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In the past, Beeple had inquired about having Beehaw merchandise. At that time, they thought it would be a good way to raise funds to keep the site going.

Now that our finances are OK I’d like to revisit this idea for the following reasons:

1. Pure fun and enjoyment.
2. A way to get attention and draw people to Beehaw.

My brother has been in the professional textile space for 15 years. I asked him what he’d recommend as a merchandise platform and he immediately responded: Printify

If someone wanted to take this on, then they would want to coordinate things with the admin team here at Beehaw.

What are your thoughts?

This could be filed in tech, but I don't yet have a story. I have several Google accounts, and they all behave differently. Currently, two of five are giving the option to create fucking videos -- not terribly good ones, mind -- that actually look like researched ideas as opposed to "Pete's depressed and was drunk last night, so let's run it!"

Hey! Not new to Fedi or Lemmy but new to this instance, and just generally disappointed with how other Lemmy instances are moderated compared to, say, mastodon.social. Not sure this Lemmy version is new enough to have PeerTube support, but you can give it a try by following !furbland_channel@cuddly.tube and !furblandalt@cuddly.tube

If you’re an instance admin, just FYI: the PeerTube fix has been backported to 0.19, so I suggest upgrading to the latest 0.19 version if problems do occur. I’m into lots of obscure bootleg stuff, mainly these. Oh, did I mention I’m autistic? :P

Anyways, nice to meet you all! :)

A couple of years ago, I joined a local Discord server with a core group of five who'd get together to see a movie or do a cheese tasting.

(Dune 2 in 5D was a low point, but the homemade cheese was good.)

After some weird Discord bullshit, we rebuilt the server. It's not particularly active, which is surprising given that as of today, four of us are unemployed (after recreating the server, we chose not to advertise it).

I'm the only one idiotic enough to have gone into journalism. One other guy (the only one still working) drives around town for the city hanging utility-cutoff notices on people's doors.

Everyone else was in coding, devops or defense contracting.

And yet, here we all are. When there's this level of unemployment in the span of just 2025 across wildly divergent fields, something has gone wrong.

I'm by far the eldest at 46, so this isn't an age problem, either. It seems unclear how the economy survives when capable people are unable to find work.

It's an interesting thing, finding a field and then watching it disappear.

I never wanted to be rich or famous. I just wanted to go skiing once a year and then head off to Europe every other summer. (Being Swiss, this was an option.)

But the reality of journalism is somewhat different. Especially over the past 30 years. I was committing journalism in college. I was still doing the same in my first three jobs. And then, well ...

I don't want another fucking career. This simply suggests that I'd chosen poorly, but you know what didn't fuck buggy-whip manufacturers over? Ford. They were separate things.

Now, we have this weird environment where "why did anyone want journalism in the first place?" is somehow the question.

As Elon would say -- and has -- let that sink in. As a society, we've been trained via the gutting of education to, well, not care about truth. This is a bad environment in which to want an independent Fourth Estate. Yet here we are.

Everything domestic has gone off the rails, and this means no job opportunities. I can't see how we rebuild this within a single generation, let alone whether we'll try.

News has never made money (as with internet firms, the audience is the money-maker for advertisers, and that has nothing to do with single-copy sales). And the more layers of editors and executives, the worse things look.

I was hoping to be in a nice house with a few trees and a nonabusive spouse by my mid-40s. It really doesn't feel like a lot to ask.

idk where else to post this. my state denied me coverage for healthcare and food share for “making too much,” and now since i can’t acquire insurance elsewhere since i simply can’t afford it, i’m going to lose medication that is currently treating a chronic, life shortening illness. i do not have $509 a month to spend on this drug. and since nobody in my state gives a shit about me i am simply going to go without and suffer the consequences of being unmedicated with my disease.

great.

means testing is immoral and fuck everyone who supports it. you are why i won’t be medicated anymore.

today's book is Autocracy Inc.

My wife is taking it especially hard.

we are all susceptible to manipulation tactics, lies, and propaganda. some of us may be more resilient than others, some may have quite the skill at resisting, but if you are an emotionally responsive person than you are not off the hook.

in 2025, i'm sure most Americans consider themselves immune to dangerous and bigoted messaging. "i'd never support Hitler if i lived back then," they claim. but many of them absolutely would have and they cannot see it. they are incapable of making the connection.

take what we are seeing now with how the average American is responding to the rise of modern American fascism and you can easily apply it to pre-nazi Germany. the banality of evil encompasses all walks of life.

i think to myself who would be a nazi if the Holocaust were to happen in America today?

• Joe Rogan
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Jeff Bezos
• Tim Cook
• Buzz Aldrin
• Paula Deen
• Kelsey Grammer
• Zachary Levi
• Taryn Manning
• Kanye West
• Amber Rose
• Kodak Black
• Kid Rock
• Lil Pump
• Sexyy Red

the potential for this list to all be nazis is unfathomably high. All of these people have supported Trump either vocally or by showing up to rallies or helping by visibly associating with the Trump campaign.

the amount of celebrity nazis we would have to deal with would become overwhelming and tiring. idk, it hit me that Hollywood would be filled with open fascists if it were acceptable.

today's book is the voluminous Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Our current balance is around $6000 and the average monthly cost to keep us running is $250.

If you'd like to take a closer look at our finances, then you can do it here -> https://opencollective.com/beehaw-collective

All of that being said, is there another service that the Beehaw community could provide with the extra funds?

One example could be to establish a Nonprofit Corporation (501(c)(3)) to create a legally recognized nonprofit with a clear charitable mission: education, health services, housing, etc.

this week's book is Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America

I can't believe I'm doing this twice in nine days, but my mom's financial support, while sufficient without any unusual expenses, doesn't extend to months in which life happens.

~~The current situation is this: My 5G internet payment was due Friday, and if I get all the way to disconnection, things get far more expensive.~~ Additionally, my annual prepaid phone service is due this coming Friday ... great timing when mom's payment is on the first.

Essentially, if both of these are shut off, I have no method of contacting the outside world, making me a guy in a van with no means of finding work.

I'm not on any sort of Cadillac plans ... ~~Internet is $50, and there will no doubt be some sort of late fee, but reconnection is $30.~~ My Mint Mobile 5GB plan (the lowest tier) runs $204 for the year. If I do not renew, well, there goes my number.

I'm really freaking out here. I've been offered a few contract gigs over the past few months, but they never get through to actual work, and any sort of payroll work would be garnished to hell due to longstanding debt that I'm just ignoring at this point.

A guy from the burner community has been tipping me off to studies, surveys and such, but the van is not yet cleared out enough to be driveable, though a new friend has helped me make a lot of progress, and apparently "45-year-old childfree homeless guy" is not a target demo (he's in his 20s, so having a very different experience).

I really don't like asking for charity; I'd much rather get paid for doing honest work. But, you know ... any port in a storm. If you have CashApp or Venmo and can spare anything, please DM. I'd rather not lose access to Beehaw just because of shit timing.

Busing it to a place with free Wi-Fi was an option until a few weeks ago, when all two-year passes were canceled because a few people were caught selling them on the black market.

Thanks in advance for any help y'all can provide. This is an amazing community that I'm proud of Beeing part of, and I don't want to say goodbye.

My latest contact for freelance work has gone silent, and I don't really care to keep asking for charity. My design skills are at this point irrelevant, and finding someone to pay me to write is my own problem.

But between those steps lies editing, which is still what I tell people I do, even if I haven't really done so since 2014. It's my identity.

My experience is exclusively in AP Style, but that's nothing the copyed behind me can't fix if we're meandering into Chicago or MLA, APA, what have you.

I've won national awards for my writing, so you won't get some sort of middling treatment.

The more I'm reading about both local LEO preparations (those being shared) and how Street Medics usually interact well with local EMS, the more it feels like options should be as much of a prep concern as safety.

I'm getting a ride there, but should shit go south, well, I'm north. And who knows what those rates will look like if scores of people want to book at the same time?

As I've received both offers for assistance and assistance itself in the past, here we are.

I have CashApp and would be happy to share it via DM. I've just switched from Monday's excitement about entering this world to "oh, fuck."

In some 30 hours, it all hits the fan, and I have no idea what to expect.

this week's reading is Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

When I awoke at 3:30 a.m. yesterday, the first thing I did was check the news. And I had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen in Los Angeles the more I learned.

A primary source for me was linking videos and articles on Discord as the day progressed. He's a burner and protest organizer, but we'd not yet met in person.

He added me to the Street Medics server in a newly created role of journalistic observer some months back, and I remember what he said: "We don't need you yet, but you need to be familiar with what we do when the time comes."

Ding! That time is now.

He picked me up midafternoon to let me crash at his place for the night and do my first load of laundry in months.

After a shower, he narrated a livestream of things unfolding in L.A. on his 65-inch TV, pointing out which cops to keep an eye on, next moves and then further projections, the vast majority of which came to pass. Back in his room, he had a three-monitor command center tracking different feeds and switching between them in the living room when he sensed something might be about to happen at a different site.

As we drank and got high, with the protest backdrop, he brought a tub of gear out. He asked whether I had a shirt that says PRESS, and when I said no, well, that was an easy enough problem to fix before the upcoming No Kings Day protest that I'm now going to. He's got bulletproof vests, gas masks ... dude is prepared.

I apparently acquitted myself well enough that he's going to ask his roommate if I can crash in the guest room I occupied last night for the longer term. He's also wrapping a 200-page book that he needs an editor for, and asked me to quote him a price, but I admitted that was well out of my wheelhouse. To be continued ...

The cat, who usually takes a month to warm up to someone new, took to me in about six hours. It was so nice to have a purring floof around again ... she was doing headbutts and the whole nine yards.

At 8 a.m., he knocked on my door to announce he needed to leave for work in 20 minutes, so if I want a maintenance beer before we head out, now's the time.

I down the final beer I brought by as I check the news on my phone ahead of getting the laundry out of the dryer, which he'd started back up sometime earlier. I gather my other things and head out to his truck.

He comes out with one of those green HEB bags, saying "you forgot something." In this bag is five additional beers of his.

As to the housing offer, even if the roommate objects, he's happy to let me park on the street there and avail myself of the facilities as needed.

So, income possibility, about to be thrust firmly into activism by someone who knows what he's doing, relief upon realizing I may not need to brave another Texas summer in an oven, and to be perfectly honest, the easiest interaction I've had on first meeting in years.

Hanging out in his living room was like hanging out with my college roommate from 27 years ago.

🎶There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. 🎶

this week's reading is The Serviceberry

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/20353095

Currently Lemmy has a decent selection of communities and nearly any post gets a good traction, you easily find yourself in convos and can recognise others if you frequent enough

I don't think this would be the case for long if Lemmy got big, maybe 10% of Reddit is enough

But maybe because of how Lemmy is maintained, instances like beehaw might defederate, again allowing for smaller communities

I don't know, I really like where Lemmy is tbh, bit iffy on the .world situation, donated a bit, Lemmy is nice. Yeah. Lemmy is nice. I like Lemmy.

Buildings aren't big enough for Blade Runner yet, and there's still a veneer of government control.

(ETA: No one's said it yet, but 1984 is so obvious that it wasn't worth mentioning.)

this week's reading is The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

Nothing huge ... just removing an "n" that made it incorrect. I emailed because it was a bit embarrassing.

But I literally changed an international publication. Not since I changed A1 on The Washington Post as a bystander in 2003 have I felt this.

this week's reading is The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

We have lived under a class of people who ruled American culture with a flaming cross for so long that we regularly cease to notice the import of being ruled at all. But they do not. And so the Redeemers of this age look out and see their kingdom besieged by trans Barbies, Muslim mutants, daughters dating daughters, sons trick-or-treating as Wakandan kings. The fear instilled by this rising culture is not for what it does today but what it augurs for tomorrow—a different world in which the boundaries of humanity are not so easily drawn and enforced. In this context, the Mom for Liberty shrieking “Think of the children!” must be taken seriously. What she is saying is that her right to the America she knows, her right to the biggest and greenest of lawns, to the most hulking and sturdiest SUVs, to an arsenal of infinite AR-15s, rests on a hierarchy, on an order, helpfully explained and sanctified by her country’s ideas, art, and methods of education.

More specifically:

1. How do you feel the platform performs compared to corporate ones?
2. How do you feel moderation is handled?
3. Do you believe the people of Beehaw (admins, moderators and users) could do a better job? If so, then why?