Tootfinder

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

Some more photos from my location scouting to the lake shore.
Obviously it was quite foggy and cold!
On location I was already pretty sure that these would be monochromes. but I struggled to really see motives at first. Luckily I went there just to take photos, not hiking.
Sometimes I just stood there for a while and was looking around to ... see whats around.
#photography

Omar Fateh,
the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist,
is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis
and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey.
Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate.
Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization,
raising the minimum wage
and reforming how the city handles public safety.
“…

“Mamdani of the Midwest”: Meet Omar Fateh. Could He Be the Next Mayor of Minneapolis?
Omar Fateh, the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist, is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey. Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate. Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization, raising the minimum wage and reforming how the city handles public safety. “Minneapolis can have a different kind of politics,…

Hummm.
So I was thinking about how with a couple of caster-boards and straps, the bed could be upturned and stowed in the studio. Probably? I should have figured for a fold-away really.
Still. Could work...
Then, without a bed in there, the place could turn into a dining room.
I was thinking about a shape of a table for a dinner party in there.
Oh my god.
This semi-circle table curve of wood and attachable table-legs and fold-able stools might just fit, like, under the bed normally?
Looks perfect for a card-game or a Dungeon Master setup.
Could that table and it's legs and it's chairs all fit under the bed? Probably not at it's current height. But I want to raise it a bit anyway.
🤔
Oh my god, look at this though. The projector is pointed at the wall behind the throne surrounded by the seats for the council of seven.
This could be built.
Not right away, but eventually?

To my eyes, this is an act of war by the US upon the nation of Venezuela. (Not to mention the blurring of GPS and the sinking of boats by the US.)
If indeed a state of war now exists (to borrow a phrase from FDR's speech to Congress after Pearl Harbor) then Venezuela could be anticipated to wage war against the US - endangering US people (including tourists) everywhere in the world.
El Cheato and Whiskey Pete are getting the US in Vietnam Part II.
"Trump says airs…

A potential actually-useful use-case for chatbots: Back in The Good Old Days when programmers did not fear being swamped by bug reports, especially the not-so-great reports, software would carry a global-scoped 'gripe' button, when clicked, a redacted snapshot of the machine state was bundled with whatever they wished to put into the text box, and no reply was expected beyond 'received'. Given the ease of recognizing pure noise in the input, an LLM might coallate a bunch and produce a useful report? False positives happen in support all the time 😅
That kinda puts the #LLM in the 'triangle' position on a #StaffordBeer #VSM diagram, what which measures expected vs actual like a steam-engine governor, reducing Variety to useful patterns and all. 🤔

The American Democratic Party, and the concept of "Democratic Socialism" within the US, comes largely from an authoritarian political tradition where the state offers services in exchange for the population allowing elites to continue parasitize the system. Then it is critical for Liberals to consume and destroy popular mutual aid, because real mutual aid undermines their carrot.
Democrats tend to imagine that anarchists want to destroy "all the good things" that governments do. The reality is that we want to build those good things ourselves so that we can reject the offer of those same good things, less well managed, with all the bad things attached.
Anarchists want to build pro-social systems (what if we didn't *need* snap, but just made sure everyone was fed?) while eliminating anti-social ones (do we really *need* to kidnap children, or could we just kind of stop doing that?).

RE Mike Lee’s execrable proposal for "Pirates of the Caribbean "
a few days ago
—it’s bad, but
sadly in line with the right-wing movement to expand private actors’ privilege to use violence.
Darrell Miller wrote about this in what we called
“the new outlawry”
https://www.

THE NEW OUTLAWRY - Columbia Law Review
Introduction From subtle shifts in the procedural mechanics of self-defense doctrine to substantive expansions of justified lethal force, many red-state legislatures across the country are delegating larger amounts of “violence work” to the private sphere. In the wake of antiracism protests in summer 2020, Republican-dominated legislatures proposed a slew of such measures. The measures provide […]

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiologist at Mount Sinai’s medical school who wasn’t involved with the study, called the work
“a good vaccine to have ready in case of any outbreaks with this virus”
However, he thinks this approach may fall short in tackling human influenza.
“H5 changes in multiple directions, so a central antigen makes sense,
while in the human flu or human SARS-CoV-2,
the central antigen moves with time.”

One shot to rule them all in the fight against H5 influenza
New bird flu vaccine design could help preparations against an evolving potential pandemic virus 

Acquiring solar panels at home can be an expensive hassle for people in the US.
But small, simple, plug-in solar panels for use on balconies are soon to become available for millions of Americans,
with advocates hoping the technology will quickly go mainstream.
Balcony solar panels are now widespread in countries such as Germany
– where more than 1m homes have them
– but have until now been stymied in the US by state regulations.
This is set to change, wit…