Tootfinder

Topical Toot: There’s a bunch of versions of this talk I gave over the years, here’s one of the shorter ones as a video: Failing Over without Falling Over https://youtu.be/R3_ccsuPoD8 and a similar slide deck pdf

"if someone has taken a life through dangerous driving, we have to ask: why should they ever be allowed to drive again?"
Good question!
APPGCW and APPGTS asking the right questions and reaching the right answers.
https://road.cc/content/news/mps-warn-

MPs demand lifetime driving bans and stricter phone laws to address justice system "failing" families of those killed in collisions
"This report shines a light on the urgent need for reform. It's unacceptable that drivers who take lives through recklessness are allowed back on the roads while grieving families are left without a sense of justice"

Trump is set to remove Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia,
for being faithful to facts, evidence, and guidelines governing good prosecutorial conduct, rather than fully corrupting his office to target Trump’s enemies.
That’s not a rhetorical cheap shot. It’s what Trump is actually doing, per ABC:
"President Donald Trump is expected to fire the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after his office was unable to find incrimin…

Trump Firing Top Prosecutor for Failing to Invent Fake Crimes by Foes
A U.S. attorney in Virginia is finding no evidence that Letitia James broke the law. In America, that’s justice. In Trumpworld, it’s a firing offense.

Meinerz talks the culture being built in Denver, Hufanga looks ahead to Week 8 https://www.denverbroncos.com/video/meinerz-talks-the-culture-being-built-in-denver-hufanga-looks-ahead-to-week-8-broncos-in-60…

On The Road - To Xi’An/ Quiescence ➰
在路上 - 去西安/ 静止 ➰
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️Kodak Double-X 5222
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

If you set limits for a scale (e.g. x-axis) in ggplot, how would you like data outside of that range be handled? There is the oob parameter for that and a set of functions to use with it: https://scales.r-lib.org/reference/oob.html

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

Feeling FOMO because I was at one cool thing over the weekend that prevented me from being at two other cool things #OBTS and #NoKings. But on the bright side it looks like the protests went amazingly well. Super excited to see what actions come out of the connections people made while joyfully speak…