Tootfinder

2/2 Reflection on #citizenship:
I do not treat the concept of “#democracy" lightly. I was born into the aftermath of centuries of totalitarian oppression that ended suddenly, leaving the nascent Ukrainian state of the late 90s and early 2000s floundering in the turbulent whirlpool of hopes and fears felt by millions of people who were finally allowed to ponder: how to build a free democratic state in the place of Soviet and imperial ruins?
I was taught the words "democracy", "citizen", "freedom", "voting", “liberty" (and more) by people who, less than two decades prior, weren't allowed to leave the borders of their country. I was told about self-determination by people whose political choices were ridiculed, punished, and eviscerated form most of their lives. The duty of governing ourselves felt to us ephemeral - a nice fantasy, akin to a fairytale or a utopia from fictional works.
And then I saw those same people fight with their bodies and souls once the previously unfathomable democracy was threatened. Protests in 2004, then again in 2014, then the unthinkable war against foreign invasion in 2022. Democracy no longer felt abstract or silly. It became as tangible as saying "I love you".
I write of Ukraine as I reflect on becoming a citizen of another country because the history and values of my adopted United States feel as real as the skin on my legs, the significance of its legacy lays as heavy as the weight of my waist-long hair, and the desire to uphold the freedoms of its Constitution burns my throat as harshly as dehydration after a long day in the sun.
People have asked me why I even want to join this country, when the present moment is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. And I answer: because I've felt the warmth of a newly lit fire of freedom breaking through shadows that for centuries looked like solid walls. I have seen kindness, and solidarity heal the fear and hate of oppression. I've seen liberty emerge from nothing but the human soul.
I am not a religious person, but I have faith. Faith in the ideals at the foundation of the American project. Faint but powerful recognition that "we the people" now includes me.
I love #America. And I hope to keep loving my home for the rest of my life.

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

Now out in #TMLR:
🍇 GRAPES: Learning to Sample Graphs for Scalable Graph Neural Networks 🍇
There's lots of work on sampling subgraphs for GNNs, but relatively little on making this sampling process _adaptive_. That is, learning to select the data from the graph that is relevant for your task.
We introduce an RL-based and a GFLowNet-based sampler and show that the approach perf…

Time to continue my #rail travel stories. It's a few years since I was at the seaside last, since the travel's too long for me now. Before, I used to visit Świnoujście and Kołobrzeg a few times. The route to Kołobrzeg is quite straight, whereas Świnoujście gets interesting because of Szczecin on the way there.
So over all these years, using regional Poznań – Świnoujście trains, I've made all these variations:
• a direct train that reversed on Szczecin Główny station (i.e. the main station in Szczecin)
• a direct train, except that I got off at Szczecin Dąbie to stretch my legs, and then entered the same train 40 minutes later as it stopped at the same station again
• a direct train that passed through Główny and used a roundabout track to reverse
• a direct train, except that I got off at the first stop at Szczecin Dąbie, and changed trains to "Błękitny" that went faster from Szczecin to Świnoujście
• the "Orkan" train that used the rail bypass to go straight from Szczecin Zdunowo to Szczecin Załom, and skip all the other Szczecins (except I only went as far as Goleniów back then)

ICE has used the pretext of combating antisemitism to target dissidents.
A branch of the agency previously used to target drug smugglers and human traffickers has reportedly been directed to scan social media for posts sympathetic to Hamas.
Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits,
the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making.
They typically meet five criteria:
they’re a police force targeting pol…

How ICE is becoming a secret police force under the Trump administration
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement meets most criteria that have defined secret police forces in authoritarian regimes. And the worst may be yet to come.

"🔜 Energy Grids Package to fix 8 critical bottlenecks across Europe – from the Pyrenees to the Trans-Balkan pipeline, from the Øresund Strait to the Sicilian Canal"
Pyrenees, you say? Us Iberians are getting properly connected with the grid of the rest of Europe? That's about freaking time, eh?
https://…

safe to say Joel Engardio is being recalled. he's down 30 points in the first drop
@…'s map also shows the 3 precincts added to the district in 2022 which allowed him to run (he lives in one of them), and which accounted for his margin of victory over Gordon Mar, voting most strongly to recall him. wild!

I keep coming back to the mirror dualities of the oppressed and oppressor under authoritarianism.
The oppressed is portrayed as both weak and godlike. The stereotypes are always some variation on sloth and incompetence, but yet somehow also a menace capable of destroying the "pure" society. To use the most relevant current example, Antifa being both little femme soy boys who would always get beat up by "real men" while also being an international terrorist organization on the brink of overthrowing the US government, the unarmed presence of whom makes the heavily armed agents of ICE flee for their lives. Antifa is both having absolutely no impact on ICE, and also having such an impact on ICE that the military needs to come in to protect them. The contradiction is obvious but never seems to occur to those who hold both to be true at the same time.
But few talk about the duality of the oppressor. The sovereign throughout history has always been both a ruler above the law, sometimes even the representative or incarnation of a divine force. Yet, this same superhuman/god-man is also a baby who needs constant care. This is absolutely a through line from the very earliest records of sovereign cults to modern cult leaders, CEOs, and Trump today. Power, for these people, is expressed both as the ability to force others to enact their will and in the ability to compel others to care for them. Can any of these "men" cook? Can they fix anything themselves? They are driven everywhere, cooked for all the time, constantly protected from danger. Kings are still dressed, at least for rituals. I could dissect masculinity here, but that's a whole thing.
It is as though the drive to care for our children, who must be taught to behave within acceptable norms, is hijacked by "leaders" who demand our care and attention... even at the expense of our literal children. And recently we've seen some of those very CEOs, with LLMs and return to office demands, show that their judgment is also little better than children, making decisions while pretending to understand a subject.
The oppressed are portrayed as both god-like and impotent and are, in fact, neither. Meanwhile the rulers portray themselves only as invulnerable and are, in fact, childish in their ability to survive without constant support. Their greatest fear from the collapse of society is figuring out how to make sure people keep taking care of them.
It just keeps rattling around in my head.
#USPol

Trump adds new level of scrutiny to wind and solar projects
The Interior Department said Thursday that it would add additional layers of review for wind and solar energy projects,
following Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at
ending any “preferential treatment” for renewable energy.

The new requirement threatens to trip up the approval process
as wind and solar projects race to begin construction by a deadline next July to qualify for tax credits,
whi…

Trump adds new level of scrutiny to wind and solar projects
The new requirement threatens to slow the approval process for renewable energy projects as they race to begin construction before the deadline for tax credits.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom
said the state is suing the Trump Administration
after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced
his agency is clawing back $4 billion of federal funds
previously awarded for high-speed rail construction,
the latest challenge for the country’s costliest infrastructure project.
Duffy this week said the decision to take back funds awarded by the Federal Railroad Administration during the Obama and Biden Administrations
…

California Sues Trump To Hang Onto $4 Billion Of Bullet Train Funds
Gov. Gavin Newsom says the effort by the Transportation Department to claw back federal grants is politically motivated and based on Trump’s “animus” toward the state.