Marc "An Unvalued Goose" Godin

#Writing & #SocialJustice. Settler on stolen land, Unama'ki/Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. #Antifascist b/c I'm #queer. #Anarchist, the gardening & book-reading kind. novelist the aspiring kind he/him

profile picture alt text: a bearded white man with long hair and glasses glances at something slightly out of frame
my writing/back-up account: quietmarc@todon.eu
Please note:: I block folks who DM me asking for money. I have none.

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quietmarc_at_kolektiva.social@momostr.pink

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relay.damus.io

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Last Notes

2026-04-19 14:46:57 UTC

"The billionaires simply have so much money because that reflects the value they've given to society" is the worst take a person could possibly have and still use sentences.

2026-04-19 10:21:14 UTC

So, fuck 300 years of "naturalists" who believed nature is always red in tooth and claw or whatever, because I just saw a crow tell a blue jay to get a peanut for him and the jay did just that.
I'm out tossing peanuts to the jays, and there are some new-ish crows around who aren't quite comfortable with me, though one did stay on the roof a second or two longer than usual. But one crow clearly isn't ready for that.
The jays are a lot more brave, and I've sometimes worried they're hogging all the peanuts and the crows might stop coming. But here is the sequence of events:
1) I hear a crow cawing from the roof overhead of me, very close.
2) I toss a couple of peanuts and land them at the edge of the roof without them rolling off.
3) Jay comes, as usual, grabs the peanut but flies to the fence across the parking lot and leaves the peanut there where the crow sweeps down from on high to get hir nut.
100% this was intentional cooperation. The jay didn't drop the peanut by accident: after watching them for 6 months I know how they handle things with their beaks and errors do happen but rarely, and unless placed just right on the top of the fence, a peanut would bounce or roll off if dropped.
Anyway, that was kinda neat to see. Well done, all involved.

2026-04-15 11:05:20 UTC

The correct response to a reduction in oil supply during a climate crisis would be to encourage people to use less oil and build out solar/wind/renewable energy infrastructure, not make it easier for people to keep consuming the oil at the cost of life-saving social programs. IMO.

2026-04-14 23:25:38 UTC

All my homies can say antifa and not get banned.

2026-04-12 15:30:01 UTC

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Quite lovely, I was unfamiliar, thank you. <3

2026-04-12 09:25:48 UTC

One of my favourite things about being human is you can see a person who appears completely unremarkable, but then you get to know them and they are an entire universe unto themselves.
I think this is neat to know.

2026-04-12 09:10:32 UTC

I wanna briefly touch on something from yesterday, just about the way we venerate "The Enlightenment" as an entirely good thing that "happened" and we should all be grateful for it.
I wanna first off say I'm not a historian or scientist, just a guy who reads and has opinions. History especially has lots of wiggle room for interpretation, so grain of salt.
The first thing you gotta understand is the Enlightenment couldn't have happened without the age of exploration. The drive to open up new lands for exploitation was a major motivating factor in technological development: both clocks and telescopes/astronomy had huge applications to navigation and many governments funded advancement in fields that brought in prestige and advantage over competitors. If I recall correctly there were cash prizes for inventors to make an accurate clock that worked on ships, that made a telescope more powerful than the telescopes in Italy or whatever.
The other thing that happened in the age of exploration was Europe was exposed to the World: food crops from the Americas and the far east *transformed* agriculture in Europe, and the non-hierarchical structures of many Indigenous governances influenced thought in Europe - it's impossible to overstate how much North and South American social organization influenced the structures we have today.
And, I want to just briefly mention that every culture has a "scientific method" - all humans ask questions, design experiments, observe results, and adjust their knowledge base accordingly to ask new questions. The foods of the Americas weren't "stumbled on": we know they are the result of generations of intentional selective breeding. Democracy as practiced by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (upon which some of the US's democracy is built) was developed *intentionally*.
The cultural exchanges we often think of as Europe's age of exploration were NEVER one-sided, the knowledge and expertise traveled both ways.
And, finally, let's talk about the wealth transfer. How Europe's "Age of Enlightenment" was built on the gold, silver, animal pelts, natural and cultural resources stolen from a whole world. While Europe's nations were getting rich, the rest of the world was battling invaders who lied and stole. It wasn't poor people doing science in the Enlightenment, it was the class of people who directly benefited from the exploitation of people and lands far away.
So, it's a fraught thing to glorify the Enlightenment without contextualizing it.
That's all. Make sure you take your grain of salt.

2026-04-11 14:23:42 UTC

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Oh, last thing, specifically genocide and colonialism ARE products of the enlightenment. The machinery of concentration camps, citizenship measures, borders, and so on are all innovations that can only arise the way they have in a rational society. They're enlightenment expressions of how to colonize people. Harsha Walia's "Border & Rule" is dense but goes into this, and also Andrea Pitzer talks about this kind of thing to.

2026-04-11 14:16:41 UTC

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For 500 years Indigenous people have been told they don't use the land correctly. Religious people tell them they worship the wrong god, and secular people tell them they don't have agriculture or engineering.

2026-04-11 14:15:22 UTC

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I wanna echo Skuppr here, you have some reading to catch up on. The "Enlightenment" was many things and one of those things was an engine for enclosure of the commons at home and extraction and colonialism abroad.
A large justification for residential schools, dispossession of land, the "enfranchisement" process, and even today's paternalism justifying oil pipelines through unceded Indigenous land requires the logic of the enlightenment.

2026-04-07 10:36:01 UTC

The three freedoms, as I understand them from "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wengrow, are:
1) Freedom to refuse
2) freedom to leave
3) freedom to do things differently.
We're doing that here on mastodon.

2026-04-06 16:26:08 UTC

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I replied to it if you check my "posts and replies", I said something like "cultural enforcer" is silly" it's scottjensen at something something.

2026-04-06 16:20:59 UTC

Apologizing for his poorly worded post while making more poorly worded posts.
Am I a "cultural enforcer" now? Wow, and I didn't even have to try!

2026-04-06 13:20:10 UTC

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(but note: I want reporters to just report, news to just news, I want the rumours to be done by NOT news until news can debunk or confirm)

2026-04-06 13:19:23 UTC

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The rumours help whet my appetite for the real thing.

2026-04-06 13:18:58 UTC

I hope there are new rumours of a terrible person being dead this week.

2026-04-05 17:26:40 UTC

Folks, "real life" isn't a zero-sum game, so while "game theory" is a real thing and has useful applications, always take any model of "real life" built on "zero-sum" assumptions with a hefty dose of salt.

2026-04-01 22:46:27 UTC

Hey, what if, while they're gone, we made the world a better place for them to come back to, like as a surprise.

2026-04-01 12:42:56 UTC

Remember everyone, April Fools Day only allows pranks in the first minute (before 12:01am) so if you haven't done your prank by now you've missed it.

2026-03-31 13:59:26 UTC

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Here in Mi'kmaki bluejays are "Tities" (plural titiesg,) pronounced di-di-es

2026-03-31 13:54:19 UTC

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Oh! I really like that. I see them do that for each other: one will be a look-out for another to get some nuts, and vice-versa.

2026-03-31 11:09:35 UTC

Sometimes I think my role is to be the asshole social justice guy so that someone less asshole-y but maybe better grounded in social justice can swoop in and educate in my destructive wake. And sometimes I'll be the less asshole-y but enough-grounded in social justice person who swoops in when an asshole social justice person has had to explode from frustration.

2026-03-31 10:48:55 UTC

Off-topic, but I don't think the solution to the consolidation of power by the right is a similar consolidation of power by the left. If you're against hierarchy and for the distribution of power and wealth, then your success will not look like a Big Giant Left Person setting everything in order.
I think our victories look more like taking marbles out from under a giant pile of marbles, waiting for when the whole thing falls down and marbles fly everywhere, to everyone.

2026-03-31 10:22:05 UTC

Okay, I think I have influence over an army of blue jays (6-8?). What should I do with this power?

2026-03-31 09:30:56 UTC

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I had good teachers, I think. I just hope you are okay. Both of you are lovely people and I've seen through your posts how much you do for others.
And besides, guys like that piss me off. I've seen guys like that join wonderful orgs and turn them into their personal sand-boxes, alienating any number of folks not like them without even realizing it.
And I've had my own watershed moment with disability, so it pisses me off when disability is treated like the unwanted step-sibling of equal rights when it's integral to life.
I hope you have a really good day today and that your enemies all stub their toes or equivalent.

2026-03-30 19:10:44 UTC

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Why are more me's not in tech? Because me get annoyed by those guys.

2026-03-30 19:09:57 UTC

I had fun today but if I'm honest I'd have rather not have spent the small part of the day I did interacting with asshole dudes being the blandest most basic kind of asshole dudes that exist. Like. Sorry to those for whom it's a far more common occurence. I hope I gave some of you some laughs today at least. I know I had some chuckles from some of your reactions to the needless piles of tech dudes everywhere.

2026-03-30 13:42:04 UTC

You shouldn't call anyone crazy, actually. But I'm on vacation this week, I'm not gonna write another long post - in a lifetime of long posts - about ableism and disability and language and blah de blah wisdom gleaned from disabled folks who came before me.
Just, in general, if you wanna cover your bases, and be taken seriously by *me* anyway as someone who means well in social justice spaces, who really is committed to ending bigotry and structural everything and making the world a better, less harmful place, you'd do well to consider why folks like me - with diagnosed mental health disability - might not trust you if you throw words like "crazy" around willy-nilly to describe folks you're angry at.

2026-03-30 13:35:31 UTC

And just again for the new gents coming up: don't call women crazy. Just don't. It's not new, it doesn't convey any information that helps your side of the story, every single woman has been called crazy for being normal with personal boundaries, no one, not even you, really believes these women are crazy, so don't say it, it's not good.

2026-03-30 13:27:48 UTC

I think Lefty was with hir grown kids this morning and they each took turns getting their peanuts from me. It was funny because one of the younger ones was first to the roof but quickly moved aside for Lefty to get first pick, and then when ze had hir peanuts the other two came back for theirs.
I like a morning ritual. I might have 3 crow friends, now, too, which is a 300% increase over last year.

2026-03-30 13:09:57 UTC

Fucking, no, bro, if you have a 37k follower count you don't just sic them on "crazy lady"s and call yourself interested in social justice, like. 101 stuff, man, like.

2026-03-30 12:24:49 UTC

My weekly writing post is up for free on my patreon, and later this week paid patrons ($3/mo) will get my "quarterly report" where I review how my writing went this winter and whether I'm on track (I am).
https://www.patreon.com/posts/today-is-not-day-154309860?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

2026-03-30 10:54:28 UTC

The crows are crowing it up out there: I can't see 'em from my window but I hear a lot of 'em just cawing their hearts out. I wonder if it's a crow holiday.

2026-03-30 10:15:33 UTC

I wonder if woodpeckers know how loud they are. I learned somewhere their heads are basically designed like hammers with lots of stuff to keep their brains from jiggling too much and that stuff probably includes noise-cancelling headphones for them, but I still wonder if every once in a while the woodpecker feels a little guilty for waking everyone up when getting breakfast.

2026-03-28 13:10:36 UTC

"I never put any politics or messaging in any of my stories at all."
Good sir, I assure you, you do.

2026-03-23 13:12:46 UTC

Getting stuff done before breakfast is easy if you never make your breakfast.

2026-03-23 10:09:58 UTC

I want porous borders. I want borders people cross without even noticing, borders that are ignored by people the way they're ignored by all the other animals. Borders should be things like mountains and rivers that we help each other cross when we need or want to.
Strong borders are like a gun, they're only good for death.

2026-03-21 11:53:39 UTC

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My hope these days lies with folks abandoning those caught in this delusion and building our own things where and when we can. You're an example to me for that. I can't but think of our leaders as anything but caught in a grand delusion, caught in several.

2026-03-21 11:39:19 UTC

The reason Amazon sucks so hard at delivering products AND pays its employees so poorly AND posts profits all the time is because governments divested from public services. That's it. Because we let our various public services falter, and we didn't develop new public services as technology changed, and we gave enormous and continuing tax breaks to these corporations we allowed and even encouraged them to cheapen their product and ruin their working conditions and run away with the money, 'cause who's gonna stop them, where is anyone gonna go?

2026-03-20 14:09:24 UTC

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It's called "current events" because it's easy to get swept up in them.

2026-03-20 14:05:16 UTC

I'm medium-worried the global situation has racheted up in ways that I, uninformed hedge mage, cannot yet appreciate.

2026-03-19 14:24:02 UTC

I did all the writing and the laundry before lunch so I'm allowed to be rambunctious online for a little bit.

2026-03-15 18:58:05 UTC

If you did some chores today, give yourself a li'l treat.
If you didn't do chores today, give yourself a li'l treat.
It's give yourself a li'l treat o'clock.

2026-03-09 14:57:39 UTC

Also while outside I saw lots of crows and one pair of ravens flying with branches in their mouths, so I will guess it is nest-building season, or else it's the latest fad.

2026-03-09 11:48:08 UTC

Just gonna gently suggest, as one of those foolishly skeptical people, that one does not "help people get over their LLM skepticism".
Kay, thanks, bye.

2026-03-06 17:37:25 UTC

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It feels like I did the patreon stuff and the protest stuff on completely different weeks, but they were the same week and I also did the background writing and editing.
I dunno if only other chronic-illness havers know what it's like to have a week when lots of stuff gets done and not be a resentful wreck, but it's awesome.
Unrelated, but if we ditched capitalism we could build something where we're all free to spend a week doing just the stuff we want to and are able to do, instead of being tired all the time providing shareholder value for someone with a hundred-thousand-lifetimes' worth more wealth than we'll ever see.

2026-03-06 17:32:14 UTC

I need a bunch of naps but on the plus side I've, overall, had a very successful week of writing and writing-related errands.

2026-03-06 13:50:16 UTC

IIIII don't wanna (go to war)
I just wanna bang on the drum all day.

2026-03-05 13:18:43 UTC

I think I had a knitting dream last night. In real life I've been thinking of knitting a bunch of bookmarks as gifts and/or things to have on a table at our next book fair or whatever, but last night in the dream I think I got stressed out looking up a pattern because it called for 1mm needles and I only have 4.5mm and up (and am a teeny bit frightened of using tiny needles for knitting with my clumsy fingers).
Anyway, what an oddly specific dream. There are lots of patterns for knitted bookmarks, and they use a variety of sized needles and are of various complexities. I think it'll be a good way to use up left-over bits of yarn and could be an interesting conversation-starter if I ever wanna start a conversation.

2026-03-05 11:06:09 UTC

One thing yesterday at the protest I liked was the Revolutionary Communist guy reminding us that the people of Cape Breton will work for themselves when distant powers cut us off. The coal companies AND the steel industry both discarded Cape Bretoners when we were no longer "profitable" and folks set up their own companies to keep people working.
I'm at the edge of the world here, but I'm also where things can happen. People here know how to work for each other instead of for some billionaire. Folks just have to be reminded.
To hear someone else acknowledge this history I've been holding inside privately was really good, it means I don't have to convince *everyone*, as I assumed. There are people here who know their history, and I can learn from them.

2026-03-03 22:41:18 UTC

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Exhausted by the bullshit but not too exhausted to complain. These are the golden years.

2026-03-03 22:40:26 UTC

So middle age is seeing all the history repeat and knowing the history is repeating having just enough spare energy to be snarky about it.

2026-02-28 18:38:45 UTC

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One bank robber is better for the local economy than one robber-baron, I'd wager.

2026-02-28 18:38:08 UTC

Watching all the old TV shows but this time knowing the bank robbers were the heroes.

2026-02-28 17:11:30 UTC

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Me: "Is the totality of current scientific knowledge in the room with us right now?" :P

2026-02-28 16:55:40 UTC

Blocked some stranger who went into someone's thread where they said LLMs are stochastic parrots and the stranger wanted to argue that, actually, human brains are exactly like LLMs, because science! as if the science of human cognition is even close to being settled.
The stranger is arguing with someone who clearly understands the subject more than the stranger does, and it's so horrifying to me, that this person really believes that he and everyone else are stochastic parrots. I know it's a strain of thought in philosophy, but it is such a bleak and sterile strain of thought, I want better for all of us.

2026-02-28 12:42:59 UTC

Oh! Eastern Time Zone is waking up!

2026-02-25 12:34:09 UTC

Okay, here's a thought, inspired by a great thread where people were suggesting "jobs" or "roles" we'd need in the utopia, and the list-starter asked as an open question "what about the law-keepers, how does this society handle troublemakers"?
Good question, but I guess for me I think that issue is partly entwined with the idea of "jobs" in the first place. I wonder if maybe only a very few of us are called to specialize and maybe a more free society wouldn't have us be specialists, but generalists, each with a more or less robust sphere of interests and skills and callings that we just *do*.
When a person is hurt or sick, enough of us would be interested enough in healing to heal them. We wouldn't have "doctors", we'd have a community of people who work in healing (and those people also do other things outside of healing). The community would still build, share, and record knowledge, but instead of doing that in private away from public eyes, health care is participatory, where anyone learns to fix and clean a bandage, and some folks who are good at it and with passion or with need learn surgery or epidemiology or whatever.
Same for law and order...there wouldn't be a special class of people who's responsibility is solely and singularly violence and control. We'd solve problems of violence the way we solve other problems - with participation from the community, from the stake-holders, specific to the situation and community that it happened. This is hard to explain to an authoritarian, who needs a person or a symbol to hold absolute authority, but we solve violence like this all the time. I've broken up arguments, I've broken up fights - it was always a community that did that. I had people beside me also intervening to calm down the parties. I've *been* calmed down.
But I couldn't describe to you the "rules" my friends and bystanders followed to de-escalate. We did it because we were in community with each other. There wasn't a "cop" in our friend-group or club who could bust the door down and beat up whoever they thought was the problem.
So, I think in a fair and just society justice would be distributed, the responsibility for keeping peace would be distributed. When a problem happens, when harm is done, the people involved and around it will figure it out, write down or record what they did and how it turned out, and people will learn in case something similar happens in the future or in a neighbouring community.
This isn't a hard and fast idea, I'm not suggesting it, I'm not interested in finding it's flaws just now. I'm more interested in thinking about how this sort of thing could be done. I think it would look absolutely different everywhere you go, and I think it might have outcomes even I wouldn't like or be comfortable with, but I'm not comfortable with cops and prisons, either.
Anyway, if anyone wants to know what I think would happen to violent criminals, it's "that would depend on the community where the violence happened, and on the victims, and on the people who share community with the victims and the violent person" and sometimes I, personally, might not like the answer a particular community comes up with, but to me that is a risk I'd take.

2026-02-23 15:34:18 UTC

How many more years can all the parties keep trying to be more "centrist" before they merge into the gigaparty and devour us all?

2026-02-23 15:27:21 UTC

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Not a hard suggestion, but we need loungers and underachievers who can be recruited in tight times and left to lie fallow in easy times. Folks doing "nothing", IMO, contribute to society by existing.
(but maybe would be on another list)

2026-02-20 12:12:06 UTC

I'll be honest, I'm not a music guy so I don't know all the shitty takes U2 has had. I appreciate learning their shitty takes have a decades-long history.

2026-02-20 12:00:34 UTC

I dunno, 3 years on and seeing one side live life almost as normal and the other side struggling to live in piles of rubble and I think any "both sides" positioning is actually evil.

2026-02-17 16:47:54 UTC

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This is kind of a big question, but who is Big Bird related to? I hope this is the kind of bird related question you are prepared to answer.

2026-02-17 12:48:49 UTC

Well, it's been a few months since I've had to put one of these up, but I'm struggling to get my groceries to reach the end of the month.
If any of you can spare the cash (I know times are tough all around), I could use $150 for a good solid grocery haul to get me to pension day next week. Any little bit helps.
0/$150
Canadians can etransfer to quietmarc@yahoo.ca and my paypal is the same.
I'll close this when I've reached my goal. Thanks in advance, and boosts appreciated too!

2026-02-12 12:58:34 UTC

Hank Green: "I've asked billionaires why I don't pay tax for my investments"
WHY WOULD YOU ASK THEM? WHY WOULD YOU ASK THEM? WHY WOULD YOU ASK BILLIONAIRES FOR THE HONEST REASON WHY THEY DON'T PAY TAX? WHAT ANSWER DO YOU THINK THEY WILL GIVE YOU THAT ISN'T MOTIVATED BY SELF-INTEREST???

2026-02-12 12:43:54 UTC

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Like, this whole conversation about "the economy" is so.......FUCK. Like, for people who don't have *bread* in their fridges, the "economy" might as well be a fairy tale.
For people with enough money to buy a lifetime of bread, not having bread must feel like a fairy-tale.

2026-02-12 12:41:52 UTC

Ugh, I hate when folks with comfortable amounts of money are like "well, I went to the store and there were people at the store, so I think things are fine."
HANK, my sweet child, only people with money are at the stores right now. You only see people being fine because you are fine and fine people only see each other. You do science, you know bias.

2026-02-12 12:19:33 UTC

I wish straight white men had to release statements explaining not all straight white men are violent whenever a straight white man does a mass shooting.

2026-02-05 19:13:04 UTC

A reminder it's a natural and human thing to hate cops. Hating cops is a pretty normal thing to do. For as long as there've been cops, it's been cool to hate them. Something to keep in mind. Hating cops is actually a really good default position to have.

2026-01-31 20:43:21 UTC

These are days when many conflicting things can be true at once, so be kind to each other and to ourselves when we fall into a contradiction.

2026-01-29 13:21:02 UTC

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The downtown sucks because we let our leaders open our veins for the billionaires and they've sucked out everything they could and now even the most sheltered and privileged of the middle class are feeling it, sorry you see too many needles around your pottery cafes, if only leftists had warned everyone about this for more than a century or whatever.

2026-01-29 13:18:30 UTC

Last night at writing group folks briefly talked about the housing situation, but from the perspective that the shelter I stayed in last year is bad for the local businesses, and I stayed quiet because I knew if I brought up that the shelter being so close to the library, the Y, the various grocery stores, transit access, and warm places to stay when the shelter doesn't want you in your room, if I brought that up I'd make some folks feel bad, not necessarily for the stuff they just said, but at me for having been homeless last year.
Being right in the heart of downtown was a lifesaver for me, as I imagine it is for the dozens and hundreds of folks who go through those shelter doors each year.
I wish when folks talked about these problems they instead of talking about the main victims of bad policy we all talked about the governments and billionaires who proudly divested all of the peoples' money away from social programs and into rich peoples' pockets.
But it was writing group and I wanted to talk about writing, not the shitty shelter I needed around this time last year and how it's a bummer for the pottery-cafe next door.

2026-01-25 16:04:40 UTC

Knitting update, here's the cowl. It's got a twist, but I think it's less of a twist than the red one I made (and gave it away). I could unravel and start again, but I think I wanna see it through to the end. I've got 2 hanks of this yarn, the original pattern calls for 1 hank, but this one's gonna be wiiiiiiiiide.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/956/570/744/714/890/original/69d848dced0dd1f7.jpg

2026-01-24 19:59:25 UTC

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okay random number

2026-01-24 18:56:14 UTC

Dude, anyone telling people to calm down in Minneapolis is not meeting the moment.

2026-01-24 18:55:32 UTC

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(honestly just lying down flat on the floor can do wonders in times like these)

2026-01-24 18:55:02 UTC

I'm doing an afternoon stretch, if that sounds like fun why not do one yourself!

2026-01-24 18:49:55 UTC

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State authorities over the megaphone telling people to move south on Nicolet.

2026-01-24 18:47:23 UTC

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JT sees protestors at every corner of the intersection. "A lot of people. A lot of people out here to protest the murder of another person in Minneapolis."

2026-01-24 18:46:29 UTC

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Police are forming a perimeter to keep the public out of the intersection. There are still some federal agents around but JT can't see them himself.
The locals are expressing their disappointment that the local police aren't doing more to protect them from the federal, shouting "Shame! Shame!"

2026-01-24 18:44:30 UTC

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Minnesota state police have taken over control of the intersection. ICE's victim this morning was a 37 year old white male, a legal gun owner, per Minneapolis police.
JT: "That detail is important and relevant because the DHS has already attempted to spin what has happened here as it's agents feared for their lives because the man had a gun. But we know him to be a legal gun owner and video of the shooting shows the man on the ground when agents shot him."

2026-01-24 18:41:28 UTC

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They're now in a group of about fifty folks walking down a street, the air is hazy with diffuse tear gas. I hear people checking in with each other.

2026-01-24 18:40:41 UTC

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JT is a bit pissed off and speculating what the spin on this will be from the government. They walk past citizens, some of whom are coughing, wafting clouds of gas are in the distance.

2026-01-24 18:37:57 UTC

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Playing catch with the tear gas cannisters. JT says there've been dozens fired off at this one intersection. You can hear the bangs of them going off all around. JT and John have fled to a side street where the air is more clear.

2026-01-24 18:36:35 UTC

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JT at one point speculates the budget must be "use it or lose it" on the tear gas.

2026-01-24 18:35:24 UTC

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Just your regular community safety operation with a regular tear-gas-covered retreat.

2026-01-24 18:33:35 UTC

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A caravan of dipshits driving SUVs as the public is told to stay on the sidewalks.

2026-01-24 18:32:53 UTC

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He asked the sherriff's deputies and they said they didn't know, but they can see through the clouds of tear gas the ICE getting into their vehicles again.
"It looks like a dystopian movie in the south side of Minneapolis," JT says. "More tear gas, but I don't know the utility of it but I see more of them getting into vehicles."

2026-01-24 18:30:51 UTC

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He hasn't confirmed it yet, stay tuned.

2026-01-24 18:30:36 UTC

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JT says someone says the agents are possibly leaving the area and using this show of force to cover the withdrawal.

2026-01-24 18:29:53 UTC

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Yeah, just ICE advancing like the storm troopers in the first minutes of episode IV, basivcally.

2026-01-24 18:28:40 UTC

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Oh look more tear gas.

2026-01-24 18:27:26 UTC

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Mitch wants Tim Walz out in the streets. He says there are city councillors who've been assaulted by ICE. He wants his leaders to be more like that.
JT thanks him and he rejoins the crowd.

2026-01-24 18:26:13 UTC

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"We are a block away from where they executed somebody!"
"What they are not protecting are the people. What're not protecting is the constitition. The only thing they're protecting is these fascists!"
He's really pissed, really passionate.
JT: "What are you feeling?:
Mitch: It's more than anger. There aren't words in the english language for it. Call it evil, call it depraved, but the pain and anguish in our bodies is indescribable. It's why 50,000 of us came out yesterday. It's community and it's sadness and it's agonizing pain."

2026-01-24 18:23:24 UTC

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JT interviews Mitch: "When did you get out here?"
Mitch: I got here an hour ago, maybe a little before. I got off of work this morning I heard they had 6, 7 guys (nice) had a guy on the ground, that it was like an execution, and so I had to come out. It's our 1st amendment right to protest that!

2026-01-24 18:21:08 UTC

"Fuck ICE! ICE Out!" from the crowd.
There's anguish and anger in their voices.
JT: "There's a crowd of hundreds out here, maybe a thousand. I look down the side streets and see another crowd of protestors, and no doubt on the other side of this intersection at the centre (of the ICE murder) there are also protests."

2026-01-24 18:04:50 UTC

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People are now in the streets with their arms in the air "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!"
A local is explaining this is from Ferguson, people are getting together and they are remembering.

2026-01-24 18:03:37 UTC

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(I don't have the spelling for cameraman jo(h)n, btw, when or if I get it I'll use it)
JT has reports on what happened: apparently ICE initially refused to let police in to the scene of the murder but the police commissioner insisted and eventually the police got in, but this is where we're at is ICE will obstruct the police when they can't get them to outright protect them.

2026-01-24 18:02:07 UTC

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ICE is pushing people out, John's grabbing JT so they can get moving. JT thanks the "heroic efforts of John Farina for giving me a break from the tear gas,"

2026-01-24 17:59:56 UTC

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Some photographers pause and catch an ICE agent's attention, so they approach chest to chest as the photogs back up. Such a fucking "big man" that was, little swagger that's asking for something.
JT's taking a moment to clean out his eyes, so cameraman John is narrating for us. "They're using more flashbangs, more tear gas."