 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
This movie had not come out yet when I was a kid, but a cousin of mine tells me their earliest memory of me is a thankgiving when I must have been <7 and apparently showed up in a homemade headband and told them I was there to represent the interests of Native Americans
November 27, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
"The Apologists" by @tadethompson.bsky.social is going on all my recommendation lists this year. clarkesworldmagazine.com/thompson_11_...
The Apologists by Tade Thompson
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.
clarkesworldmagazine.com
November 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
This is true. It is the best email I got this year.
November 26, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
One deeply underappreciated aspect of MAHA is how much it's often a fig leaf for domestic abuse. I'm not surprised doctors on the ground belive men are withholding kids' vaccines as a way to control and terrorize their wives. They obviously are!

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/o...
November 27, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
Oh dang the article that started the avalanche of Biden Old push notifications from every major news outlet was written by a woman who was sleeping with a *different* presidential candidate *at the time*?

Now does everyone understand what I mean by "ratfucking operation"?
November 27, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
“What is crime” is one of those deceptively simple questions that just begins to completely unravel as soon as you start pulling at it.
We’ve seen video of a child being gunned down on a playground in the name of fighting crime and many people decided that was a necessary part of society.
November 26, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
fuck you

the memories of a generation lost because of Reagan's homophobia will not be erased

i think we should do something in DC that would make david wojnarowicz proud tbh
November 26, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
You may be cool, but you'll never be as cool as these two cats wearing sunglasses in the window of an optician's Boulevard St Germain in 1925
November 26, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
1/3 Massive efforts are being done to ensure states do not regulate GenAI.

Regulations like CA’s AB-412. A transparency bill that terrifies Big Tech!

On Dec. 8th, there is a major hearing on this bill.

We need as many folks to show up! Come join in support of creatives!

Rsvp link in thread!
November 25, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
PERTUSSIS?!? PERTUSSIS

Babies are dying of things I only read about in Little House on The Prarie
A third infant has died in Kentucky, KYDPH adds:

“These are Kentucky’s first pertussis deaths since 2018. None of the infants nor their mothers received the recommended pertussis vaccinations during pregnancy or early infancy.”

s3.amazonaws.com/nursing-netw...
November 26, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
Everyone knows data centers use a ton of water.

What hardly anyone knows: they can poison the water that remains.

And in eastern Oregon, Amazon is doing exactly that.
AI’s water problem is worse than we thought
A new investigation reveals how Amazon is amplifying Oregon’s nitrate pollution crisis.
heated.world
November 25, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
LISTEN UP!

December 1 is Monday.
This means I only have another 6 days to get an advent calendar to you.. Those days include Thanksgiving and a Sunday.

I will be doing a post office drop tomorrow! This is your last chance. I can't guarantee it'll get there by Monday, but it could!

SquidFacts.net
November 25, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
The thing is we've known that housing the homeless is cheaper than neglect, we've known that Ubi is effective at eliminating poverty, we've known that heavily subsidized housing and education leads people into the middle class, we've known all of these things in some cases for 70 years.
“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”

It costs a lot less to house people.
Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - scoop.me
In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.
thebetter.news
November 25, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
the gestapo were infamous for often not accepting the papers of the people they victimized, in fact.
November 19, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
- Disney would be forced to make the "King of the Elves" Philip K. Dick story adaptation they abandoned
- Pixar would be forced to make their abandoned stop-motion movie "The Shadow King"
- "Phantom," "Reverse," "Dreaming Machine..." basically everything Satoshi Kon was working on when he died
If you were a despotic president, what movie would you force Hollywood to make? I want to see Quentin's Star Trek movie or maybe Kill Bill Vol 3.
November 25, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
So a while back I was commissioned to do short bios of various rock stars, and they were just about universally total psychopaths, with the huge exception of Freddie Mercury. A lovely man who did good by his wife, his lovers, and his cats.
Today (24 November) marks the passing of Freddie Mercury, lead vocalist and pianist of the rock band Queen. He remains regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock music.

📷 Getty
November 24, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
“You will be visited by three spirits.”

The three spirits:
November 25, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
The three spirits:
November 25, 2025 at 4:21 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
I misread this image so badly that I can only really hope to illustrate what I saw.

( Also a good excuse for an #art study )
November 23, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
I'm really upset by all the articles I'm seeing that treat him like he's not a murderous psycho
“The entire purpose of science is to search for existential truths,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told me. “It’s not subjective. It should be objective. I believe science is a place where you can find unity if you can get a conversation going.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Why Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Convinced He’s Right?
How an outsider, once ignored by the public-health establishment, became the most powerful man in science
www.theatlantic.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Reposted by The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈
One of the more interesting twitter fights I ever got into was when anti abortion laws were starting to ramp up, some folks who i don't know how well meaning they were, started posting herbal abortifacient recipes.

To which my response was a not at all measured NO DO NOT EVER DO THAT 30 tweet rant.
November 25, 2025 at 2:58 AM