Tootfinder

If you want to see someone completely disconnected from reality (who is also in charge of a company that interacts with millions of children thanks to Roblox), have a read here: https://www.

20 former children at school with #NigelTheStockboker allege racist behaviour then, which he denies.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/

I posted this video about how nice Books Upstairs is and I am sorry to say that I have received *Domestic Mockery* for my voiceover.
My children opine that I sound like I am doing an ASMR video. They are asking when I will start tapping on the books’ spines.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNR2mc2kG/

Giving up territory in Ukraine is giving up on the people living there, their children and their future. Within the EU their future looks great, under russian dictatorial rule their future looks bleak. So don't talk to easy about changing borders and giving up territory.
#Russia #Ukraine

Investigation: Sick Ukrainian children exploited in fraudulent charity campaigns linked to US, Israel: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/19/investigation-sick-ukrainian-children-exploited.html

So in another dream I just woke up from, I was talking to someone about "the idea problem" (that it's becoming harder to monitize ideas, from a vox article written by an AI cooked reporter).
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/executive-disorder-white-house-weekly-46-313675864/
Basically, I was arguing that the majority of inventions target men because patriarchy puts economic control in men's hands. As men have started to help more with childcare, there have been more inventions related to childcare. (I don't have any idea if this is true. Seems legit, but I'm just relating my dream. I think I was also oversimplifying a bit to "men" and "women" because of my audience, but anyway it was a dream.) There's actually more low-hanging fruit, I pointed out, related to making care work easier.
So I argued that the real problem was a failure to invest in research into solving that problem. Today there are all these boondoggles built around killing people. What if, instead of all this government research into killing people, we dumped a ton of money into making it easier to support a household? That would be great for the economy. (Being asleep, I seem to have forgotten that working people need money.)
In the blur of being just awake I started thinking about how you could kickstart the US economy by taking the money from the AI boondoggle and other autonomous murder bots and create something like a program to build robots for housekeepers. You'd still be funding tech with government money, so the same horrible people get paid, but you're now actually solving real problems. It wouldn't even matter if it was a boondoggle, honestly. Just dumping money into something other than murdering people is good enough.
I imagined first if there was a program to fund a robot housecleaner, like robot dog with AI some laundry pickup, that would be provided, free of charge, to help people with children. It would work the same as the military boondoggle where a private company makes the government buy a piece of hardware from them and then also pay them to service it for some number of years. But instead of that hardware sitting around waiting to kill someone, it would be getting brought to people's houses to help them.
Then I thought, hey, you could even boost the economy more if you just had government funding for doulas and housecleaners and paid them a living wage. Hey, you could really kickstart the economy by nationalizing healthcare and including doula support as part of all births. Oh, and you could also just include the optional household help for families with children until the kids turn 18.
None of this is perfect (I don't actually think most of this is possible from any state), but the point is that it's actually wildly easy to figure out all kinds of ways to invest in the economy and monitize ideas as long as you aren't entirely focused on the same old "make money from spying on people and killing them." Funny that. Like they said in the podcast, maybe "finding ideas" isn't the problem.
Hope you enjoyed the weird semi-awake brain dump/rant.

Wouter constant is talking about permissionlessness. Nostr is a protocol that doesn't need some central server to authenticate your requests. Which is good. But this means that, say, children can use it without parents permission.
Online safety act and others are closing down the internet to protect them kids. So can nostr have accounts that do need permission? Can it be made kid safe? Of only to satisfy crazy governments under parent pressure.
Weboftrustfoundation exists to try and build kidstr, some kind of nostr for children.
Mostly just asking questions so far. How can it work? How can it avoid labelling vulnerable people to exploit?
#nostr #permissionlessness #nostrshire

Not being even vaguely sarcastic:
At some point, a journalist needs to ask Johnson
“you regularly claim you have no idea what your own government is doing.
If we take you at your word, how are you so poorly informed,
and do you this level of ignorance should disqualify you as speaker?”
-- John Pfaff
https://

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)
Q: What's your message to the 170 US citizens who have been detained by ICE? About 20 of them are children MIKE JOHNSON: I don't know what you're talking about with the children. I haven't seen that so I'm not going to comment on it.

This week’s #ThursdayFiveList is all about #Children, courtesy of @…:
1. Almost Vinyl, “That's a Fucking Ugly Baby”—

RE: https://mindly.social/@NotRappaport/115568243899839267
I’ve said it 50k times, but I’ll say it again: IT’S NOT ABOUT FETUSES/BABIES/CHILDREN. IT’S. ABOUT. CONTROLLING. OPPRESSING. AND. PUNISHING. WOMEN.

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

»TikTok signs deal for sale of U.S. unit after yearslong saga:
TikTok has signed a deal to divest its U.S. entity to a joint venture controlled by American investors, per an internal memo seen by Axios«
When will the children & young people (all people) finally realize that dss Internet is decentralized and not about a few power-hungry corporations?
(A rhetorical question in my dream of freedom)
🤷

Scoop: TikTok signs deal for U.S. unit after yearslong saga
The deal would end a yearslong saga to force TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the company's U.S. operation.

⚖️ Underweight children cost NHS as much per child as children with obesity, study finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-underweight-children-nhs-child-obesity.html

Underweight children cost NHS as much per child as children with obesity, study finds
The NHS incurs an estimated £340 million in additional health care costs annually due to weight-related health problems in children—but it is not just obesity driving the costs. New research from the University of Oxford reveals that underweight children need comparable medical support as those who are severely obese, challenging assumptions about childhood health priorities.

Are there any admins on social.tchncs.de.? Is anonymously spreading lies about over 30 families in Gaza allowed on this instance?
This anonymous coward has been chased off of every server he’s been on and yet he’s still here, still attacking people suffering from genocide and famine.
(And yes, some folks copy posts from others. We’ve asked them not to. But they’re trying to survive genocide, not win social media awards.)
Also (see his second post) we’re not attempting to r…

Linux Is Best (@Linux@social.tchncs.de)
Attached: 2 images 1 of 2 First, let me say: what’s happening in Gaza is absolutely awful. But what’s also awful is that there are dishonest people taking advantage of others during a crisis. In one photo, from Facebook (my job, where I work), we had a woman claiming to be a 36-year-old mother of two children, ages 4 and 7. She spaced out the URL in her post, hoping it wouldn’t get flagged by spam filters (it did). The very next day, someone on the Fediverse posted the exact same messa…

Wrt to a certain article going around today:
I think if your parents are abusive and/or say or do certain abominable things and you don’t cut them off, there’s something wrong with you.
Which would make perfect sense being raised by people that were abusive to you.
Gotta break the cycle. If you don’t do it for yourself, think about how it affects people you love like your partner or children.

By this spring, the World Food Program still had not received funding,
ran low on supplies
and was forced to stop feeding many of Kenya’s refugees.
In Kakuma, the third-largest camp in the world,
WFP cut rations to their lowest in history,
trapping most of the 308,000 people in the camp with almost nothing to eat. 
They began to starve,
and many — mostly children
— died because their malnourished bodies couldn’t fight off infections
Moth…

Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis
“Brutal and traumatizing”: Interviews and a trove of internal documents show government officials and aid workers desperately tried to warn Trump advisers about impending disaster and death.

QQ for all the "Restore the #RuleOfLaw" folks out there: When militarized police crushed Occupy for daring to challenge the logic of bailing out the bankers who crashed the economy rather than the people they fleeced, was that "Rule of Law"? When militarized police maimed and brutalized water protectors, was that "Rule of Law"? When oil companies and tech monopolies fund both parties and just happen to get legislation that keeps them in power, is that "Rule of Law"? When your tax dollars go to fund genocide, to pay to drop bombs on children, is that "Rule of Law"? When the NSA was spying on American citizens, was that "Rule of Law"? How about the drone strikes on Americans, was that "Rule of Law"? When cops murder people and then use "qualified immunity" to get away with it, is that "Rule of Law"?
Y'all keep talking about how #NoKings is about "restoring rule of law." It's got a bit of a "Make America Great Again" feel to it: you're invoking a return to a history that never actually existed.

5 Lies We’re Told As Children About Animals #animals

5 Lies We’re Told As Children About Animals
When we’re little, we’re taught to love animals – we sleep with stuffed cows, watch movies about brave pigs and loyal dogs, and cry when the baby deer loses their mother. But somewhere along the way…

Young people were very important to the Nazis. To this end, Hitler set about influencing children both inside and outside school (CCEA) - BBC Bitesize #fascism

Young people were very important to the Nazis. To this end, Hitler set about influencing children both inside and outside school (CCEA). - BBC Bitesize
Young people were very important to the Nazis. To this end, Hitler set about influencing children both inside and outside school.

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

7 killed, 23 injured, including children, in Russian attacks on Ukraine over past day: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/12/killed-injured-including-children-in.html

About 400 immigrant children were detained longer than the recommended limit, ICE admits (Valerie Gonzalez/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-ice-children-detained-lawsuit-dilley-75530212ec0959eda2b42aada3fbe46a
http://www.memeorandum.com/251209/p147#a251209p147

“So I would advise and caution against purchasing an AI toy for Christmas and think about other options of things that parents and kids can enjoy together that really build that social connection with the family, not the social connection with a parasocial AI toy.”
Many of these toys are happy to engage in discussions inappropriate for children, such as dangerous activities or sexual practices. Some are programmed to cause addiction.

I’m confused. When did MTG become the voice of reason and the sane one in the US Republican Party…?
bird.makeup - Tweet https://bird.makeup/users/repmtg/statuses/2000597575901327850

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸
Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak. This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies. Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It’s incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy especially when it ends in murder.

I'm getting myself so annoyed by something that really shouldn't get to me. Lost story short: a neighbour passed away a few months ago - a really lovely guy.
Whenever we spoke, he didn't really talk about his family, although we knew he was divorced and had children, one of which very occasionally visited. He talked about his hobbies, his previous work, and his dog, who had also passed a few months before him.
So, what's grating me? His children are now sorting out his house and possessions and they've parked their massive 4x4s on the front lawn he took so much pride in. Like, not just clipping it at the edge with their wheels, but properly parked over the grass. He didn't have much of a garden, but it was always taken care of. I've also noticed how his Mercedes was the first thing that got the most attention. It just feels so disrespectful it's kinda upsetting.

Russian drone hits civilian car in Odesa Oblast, killing mother and injuring 3 children, governor says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/18/russian-drone-hits-civilian-car.html

"Donald cares more about the ballroom and increasing his wealth than he cares about starving children in America."
https://www.marytrump.org/p/le-me-eat-cake
via @…

"Le Me Eat Cake"
Morning Dispatch

AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-toys-gift-present-safe-kids-robot-child-miko-grok-alilo-miiloo-rcna246956

AI kids' toys give explicit and dangerous responses in tests
AI-powered kids' toys like Miko 3 have hit shelves this holiday season, claiming to rely on sophisticated chatbots to animate interactive robots for children.

Just finished "Endgames" by Ru Xu, sequel to "Newsprints." I was happy to see the characters from the first book get their endings, but Xu feels incredibly out of her depth writing about the politics of empire and the power/complicity of the press, which completely dampened my enjoyment.
As just one example, there's a ton of interesting nuance to explore behind the idea of a disabled imperial ruler and how disadvantage/persecution (from which you have been effectively shielded) does not justify harming others. This book explores none of that.
I think it does serve as a great example of how severely one limits one's own imagination when one buys into the myth of nationhood as natural/inevitable/good. It's not that Xu's politics are especially authoritarian, I think, but that she's just (been kept?) resoundingly naïve, and so her plot resolution feels childish (or perhaps that's an insult to children).
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Kyiv Independent to present documentary exposing Russia’s militarization of Ukrainian children: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/16/kyiv-independent-to-present-documentary.html

On July 18, a mild, overcast night in Nairobi, Kenya, a team of Donald Trump’s top foreign aid advisers
ducked into a meeting room at the Tribe Hotel,
their luxury accommodations in the city’s diplomatic quarter,
for a private dinner.
To press the urgency of the situation in East Africa, the embassy officials enlisted Dragica Pajevic,
a World Food Program veteran of more than two decades.
Pajevic arrived at the Tribe Hotel early. She brought props. The b…

Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis
“Brutal and traumatizing”: Interviews and a trove of internal documents show government officials and aid workers desperately tried to warn Trump advisers about impending disaster and death.

New rule: Next time a republican mouthpiece starts yammering about how trans/queer/drag queen harm youth - just go ahead and order a forensic image of their devices.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/gop-lawmaker-said-…

"Shell-funded school materials accused of downplaying fossil fuels’ climate impact"
#Shell #FossilFuels #Climate

Shell gave €5m to this museum. Should parents be worried?
School materials emblazoned with the Shell logo are shaping how children as young as 10 learn about climate change.

I'm tired of hearing about the bodies of those Israeli hostages who died and haven't been returned. It is a devastated war zone and no doubt many died in the bombing. Hardly surprising if they can't all be found now. I'd like to see the same concern for the remains of all those Palestinian children, women and men who were killed by Israel and who lie under tons of rubble. Their families won't be able to retrieve their remains.
It's a tragedy for all but let's…

Next week, on the 14th of October, the EU will attempt to push through a new law called "Chat Control." They claim this law is necessary to protect children from harmful individuals—and let’s be clear, protecting children is crucial. But here’s what’s really happening: the EU wants to scan every phone, tablet, and computer. This includes your photos, files, and every message you’ve sent or will send. 448 million people will be under 24/7 surveillance.
You might say, "I ha…

Idea: Animated movie about two children who meet a magical reference management software for bibliographic data and befriend it: "My Neighbor Zotero".

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

U.S. citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents about children gathering at bus stop, lawyers say - Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-11-02/lawyers-say-ice-shot-us-citizen-from-behind-as-he-stopped-to-warn-them-of-childre

This article suggests that research in 3D rendering contributed to machine- assisted assassinations of children in Gaza.
It is a topic very close to my heart. When I was starting my academic career at the dept. of Digital Storytelling of ZGDV in Darmstadt, Germany, I took a lot of inspiration by colleagues from the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Their work was funded by DARPA and a lot of it was about military training. Let alone the fact t…

How Pixar’s technology helped develop more lethal military drones
The 3D modeling systems that made ‘Toy Story’ possible have been key to enabling unmanned aircraft to navigate and aim their weapons with greater precision

"On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which the federal government created to honour 'the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities,' members of the Active History editorial collective offer suggestions on scholarship and resources they have found helpful in their own work and learning journeys."

On the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation
Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its final report on the history of residential schools in Canada. Mandated to “inform all Canadians about what happened in reside…

It's absolute insanity that the recruiting arm of the US army is just the violence of poverty.

I just woke up from a dream. For every parent there is a time when, with shame, we have to explain how the world actually works... when they become a little too old to keep saying, "I'll explain it when you're older."
Amsterdam is full of reminders of the occupation, of the Holocaust. It's impossible to pretend there hasn't been a great evil here... One that's not in the past, but still very alive in the present.
At some point things will have to change because fascism can't last forever. It is a thing which necessarily contains its own downfall. We will, at that point, have an opportunity to make the world one that we can be proud to tell our children we created. We can stop short and reestablish the status quo that got us here, or we can build a world that we will no longer have to explain to each new generation in shame.
What would it look like?
(Shout out to the comrade who prompted me to be thinking about this.)
There was also a sign in my dream that said, "we created the bike, therefore we can do anything." This may or may not be related.

Melania Trump says she received response from Putin on letter about Ukrainian children: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/10/melania-trump-says-she-received.html

I know that sentencing kids to tooth decay is small potatoes compared to lots of the rest of what this administration is doing, but this still makes me angry.
(Yes, I know, if we removed all processed sugars from our diet, that would also address tooth decay in a substantial way, but also let's be honest about whether that's going to happen.)

Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part of
this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be
watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for
a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky
Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food
such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of …

Turned on #Christmas Pandora playlist for the first time this year. And of course the first song was all about it being ok to abuse peers for being different and having the authority figure ignore it until he needs you for something important for him, not because it's wrong.
The "Now that we know your difference is useful we'll stop treating you like shit and pretend it never happened" is a perfect topper.
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a great lesson for children. /sarcasm
#autistic #neurospicy

Ok, yeah, I'm not done processing my anger over liberals doing shit like this. So this historian sees a rise in right wing violence, sees the US government carrying out ethnic cleansing, sees a rise in white supremacist terrorism, and then says, "oh yeah... this reminds me of a time right around the 1920s. Hum... yeah, ANARCHISTS fighting the government! Yeah, that's the same thing."
FFS, IT'S THE RED SUMMER! If you want a parallel between today and some horrible time in US history, TALK ABOUT THE RED SUMMER. The point of the language of dehumanization that the right uses, the point of all the anti-black and anti-emigrant rhetoric, is that it leads to genocide. Trump already carried out an act of genocide (#USPol

Ukraine brings back 22 children from Russian-occupied territories: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/04/ukraine-brings-back-children-from.html

How to talk about climate change with children!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ_8ZOouZgU

@xankarn
Approximately 18% of SNAP recipients are over 60.
That’s over 7 million people.
A lot of those people have few options to generate more income.
Graphic from the USDA web page:
Also featuring a flagrant Hatch Act violation
http://www.ers.usda.gov/d…

Day 17 (oops; a bit early): Angie Thomas
Can hardly believe it's taken me this long to get to Thomas, and I haven't even read "The Hate You Give" which is probably her most popular book. I did read "Concrete Rose" and was duly blown away by her craft: the use of vernacular, the love she has for the community she writes about, the honesty with which she grapples with the bleak details of the setting, and her stubborn and inescapable portrayal of a human being where our society has taught us to see only perpetrators and victims. CW for family member death and gun violence that I can think of; it's not light reading.
As the parent of two children, Thomas' descriptions of baby care ring true, and drew me into the book more than any other factor, and her vision of a positive masculinity among so much pain is breathtaking. "Concrete Rose" is a brilliant novel, and Thomas richly deserves a spot on this list.
#20AuthorsNoMen

Google’s AI Nano Banana Pro accused of generating racialised ‘white saviour’ visuals https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/04/google-ai-nano-banana-pro-racialised-white-saviour-images?CMP=Share…

Ukrainian NGO returns 18 children from Russian-occupied Kherson: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/05/ukrainian-ngo-returns-children-from.html

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.)

Amid the moral panic about unofficial #migration, the vulnerability of desperate people is never mentioned. Here's a dereliction of the duty of care.
"More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing...
"Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs o…

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs.
She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
She calls it “the final mission.”
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down.
Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education,
she’s operated in what she calls
“a parallel universe”
to radically shift how children will learn for years to come.…

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.
Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of public schools as we know them.

Ukraine returns 1,859 abducted children, Zelenska says in Paris: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/02/ukraine-returns-abducted-children-zelenska.html

Seven Ukrainian children abducted to Russia returned in initiative backed by Melania Trump: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/04/seven-ukrainian-children-abducted-to.html

Several Ukrainian children abducted by Russia forcibly sent to North Korea, expert tells US Senate: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/04/several-ukrainian-children-abducted-by.html

Ukraine rescues 17 children from occupation, Yermak says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/27/ukraine-rescues-children-from-occupation.html

Zach Bryan, one of the biggest stars in US country music, has been criticised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over a new song in which he sings about immigration raids by Ice.
The DHS’s assistant secretary of public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, told Bryan to “stick to Pink Skies, dude,” referring to one of his previous hits, in comments reported by the Independent.
The DHS also made a provocative post on X, laying another Bryan song, Revival, over footage of Ice office…

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

RUSSIA IS DESTROYING LIVES! Ukrainian children deprived of their childhood by war | Special report: https://benborges.xyz/2025/11/09/russia-is-destroying-lives-ukrainian.html

Just checked out some truly excellent books from the library to read to my 4-year-old:
Adèle & Simon by Barbara McClintock (things to find), The Marvelous Now by Angela DiTerlizzi and Lorena Alvarez Gómez (rhyming & positive encouragement about mood regulation), and Forts by Katie Venit & Kenard Pak (lovely ode to children's forts).
I had a wonderful reverse-Magritte moment reading Adèle & Simon where Simon loses his drawing of a cat and my kid pointed out one of the actual cats in the image. I said "No, that's a cat, we're looking for a drawing of a cat," before realizing that technically we were looking for a drawing of a drawing of a cat, and the thing my kid pointed to was indeed a drawing of a cat, just not in that category relative to Simon's frame of reference...
#AmReading #ReadingNow #ChildrensBooks

Stolen childhood: Russia deports Ukrainian children and destroys their future #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/11/09/stolen-childhood-russia-deports-ukrainian.html

Good Morning #Canada
Most of us - who are not CEOs, or CFOs, or CTOs, or C-somethings - know that #AI makes the user experience shittier and we'd prefer it wasn't installed on our phone, tablets, applications or toasters. But when it gets installed on children's toys, that becomes a whole new level of evil perpetrated on us by the tech bros. Numerous media outlets reported in the past month about the dangers of letting your kids access AI via a cute and cuddly toy, most focused on a teddy bear that used Chat GPT to explain fetishes and role playing to unsuspecting children. I don't think Santa's Elves were involved in the quality control process. Stick with something low tech, like Play-Doh or LEGO.
#CanadaIsAwesome ##BeSafeOutThere
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/ai-toys-for-kids-safety-9.7001764

At least 14 injured, including 4 children, in Kyiv amid Russian drone attack on residential buildings: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/26/at-least-injured-including-children.html

A federal vaccine committee decided on Friday to end the decades-long recommendation that all newborns be immunized at birth against hepatitis B,
a highly infectious virus that leads to chronic liver disease in most infected children.
The vote was a victory for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has sought for decades to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule.
But the divisiveness and dysfunction of the committee in making the decision raises questions about the r…

C.D.C. Vaccine Committee Ends Recommendation That All Newborns Receive Hepatitis B Shots
In a move toward Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal of upending vaccine policy, the committee recommended delaying the shots for infants whose mothers test negative for the virus.

Russia is preparing Ukrainian children from occupied territories to fight in its war: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/25/russia-is-preparing-ukrainian-children.html

ROCKET AGAINST CHILDREN! The Kremlin STRUCK a kindergarten in Kyiv #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/25/rocket-against-children-the-kremlin.html

Day 3: Octavia Butler.
Incredibly dark, graphic, and disturbing near-future science fiction, which has proved absolutely prophetic. In the 1990's she was writing about a charismatic Conservative Christian and white nationalist president elected in 2024, and the horrors his paramilitary followers would unleash, including forced labor & indoctrination camps. Did I mention those books include ebikes & pseudo-cellphones too? Characters fleeing north from a disastrous social collapse in Loss Angeles? This is "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents" and the later was tragically rushed to an end because of Butler's declining health.
Her work deals unflinchingly with racism and the darker parts of society, and to those who might say "her depiction of social collapse is overblown," I'd say that while it's not literally the world we live in, it's *effectively* the world that the poorest of us live in. If you're a homeless undocumented latinx person in LA right now, I'm not sure how meaningfully different your world is from the one she depicts.
Her work comes with a strong content warning for lots of things, including racial violence, sexual abuse and slavery, including of children, animal harm, etc., so it's not for everyone. Reading it in 2023 was certainly an incredible trip. Her politics are really cool though; with explicit pro-LGBTQ themes and tinges of what might today be considered #SolarPunk.
#20WomenAuthors

Increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensionsin the nation’s third-largest city.
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday on CNN.
“They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”
U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and children have been among those detained
in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounter…

Immigration agents use increasingly aggressive tactics in Chicago, alarming activists and residents
Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest city. That includes storming an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept and deploying chemical agents near a public school. About 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since an immigration crackdown started last month in the Chicago area. But U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and c…

USAID’s dismantling is estimated to have already killed 600,000 people,
⇔ of them children.
Officials simply deny any harm,
while halting data monitoring and firing inspectors general who’d have documented it
https://www.newyork…

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
Atul Gawande writes about the short documentary “Rovina’s Choice,” by Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong, which tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

Propaganda in Russia is passed down from parents to children #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/11/30/propaganda-in-russia-is-passed.html

⚡HUMAN SAFARI: Russian Drones Hunt Volunteers & Strike "CHILDREN" Signs!: https://benborges.xyz/2025/11/30/human-safari-russian-drones-hunt.html

Russian strike hits Sumy high-rise, injuring 11 including four children: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/31/russian-strike-hits-sumy-highrise.html

Good Morning #Canada
Happy #Halloween to all those Canadians who enjoy dressing up, and today it's totally normal. But remember, don't go into the old shed with all the sharp farm tools.
Today, I am sharing one of my favourite radio episodes narrated by the late Stuart McLean. For 20 years, #TheVinylCafe radio show aired weekly on CBC Radio and was written and hosted by the late McLean. The radio show featured stories are about Dave, owner of a secondhand record store called "The Vinyl Cafe", and also starred Dave's wife, Morley, their two children, Sam and Stephanie, and assorted other characters. If you fondly remember The Vinyl Cafe, then this episode may spark a memory. If this is your first exposure, I warn you that you may crave more.
I first heard this episode in the lead up to Halloween over a decade ago. It's about a man who is terrorized by his sister's doll, in his youth, and into manhood.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CBCRadio
https://youtu.be/vi6KKSWO5oU?si=7Tw3a7sfKuyP-M3u

⚡ Russia destroyed a CHILDREN'S hospital in KHERSON – it is now in RUINS #short: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/29/russia-destroyed-a-childrens-hospital.html

I think the hardest thing to accept about this current reality is that our rulers are not terrifying Machiavellians who've built this monstrous dystopia, but scared little children who are also captured within the emergent chains of this terrible system.

Russian artillery strike hits children's hospital in Kherson, 9 injured: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/29/russian-artillery-strike-hits-childrens.html

12-hour Russian drone and missile attack hits Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia, killing children and striking cardiology institute: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/28/hour-russian-drone-and-missile.html

Ukraine Action Summit meets in Washington, calls for return of abducted children, security guarantees: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/26/ukraine-action-summit-meets-in.html

Ukraine's First Lady Zelenska meets Melania Trump to discuss children affected by war: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/25/ukraines-first-lady-zelenska-meets.html

UN calls for return of Russia-abducted Ukrainian children in US-backed vote: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/04/un-calls-for-return-of.html

Overnight drone raid on Moscow, parents urged to keep children home from school: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/23/overnight-drone-raid-on-moscow.html

Investigation: How Russia militarizes Ukrainian children, training them for a lifetime of war: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/23/investigation-how-russia-militarizes-ukrainian.html