Blog

  • We need to take this opportunity

    Dems have spent the last 2 decades telling us we have to work slowly and can’t expect to get everything we want. We have to stay middle-of-the-road and work together with the opposing party. Republicans just shows us another way to rule, and it might actually let us make dramatic, positive change.

    For years, we’ve heard about how many progressive projects wouldn’t be possible, would be too destabilizing, or would be impractical. Now’s the time for us to bring them back and fight like mad to make them happen.

    Actual Equality legislation that respects identity.

    Medicare for all seems possible and doable when the administration can wipe the slate with HHS and Medicare funding.

    Universal Basic Income seems like something when can achieve. When untaxing the rich can be done with a stroke of a pen, taking the rich can be too.

    CEO pay limits to put a cap on unrestricted compensation along with making stock buy backs illegal again.

    These goals should be on the mouths and in the plans of the elected officials of the left, and if they aren’t, they need to be primaried.

  • Survival Advent Calendar: Day 1, Find Your Community

    Survival Advent Calendar: Day 1, Find Your Community

    We’re heading toward the new year, the new political reality starts in the US, and during this time of relative calm. Now is the time to prepare for what’s coming. I’ll be attempting to post every day for the next 25 days to share ways you can solidify yourself for the next four years.

    The first is to find your community. Make sure you have people in your life who are looking out for your best interests. Ideally, these folks are local to you, but having an online community is important as well.

    With the conservative christian nationalist focus of the right, it’s more important than ever to find the weird and outstanding communities that embrace personal expression, rights, and freedoms.

    If you LGBTQ or affirming, find your local gay communities and kink communities. Even if you’re not interested in sexual aspects of those communities, you’re going to find amazing folks who are committed to not letting the country become a conservative authoritarian state.

    We’re in weird times and I don’t think now is the time to mince words and try to be “presentable” to people who don’t care if we live or die. Find the weirdest, most active group near you, and get involved.

    Head to Fetlife and see what’s active in your area, usually most kink groups will have a monthly monch where you can meet others. Sign up, meet other folks who are as motivated to keep our country from going over the edge as you are. If you don’t see any active communities on Fetlife, check out if PFLAG is in your area, find if there are Pups and Handlers or Furries in your area. Find weird, cool, smart people and start hanging out with them.

    Online, if you’re still using X or the Meta Trio (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) for your primary social media content… stop doing that to yourself. Bluesky is rapidly becoming a better platform people saner heads with also much better moderation tools. Check out a starter pack of folks to follow.

    Going back to our earlier posts as well, find a secure chat platform to talk to your community. Avoid Discord and Telegram where possible, preferring encrypted platforms like iMessage, Session, or Signal (check out the full Secure Your Access post).

    When I was struggling to find my footing away from my evangelical christian family, the amazing folks I met through kink communities were a key part of building my identity. I could then use that identity to gain independence and finally move outside of their circle of hate and influence. For me, a lot of those friends and contacts came from the furry community, and I find the folks there are incredibly intelligent and willing to make change happen.

    I’ve also had the great luck to visit some local kink parties in my local area, and again found amazing and kind people who will organize and help each other. We all need those folks for what’s coming. If you already have a community, that’s awesome! Nurture them and build on the community.

    If you have other suggestions for finding community, comment below! Comments on ports are open for 2 months.

  • Know Your Risk Profile: High Risk

    Know Your Risk Profile: High Risk

    Things are going to get a lot harder. If you don’t fit into the conservative, Christian-nationalist mold. Expect harassment, threats, and restrictions on your privacy and basic freedoms.

    As we transition into that world, it’s important to understand what your risk profile looks like. A risk profile is the amount of risk you’re willing to take based on the likely outcome if that risk occurs. The amount of risk you’re willing to take is often referred to as a risk appetite.

    In the coming years, there are a few groups that are most likely to be targeted, ranging from most to least. Today we’re starting with the highest risk.

    Trans and Gender Nonconforming People

    I think it’s unfortunately very obvious that the right has made Trans folks a major bogeyman for their cause. Access to trans healthcare, being able to be trans in public, and access to services and support as a trans person are going to be more difficult.

    Photo by Oriel Frankie Ashcroft

    Those in red states can expect to see any discrimination protections to be fully removed or just unenforced. If you’re trans and not out publicly, coming out is going to carry additional risks, especially if you’re in a red state. We’ve seen the insane vigor of republicans and christian nationalists have put into getting books banned. Those same people will turn their gaze toward those they can find are trans and attempt to get them fired from their jobs and evicted or harassed from their homes.

    Reproductive Rights Organizers and Users

    Another pillar of the right’s agenda has been to eliminate access to reproductive freedoms. We can see that red states are eager to ban abortion access entirely or to limit it so severely that it becomes effectively banned. We should expect to see those bans attempt to be federalized under a Trump administration and access to medication-based abortion severely restricted.

    Photo by Alfo Medeiros

    The Heritage Foundation, creators of the Project 2025 handbook and chief campaigners of Supreme Court selections and republican fundraising, have been pressuring the incoming administration to remove access to birth control as well.

    Before the government transitions, stock up on prescription birth control while you’re able to do so. If you don’t currently have a prescription, get one. In some states, pharmacists can prescribe birth control directly with no need1 to see a doctor. You can request up to a 1 year supply of birth control by prescription to create a personal buffer.

    If you’re not able to get a prescription, over-the-counter birth control is available and sold at many pharmacies. Also, in most places, morning-after emergency contraception is also available over the counter (Costco seems to provide this at an especially cost-effective price).

    If you yourself don’t have a womb, creating your own stock of condoms and emergency contraction is still valuable for yourself, your sexual partners, and your friends.

    Again, if you’re going to be seeking these services, assisting others with getting them, or advocating for them; you are going to be targeted heavily. Two red states already have criminalized assisting a minor in obtaining an abortion, and these sorts of laws are likely to expand beyond these two states and beyond minors.

    These sorts of laws highlight why personal privacy must be maintained, restored, and strengthened. The “privacy doesn’t matter if you have nothing to hide” crowd needs to read the room and shut the hell up. Traveling for an abortion will require the highest level of secrecy, and doing that today is very difficult. I’ll be making a post in the future on some steps that could be taken to help, but ultimately you want to have a stockpile of what resources you need so you never end up in this position.

    Undocumented Immigrants

    Trump and his supporters have entered a furor around “mass deportations”, and people will pressure them to carry out that plan. It’s critical to understand that for republicans, “illegal immigrants” are not just those immigrants who came to the US and committed crimes (in fact, the level of crime committed by immigrants is well below the average crime committed by citizens).

    When republicans say “illegal immigrants” they have referenced those who have applied for asylum on arrival, those who have overstayed visas, those who have entered outside of a border checkpoint, and many other groups. It’s clear that republicans consider any immigrants that they don’t like as illegal, regardless of their actual status.

    Photo by Maciej Prus

    It’s also unlikely if millions of people are targeted for deportation that they will apply any level of nuance to the selection process. It’s highly likely given the history of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) broadly that any enforcement will be highly racist and have a limited chance to appeal.

    If you’re an immigrant to the US, now is the time to review your status and ensure your documents are up to date. If you’re married to an American but haven’t gone through the process to get your Green Card, and after three years, naturalize; now is the time to start that process. Typically taking affirmation action to correct your status is given a lot of leeway within the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and they will issue you extensions and temporary documents as needed. Get an immigration lawyer. If you can’t afford one, contact Pro Bono legal services near you to get help.

    Do not wait until DHS finds or reaches out to you. You have a lot better chance if you begin to legalize your status first. If you don’t have legal status, and after speaking to a lawyer you don’t have a path to get legal status, you should have a prepared exit plan as the U.S. is likely to become much harder to live in over the next 4 years.

    Comments are on, scroll down and let me know your thoughts.

  • Protect Your Access

    Protect Your Access

    Find your people, keep them close.

    One of the most critical things to maintaining your ability to survive in the coming years will have access to your support community.

    Looking at how other countries have limited access to the internet and communications, whether authoritarian or just to remove freedoms from their citizens; it’s not a stretch to think that the same could happen under a Trump administration.

    Already in the US, some classes of web content are being locked behind ID checks to satisfy conservative lawmakers or blocked to satisfy corporate lobbying. With that direction already starting, it won’t take much to continue the momentum, especially in red states that want to limit access to information contrary to their agenda.

    Use Encrypted Connections

    One of the first ways you can protect yourself on the public internet is to encrypt all your connections and communications. Telling your web browser to prefer HTTPS connections will keep your traffic encrypted (think of it as the contents of an envelope), and using Encrypted DNS will also keep the requests to domains private (think of that like the outside of the letter).

    Photo by Diana

    Firefox has options for both forcing HTTPS for pages and for Encrypted DNS. This combined with a privacy-preserving Ad blocker will keep most trackers at bay. If you’re on a Mac, iCloud Private Relay will also help with this, although you’ll still need an ad blocker.

    Having secure communications can be harder. Interceptors can easily read emails and SMS messages because they are not secure by default. Sending actually encrypted email can be a pain. ProtonMail and Tuta both provide private email options, but both you and your recipient have to be using encrypted email for transferring messages to be safe. GPG Tools can also make any email account encrypted.

    Secure Your Messaging

    For SMS, there’s no universal way to end to end encrypt (E2EE) between device types. RCS provides encryption in specific situations between Android users. Also, iMessage between Apple users is actually end to end encrypted. Turning on iCloud Advanced Data Protection can also keep phone backups safe from a government-level actor with a subpoena. If you’re messaging between types of users though or want additional assurances, you’ll need a third party chat application.

    Photo by Anton

    The most approachable end to end secured messenger is WhatsApp, which is E2EE between parties by default but requires some level of trust of Facebook/Meta, which is a tall ask.

    Signal is far and away the most trusted of the E2EE chat platforms and uses a highly tested set of defaults to protect communications from government-level actors. There are also a few other E2EE platforms that are a little newer, namely Session, Matrix, and SimpleX. While not as extensively tested as Signal, Session, Matrix, and SimpleX offer additional features that might be appealing.

    A good policy would be to have accounts on two of these E2EE services with connections to multiple friends, so you have a backup you can switch to if you ever need to and maintain contact. It’s also a good idea to grab apps for these services now before they potentially face government interference.

    A very notable point to add here is that Discord and Telegram are not secure by default. Both of them store your messages plainly readable in their own data center. A hack could easily leak your data, or law enforcement could request it at any time. Don’t use these services for anything you don’t want traced back to you.

    The number of abortion rights activists, LGBTQ+ organizers, and immigrants that could all be outed with a single bulk data request to Discord and Telegram is terrifying to me; and I’m hopeful these groups will migrate to secure channels for the safety of their members.

    VPNs

    First things first, VPNs are not a panacea as they’re often touted. Tracking scripts or simply noticing your login in a place where your identity is known and another place where it’s not at the same time can still reveal your identity, even with a VPN. Browser fingerprinting is also usable even over a VPN. Long story short, a VPN will not solve everything, but it can totally be a great additional layer.

    For exposure risk, define your exposure risk and what risks you’re willing to take. Once you’ve defined your risk tolerance, then you can set up protections to meet that level of tolerance. In cyber security, you’ll often hear this described as a Swiss cheese model, where if you have multiple layers, the layers can fill the holes in prior layers.

    Original Image by Ben Aveling

    I’ll be doing another post on risk tolerance coming up here soon, but for now, the fastest approach is to make sure you have multiple layers of protection. Securing your operating system, running a trusted VPN, and using a locked down browser are three excellent layers.

    ProtonVPN and Calyx Institute both have free privacy-preserving VPNs you can use easily to get some immediate protection. There’s a list of good privacy-preserving VPNs. You will get more bang for your buck by getting a paid VPN, and it’ll let you do things like beat geo-blockers, but a free VPN from one service above will totally get you by.

    The Onion Router

    The Onion Router (shortened to Tor) is another potential layer of security in your cheese model. Onion routing means each time you request a resource, your request passes through multiple intermediaries to hide the source and destination of the individual request. Tor isn’t perfect. Ways exist to unmask a Tor user, but their use is incredibly rare.

    Photo by RealToughCandy

    The best ways to use Tor are to either use the Tor Browser bundle, which is a custom bundle of Firefox and the Tor application that’s ready to use. The most secure way is to use Tails OS which is a live booting operating system you can boot from a flash drive. Governments and activists extensively audited and routinely used both to secure their access to the internet. You can connect to a VPN first before connection to Tor to hide the usage of Tor from your ISP or a monitoring party.

    For most folks, Tor will be overkill. But if you’re organizing or doing things a red state wants to criminalize, it’s a really useful tool to have in your tool chest. Again, now is the time to download the Tor Browser installer or Tails flash drive. Even if you keep them just in case, you’ll be able to install and update through the Tor network in the future. Better to have it and not need it.


    Wrapping up today with a couple of last links, you can check out https://www.privacyguides.org/ for more Privacy-preserving resources. Privacy Guides don’t take sponsorships or use affiliate links and are the most unbiased in this area. https://www.privacytools.io is also an option, although they accept sponsorships. Both are excellent resources to explore more.

    We have 63 days to go. Let’s keep getting ready!

    Cover Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

  • The Beginning (64 Days to Inauguration)

    The Beginning (64 Days to Inauguration)

    In 64 days, the United States will enter one of the riskiest periods in its history. Surely the riskiest period in our lifetimes. On January 20, 2024, we will see the inauguration of a populist autocrat. Someone who has committed horrific crimes. Someone who attempted just 4 years ago to overthrow the government with his supporters.

    Gallows erected on January 6, 2021 at the capitol. Image by Tyler Merbler released under Creative Commons.

    I prepared to start this blog four years ago when it looked like Trump might get a second term. The goal was to provide the tools and resources needed by those who weren’t straight white Christian Nationalists and wanted to control their future and their bodies.

    Four years ago, we got a reprieve. We got four years to undo some of the damage, to add in more restrictions and controls, and to keep our nation from completely falling apart. Sadly, a majority of Americans didn’t see the cliff we avoided, and voted to swerve the car back toward the cliff.

    This blog isn’t about trying to figure out which passengers wanted the cliff more, or if they thought the cliff was actually utopia, or why the car is driving so close to the cliff to begin with.

    We’re heading toward the cliff, and the same groups who would have needed help four years ago need that help today. Those who don’t agree with the Christian Nationalist agenda but have to live or work with those who do, LGBTQ+ people and especially LGBTQ+ young people, women of all stripes and backgrounds, as well as immigrants. A large chunk of America is going to be less safe.

    We have something massive on our side, something that no other nation that’s been facing an autocratic leader has had: we have forewarning. Having over 2 months to prepare for what’s coming benefits us, as does having such early access to the Project 2025 documents to prepare countermeasures.

    Next Comes What podcast logo.

    Next Comes What has a podcast that goes into more detail about how we can use the time we’ve got effectively called, fittingly, How We Survive This Mess.

    Survive Your Family is part of that preparation. Counting down the days to Trump’s second inauguration, there will be practical advice on how to protect yourself and those you care about, and how to be ready for the years ahead.