Happy Mothers Day.

Abstract image of stone-statue-like, faceless mother and child against a dark red background.

Mother (pink madonna) by Mikulus Galanda, 1933.
(public domain via rawpixel)

Mother’s Day grew from a movement rooted in antiwar organizing, mutual aid, and demands for policies that support women and families.

Before it became a commercial holiday, women used this day to organize for peace, public health, labor protections, and dignity.

That legacy belongs to mothers. And it also belongs to every woman helping shape the future of this country — whether they have children or not.

Today, women are still leading. We are the supermajority of people showing up and leading resistance movements across our country.

Women don’t carry society on our backs because we’re built for it. We carry it because we refuse to hand the future to fascists.

Happy Mother’s Day,
Women’s March

Co-signed in solidarity and love,
-Iris the Childless.

P.S. I understand all too well that this day can be a difficult one for those with challenging, damaging, distant, abusive, or no relationships with our mothers. It can also be difficult for those who are grieving the loss of beloved mothers, mother-figures, and children. Please know that you are not alone. I wish you peace and healing.

FWIW, here’s an image that made me smile today.

Siberian tigress with cub in snow.
(public domain via rawpixel)

WHITE PEOPLE: LET’S ALL FORFEIT OUR VOTES TO BLACK WOMEN.

U.S. “Supreme” Court (image: public domain via rawpixel)

In Callais v. Louisiana, the United States “Supreme” Court just eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an extraordinarily hard-won piece of federal legislation aimed at ending racial discrimination in voting.

The tl;dr version is this:

The ruling effectively invalidates Section 2 of the VRA as it has been understood for four decades without explicitly striking down the statute… By allowing for the dismantling of minority districts currently held by Democrats, the ruling could provide the GOP enough additional seats to lock in the party’s control of the House for a generation.

There is nothing surprising about a 6-3 SCOTUS opinion wherein the six-asshole majority rewrites, neuters and/or hollows-out laws duly enacted by Congress or states that do not uphold white cis-het christian male supremacy. Conservatives are constitutionally (<-hahaha) incapable of envisioning a culture, society, community, institution, family structure, or indeed any human relationship that does not embody a strict hierarchy, as arbitrary, amoral, or immoral as it may be. This is why conservatives by nature hate democracy: because democracy is, at least aspirationally, a real-world manifestation of equality. One person = one vote.

THE HORROR. 😱

After Callais, the gerrymandering frenzy in Republican-led states has gone into hyperdrive, in an effort to lock in a permanent gain of House seats for the GOP. Dem politicians are responding accordingly in a manic frenzy to rewrite electoral maps in blue states to counter these measures.

The Dem reaction is all fine and dandy, and probably necessary in the immediate aftermath of the court’s transparently racist and anti-democratic excrescence. But the real travesty here will not be remedied so easily: racial minorities will remain disenfranchised and significantly underrepresented for the foreseeable future.

Gee Iris, I can hear you asking, What can I possibly do about this malevolent shitfuckery? Fear not! For I have the answer:

WHITE PEOPLE:
LET’S ALL FORFEIT OUR VOTES TO BLACK WOMEN.

No, I am not joking.

[Read more…]

Banksy: Now in 3-D!

A statue of a man holding a flag which covers his face, and stepping off a plinth, signed "Banksy," surrounded by a crowd. It appeared in Waterloo Place in London, Thursday, April 30, 2026.

(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

via AP:

May 1, 2026

LONDON (AP) — Elusive street artist Banksy said Thursday that a new sculpture that appeared in central London of a man striding off a plinth, with his face blinded by a billowing flag, is his work.

A statue of a man holding a flag which covers his face, and stepping off a plinth, signed "Banksy." It appeared in Waterloo Place in London, Thursday, April 30, 2026.

(via AP – video uncredited)

In a humorous video posted Thursday on his Instagram account, Banksy showed snippets of how the sculpture was put up in the dead of night. The sculpture appeared to have been erected in the early hours of Wednesday on a plinth on a traffic island in Waterloo Place, near Buckingham Palace.

…

The statue is situated close to those of King Edward VII, who reigned between 1901 and 1910, and legendary nurse Florence Nightingale, as well as the Crimean War Memorial.

Banksy is known for his 2-D spray-painted images, surreptitiously applied on public and private buildings. The sharp, witty, satirical and often scathing political commentary embedded in his work is not subtle. For me, Banksy’s artistic genius lies in crystallizing his point of view on dark and deep subject matter into simple, nearly universally accessible images (and statues!) that simultaneously exude an unmistakable playfulness, hilarity, child-like whimsy, and outright joy.

It is quite the trick Mr. Banksy pulls off, like no other.

More images of the statue below the cut.

[Read more…]

BREAKING: Abattoir goes international, welcomes new involuntary organ donors!

The Abattoir is quickly expanding its involuntary organ donor pool – we are now operating in Australia!

It turns out some prominent Australians feel so very strongly about other people involuntarily donating organs, it is only fair and just that they live by this principle themselves.

Thanks to commenters gijoel and mathscatherine, who provided candidate names and links to evidence that unquestionably qualifies these donors, we are now happily harvesting organs from:

Bernie Finn, Victoria, Australia “Liberal” MP.
(qualifying criteria: commenting on unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape, “Babies should not be killed for the crime of his or her parent.”)
Tony Abbott, former prime minister of Australia.
(qualifying criteria: calling abortion decriminalization “effectively infanticide on demand.”)

Remember, people: our mission is SAVING LIVES of children, women, and men who die every single day for lack of a life-saving donor organ. #savingbabies #prolife

[Read more…]

Well…yeah.

You didn’t expect the conservative SCOTUS majority to be consistent, principled or even coherent, did you?

CUZ THAT’S JUST SILLY TALK.

The Abattoir.

Once upon a time, I had another blog called Perry Street Palace™. It was (and still is imho) a wonderful place, with its own zoo, an extensive library, and of course a bar. But perhaps its most ambitious operation was The Abattoir.

The Abattoir has been sorely neglected since I joined FtB, and definitely needed some updating. Thus I am proud to announce the Grand Reopening of The Abattoir, in its sparkling new location, Freethought Blogs!

__________

Welcome to the Abattoir!

Here, we perform extractions of lifesaving organs–whether people consent to them or not!

Don’t worry! The Abattoir does not harvest organs from just anyone, willy-nilly. That would be morally reprehensible, barbaric, and inhumane. You see, all of our involuntary organ donors meet one, and only one, very specific criteria: they would eagerly and happily force other people to donate lifesaving organs without the donor’s consent. And these donors do so with absolutely no regard for the harm this may cause, whether physically, psychologically or financially. Since all of The Abattoir’s donors feel so very strongly about this particular principle, it is only just and fair that they live by it!

[Read more…]

Amazon Union Win a “Huge Shock.” (not an April Fools joke!)

via NY Daily News:

Amazon workers in N.Y. vote to form first U.S. union in company’s history in ‘huge shock’

Workers at the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island voted decisively to form the first U.S. union in the mammoth multinational company’s history, according to a count of the historic labor election completed Friday.

…

The election was instantly viewed as a possible watershed moment for the American labor movement, which has weakened in recent decades.

“Weakened?” WEAKENED?! There are many, many more accurate words I can think of to describe what has happened to U.S. labor movements and unions: decimated, demolished, shattered, destroyed, conquered and obliterated are just some of them. I guess the Daily News misplaced its thesaurus today?

Christian Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who objected to the 27-year-old company’s COVID protocols, led the recently created Amazon Labor Union to the victory over the Seattle retail giant, which is known for pulverizing labor efforts by inundating workers with anti-union messaging.

“Pulverizing.” See? Much better.

At the New York warehouse, a fulfillment facility known as JFK8, management hung “Vote No” banners on the walls and held required union-busting meetings. But the workers would not be denied.

“Amazon has proven willing to put basically unlimited resources into anti-union campaigns, and these workers really won against all odds,” said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University. “It’s really a historic victory and probably a huge shock to Amazon.”

You can read more here (@ NY Daily News).

One of the takeaways that struck me is the social media angle. While America’s Owners have developed and deployed extremely effective union-busting tactics (“required union-busting meetings”… WTF is with that?), the organizers here:

led a creative labor push that leveraged social media, including Twitter and TikTok, to succeed at the city’s lone Amazon fulfillment facility, a place where many workers are relatively young people of color, according to The City news outlet. “This is Gen Z,” Smalls, 33, told the outlet.

This suggests to me that there is only a very small window here for labor organizers with younger workforces to succeed in their unionizing efforts, before the Amazons of the world begin using the same platforms to deliver slick, Gen Z-tested, anti-union messaging to neutralize the threat.

If you’re wondering why this is a really big fucking deal, ask yourself this: if unions did not shift meaningful power, e.g. better working conditions, benefits and pay to employees, why would U.S. corporations be willing to put “basically unlimited resources” into crushing them?

Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.

If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.

However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]

It’s Day 23 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

And learn. And then click. And thus help.

I have written many times here about Color of Change, and I have learned so much about what Black people actually need from me by reading their work, and then doing what they ask of me. Today we get to learn and to help Black people by reading, signing, and sharing (if possible), four Color of Change petitions.

But first, I want to share something that we whites (including Yours Truly) clearly need to hear, again and again and again. [Read more…]

Death to Squirrels

by Iris Vander Pluym

Go Northwest, young people!

What is the point of this summit?

New on OnlySky: Petrostates fade, electrostates rise

Link Roundup: May 2026

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 18 – Medicine

Bolingbrook PR firm tries to counter Iran's AI Lego videos (Fiction)

Yahtzee to Hit