@salrandolph@zirk.us2025-10-23 13:59:00
As I’m writing, the season is “Crickets chirp around the door.” By the time you read it, it will be “First Frost.” In New York, where I live, autumn is taking hold. Darkness in the early morning, leaves and branches coming down in high winds, and in the afternoon, low light floods the avenues, catching the tops of trees.
https://
@StephenRees@mas.to2025-11-22 19:00:35
Fair Vote Canada is pleased to announce the Teacher Resources section of our website. The first teacher resource has now been added.
A Fair Vote? Rights, Responsibilities, and Decision-Making in a Democracy is an exciting new resource for Grade 5 Social Studies teachers, which was developed by the Elementary Teachers of Toronto and Fair Vote Canada.
@jtk@infosec.exchange2025-12-20 03:16:06
When you're trying to get #Google to help them fix a problem they have in relaying an email to a list (they are forwarding as if it they are originating your non-GMail email, thus incurring an SPF failure) their helpful support team to the rescue (see image attached).
FYI... the second thing they want is a screen cap of the client SMTP config.
Very temped to send a screenshot wit…
@castarco@hachyderm.io2025-11-16 12:05:17
I have the distinct impression that we could use most American "sci-fi" TV series (which seem to have a kink for post-apocalyptical scenographies) as a diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum.
For a moment, let's leave aside the tons of right-wing propaganda "hidden" in plain sight, and their excessive reliance on boring & worn out tropes (religious & cultish bullshit, irrational lack of communication & excess of anti-social behaviour, all vs all, ultra-low-iq characters*, psychotic & irrationally treacherous characters*, ultra-inconsistent character development used to justify "unexpected" plot twists, rampant anti-intellectualism...).
What could be used as a diagnosis tool is the incredible amount of strong inconsistencies that we can find in them**. It throws me out of the story every single time; and I suspect that it takes a certain kind of "uncommon personality" to feel that way about it, because otherwise these series wouldn't be so popular without real widespread criticism beyond cliches like "too slow", "it loses steam towards the end of the season", etc.
Many of those plots start in a gold mine of potentially powerful ideas... yet they consistently provide us with dirt & clay instead, while side-lining the "good stuff" as if it was too complicated for the populace.
Do you feel strongly about it? Do you feel like you can't verbalize it without being criticised as "too negative", or "too picky", or an "unbearable snob"? Do you wonder why it seems like nobody around shares your discomfort with these stories?
* : I feel this is a bit like the chicken & egg problem. Has the media conditioned part of American society to behave like dumb psychopaths as if it was something "natural", or is the media reflecting what was already there? Also, could we use other societies as models for these stories... just for a change? Please?
** : Just a tiny example: a "brilliant" engineer who builds a bridge out of fence parts and who doesn't bother to perform the most basic tests before trying it in a real setting and suffer the consequences: the bridge failing and her falling into the void. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.
@leftsidestory@mstdn.social2025-10-05 00:30:04
Moody Urbanity - Nowhere 🔲
情绪化城市 - 无处 🔲
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-20 08:05:15
Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
#USPol
@AimeeMaroux@mastodon.social2025-12-13 10:01:11
Have a joyful #DayOfDionysos here at Erotic Mythology! 🍇
"The Egyptians say that Demeter [Isis] and Dionysos [Osiris] are the rulers of the lower world. The Egyptians were the first who maintained the following doctrine, too, that the human soul is immortal, and at the death of the body enters into some other living thing then coming to birth"
Herodotus, Histories 2.12…
@NFL@darktundra.xyz2025-11-19 11:11:49
The best NFL games on TV for the rest of 2025: Defending champs vs. defending MVP https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6808271/2025/11/19/philadelphia-eagles-buffalo-bills-josh-allen-nfl-week-17/
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2025-12-15 21:50:42
Sources: Bay Area radio station KCBS-AM, which faced MAGA backlash over ICE coverage, scaled back political reporting after Brendan Carr's threats of a probe (Byron Tau/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-fcc-kcbs-5dbed5c466771d53e2c7…
