Tootfinder

With Trump in the White House,
it is easy to see that the big anniversary ahead will pass over the fact that the US’s revolutionaries instituted one of the world’s richest, most powerful slave societies,
which their descendants overthrew.
Showcased instead will be paeans to the pioneer spirit, military power and business civilization as the embodiment of the country’s perfect, flawless revolution,
perhaps with a little plantation nostalgia on the side.
Andrew …

The American myth always came at someone’s expense. Now, it’s all but collapsed
The main pillars of the founding narrative have fallen on hard times. Today, its meaning is up for grabs

Semi-subtoot: there's a certain kind of anti-genocide narrative that draws comparisons between the Gaza genocide and the genocide of Jews, queer, and disabled people during WW2, with an incredulous overtone, the subtext of which is: if the good nations invaded Germany to stop the Nazis' evil in WW2, it's hypocritical for this nations not to take action to protect Gazan civilians now. There are a couple of problems with this line of reasoning, but the most obvious from an anarchist perspective (which sees "good nation" for the oxymoron it is) is that it's ahistorical. The reasons for the various allies' entrance into WW2 are varied, but they weren't about good and evil, and in fact the full depth of the evils of the Holocaust *was not known* in allied countries until after the war. Nations never really do things to "fight evil" like some humans might; they always act out of a kind of (imperfect) self-interest. The motivations for many of the allies were simply "we don't want Germany to conquer and destroy us" (and the imperfection in that motive is amply evident in the appeasement that preceded the war). America was of course not swayed by that motive, and it was the Japanese that (thinking the issue would have to come to a head eventually and that a surprise attack was worth speeding it up) put America in a situation where it joined for similar reasons.
Why is this extra relevant right now? Because neither the US nor any European country is existentially threatened by Israel (or threatened at all in fact, quite the opposite they're all benefiting economically from the situation in Gaza). The lesson of history isn't "brave, good nations will stand up to fight against anyone who commits genocide or other major evils", it's "nations act in their narrow and twisted and often mistaken self-interest (the interest of the national entity, which is often counter to the interest of it's citizens), and they always mythologize their actions after the fact as having been a fight against evil, which sometimes by luck is partially true."
To double down on this point: in the European theater the U.S. war actions were pretty good overall, defeating an evil opponent through military force and being a fairly gracious victor to the civilian populations there. In contrast, in the Pacific theater the U.S. was one of two evil empires duking it out for global dominance at the expense of civilians on both sides. The Japanese empire was a vile regime and perpetrated horrors in China, Korea, and across southeast Asia. The U.S. was barely better, between Japanese internment camps at home, and mass targeting of civilians on Japan, both with the firebombing of Tokyo and especially the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So if your model of how we stop genocide is "convince the good guys to invade (or exert political pressure) and save the day", your model is wrong. That's not what happened in WW2. I'm not confident I know the perfect solution, but I do think it involves a mass of people making increasingly disruptive protest so that the cost *to rich companies and thus politicians* of falling to intervene is too high to stomach. That's a large part of what succeeded in South Africa, for example. Thankfully, there is already a vibrant protest movement to end the genocide in Gaza, and even though they haven't been fully successful yet, I'm optimistic that as things naturally (and through hard work) fall apart for various fascists politically, that movement will be able to succeed.
#gaza #genocide

#TIL: "Anders als arabischer Text, der von rechts nach links gelesen wird, liest man die #arabisch​e Brailleschrift gemäß den internationalen Konventionen von links nach rechts."
– aus dem newsletter 4/2026 des @…

I saw #TheOdyssey so you don’t have to. The story itself is a given, so what’s actually interesting is how it visually sets up the more mythical elements. That’s solid and at times extremely creepy! Well done!
The non-linear narrative arc is kinda a mixed bag though?! It goes for an anti-war message at the end, but that doesn’t track with what actually happens chronologically. Th…

Texans offensive coordinator Nick Caley saw 'a lot of progress' from C.J. Stroud in 2025 -- and it's continuing https://www.nfl.com/news/texans-offensive-coordinator-nick-caley-saw-a-lot-of-progress-from…

#WritersCoffeeClub 21 Jul
Do your works contain erotic elements? How far do you go?
Interesting question: what counts as 'erotic'?. I'm interested in relationships, often power relationships, between people. That they have sex and how they have sex is important character and narrative information.
So yes, almost all my stories have scenes in which people have…

For those people interested in digital identity , wallets etc., Architecture and Reference Framework for the EU Digital Identity Wallet, version 3.0 has been released.
#EU

European Digital Identity
Architecture and Reference Framework (ARF) of the European Digital Identity Wallet: main narrative, annexes with normative high-level requirements, technical specifications, and discussion topics.

‘Last year, the online magazine 972 revealed the existence of a specialised military intelligence unit known as the “legitimisation cell”. Its mandate is narrative management. “Whenever criticism of Israel in the media intensified on a particular issue,” the report said, the cell combed through intercepted calls and fragments of intelligence from Gaza to identify material that could be deployed to defend Israel on the international stage.
“If the global media is talking about Israel ki…

Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity • EQUATOR
Forty years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continues.

httpx2 has proper API docs and intersphinx 🥲
now they just need to start using it themselves in their narrative docs 😅
https://github.com/hynek/stamina/commit/63663956d99aea06b8350293c0a7b12353793d12

docs: httpx2 has intersphinx 🥲 · hynek/stamina@6366395
Production-grade retries for Python. Contribute to hynek/stamina development by creating an account on GitHub.

The declassified documents Trump just released to “prove” the 2020 election was “rigged”
actually show that Russia tried to interfere to hurt Biden and help Trump.
https://x.com/tvietor08/status/2077943979656851489?s=12&t=JIzXmAfBKPksn8uWZp4aaA

Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) on X
Trump released documents that confirm Russia tried to interfere in the 2020 election to hurt Biden. It says Russia tried to "orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal" and push narratives about "voter fraud resulting from mail-in balloting"