(^^)

I was born here. I didn't choose any of this.

Currently occupying colonized Piscataway land.

No:
Piscataway Conoy Tribe: http://www.piscatawayconoytribe.com
Combattants de la Liberté: https://combattants-de-la-liberte.org

Public Key

npub148ykgehwj4c3gct2mfruwzzsukpahdf6f0gawglv353e8fhe6gcsv800j5

NIP-05 Address

arrrg_at_kolektiva.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2njtyvmhf2ug5v94d5378ppgwtq7mk5ayh5why0kg6gun5muayvgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsd6ju9z

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub148ykgehwj4c3gct2mfruwzzsukpahdf6f0gawglv353e8fhe6gcsv800j5

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Last Notes

2026-05-22 20:55:58 UTC

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/620/217/266/552/466/original/1c7ef9938a29df69.png

2026-05-20 18:42:17 UTC

That woman who got shot and killed on January 6th for trying to overthrow the government ... taxpayers had to pay her family millions of dollars.
How many millions did Tamir Rice's family get? He was playing at a playground.
How much did Michael Brown's family get?
Eric Garner? Sandra Bland? George Floyd?
All these people did was be black and they were killed by the government. They weren't attacking anyone.

2026-05-11 11:36:14 UTC

I think a lot of people assume that all USians opposed Hitler. That was far from reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden

2026-05-10 20:29:21 UTC

Smaller, less powerful nations are starting to realize that drone technology is leveling the battlefield. Sure a country like the US can spend $200 billion and blow up schools and hospitals, but for a couple of million, a smaller nation can truly respond in a ways a country like the US can't ignore. The US is hiding the damage Iran did to US bases and military infrastructure, but it was significant. And the US has depleted it's arsenal, which takes years to rebuild while drones can be cranked out at scale for a few thousand dollars a pop.

2026-05-07 21:27:58 UTC

Mother Earth has had it with humans.

2026-05-03 23:56:55 UTC

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the US economy is about to collapse. it costs us too much to do basic things. life was already unaffordable.

2026-04-29 14:46:32 UTC

Every day another story comes out highlighting how absolutely fucked we are in the US.
Dems will do nothing, as usual, while the GOP are ripping apart what tattered institutions of democracy once existed in the US.
I know it's frustrating for people outside the US to watch this violent government thrash around, but know that we're not in charge. This is not a democracy, regardless of what the press releases claim. The oligarchy is in charge and nothing short of a fullblown civil war is going to end this.
The fools hoping and praying voting works are wrong. Do not listen to them. Sure, vote if it makes you feel better, but that's not going to do shit.

2026-04-26 12:14:58 UTC

518,428 children are dead because of Elon Musk.
We look at the number in horror. Musk looks at it with glee.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/geek-tragedy-altman-musk-bezos-zuckerberg/

2026-04-23 14:10:24 UTC

The only way a government can truly function is if it abides by one rule.
Do no harm.
A government should never be allowed to harm any living thing on earth.
As long as this is not the case, governments will continue to ruin peoples lives and destroy the planet with their oil buddies.

2026-04-23 13:57:06 UTC

I can't believe anyone would think Trump's FBI director is a heavy drinker.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/454/364/710/049/662/original/5ef6ffeee3437132.png

2026-04-19 01:16:04 UTC

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Dems have a rapist/murderer problem.

2026-04-15 05:14:57 UTC

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/407/014/365/838/319/original/9f979e3348706093.png

2026-04-14 15:23:48 UTC

If you’re opposed to fascism you’re automatically seen as a potential threat and your speech will be scrutinized and banned. https://theintercept.com/2026/04/14/facebook-instagram-antifa-censor/

2026-04-12 04:47:21 UTC

Love all children on Earth and all wars, violence and starvation end today.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/389/917/672/033/385/original/d7e3053524ba16ef.png

2026-04-10 22:54:47 UTC

They ran her out of the country and now she's going to spill. I think she's in Brazil, so maybe safe.
https://www.newsweek.com/who-is-amanda-ungaro-what-we-know-as-melania-trump-speaks-out-on-epstein-11813227

2026-04-10 22:08:06 UTC

oh no ... not the data centers ....
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/382/687/112/675/500/original/4bafe10978402d69.png

2026-04-09 01:43:18 UTC

Capitalists in the US convinced workers that they're not workers, but capitalists instead.
If you don't have any capital, you ain't a capitalist.

2026-03-28 23:42:32 UTC

I think that if I were someone like Taylor Swift with all that money and that huge audience, I would do something with it. I take stands against genocide and war.
People like that though don't get be Taylor Swift.
The highest someone with radical ideas can rise is Boots Riley. How that man - a communist - has achieved the level of success he has is impressive.
I'm hear to laugh, love, fuck and drink liquor and help the damn revolution come quicker.

2026-03-28 23:38:37 UTC

Whenever I hear a new love song I always listen to see if they pulled it off or not. It's really hard to do a love song that hasn't been done a million times and is loaded up with cliches. To make some different and clever, that takes talent, most can't do it.

2026-03-26 21:44:15 UTC

A british journalist on al jazeera doing a story in Maryland called it Mary Land. I love it.

2026-03-26 19:56:57 UTC

We know who owned slaves in the US. Anyone who is part of those families who owned slaves and who inherited any wealth needs to forfeit their wealth so it can be used to pay reparations.
We just take it all. It's all ill-gotten gains.
But the oligarchy shouldn't worry, they've got those good genes and they'll make all that wealth back in no time.

2026-03-23 00:52:08 UTC

Trump can say he’s glad mueller is dead … a war veteran. But Charlie Kirk … now there’s a real hero.
The collective response to the US government being taken over by gross Nazis is probably the most pathetic shit. Pedophiles.

2026-03-20 22:56:19 UTC

The US government is negotiating whether or not to stop starving people to death and what they're going to get out of letting people have food.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/20/cuba-categorically-rejects-prospect-of-removing-diaz-canel-in-us-talks

2026-03-11 23:32:48 UTC

It's bizarre to watch USians on TV talking about how radical Iranian leadership is when the US government has killed hundreds of children.
I'm not saying Iranian leadership is good, but are people this deluded that they can't see how absurd they look?

2026-03-10 19:42:50 UTC

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you watch. once they get going ... boy oh boy the press releases are going to be flying around with all sorts of stern words ... really stern.

2026-03-10 19:39:19 UTC

Uh oh, dems are angry.
--
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) appeared stunned when speaking to reporters after leaving a closed-door congressional briefing on the United States' involvement in the Iran war on Tuesday.
"I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry frankly as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate," he said. "I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war. My questions have been unanswered."
A ground deployment in Iran appears to be a strong possibility, Blumenthal continued.
"I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran," he said. "We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish and of the potential objectives here.
Blumenthal said Russia and China appear to be assisting Iran. He chastised President Donald Trump's administration for being opaque about the circumstances around the war.
"The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform and the potential for further escalation and widening of this war — a war of choice made by this president, not chosen by the American people, with potentially huge consequences to American lives," he concluded.

2026-03-09 18:28:16 UTC

Iranian leadership now has nothing to lose. Trump has already said, that he plans to kill every Iranian leader and perceived enemy of the US, which is all Iranians in Trump and Netanyahu's view. Just like how all Palestinians are terrorists, even babies.
--
A top Iranian official suggested the regime will continue to attack Gulf countries in lieu of a diplomatic resolution to the conflict for the foreseeable future.
Kamal Kharazi, foreign policy adviser to the office of the Supreme Leader, signaled defiance in the face of intense air strikes by the U.S. and Israel in an interview broadcast Monday.
His commentary came as Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been lined as his successor.
“I don’t see any room for diplomacy anymore,” Kharazi told CNN when asked about the prospect of a ceasefire. “Because Donald Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations — that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us.”
He went on to suggest countries in the Middle East and beyond feeling the pain from spiraling oil prices could be a factor in ending the war.
“There’s no room unless the economic pressure would be built up to the extent that other countries would intervene to guarantee [the] termination of aggression of Americans and Israelis against Iran,” he said.
Meanwhile, as oil prices topped $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022, a spokesperson for Iran’s military joint command reportedly hinted that the cost could double if the attacks on energy infrastructure continued.
“If you can tolerate oil prices above $200 per barrel, continue this game,” a spokesperson of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters was quoted as saying by Iran's state broadcaster.

2026-03-06 00:56:00 UTC

Dems are hoping that Trump's new DHS secretary will "change the way ICE operates."
These are not serious people.

2026-03-02 13:49:47 UTC

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Trump is being played by the Iran hawks who have wanted to topple the Iranian government for 50 years. They tell Trump how smart and handsome he is ... slide some crypto his way ... let bombs pummel Iran.
At the end of day, I doubt Trump could find Iran on a map.

2026-02-23 17:23:05 UTC

Does anyone really believe that Bill Clinton only sexually assaulted one intern once in his life?
No one believes that.

2026-02-20 17:18:50 UTC

People need to realize how radical Trump's tariff policies are to the oligarchy who have been banging the war drum of globalization and "free" "markets" for decades and decades.
So Roberts slapping Trump over the tariffs was expected. It would have been shocking if the court had ruled against the oligarchy.
There are limits to what Trump can do ... he can kill moms and dads and sons and kidnap presidents and launch illegal wars ... but disrupting trade at this level can not stand.

2026-02-14 12:15:00 UTC

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Here's that website about Palestinian Children I made. It's not even 1 tenth of 1 percent of children profiled. It's very hard to find information about these children. It's very sad work too.
https://palestinianchildren.org

2026-02-14 03:07:56 UTC

Don't worry. You just have to vote really, really hard for Democrats. That will do it.
--
President Donald Trump promised Friday that he will make it harder to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.
"The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections," Trump falsely posted on his Truth Social page. "This was not what our Founders desired."
Trump claims to have "searched the depths" of legal arguments on the subject.
"There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!" Trump threatened.
A new GOP proposal would impose strict voter ID requirements. Trump, who has previously cast his vote through mail-in voting, said he wants to severely limit who can vote by mail.
"Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel," Trump said. "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

2026-02-10 19:15:33 UTC

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and for what's it's worth, it's not worth it to host your own smtp server - usually. it's a major pain in the ass.

2026-02-10 19:14:56 UTC

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you probably just need a couple of dns records to prove you are who you say you are (smtp anyways).

2026-02-09 21:27:45 UTC

9 times out of 10, when i type "python" i type "pythong."
what does that mean?

2026-02-09 00:34:42 UTC

Who is this person?
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/037/862/787/416/274/original/edf05948c2701477.png

2026-02-05 19:19:41 UTC

It's not really the 5th day of February. They made it up. There is no "February" so there can't be a 5th of "February." The year isn't 2026. Years don't exist. They imagined a year in a drunken stooper, and we believe them.
They want us on the clock and counting the days. What if we didn't?

2026-01-31 17:03:12 UTC

Funding ICE is some weird version of "winning"? They're talking about "reforms." These dems are not serious people.
HuffPost headline:
Senate Passes Government Funding As Talks Over ICE Continue
Democrats agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks while talks continue on reforming ICE amid protests in Minneapolis.

2026-01-30 06:20:16 UTC

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It will never cease to amaze me that people can get a shot that will prevent horrific diseases but they don't want to because a few ding dongs who know nothing about anything think there might be something weird going on with the shots.
It used to be, hey science can eradicate another disease that's awesome, when do i get my shot?
now it's like ... i don't know maybe the disease is better than getting the shot?

2025-11-19 01:17:35 UTC

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That's interesting. That's what the linters are for. I haven't worked with rust much, but I've been impressed with the compiler, it really calls you on your bullshit.

2025-11-19 01:09:31 UTC

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The compiler didn't pick it up?

2025-11-15 01:57:00 UTC

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They really don't care.
So now that that's settled, what should we do besides hoping that these monsters are capable of human emotions?

2025-11-08 13:21:29 UTC

Now Trump is going give OpenAI the people's money? It's a fucking slush fund of corruption and outright thievery.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-seeks-us-government-backing-145511835.html

2025-11-07 12:10:39 UTC

You do not to talk to cops or fake immigration cops. You don’t need to prove shit to them. If they ask to prove your citizenship, say … nothing. Just stare at them with complete and total disinterest … yawn and walk away.

2025-11-07 00:09:47 UTC

If you actually listen to many people on the so-called radical left ... they talk about how "all people" should be free to live dignified lives.
You don't hear that from the fashes. They don't even care if they're free, as long as other people are being oppressed more than themselves.

2025-11-03 23:10:08 UTC

One of the myriad reasons corporations hate unions is that if engineers were in a union they could stipulate shit like, "We're not contributing to software that is used to kill people." "We're not going to implement this stupid AI shit that is only going to waste time and energy."

2025-10-24 16:39:02 UTC

Capitalists act like the inventions we have as humans are because of their economic system. The opposite is more accurate.
The number of brilliant inventions that were never seen by anyone but the inventor is unknowable, but it must be vast.
The number of inventions that never happened because the inventors spent their time automating business processes instead of doing shit that actually would matter to humanity.
The brilliant mathematicians are writing algorithms to do high-speed stock trading and derivative voodoo.
What we could do if capitalists left us a lone ... that would be amazing.

2025-10-24 11:45:11 UTC

Whenever I complain about my life, Palestinians remind me about how good I have it. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/24/palestinian-child-killed-in-israeli-raid-on-west-bank-as-settlers-rampage

2025-10-23 13:08:30 UTC

So Trump is planning to label antifa a foreign terrorist organization.
If that happens, and there's no reason to think it isn't going to happen, what do we do?
Obviously everyone on kolektiva.social is going on the list.

2025-10-23 00:29:26 UTC

Oh Elon. You're such a fucking asshole we love to watch you angry.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/22/elon-musk-discovers-what-hierarchy-actually-means/

2025-10-21 13:44:35 UTC

Portland Police are not doing their jobs and the people of Portland need to demand they protect the people of Portland from these goon squads.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/10/blind-protester-dragged-detained-by-feds-says-agents-picked-the-weakest-person-they-could-find.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

2025-10-18 16:55:50 UTC

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/18/what-we-know-about-the-torture-abuse-of-palestinian-prisoners-by-israel

2025-10-10 21:19:59 UTC

The US military is deployed in the US all because of some fake ass bullshit the fashes made up.
This is the new normal. Is there ever a time when we don't accept what the fashes want to do?

2025-10-09 18:55:47 UTC

Palestinian people deserve to live dignified lives on the lands that they've lived on for centuries. That's the solution.
At some point humanity says no to colonization, right? Or it's just like this forever? If someone shows up with bigger weapons, they can kill you and take your land?
I don't think that is how it's going to be, and now is the perfect time to start the new way - anti-colonialism.
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/

2025-10-09 01:58:27 UTC

This is Trump murdering random people.
Fetterman is fine with it.
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/

2025-10-07 13:02:53 UTC

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I think they're monsters too. This nation is full of fucked up people.

2025-10-07 12:52:05 UTC

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Because they want our lives to be miserable. They want people to suffer while they watch their children die from brain cancer. They're monsters.

2025-10-02 12:51:06 UTC

The Qataris give Trump a plane that they couldn't sell because no one else wanted it. Now Trump is giving them our military as protection ... against Israel?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-qatar-defense-luxury-jet_n_68dda9fae4b0c450ba64f847

2025-10-02 00:03:19 UTC

Israel didn't "arrest" the people on the freedom flotilla. Israel has no authority to arrest these people. Israel kidnapped these people. That's illegal.

2025-09-26 22:00:13 UTC

The greatest trick the capitalist played was convincing workers that they're capitalists.

2025-09-18 10:22:14 UTC

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/224/800/369/766/742/original/e5e1cc01d3c52c5e.png

2025-09-18 02:44:18 UTC

Let's not get twisted up ... Hitler didn't win. Pol Pot didn't win. Stalin didn't win. The Italian one that I look like didn't win either.
These ones won't win either. The question is ... how many people do we allow them to kill before we stop them.

2025-09-17 00:40:32 UTC

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this is why they keep us busy toiling ... if we don't ... we'll do stuff like this. they don't like it.

2025-09-16 12:58:15 UTC

https://latenfour.com/2025/09/15/grieving-families-bonded-to-pass-a-bill-which-may-require-drastic-changes-to-police-killing-investigations/

2025-09-11 12:57:31 UTC

Don't ask questions ... it's inappropriate.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/randy-fine-ag-gancarski-charlie-kirk-suspended-campus-carry_n_68c294cae4b0bf06eab6703c?origin=home-latest-news-unit

2025-09-11 01:13:59 UTC

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yeah, you better not ... or else ...
There's an old saying that I'm fond of ... it goes something like.
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

2025-09-05 23:45:10 UTC

I thought I heard something earlier today. I'm about 10 miles from DC and I heard this sound that sounded like a demon cackling, but intensely evil.
It must have been Melania laughing when she heard this.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/154/341/755/467/358/original/82449eb721f6901d.png

2025-09-05 13:26:03 UTC

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shameful. criminal. disgusting.

2025-09-03 13:01:05 UTC

People in the US have lost faith in ourselves to be able to govern ourselves. Too many think that we need a strong man leader, or else something will happen ... I don't know what they're thinking.

2025-09-01 22:12:23 UTC

The greatest innovation the capitalists came up with was stealing peoples wages and calling it profits, and convincing workers it's how it's supposed to be.

2025-08-31 21:01:23 UTC

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it's like how white people in the US view black people and indigenous people. it's harder to oppress, enslave and murder people if you think they're like you. it's easier to pretend that they're animals.

2025-08-31 12:46:15 UTC

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oh i don't know about that ... Biden gets a bunch of credit for this genocide.

2025-08-29 20:48:09 UTC

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/114/013/227/915/141/original/269b4f716e9a9ede.png

2025-08-29 01:52:49 UTC

I wonder if any of the fascists occupying dc are worried about when they lose and what happens to them then.
Do they know that "just following orders" still puts them on the wall? Even if they're crying and saying that they're sorry ... they still go on the wall.
We can not be trifling with these fascist fucks.

2025-08-29 01:44:55 UTC

My report from occupied DC - 28 August 2025.
https://antifadocket.com/newsletter/dc-cops-soldiers-august-28-2025
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/109/535/021/270/126/original/e01028b7eec21d75.jpg

2025-08-27 15:47:21 UTC

Israeli forces kill 37 Palestinians since dawn on Wednesday, including eight waiting for aid.

2025-08-26 22:32:06 UTC

If new social security numbers need to be reissued, musk should owe $1 trillion. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doge-minions-upload-social-security-whistleblower_n_68adebfee4b07bd4ac5e8c8c

2025-08-24 23:01:51 UTC

You know how people think Trump is taking over US cities because of the Epstein files, but all of this shit was documented in Project 2025 and has been spoken about openly by the oligarchs, including Trump during the campaign.
By linking this takeover of US cities to Epstein, it makes it seem less serious and that Trump will eventually get bored of taking over US cities when the media about Epstein dies down. That's not what's happening. That's not what's going to happen.

2025-08-24 19:29:34 UTC

People who still say things like, "Trump can't deploy the National Guard in Chicago ... that's illegal" are that guy in Weekend At Bernies who was shouting, "What you're doing is illegal!"
If a criminal act happens and no one is prosecuted for the criminal act was there really a crime? Without enforcement, laws obviously are meaningless.

2025-08-21 14:59:55 UTC

I can't stop thinking about the suffering in Gaza. I think about the children starving and the parents watching their children starve while they themselves starve ... and bombs.

2025-08-17 22:19:37 UTC

The day Heather Heyer was murdered by a nazi, Trump referred to the nazis as "very fine people." At the time, there was some, "Did he say that?" But it didn't last, people just chalked it up to Trump saying nonsense. But it wasn't nonsense. Trump was sending a message to white nationalists that day. He sent another clear message during one of the debates when he told a white nationalist group to "stand by."
Trump pardoned the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Trump has taken over a US city and deployed Marines in California.
As long as no one steps up, Trump is going to keep steamrolling everyone and everything. Trump, Putin, Hitler, whoever, they were not and will not be stopped by happy thoughts and hope.

2025-08-14 20:45:14 UTC

There you go. https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/08/14/cops-brutal-takedown-of-black-man-filming-d-c-police-sparks-outrage/

2025-08-11 14:06:28 UTC

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I will never forgive those who made this happen - never.

2025-08-11 14:03:24 UTC

if you don't weep watching this video i feel sad for you.
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/8/7/video-boy-who-looks-after-cats-in-gaza-mourns-for-kitten-he-could-not-save#flips-6376652141112:0

2025-08-10 13:51:38 UTC

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ai in the hands of these lunatics is going to end humanity.

2025-08-09 13:50:42 UTC

Musicians and popular artists tend to portray themselves as liberals ... to the left.
That's obvious bullshit.
These people can draw crowds of 100,000 people. They can command millions with an online post.
But as they watch as 100,000 people are rounded up off the streets by masked federal agents it's cricketts. People have been disappeared, killed, sexually assaulted, tortured. We can see that it's only getting worse.
What does Taylor Swift? What does any of these huge currently popular singers and musicians do?
Aside from Macklemore and Tom Morello, they're all pretty quiet.
What they could do instead is create a huge coast-to-coast tour with music, political speeches and whatever. Within a month, millions of people will have taken part and connected. They would share their experience with others and a wildfire would be ignited.
But they don't do that because most of these people are full of shit. They're playing role and presenting themselves as whatever sells the most merch. Swift is the small town girl, who dates a football player and cheers for him at games from her luxury seats.

2025-08-09 13:11:12 UTC

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I do live in the US, and I don't really hide that fact. Next time you're in the DMV, hit me up.

2025-08-08 20:49:15 UTC

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that might be too kind to netanyahu. another reason for starving palestinians to death is that netanyahu wants the palestinians to be dead - all of them. whoever remains will be slaves to israelis.

2025-08-08 12:55:33 UTC

Do you live in the US or outside the US?

2025-08-07 20:36:01 UTC

This company contracts with ICE to kidnap people - women and children. Look at their nazi logo.
mvminc.com
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/989/395/616/342/906/original/c70786998ab6eb91.png

2025-08-07 13:11:47 UTC

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If the press in the US covered the genocide, those numbers would shift dramatically.

2025-08-02 14:47:33 UTC

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it’s crazy that 1 in 3 USians think the genocide and starvation of Palestinians is a good thing. We’re so shitty.

2025-07-27 16:46:35 UTC

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This is from the book Invisible Doctrine: The secret history of neoliberalism.

2025-07-27 16:45:40 UTC

While capitalism's origins are disputed, we believe there is a case for tracing them to the island of Madeira1, 320 miles off the west coast of north Africa. Madeira was first colonized by the Portuguese in the 1420s. It was a rare example of a genuinely uninhabited island. The Portuguese colonists treated it a terra nullius: a "blank slate." They soon began clearing it of the resource after which it was name: madeira is Portuguese for wood.
At first, forests on the island were felled to meet the need for timber - which had been all but exhausted in Portugal and was in high demand for shipbuilding - and to clear land for raising cattle and pigs. In other words, the original colonists simply extended the economy which they were familiar. But after a few decades, they discovered a more lucrative use of Madeira's land and trees: producing sugar.
Until that point, economies had remained, at least in part, embedded in religious, ethical, and societal structures. Land, labor, and money tended to possess social meanings that extended beyond the value that could be extracted from them. In medieval Europe, for instance, feudal economies - while highly oppressive - were strongly connect to both the Church and a codified societal system of mutual obligation between large landowners and their serfs and vassals.
On Madeira, as the geographer Jason Moore has shown2, a form of economic organization developed that was in some respects different from anything that had gone before. On this newly discovered island, the three crucial component of the economy - land, labor, and money - were detached from any wider cultural context and turned into commodities3: products whose meaning could be reduced to numbers in a ledger.
Onto the blank slate of Madeira's land, the colonists imported labor in the form of slaves, first from the Canary Islands 300 miles to the south and then from Africa. To finance their endeavors, colonists imported money from Genoa and Flanders. Each of these components - land, labor, and money - had been stripped of their societal meanings before. But arguably not all in the same place, at the same time.
By the 1470s, this tiny island became the world's biggest source of sugar. The fully commoditized system that the Portuguese created was astonishingly productive. Using slave labor, freed from all social constraints, the colonists were able to produce sugar more efficiently than anyone had done before. But something else was new - the amazing speed at which that productivity peaked and then collapsed.
Sugar production on the island peaked in 1506, just a few decades after it began. Then fell precipitously, by 80 percent within twenty years - a remarkable rate of collapse. Why? Because Madeira ran out of madeira. Stoking the boilers needed to refine and process a kilogram of sugar required 60 kilograms of wood. The enslaved laborers had to travel farther and farther afield to find this wood, extracting it from ever steeper and more remote parts of the island. In other words, more labor was needed to produce the same amount of sugar. In economic terms, the productivity of labor collapsed, tumbling fourfold in twenty years. In tandem, the forest clearance drove several endemic Madeiran animal species to extinction. The island-wide disturbance of forest ecosystems was sufficiently serious that the first of several major extinctions of endemic mollusks occurred in the early sixteenth century, the result of "rapid and large-scale change in the habitat, from woodland to grassland."4
So what did the Portuguese sugar planters do? They did what capitalists everywhere would go on to do. They left. They took their operation to another recently discovered island farther south, São Tomé, 190 miles off the west coast of central Africa. There the pattern had been established on Madeira was repeated: Boom, Bust, Quit.
When sugar production on São Tomé went bust, the Portuguese moved on again - this time to the coastal lands of Brazil, where their much bigger operations followed the same script: Boom, Bust, Quit. Then other imperial powers moved to the Caribbean, with the same results, burning through one frontier after another. Since then, the pattern had been followed across countless commodities and commercial schemes - the sparks that ignited Madeira's forests scattered across the world. They continue setting fire to ecosystems and social systems to this day, consuming all that lies in their path. This seizure, exhaustion, and abandonment of new geographical frontiers is central to the model we call capitalism.
"Boom, Bust, Quit" is what capitalism does. The ecological crises it causes, the societal crises it causes, the productivity crises it causes are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system.
Before long, Portugal was supplanted by other nations, and England quickly became the dominant colonial power. Over the course of the next several centuries, European colonial powers systematically looted one region after another. They stole labor, land, resources, and money, which they then used to stoke their own industrial revolutions. The United Kingdom's great and unequal wealth was built on colonial theft in Ireland, the Americas, Africa, India, Australia, and elsewhere. One estimate suggests that, across two hundred years, Britain extracted from India alone an amount of wealth equivalent to $45 trillion in today's money.5
To handle the greatly increased scope and scale of transaction, the colonial nations established new financial system that would eventually come to dominate their economies - instruments of extraction whose use has intensified. It continues today with ever-increasing sophistication, assisted by offshore banking networks.6 Powerful people and corporations seize wealth from around the world and hide it from the governments that might otherwise have taxed it, and from the people they have robbed. As offshore tax havens and secrecy regimes shift capital even further out of sight, this disappearing frontier in the invention of evermore creative financial schemes.
Using international debt and the harsh conditions attached to it (a system known as "structural adjustment"),7 tax havens and secrecy regimes, transfer pricing (moving wealth between subsidiaries),8 and other clever instruments, rich nations have continued to loot the poor, often with the help of corrupt officials and the proxy governments they install, support, and arm. Commodity traders working with kleptocrats and oligarchs fleece poorer nations - seizing their natural resources, effectively without payment. The US research group Global Financial Integrity estimated that $1.1 trillion a year flows illegally out of poorer nations,9 stolen through tax evasion and the transfer of money within corporations.
If this rapacious cycle were interrupted, the system we call capitalism would fall apart. Capitalism depends upon constant growth, and must forever find new frontiers to colonize and exploit. So now its attention turns to the deep ocean floor, in search of mineral clusters to mine, and fish populations yet to be driven to exhaustion. It looks to outer space, seeking to extract minerals from planets and asteroids, or to stake out new colonies:10 escape hatches for the super-wealthy to be exploited once Earth is no longer habitable.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot exist without peripheries and externalities (the "unintended," and often devastating, consequences of economic activity). There must always be an extraction zone, from which materials are taken without full payment; and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases, so capitalism transforms every corner of the planet-from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor. The Earth itself becomes a sacrifice zone. And its people? We are transformed into both the consumers and the consumed.
All exploitative systems require justifying fairy tales, and the true nature of capitalism has been disguised from the beginning by such myths and fables. The Portuguese colonists of Madeira claimed that there had been a natural apocalypse,11 a wildfire that raged for seven years, consuming all the wood on the island. There was an apocalypse all right, but there was nothing natural about it. The island's forest was incinerated by a different blaze - the first of capitalism.
The fairy tal of capitalism grew win in 1689, when John Locke published his Second Treatise of Civil Government.12 Locke claimed that "in the beginning all the world was America." By this, he meant a terra nullius: like Madeira, a no-man's-land in which wealth was just waiting to be taken. But, unlike Madeira, the Americas were heavily inhabited - by tens of millions of indigenous people. To create his terra nullius they would have to be erased - either eradicated or enslaved.13

2025-07-27 01:24:17 UTC

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i went without coffee for like six months. i was tired all the time and i couldn't get anything done.

2025-07-25 16:19:25 UTC

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the UN is more like a lightening rod for any efforts to stop Israel and send that energy into the ground where it can't do anything.

2025-07-25 13:02:37 UTC

Gaza will run out of the specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children by mid-August, UNICEF and humanitarian agencies say.

2025-07-24 18:42:09 UTC

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i think the amount of suffering we are expected to deal with to keep the oligarchy in the lush life is just getting started.

2025-07-24 12:52:16 UTC

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it will play out like it did the last time. they'll get bailed out, we'll pick up the tab and try to rebuild our shattered lives.
When it's all over more wealth will be consolidated into the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
As long as we continue to let these monsters rule over us, we're going to continue to get eaten by the monsters.