Madeleine Morris

DON'T PLAN YOUR REVOLUTION ON THE KING'S BLACKBOARD.

Reader, worrier, lefty, PhD. Lacanian, complicator. Interested in politics, pottery and sewing. Slightly strange. Uncomfortably intense.

Fiction (inactive): http://www.remittancegirl.com
Kimono Sewing: https://kimonomad.com.remittancegirl.org
Languages: English, Spanish, French, Vietnamese

Public Key

npub15t7s8f6jvn93phgptma8vep4kxcck8ud3zekq2ceq73tv7y7at8q4808hr

NIP-05 Address

remittancegirl_at_mstdn.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs29lgr5afxfjcsm5q4a7nkvs6mrvvtr7xc3vmq9vvs0g4k0z0w4nsprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntahh5ux

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub15t7s8f6jvn93phgptma8vep4kxcck8ud3zekq2ceq73tv7y7at8q4808hr

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Last Notes

2026-10-20 07:55:18 UTC

I have been giving some thought as to why Western societies (I cannot speak for others) who put so much store in individuality and self expression and identity are so willing to let an #LLM in the form of an #AI chat bot speak for them. Because essentially, when you ask AI to write something for you, that is what you're doing.
Why are we so eager to have our own voices usurped? 1/

2026-09-29 10:55:29 UTC

So, I have a warning for anyone who depends on #AI for advice or technical information for anything.
This story is going to take a bit, but I want to relate it completely because it shows a pattern of supplying fundamentally false information on a topic where, in technical circles, the information is solidly documented and the technique is entirely reproducible.
1/

2026-09-11 11:42:16 UTC

If I were a politician this is what I would say about right-wing groups demand to examine the genitals of athletes:
While it is gratifying to think their motivation for doing this is to hate on Trans folk, (Because at least then they see you - even if it's seeing you and hating you), I think the motivation is much baser.
I think this whole spurious hysteria over Trans athletes is simply window dressing for their perverse desire to examine children's genitals with the blessing of the state.

2026-07-12 07:04:43 UTC

Lynsey Graham just died.
It's amazing how long you can keep ticking without a moral compass or a spine.

2026-05-25 13:30:32 UTC

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I wouldn't for a moment suggest that Cuba's political system is unproblematic (although I have to wonder if it was ever any more problematic than any other system). But they had excellent education and outstanding health care services.

2026-05-25 13:28:39 UTC

RE: https://climatejustice.social/@artemis/116635435070572453
I often wonder if much of the US's aggression against other parts of the world doesn't come down to the fact that they face utter financial ruin if they get sick, and feel the rest of the world should have to suffer similarly.

2026-05-16 10:33:21 UTC

If you love interacting with AI chatbots because it feels easier than interacting with another human, I want to try to prompt you to think about why that is.
All discourse is two-way. With another human, we are constantly getting - no matter how much affinity we feel - a little bit of push back. That sense of pressure conditions our own evaluative thinking. It forms and nurtures an independent mind.
That even slight discomfort you feel when meeting another human mind forms you. 1/

2026-05-03 11:45:13 UTC

On balance, I think we really don't grasp how deeply mentally ill Trump is and has been for a long, long time.
Something to do with the way the media covered him has really managed to blind many Americans to the obscenity of the man currently running their country.
Sex offender, serial embezzler, tax evader, blackmailer, inciter of insurrection, extortionist, he fucking tore down half the fucking WHITE HOUSE.
But people still want to fantasise the existence of some spicy Russian kompromat.

2026-03-14 11:19:02 UTC

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Good morning, sweething!

2026-03-13 15:48:01 UTC

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I think many countries - especially colonised countries - learned a LOT from the fall of France, Belgium, Holland, etc. to the Nazis during WWII.
The first was to absolutely believe your country CAN be taken from you. The second was to determine that you'd rather die than relinquish it. The third is that the invading enemy has a lower tolerance for loss than you have.

2026-03-13 15:45:26 UTC

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I spent 20 years living in a country that defeated and ejected an American force of over 1/2 a million at one point. I studied the history of that war, and the war to oust the French before it.
With a tiny percentage of its resources, its military technology, etc. The reality is, people who love their country (not necessarily their governments), can and do bear unbelievable levels of misery to hang onto it.
It's not theoretical for them. It's their country.

2026-03-13 15:34:31 UTC

Firstly, I want to be incredibly clear on something: the regime in Iran is murderous, misogynistic, autocratic, anti-diversity, torturing, kidnapping bastards.
All that being said, I don't know when the US and the west in general is going to learn that you cannot defeat an enemy determined to defend its own territory via aerial bombardment. Period.
It has never happened. Never. Not once.
The US has even tried it with boots on the ground - in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. It doesn't work

2026-03-13 14:05:09 UTC

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Well, democracies only function when the people living under them take responsibility for them.
The fact that 1/2 the fucking country wasn't out on the street protesting after Pretti's murder is proof of this.
People COULD get out and protest en mass, but they chose not to.
In non-democracies, you can't. You get shot.

2026-03-13 11:41:57 UTC

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Meanwhile, in the US, where you literally DO HAVE A LEGAL RIGHT to document ICE acting badly, they shoot you for it these days.

2026-03-13 11:40:33 UTC

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And yet I can understand that people living expat lives come to believe the rules don't apply to them. I saw it often, Westerners who believed themselves to be above the laws of the country that was hosting them.
And with smart phones it is very easy to think that because you can take a picture of anything, you should and have a right to.
But you don't.

2026-03-13 11:37:00 UTC

RE: https://mstdn.social/@Remittancegirl/116221646008456537
I have mixed feelings about this. I spent 20 years living in Vietnam, not photographing the things I was prohibited from photographing.
Because I was visitor. It wasn't my country, and I was allowed to live there under the forbearance of the government. So, you know, I obeyed their laws.
Dubai isn't a democracy. Your rights are whatever the government says they are. If that offends you, go home.
#note18pk…vz7e

2026-03-13 11:33:00 UTC

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/12/british-tourist-among-20-charged-in-dubai-over-videos-of-iranian-missile-strikes

2026-02-21 05:59:24 UTC

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Politicians want you to believe it's all more serious and glamorous than that, because that allows them to appear irreplaceable and worthy of leeway.
But it's not.
We pay them. We pay them to lead us on a tour of how to be a sane, relatively fair society.
I do not understand why so many people forget this. WE PAY THEM. They work for us.

2026-02-21 05:56:24 UTC

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But it is equally our job to allow ourselves to be led. Not like obedient children, not as devoted followers of a demagogue, but as customers on a guided tour.
When they start leading us to places we don't and shouldn't want to go, it's time to fire them and get a new tour group leader.

2026-02-21 04:30:00 UTC

https://davidlivingstonesmith.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-fascism-part-1

2026-02-04 12:44:31 UTC

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I really do like using LibreOffice. And yes, I did make a donation!😉

2026-01-16 06:35:13 UTC

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I am not offended by repetition. 🤗

2025-12-21 09:56:01 UTC

Perhaps, having lived in a developing country, I have some insight into how one constructs one’s work and life in anticipation of infrastructure failure.
Looking at what climate change is doing to the weather, and what bat-shit crazy leaders are doing to their nations, here’s my advice: assume everything can fail.
Decide what failures might endanger your life, your work, your well-being, your comfort - in that order.
Address the first one first, then work down the list.

2025-10-10 22:31:41 UTC

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If you’re going to thank anyone, I think it should go to Qatar.
Disgustingly and sadly, it was not the loss of Palestinian lives that bothered Trump. It was when Israel bombed Qatar, and pissed them off. That’s what lit a fire under Trump’s ass to break with Netanyahu.

2025-10-10 22:28:30 UTC

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Ultimately, what your post suggests is that the likes of Tucker Carlson et all made Trump suddenly grow a conscience.
That, I’m afraid, is not the case. He couldn’t give a shit about lives. He wanted the Nobel Peace Prize (which he will now claim he got and also say he was cheated out of simultaneously), and the money from Qatar, who just signed a deal for an air base in the US.

2025-09-26 19:35:13 UTC

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If who deserves justice depends on whether you like them or not, then there isn’t justice. There is only tools of oppression.
@npub1qms…2jas

2025-09-24 15:05:40 UTC

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I’m just waiting for Stephen Miller to call us cockroaches and start offering government-subsidized machetes.

2025-09-24 15:03:53 UTC

The textbook example of projection:
"Miller directed much of his speech to the enemy camp. “And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us,” he said, “what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.”"
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/stephen-miller-hypocrisy-speech-015036974.html

2025-09-24 11:52:53 UTC

If I have to be completely honest, I’m not a fan of late night talk shows.
But I want people to really understand that this was a victory - and it was a fight fought (and won) by ordinary people who let a corporation know that their obedience to Trump’s administration was going to cost them.
Regular people did this. Not some asshole on a white horse. YOU did this.
What else could we do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tjh_ZO_tY

2025-09-22 07:16:44 UTC

I just have to say it:
If taking paracetamol (tylenol) while pregnant caused autism, the vast majority of us would be autistic.
I am so deeply tired of this shit. Bone tired of the blatant lack of logical thought predominating American culture right now.

2025-09-20 08:16:27 UTC

Please give this woman some love. Leaving an in-group can feel alienating and hellish. But kudos to her for making the change - and at the age of 50! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXQa7jW_QmY

2025-09-04 15:11:08 UTC

It’s a smart approach for people who embrace rational thought and the principle that being a complete hypocrite indicates a moral failure. But they don’t vote for Trump. GOP / MAGA reject logic as woke.
It doesn’t bother them at all that principles aren’t applied with equal weight or that their stances require a rational defence.
A huge proportion of the US is not offended or bothered by blatant hypocrisy. They feel entitled to their feelings - however absurd. https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/post/3lxzfwettms2y

2025-09-04 07:30:25 UTC

Today I’m embarking on another sewing project. This time a lined kimono for a young person in their teens. I wanted to focus on the idea of the litoral between girlhood and womanhood. So I went for playful stylised flowers, lined with a bold deep cherry red.
Because this is all cotton, it is strictly speaking a yukata, but they are seldom lined. So this is a bit of a hybrid.
Like the previous garment, I aim for something completely reversible. #Kimono #Yukata #Sewing
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/144/831/554/117/156/original/aea9e9f540d8a3bb.jpeg

2025-08-28 06:35:25 UTC

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-greenland-us-trump-6c9544314792cf1e287e21af06111c1e

2025-07-25 22:01:44 UTC

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it is so deeply shocking to watch friends lose their conscience

2025-07-25 09:51:24 UTC

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I honestly don’t think most of us worship them. Mostly we just don’t get better options and so we settle and call their lack of ethics ‘political’.

2025-07-25 08:18:27 UTC

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And for those who just shrug their shoulders and say all of humanity is selfish and rotten, bullshit.
There is an elderly lady who cooks on youtube from a tiny village in the south of Spain who is as frantic and disgusted as I am.
It is not ‘humanity’ that is rotten and selfish. It is the people we allow to reach positions of power over us.
Good god, we must change the way we pick our leaders. We seem to elect, with a few exceptions, the very worst of us.

2025-07-25 08:12:47 UTC

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I am a Jew. As a Jew it is my absolute obligation, despite any historical affinity I may have felt towards Israel (to be honest, I’ve never felt it, but I know many Jews have), to call this monstrous genocide what it is.
By virtue of our own history, it is absolutely incumbent upon us to condemn what is happening, regardless of who is doing the perpetrating.
If you are a Jew, it is precisely because you are one, that you, more than anyone else, should recognise this for what it is. Genocide

2025-07-25 07:54:44 UTC

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You know, I absolutely understand the argument that there is very little most countries (other than the US) can do to stop this. But there is something - they can call it what it is. They can stop trading with the perpetrators. They can stop pretending not to see the enormity of the atrocity.
Because this moral deficit, this failure to even be a clear-eyed witness… this is unforgivable. Historically unforgivable.

2025-07-25 07:47:35 UTC

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During WWII MANY governments knew what was going on inside Germany, but they were also engaged in a world war.
Here, there’s no excuse. Every single leader in the world KNOWS they are watching genocide (or at the very least ethnic cleansing, if they’re too squeamish for the other word).
How the fuck have they convinced themselves they can somehow tiptoe through this morally, ethically, historically.
It speaks volumes about how amoral they are, to how stupid and short sighted they are.

2025-07-25 07:36:33 UTC

I don’t think I’m remotely alone in finding the pathetic and spineless response of world leaders to the war in Gaza absolutely disgusting.
How fucking hard is it to simply DO THE RIGHT THING?
Why? Why the fuck can’t they do the right thing?
Yes, there will be consequences. Yes there will be pushback. Yes there will be spurious accusations of antisemitism. But so what?
I’m so disgusted with almost all of them.
https://journa.host/@fulelo/114912490328160077

2025-07-21 13:02:48 UTC

Okay, I realize that I should account for my statement that one of the principle ways in which AI is problematic is that it doesn’t lack.
I’m using ‘lack’ in the Lacanian sense, and I won’t go down that rabbit hole.
Another way to say this is to simply break down the term Large Language Models.
Language is not capable of saying everything about reality. There is always a gap. It can say some things, but never everything. 1/

2025-07-17 14:09:32 UTC

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I do wonder if that small change of simply politely greeting people you don’t know on a regular basis might make the world a better place. #malaga

2025-07-17 14:06:12 UTC

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The other day a taxi driver asked where I was from and I said I was Canadian but lived in #malaga He asked what I liked most about the city and I said it was hard to choose just one thing, but if I had to choose, it would be that everyone who arrives at my local bakery greets everyone else in line.
He said: once you’ve had a civil war, you learn that it’s harder to kill people you say hello to every day.

2025-07-17 11:48:41 UTC

I love living in a city where everyone who arrives at the bus stop greets everyone already there #malaga

2025-07-11 13:32:38 UTC

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actually, I live on a street predominantly populated by migrants from other places. And you know what?
They’re nice people. Hardworking, good neighbors, care for their families. They’re exactly what I want in a neighbor.
Exactly what you are not.

2025-06-23 22:25:30 UTC

https://apnews.com/live/iran-israel-war-updates-6-23-2025#00000197-9ed9-dc99-a79f-9fdde45d0000

2025-06-05 10:29:09 UTC

So, I actually have no sense what other people think about unisex toilets. Personally, I’m perfectly okay with them as long as they’re cleaned regularly.
So, what do you think?

2025-05-25 06:40:08 UTC

I haven’t ranted in a while, so here goes:
The Project 2025 Junta bears an uncanny resemblance to a fundamentalist Islamic tradition.
With the only difference being that most fundamentalist Islamic organisations are more liberal, in that they do not exclude by race.

2025-05-23 20:33:27 UTC

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I think most people have come to believe that wealth is a mark of virtue.
They often won’t admit they do, but they live there lives as if this was true.
And I’m absolutely sure it is quite the opposite.

2025-05-09 01:56:27 UTC

I’m not all that bothered about who gets to be Pope.
But maybe an American #Pope can remind American ‘Christians’ what actually being ‘Christian’ means.
Because they seem to have completely forgotten.

2025-05-08 09:31:33 UTC

Really excellent episode on the lessons learned from #democratic #backsliding elsewhere that the US needs to learn. Refreshingly concrete and actionable suggestions that one might not suspect
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-lawfare-podcast/id498897343?i=1000706781384

2025-05-06 10:03:34 UTC

It kind of blows my mind when younger people say that civil disobedience was not inherently as dangerous in the past.
It was always dangerous. From Soweto to the Edmund Petis Bridge, from Kent State to Tiananmen Square. Getting rid of power hungry assholes has always been dangerous.

2025-05-05 20:35:40 UTC

There was a time in my life when only the young had the passion for civil disobedience.
Now it seems it’s only us ladies of uncertain age.
"A constituent was forcibly removed from Mike Lawler’s town hall.
He has inadvertently created an instantly iconic image of the resistance.” via @keithedwards.bsky.social‬
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/457/129/966/733/378/original/74cdbd289346189d.jpg

2025-05-03 10:10:27 UTC

I get the sense I must state the obvious:
I’m not a particularly smart person. I grapple with how to understand and make sense of the world around me, and I try to find novel frames that will help me understand the complexity.
Some of those frames, and the way I develop them are useless. Some are deeply flawed. Some are little sparks of a different way of looking that broaden the ways to look at something.
None are proscribed ideology. I am not posting some ‘deep’ truth about anything.

2025-04-03 22:21:16 UTC

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Hello Mister Martin. @npub1quc…vfdk

2025-04-02 23:31:27 UTC

I feel I need to make something clear.
Lots of people in this world cannot find or cannot afford to see a therapist.
But talking to another human - almost any other human - is far more therapeutic than having a machine PRETEND to listen to you.
That is a pseudo-relationship predicated on the lie that AI is listening. It is not. It is recording, documenting, storing, pattern matching, calculating.
But it’s not hearing you. It’s not listening to you with a body that will one day die.

2025-03-30 13:45:06 UTC

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And can I just say I am so glad I follow you. Because, shit, that was just so fucking nuanced and insightful.

2025-03-30 12:48:10 UTC

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I am pretty sure they are scared out of their wits about sanctions. But apparently feeling bold enough to take a swipe.

2025-03-30 12:41:47 UTC

So, thanks to someone on my timeline, I found tv.garden, and was watching a little VTV1 - the main Vietnamese government run station. They’re broadcasting their nightly news program.
Now - understand that Vietnam has a rather choppy relationship with China, right?
They’re reporting on the S Korea/Japan/China summit, and saying: well, this would not really have come about if it hadn’t been for how deeply destabilising Trump has been in the world. That South Korea & Japan are looking Chinawards.

2025-03-29 17:20:39 UTC

In #Boston
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/246/864/946/955/569/original/48089c92e4131d14.png

2025-03-20 22:27:22 UTC

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It baffles me that, being as rich as he is, he wouldn’t have at least a couple of advisers who would game it out for him.
@npub1dgr…mmu2 @npub1ggk…6vhr @npub1z6y…qah3

2025-03-13 21:44:22 UTC

As a #canadian I sincerely promise that if you try to take my country, I will wait until you are sleeping and slit your fucking throats.
#Elbowsup

2025-03-13 10:02:52 UTC

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I am so sorry Marge. I can only hope that, at some point, people will come to their senses.

2025-03-13 09:10:05 UTC

The normal reaction reading these stories of people getting detained by ICE is… they must have done something wrong: wrong paperwork, looked shady, they were selling some product the government didn’t like…
"That wouldn’t happen to me."
Yes, it could. Easily. Encounter a single official who doesn’t like the look of you. There are almost no legal limits to the power of ICE - and those that exist are slow and expensive.
And that’s if you’re white.
https://masto.deluma.biz/@dogzilla/114154109221520078

2025-03-05 19:09:40 UTC

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Molly! This is awful!

2025-03-04 13:54:49 UTC

Now... THIS...
This is exactly a curtailment of free speech. When the government threatens to incarcerate you for saying something it doesn't like.
That is a perfect example of the limitation of free speech.
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/104/494/013/387/955/original/5fa187f5a2792d1f.png

2025-03-02 12:06:47 UTC

I'm not sure what to make of this: #Trump #Russia #Putin
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/092/747/121/321/570/original/c8f252caae9a46d0.jpg

2025-03-01 17:58:36 UTC

I know I'm being a little pedantic, but I hate all these headlines saying the Zelenskyy was 'humiliated'.
No.
Those fuckers humiliated themselves. He stood strong.

2025-02-27 09:03:34 UTC

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I'm going to be cautious and remind myself that text can be misread.
Because this reads like a privileged gloat. Did you mean it to read this way?
@npub12pw…zvxn @npub1r7f…zyx3

2025-02-26 07:36:40 UTC

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I have come to think that 'greater good' is something that a very significant percentage of the population essentially infers a negative for them personally.
It implies the a choice not in their interest because the rhetoric around individuality - politically and commercially - has brainwashed them into not seeing themselves as part of a group.

2025-02-18 15:05:41 UTC

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I responded: Michelle Obama can afford security. I'm worried someone is going to take all the white hate being directed at Michelle Obama and play it out on the bodies of far more vulnerable Black women. Because these people have so dehumanized them, that killing one is just as good as killing another.

2025-02-18 15:03:58 UTC

Usually, our Lacanian reading group online studiously steers clear of politics or current events. I'm probably the only one who, on occasion, just can't contain myself. But it's very rare.
During our online reading group today, a wonderful Black woman, a psychotherapist in Vermont broke the silence, and I was so glad because it made me feel less alone and less nuts.
She said: 'I'm worried someone is going to try to kill Michelle Obama."

2025-02-08 22:03:35 UTC

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I don't want to demonize these people, but I really do get the impression that they've always had a bit of a taste for cruelty, and then Trump gave them permission to really enjoy it.
And so they've taken that permission and decided to run with it.
And a people who get an appetite for cruelty - it never ends well for them. But they hurt a lot of people on the way down.
@npub1qud…q43s @npub1cj7…fksg

2025-02-08 17:40:46 UTC

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I think it was Cincinnati @npub1yyr…lyn2

2025-02-02 08:00:04 UTC

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I'm not valorizing China or the CCCP.
I'm saying that, looking at the choices of alliances available, the US no longer looks any better than China. But at least China has a coherent vision that can be accounted for when anticipating its moves.
Under Trump - the US is drastically unpredictable.

2025-02-02 07:54:34 UTC

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At the very least, China's trade policies are not driven by hallucinations.

2025-02-02 07:48:07 UTC

Between the loyalty-testing of the entire FBI, the Muskification of the Treasury, the purges, the reach for total surveillance, the 'immigrant' round-ups, etc...And the Republican Party's total subservience, Trump is creating an America that looks eerily like China, but with worse food.
It's driving a lot of previous allies of the US to look towards China as a superpower alternative with, at least, more intelligible goals.

2025-02-01 13:47:08 UTC

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I think it is pretty clear that the bulk of the Democratic party as it stands right now believes that some shade of business as usual is possible. This is delusional and tells me they are not cut out to be the people who are going to lead us out of this.
My guess is that the Dems will never again see the levels of fundraising they saw during the Harris campaign. People feel betrayed.

2025-01-23 20:48:19 UTC

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Honestly, this is just where I have to admit to not knowing the landscape at a certain level. I'm never going to truly understand the relationship the US has to firearms.

2025-01-20 22:50:31 UTC

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I second this. I am also on mstdn.social with stux.
And it's great. Wonderful admin.

2025-01-20 09:41:04 UTC

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If we can be bold and brave, this is absolutely possible. Now, can the EU shed its rather odd inferiority complex and go for it?

2025-01-03 12:37:48 UTC

So... I was thinking about fundamental changes anyone can have a go at making in 2025
And I was surprised at the responses I got to a very casual mention that, in Spain, if you meet someone new, it is socially unacceptable to ask them what they do for a living.
Hidden in there is something quite profound. And it starts with each of us. Without even being aware of it, we employ the value-measures of our society.
For #2025.... meet new people, face to face, and don't ask them what their job is

2024-12-07 08:58:11 UTC

It seems that some recourse to fairness or justice is a key part of the human psyche. This need is pretty much universal. The response to an absence of recourse, though, is very culturally determined. Some cultures internalize the destructive rage caused by this intolerable sense of injustice. Some cultures externalize it in individual or communal acts of revenge.
One of the most common reasons for #suicide in Asian cultures is an intolerable sense of being wronged. 1/

2024-11-05 08:51:21 UTC

I do have one request.
After this election is over, if you are still on X, please get off it.
As an account holder on that platform, you are materially supporting a man who took a SM platform and turned it into the world's largest propaganda machine for fascism.
I've been really understanding until now, but I think it is impossible to claim you can stay on it ethically.
It's like belonging to the Nazi party because it's fun. #GetOffX

2024-10-19 08:13:09 UTC

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And the irony that I encounter among people who disdain voting for the 'least worst option' is that they are captured by a kind of consumerist fantasy that democracies ever offer perfect options. They never do. Often all they offer is the possibility of voting for someone better next time.
With Trump, there will be no next time without incredible levels of violence.

2024-10-19 07:59:13 UTC

What scares me the most is how many Americans just cannot imagine their #democracy can collapse. They picture it in post-apocalyptic terms, like in movies. They tie their sense of identity to a single issue that becomes the only thing that matters to them, and cling to it even as the entire landscape shifts around them.
Those who've lived in non-democratic countries know: fascism, autocracy, totalitarianism happen quietly and by inches and by the time you realize, it's too late.

2024-07-31 10:30:56 UTC

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I see you!!

2024-07-28 15:48:05 UTC

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But to paint both parties as equally atrocious allows for a position of eschewing all personal responsibility to engage, while enjoying a perpetual righteous indignation. You get to look like you care while making sure nothing you do moves the needle. There is a bit of exploitation of the misery of others hidden in that position.

2024-07-28 15:40:19 UTC

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I do think you’re honing in on a certain very contemporary psychological outlook. I see that there is an unacknowleged enjoyment in a position of paralysis. I personally despise both parties positions on Gaza/Israel. I could choose to condemn them all equally. But how would that help change anything? The best you can do is vote for the most viable progressive candidate on offer to edge the less murderous party closer to something fairer.

2024-07-05 17:38:58 UTC

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I'm not sure that response leads to a productive discussion. And aren't there enough instances of people dismissing each other and leaving hurtful one liners?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if together we could formulate some common ground? And if not, that we could agree that we have differences that don't make us bad people.
@npub15ws…0e5k @npub179z…eaxx

2024-07-05 06:47:29 UTC

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I've boosted this because i think most people have no idea how speech impediments work. What exacerbates them, and what calms them down.
Plus, like anything else, like an injured limb, it can become more symptomatic with age.
The fact that people mistake verbal fluency for intellectual capacity makes me so damn angry.

2024-07-05 05:21:27 UTC

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Is it possible he's slowed down mentally some and they're hiding it? Yup. Sure. God knows they managed to hide Reagan's descent into dementia well, and the country didn't collapse.
But there's a significant difference between a stutter that gets more pronounced with age - hesitation, restatement - and the kind of word-mush that Trump falls into quite frequently. #Biden #Trump

2024-07-05 05:15:11 UTC

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Being able to read fluidly from a teleprompter is actually something people in cognitive decline find very hard to do. They tend to lose the thread of what they're reading.
Just look at Trump's problems with teleprompters. #Biden #Trump

2024-07-05 05:13:06 UTC

Having spent 5 years nursing a mother in cognitive decline, I do not see the tell-tale signs in Biden.
I see a man who is in his 80s. A man who was never verbally fluid and did not suddenly become more fluid now.
But I would really like to push against the accepted line that speed of comeback is any sort of asset in a leader.
We think the snappy, scathing comeback is a sign of intelligence and competence. It's not. It never has been. It's just been represented as such on TV. #Biden