Tootfinder

reclaim conservative phrases and ideas to make them meaningless with the same fervor republicans work to destroy liberal phrases.
be pro-life which I assume means right for food, shelter, and bodily autonomy.
be pro masculinity which I assume means community building and mutual aid.
be MAGA which probably means fighting for immigrants and advancing civil rights.
I'm sure there are problems with this idea but I bet there are good parts we don't get to enjoy.

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

I have decided that running openSUSE on my pi5 is prima facie consistent with my policy and efforts to move my devices over to the distro, but ultimately inconsistent with the underlying motivation of reducing the amount of fucking-around I have to suffer to keep my grex functioning. Debian Just Works on the Pi series, while openSUSE functions, but does so balanced on a stack of compromises. Better to leave well enough alone while it's well enough.

I need for Celtic to win today not just because I love Celtic but also bc FC Midtjylland is the opps bc they destroyed BrŸndby when I went to watch them in Copenhagen
#fedifc

I do not support or condone malicious hacking, destruction of private data, or the unwilling sharing of private data.
Unless it's Nazis. Then screw 'em.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/05/hacktivist-deletes…

Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live onstage during hacker conference | TechCrunch
A hacker known as Martha Root broke in and deleted three white supremacist websites at the end of a talk during the annual hacker conference Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

ICE continues to terrorize MSP. It continues to be distressing and exhausting; the incredible volume of counter-organizing and community action continues to give me heart.
One thing that’s not surprising but I haven’t seen covered much: ICE is redlining. They swarm over very specific neighborhoods; the abductions (so far) happen almost entirely within clear boundaries. Those boundaries don’t entirely correspond to where immigrants live. They do, however, seem to correspond pretty closely to •political• boundaries that are / are not heavily white.
1/2

I don’t try to cultivate a big follower list, I didn’t do that on Twitter, and don’t do it here. Regardless, in 3 years on Mastodon, I have managed to nearly double the number of followers that I had on Twitter. So that’s cool. Thanks. :)
I don’t really understand why that result is different as the way I interact is basically the same… following people that follow me and vice versa. And occasionally, a yearly basis?, I find myself unfollowing people and resources for various reasons.
On Twitter, the unfollowing was mostly because so many accounts seemed to be fake or bots. But here it is more about curation. It is so much easier to get good content on the Fediverse from many vectors, people yes, but also hashtags, lists, federated blogs, aggregators, and the like. Following people is less crucial.
It is an under appreciated advantage of the Fediverse and #opensocial web that starts to break what I feel is one of the most destructive aspects of traditional social media I call: The Illusion of Popularity
From adolescence we are often taught that being universally “followed” or “admired” for good or ill means you have more worth.
But is that really true? In Real Life, is a person with one good friend automatically better than one with many friends? Or is it more about your impact in the community or just impact on yourself and those you choose to interact with?
Afterall there is nothing wrong with cultivating your own obscurity. Some people seek that out.
Perhaps, if the #opensocialweb is truly successful, there will be little nooks and crannies of it that will host those folks who just want to… be.
Introverts, hermits, lurkers, “the silent masses”….whatever you might label them, there is nothing wrong with them, they just are. Traditional social media was built to convince us that everyone has to be important, an influencer, a leader, when many many of us, just want to be.
I hope the #Fediverse can be a place where both of those types of people can thrive.

#socialmedia #followers #following #values

It is always disturbing when MAGA politicians go off halfcocked about socialism.
Here are some of the “radical left” socialist programs that Warner must be complaining about:
Medicare
Medicaid
The Affordable Care Act
Social Security
SNAP (food stamps)
Meals on Wheels and Office of Aging services
Every single one of these programs was once characterized by right-wing politicians as a
“socialist program.”

This MAGA politician's disturbing rant shows a party hellbent on hurting its own
“It is hard to watch other states and cities across our nation leap toward socialism… Let’s keep our state moving forward by always rejecting the falsehoods sold by the radical left.” — Secretary of State Kris Warner, Facebook post, November 5, 2025. Although I should be accustomed to it, it is alw...

The implications are interesting enough when we apply this to systems like capitalism or national governments, but there are other very interesting implications when applied to systems like race or gender.
Like, as a cis man the only way I can be free to express and explore my own masculinity is if the masculinity I participate in is one which allows anyone the freedom to leave. Then I have an obligation to recognize the validity of nom-masculine trans identity as a necessary component of my own. If I fail to do this, then I trap myself in masculinity and allow the system to control me rather than me to be a free participant in the system.
But if it's OK to escape but not enter, that's it's own restriction that constrains the freedom to leave. It creates a barrier that keeps people in by the fear that they cannot return. So in order for me to be free in my cis masculine identity, I must accept non-masculine trans identities as they are and accept detransitioning as also valid.
But I also need to accept trans-masc identities because restricting entry to my masculinity means non-consensually constraining other identities. If every group imposes an exclusion against others coming in, that, by default, makes it impossible to leave every other group. This is just a description of how national borders work to trap people within systems, even if a nation itself allows people to "freely" leave.
So then, a free masculinity is one which recognizes all configurations of trans identities as valid and welcomes, if not celebrates, people who transition as affirmations of the freedom of their own identity (even for those who never feel a reason to exercise that same freedom).
The most irritating type of white person may look at this and say, "oh, so then why can't I be <not white>?" Except that the critique of transratial identities has never been "that's not allowed" and has always been "this person didn't do the work." If that person did the work, they would understand that the question doesn't make sense based on how race is constructed. That person might understand that race, especially whiteness, is more fluid than they at first understood. They might realize that whiteness is often chosen at the exclusion of other racialized identities. They would, perhaps, realize that to actually align with any racialized identity, they would first have to understand the boot of whiteness on their neck, have to recognize the need to destroy this oppressive identity for their own future liberation. The best, perhaps only, way to do this would be to use the privilege afforded by that identity to destroy it, and in doing so would either destroy their own privilege or destroy the system of privilege. The must either become themselves completely ratialized or destroy the system of race itself such being "transracial" wouldn't really make sense anymore.
But that most annoying of white person would, of course, not do any such work. Nevertheless, one hopes that they may recognize the paradox that they are trapped by their white identity, forced forever by it to do the work of maintaining it. And such is true for all privileged identities, where privilege is only maintained through restrictions where these restrictions ultimately become walls that imprison both the privileged and the marginalized in a mutually reinforcing hell that can only be escaped by destroying the system of privilege itself.