Tootfinder

With fewer than 900 American students in China at a time of unprecedented bilateral tensions,
Chinese classmates continually ask her to explain President Donald Trump’s decisions,
while American friends and family ask her to translate the intricacies of Chinese politics.
https://www.

American students in China face a barrage of questions about Trump
The number of U.S. students in China has plummeted, but those who are there now say it’s more important than ever for Americans to understand the country.

America being America in America instead of in some foreign country.
What’s that saying about leopards and faces again?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/8/trump-deployed-national-guard-arrives-in-la-to-cr…

Trump-deployed National Guard arrives in LA to crush immigration protests
The move sparks sharp rebuke from California’s Democratic leadership after wave of US immigration raids.

Autism and anarchy: The importance of autistic anarchism
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2024/04/10/autism-and-anarchy-the-importance-of-autistic-anarchism/

"Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: ‘Look, until America goes into political decline, there won’t be an American pope.’ And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don’t want America running the world religiously. So, I think there’s some truth to that, that we’re such a superpower and so dominant, they don’t wanna give us, also, control over the church."

MAGA and the American Pope
Seven things to know about Pope Leo XIV.

72 years later, this image still seems to resonate.
'In America - At This Restaurant Only One Person Is Served' (Krokodil # 4, 1953) by Yuliy Ganf. The solider at the table being well fed is labeled “war” and the neglected tables are labeled 'Education', 'Health Care', 'Libraries' and 'Art'.
#USpol

She’s right, you know.
We don’t need a general solution for how we accommodate trans kids in sports. It can be handled on a case by case basis. It’s being hypothesized into absurd scale to trigger reaction. There’s no “catastrophe” possible. There are a few dozen specific cases and they are different enough that they should be handled independently.
The details in real cases always seem to argue in favor of the trans kid’s choice.

Lawmakers Say Trump’s Budget Would Put Native American Health Care at Risk - Oklahoma Watch
https://oklahomawatch.org/2025/06/07/lawmakers-say-trumps-budget-would-put-native-american-health-care-at-risk/

Calamus 26 We two boys together clinging
This is one of the gayest of the Calamus poems, a fantasy of two men against the world, full of life and ardor. I should be all over this in my gay reading!
Instead I see a darker form of Americanism here. "Power enjoying ... Armed and fearless ... No law less than ourselves". It's classic American individualism fantasy, a repudiation of community and law. Armed, at that.
On top of that I trip over the "North and South" part every time I read this. In 1860 when this was published we were just steps away from a Civil War after 10 years of enormous tension. I don't blame Whitman for wanting unity, his whole program in Leaves of Grass is American unity. All I can think is how there's no moral equivalence between the North and South. But Whitman wasn't an abolitionist and this poem reflects that.
Sorry for not reveling in the gay, maybe it's the ICE and California National Guard news affecting my reading today.

The Trump administration’s spending cuts and restrictions on foreign students are triggering a brain drain — and American scientists are panicking.
U.S. researchers' fears are coming true.
America’s science pipeline is drying up,
and countries like China are seizing the opportunity to surge ahead.

“This is such a race for being the science powerhouse that you never fully recover,”
says Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The great poaching: America's brain drain begins
China and Europe are recruiting heavily from U.S. labs.

I really enjoy painting this flag all over my workbench, it’s the best anarchist flag I’ve done so far.
#Anarchy #Anarchism #Syndicalism