ever cycle through all voice parameters you can and you are like succeeding at what you're trying to do but no voice feels like, yours, in ways that include but are not limited to gender

It's Labour Day everyone! and let's give a moment to remember the Haymarket Martyrs—the five anarchists murdered by the USA Goverment for the crime of believing in anarchism. This is the event commemorated on Labour Day; do not let the States erase our history, do not let the States take our ancestors from us. And for fuck's sake do not let the goddamn Marxist backstabbers steal it.

The Anarchist Library

Hurrah for Anarchy

Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness Hurrah for Anarchy Mayday as Celebrated by the Anarchists May 1, 2017

This is an excellent day to read or re-read the martyrs' statements before execution

HADC - The Accused, the accusers, TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ok maybe not Parsons', gods that man was a leftist, he discoursed for like eight hours, and would have carried on even more if not for the hangman. Wall of text kind of guy, Albert R. Parsons. He turned himself in to stand in solidarity with his comrades, the poor brave fuck. Died with his dignity intact and proving the State wrong. That's the one thing we anarchists consistently have on our side, and we have to cherish it: being correct. Because when given the choice between ethics and victory we pick ethics, and therefore we lose, often. To paraphrase Vietnamese anarchist collective Mèo Mun, we are not in the business of winning at political power-grabs—"we are in no business at all." Which doesn't mean we have to take it lying down. If you want to read just one statement try Louis Lingg, who famously denied that he had thrown bombs at the cops, with the iron-solid alibi that at the time of the riot he was at home making bombs to throw on cops: > You have charged me with despising "law and order." What does your "law and order" amount to? ... I repeat that I am the enemy of the "order" of today, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, "If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you." > You laugh! Perhaps you think, "You'll throw no more bombs;" but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! > In this hope do I say to you: > I *despise* you. I despise your order; your laws, your force-propped authority. HANG ME FOR IT! Bring tears to my eyes, every time. Lingg later blew up his own head in prison to deny the State the spectacle of execution. He only had a blasting cap—no one knows how he got even that behind bars—so only his jaw was torn, and he bled slowly to death. Rumour has it that in his final moments he wrote in blood the same last words uttered by the kindly old toymaker George Engels when the noose closed on his neck: Hoch die Anarchie. Do not believe that this couldn't happen to any of us. The USA is already talking of sending people to death camps for "wrong opinions". Because we grew up in a neoliberal order this feels exceptional but that's really the historical norm, this is how Statists white and red have always treated us. History shows amply that whenever we expand our solidarity and mutual aid to any appreciable success we get massive violence from the bloodthirsty Capitalist governments, and from the equally bloodthirsty Communist governments, nevermind we're just minding our own business taking care of our people. Neither flavour of State will ever allow the existence of communities who prove, by existing, that their cops and laws and great leaders are nothing but an extortion mafia and a ponzi scheme, an entirely unnecessary evil. (This is why they massacre indigenous folk, too; this is why the Turkish State massacres the AANES; counterexamples to the State are in themselves a threat, for the crime of being correct). Every State is a structure of systemic violence, and no State will tolerate us peacefully opting out of the violence. We tried that, and we saw how it goes: There's no peace without justice, no justice without violence. Martyrs never die; and it's up to us, the living, to do the bomb-throwing. Happy Labour Day.

Disposable multiblade razors are objectively worse than safety razors, on all counts. They shave less smooth, while causing more burns. They're cheaper on initial investment but get more expensive very quickly, making you dependent on overpriced replacements and gimmicks that barely last a few uses. That's not counting the "externality costs", which is an euphemism for the costs pushed onto poor countries and nonhuman communities, thanks to the production, transport and disposal of all that single-use plastic (a safety razor is 100% metal, and so are the replacement blades, which come packed in paper). About the only advantage of disposables is that they're easier to use for beginners. And even that is debatable. When you're a beginner with a safety razor you maybe nick yourself a few times until you learn the skill to follow the curves of your skin. You skin itself maybe gets sensitive at the start, unused to the exfoliation you get during a proper smooth shave. But how long do you think you stay "a beginner" when you shave every day? Like it's not like you're learning to play the violin, it's not that hard of a skill, a week or two tops and it becomes automatic. But this small barrier to entry is enough, when paired with the bias and interests of razor manufacturers. Marketing goes heavy on the disposables, and you can't find a good quality safety razor or a good deal on replacement blades at the grocery shop, you have to be in the know and order it online. You have to wade through "manly art of the masculine man" forums that will tell you the only real safety razor is custom-made in Tibet by electric monks hand-hammering audiophile alloys and if you don't shave with artisinal castor soap recipes from 300BCE using beaver hair brushes, your skin is going to fall off and rot. Which is to say, safety razors are now a niche product, a hipster thing, a frugalist's obscure economy lifehack. A safety razor is a trivially simple and economic device, it's just a metal holder for a flat blade; but its very superiority now counts against it, it's weaponised to make it look inacessible. People have been trained to think of anything that requires even a little bit of patience or skill as not for them; perversely, even reasonableness can feel like "not for my kind". Not by accident; since the one thing that disposables do really well is "transferring more of your monthly income to Procter & Gamble shareholders." I could write a long text very similar to this about how scythes can cut grass cheaper, faster, neater, requiring no input but a whetstone—and some patience to learn the skill but how long does it take to learn that if you're a professional grass-cutter—when compared to the noisy motor blades that fill my morning right now, and every few months, as the landlord sends waves of poorly-paid migrant labour to permanently damage their own sense of hearing along with the dandelions and cloves that the bees need so desperately. But you get the point. More technology does not equal better, even for definitions of "better" that only care for the logic of productivity and ignore the needs (material, emotional, spiritual) of social and ecological communities.