Tootfinder

People keep trying to point to an event where the "right/left" political violence thing got out of hand. You cannot point to anywhere in US history where the right hasn't been murdering leftists. It has never happened.
They've been talking about civil war since they lost the last one, and most of US politics before that was just trying to prevent the first one.
There isn't a wave of right/left violence. Right wing violence has just gone unchecked for so long, and been so accepted, that now they're killing each other regularly. The Trump assassination attempts were all from the right. #CharlieKirk was killed by another fascist for not being fascist enough.
Fascists have so completely taken over that they see each other as legitimate targets because they've run out of "leftists" worth murdering. That's the story. That's what people can't wrap their heads around.
Everyone is worried about the right wing response, worries about right wing escalation, but they called for civil war over the cracker barrel logo. They're already maxing out their base. All the proud boys and other Nazis are already hired by ICE. They're also already going as hard as they can. They don't need any excuses. They have total control of everything. This bumbling mess is *the best they can do.* They call for civil war every few days.
We're not seeing a war between the left and the right. We're seeing a war between the right and the far right, where both side opportunistically punch left when they can and liberals help them justify their actions.
#USPol

“We lead by love. This is community. We send no orders, there’s no orders out here, just people defending each other. And we don’t need a f*cking gun to do it. We don’t need body armor to do it. We don’t need to beat up protestors, we don’t need to beat up fake news to do it. We show up, put our f*cking bodies on the line because we don’t f*ck with n*zis. Maybe one day, maybe one day, you can say the same. Community will welcome you back…”
🧵 1/2

As I tune Xogot for the iPhone, I started with this UI for some of the "Plugin" tabs that Godot offers. The samples showing the AudioBus viewer:
* on iPad
* on iPhone retouched
* on iPhone using navigation buttons
In the particular case of the Audio bus, I am not sure what to do with that empty space at the bottom. The UI was carefully replicating LogicPro on iPad - not excited about the work to stretch this
Maybe I can put a big ass icon there to dist…

"The AI investment ‘bubble’ (as measured as the stock price relative to the 'book value' of a company) is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy of 2000 — and four times the subprime mortgage bubble of 2007. The ratio of the US stock market’s value to GDP (aka the “Buffett Indicator") has moved up to a new record high at 217%, more than 2 standard deviations above the long-term trendline." [ the very definition of abnormal - MB ]

The AI bubble and the US economy
The US stock market continues to hit new record highs; the bitcoin price is also close to highs and the gold price has rocketed to all-time highs. Investors in financial assets (banks, insurance co…

rest in paint 🕯️ https://criminalmindedartist.neocities.org/rip

TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?

Phanpy doesn't support quoots yet, so I'm using Mastodon's stock web interface and.. it's bad. Compare how busy it looks with unnecessary stuff (do I really need a "post" input form on screen at all times? Do I need a link to "favorites" visible at all times?), but also - the fonts are bad. Bad, bad, bad. Just so much harder to read. And the timeline toots just kind of run together, rather than being clearly delineated by whitespace in phanpy.

"Every morning, a spider rebuilt its web on my car mirror, only for the wind to destroy it again. Watching that tiny creature taught me something about toxic cycles, misplaced resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to stop rebuilding in the wrong place."
"True resilience isn't about stubbornly withstanding the storm; it's about having the wisdom to find a new foundation."
This piece of writing hits like a gut punch.

What a Spider Taught Me About Resilience and Letting Go
Every morning, a spider rebuilt its web on my car mirror, only for the wind to destroy it again. Watching that tiny creature taught me something about toxic cycles, misplaced resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to stop rebuilding in the wrong place.

“For too many political reporters…_way_ someone makes…argument–how nice they look…erudite they sound…polite they seem – …long taken precedent over…actual argument itself.”
“…as long as…tone is cheerful…no need to examine…ugliness of…words.”
“…true reckoning w/…life & legacy of _any_ political activist–no matter where…on…spectrum–has to address…substance of their words & deeds…not just…style. Focus on exactly what they said, not how nicely they said it.”

The White Civility Council
As the nation reckons with the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, there has been a notable trend from mainstream pundits and press outlets. They have tended to downplay or outright ignore the ugly things that he said and instead to stress the polite ways he said them. It's an

A US Federal Judge ordered the release of the people DHS now plans to hold anyway, illegally under both US and International Law.
15 of the people arrested at Broadview yesterday were clergy, peacefully protesting; bringing assistance to and advocating for the downtrodden quite literally _is_ their job.
But DHS/ICE/CBP brings only lawlessness and violence.
DHS and all its components and collaborators are a clear and present danger to the American People and the US Consti…