Violet Madder

Disturb the comfortable; comfort the disturbed.

Agnostic: I don't know, and you don't either
Agender: Binary thinking is BS
Asexual: Your kink is not my kink and that's very okay
Anarcho-communist: Party at the bottom left!

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violetmadder_at_kolektiva.social@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-06-04 20:24:19 UTC

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Note, the "created equal" thing means we only start off that way. The visionary go-getters and entrepreneurs who win at meritocracy (as proven by how much they own, obviously) are definitely MUCH more equal than others.

2026-06-04 20:15:05 UTC

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Okay I might be remembering that part wrong but you know what? If I look it up in an internet search, that's gonna go into my File.

2026-06-04 18:05:35 UTC

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I was just watching a video about when the Congo fought off its colonizers in 1961, the leader of the rebels was tortured to death and his body dissolved in acid until all that was left of him was ONE TOOTH. ...And his family didn't even get THAT back until fucking 2022.
The UN had tried to step in, but the Secretary-General was assassinated en route to ceasefire negotiations. People do try to make the UN a properly helpful, principled organization, but other folks (like the CIA) sure work hard to keep it a tool supporting imperial abuse.
Haiti was actually forced to pay reparations to their slavers, how's that for backwards. They're still being punished to this day, for winning.
Oh but wait-- wait, you meant stuff like Nat Turner killing white women and children, right? Well, committing atrocities against people for years and years makes them angry enough to do some pretty fucked up shit. So, the abuse really needs to be stopped BEFORE more people are so tormented they flip the fuck out. Unfortunately, the atrocities are ongoing so there's a lot of flipping out lurking just under the surface. Still. Sooner the better. The longer we wait, the uglier it will get when things finally snap.

2026-06-04 03:17:24 UTC

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The violence is already here. We didn't bring it.
This is exactly like being in an abusive relationship-- that's what it is, that's who is responsible and how it works: abusive bullies cornering victims and forcing us to take care of their needs on pain of retaliation if we misbehave. What does it take, to make an abuser stop? We're SUPPOSED to be able to call the cops, right? That's violence in of itself. And the trouble is, the cops work for our abusers. So, what do you do when you're being abused and the cops are only making it worse instead of helping? And you can't just leave, because the abusers own the place-- and the next place and the next place and the government, and world really.
What's happening in Gaza and Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan and Libya etc etc etc will keep spreading unless it's stopped. We're up against people who think torture is justified, war profiteering is cool, and double-tap bombing paramedics is fine. Think we can just talk them out of it if we're very persuasive?
Keep in mind also that sometimes when people talk about pacifism and nonviolence, some are including property damage in their calculations and some aren't.
It's very difficult for people to agree on where to draw the line, what qualifies as self-defense. When IS it finally time to club your abuser over the head with that chair? We don't want to. We really don't. But are we going to sit and watch our kids be raised in a lifestyle that will turn them into the next generation that will continue the cycle of abuse?
The more I learn about history, the more I figure people should've probably freaked out and fought back a lot harder, a lot earlier.

2026-06-02 22:00:34 UTC

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And some jackass is gonna be like, "ohmigosh, but wait 'AI' will save us!"

2026-06-02 21:30:47 UTC

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The most important thing that must be taken from them, is devotion.
Once people stop looking up to them and stop wanting what they have the vast majority of their wealth's value simply evaporates on the spot.
The physical resources-- land, water, infrastructure-- they may be able to hold for a while, but as it gets harder to find mercenaries desperate enough for their treats to do dirty work for them, it's only a matter of time. That's a direct, physical struggle.
The whole thing is held together by religion. Capitalism is a death cult, people marching up to sacrifice everything of worth in a damned volcano to make some line go up.
Break the religion. Have something better to believe in. Then everything changes.

2026-05-31 00:16:41 UTC

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I don't give a damn about punishment.
All I care about, is how to make the abuse stop.
Just take away their power to perpetrate further abuse. In whatever way is the most effective, with the least possible drama. Period.
Punishment may serve as a deterrent for further bad behavior, but when the supposedly good guys are actively causing suffering, that's cultivating poison. No matter how justified, indulging revenge is dangerous. There's a bad gray area where justice starts to overlap with sadism and the risk of people becoming the very thing they hate-- again.
Punishing most of the population of a whole country is not particularly feasible, tends to hurt a lot of innocents along with them, fosters more solidarity among them built on shared resentment-- what, like some kind of mass spanking is gonna teach anybody a real lesson?
If Netanyahu and his nastiest ministers got stripped and tossed unarmed into the camps they created, they'd probably get torn limb from limb. How many of those who participate in that frenzy would come out of it feeling better? How many might actually feel shame or regret afterwards instead?
There's no easy answer. Is there ANY justice system on earth that's ever been designed around the needs of victims or how to get things running properly in the aftermath? How many studies have even really grappled with this stuff?
How does a busted, abusive society get better?

2026-05-28 13:29:30 UTC

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Could.
We're ultimately going to need mesh networks to host anything on, and I have a feeling there will be armed goons hunting the nodes.

2026-05-28 03:24:42 UTC

The technofascists were never going to sit idly by and let the biggest collective repository of information just run around un-enshittified.
For almost two decades, I have been amazed at how well Wikipedia has been doing, and dreading the inevitable attacks.
We've seen this pattern playing out many, many many times now. Reddit's board was colonized around 2015, for one example. Everyone can see Mozilla going down the tubes with leadership actively trying to destroy anything that could make it a good and open alternative to the megacorps browsers. The people with backgrounds in venture capital or Microsoft or Amazon etc etc moving in on good sites and services, changing the priorities, letting the poison in. Evil, making offers people can't refuse, throwing around endless money and let's face it threats too, put NOTHING past them. It's an attack-- this is war. And they're out to eat EVERYTHING.
All of our access to information, news, history, communication, they want ALL of it swallowed down an endless abyss of propaganda and surveillance.
We've got to fight like hell, or they'll take all the light and breath and light in the whole world and future generations won't even get to remember.
@npub17ea…wz02 https://mastodon.social/@JakeOrlowitz/116649352150125501

2026-05-27 14:46:51 UTC

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This is NOT merely about busting a union.
This is about seizing the the last big motherlode of free information and locking it down for technofascist control.
Look around. They are enclosing the digital commons. This is a coup. We are under attack. Generative slop is a signal-jamming weapon. Journalism and education are being destroyed. Surveillance is invading every facet of our lives, and democracy is getting disemboweled.
Think for one minute about what any megalomanaiacal jerk would do with tech like "AI". Wannabe supervillain billionaires are fighting over who gets to rule the world, and they'll burn the whole thing in the process.
It's not like they were just going to let Wikipedia just keep running around un-enshittified.

2026-05-23 22:55:43 UTC

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The entire industry is frantically sailing itself up shit creek at Ludicrous Speed.

2026-05-17 17:00:36 UTC

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You know what is AMAZING for fruit fly traps???
Kombucha!!
I've done wine and vinegar traps, and it works, but it takes a week or so to ripen to where they really want it-- and then within another week or two, you get mold on the surface and they stop drowning and start breeding instead.
Then I started brewing my own kombucha, and noticing them crawling eagerly around on the cloth cover on top I thought hey let's try that.
I use a 32oz wide-mouth mason jar.
Pour in about an inch and a half of kombucha with a teeny dab of soap.
Twist a sheet of paper from the junk mail into a cone that points down into the jar, not quite deep enough to touch the liquid. Make sure it sits well so there are no gaps around the rim of the jar where they can escape.
The kombucha is already ripe and immediately irresistible, and defends itself from mold. It will actually form a new little SCOBY in there, which may get thick enough for the flies to walk around on, but if I top it off with a little bit of water (from the faucet, it'll dampen the cone but oh well) the goo layer usually sinks enough to keep things effective.
It rolls like that for weeks!

2026-04-27 01:48:09 UTC

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Are you really fucking sure about that??
I know somebody who was trafficked as a child. Two men kept the children chained up in a basement. He calls them The Monster, and The Monster's Keeper.
When the Monster came downstairs to use the children, he would beat them.
The Monster's Keeper, on the other hand, brought candy and hugs.
Both kidnappers and rapists. Which one is "worse"? The one who uses straightforward violence, or the one who plays headgames and builds trust with sweet promises? Is that your idea of "kindness"? Which victims have a harder time recovering, do you think? The ones who were pummeled or the ones who were groomed into thinking rape was love? Hmm? WHY THE SHIT ARE WE EVEN PLAYING THIS "WOULD YOU RATHER" GAME?? DAMN THEM BOTH TO HELL!!
It's a vile, meaningless fucking question. Especially when they play a Good Cop / Bad Cop tag team. The "good" one feeds the monsters they're paid to fight, and then tosses us back to them so we'll get softened up, desperate to take their "deal".
That's a game from a Saw movie, not a system of government-- and certainly not democracy!! Fuck the entire establishment and the genocidal colonialism it rode in on.

2026-04-21 05:56:36 UTC

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On the other hand, a couple of those women are vile jerks and I'm very glad I don't have to keep seeing as much of them betraying their gender in such a disgusting way.
Of course, an important part of equality is recognizing that all categories of human are somewhat prone to being horrid shits, just like other humans in general. Girl boss, same as the old boss. Turns out women can be megalomanaiacal war profiteering jerks just like the boys, yay.
But damn it's uncomfortable to watch. Bondi makes my hair stand on end.

2026-04-12 00:21:11 UTC

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Winning?!! Saying shit that offensive and bizarre should get people thrown OUT on the spot!!
Racism-- direct, explicit, brazen racism-- is not a legal argument. It's not shit anyone should expect to "win" with.
Telling people to submit passively to sexual assault is not a legal argument! It's depraved NONSENSE.

2026-04-11 23:50:24 UTC

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How are there actual grownups saying this kind of shit out loud in public AT ALL, much less in COURT??? Good grief everything is so fucked.

2026-04-09 17:44:15 UTC

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Science! was supposedly the reasoning for the frenzy of lobotomies and other similarly horrific "therapies" in the USA's darkest age of mental health care, around 1900-1950s. Eugenics is BAD.

2026-04-07 18:13:44 UTC

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This place serves people who've had major mental health issues or substance abuse, been houseless or incarcerated etc. The marginalized. Many are not very educated.
When the group was asked what kind of work they want, one person shrugged and said "Janitorial". The teacher winced and amended her question, "I mean what did you want to be when you grew up? What's your DREAM job?"
There was a heavy silence.
One person thought about it for a long, long moment and said, "...Grape picking?"
"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
"........Better pay?"
"But what role in your job? What do you see yourself doing?"
"...My own apartment?"
This is the population the fascist techbros see not even as prey, just vermin. Pathetic suckers. Bowls of worms. Stupid. Disposable. Misery cultivated to scare other workers into line.
Some of us are already so ground down we don't know how to dream anymore. It all seems so far out of reach. Some FEEL stupid, due to how they've been treated, with little awareness of the insight, wisdom, and potential they actually possess.
The faces in that room were determined but tired. So very tired.
I walk in to a facility like this with my smartypants vocabulary and the staff look bewildered that I'm even there and say, "Oh you'll have NO problem" but it's not fucking true, I've never been able to support myself like a functional grownup. My grades were always bad, I'm constantly late and forgetful, I couldn't finish college, I keep getting fired. I've been couch surfing for years. Most of my adult life I've been living on around $500/month. But I sure sound smart. On paper, I'm supposed to be a genius. I stand with one foot inches from an elite world, and the other foot inches from the gutter. I want to use that, and help bridge the gaps of understanding.
I'm a peer support specialist. Marginalized folks are the population I'll be serving. Some will be "gifted" burnouts like me, and more will be people who don't know a lot of words over two or three syllables. I've got to be effective at connecting with people who've had very little education, and/or have developmental disabilities or a lot of damage from trauma and substances and so on, without alienating them or getting condescending.
I at least have some awareness of how bad things really get, but my own life has been frankly pretty sheltered. I even look soft-- it shows on the skin, when somebody has been on the streets a long time. I'm not going to be as useful in this role, in some ways, as say that hardened guy over there with all the tattoos or my coworker who overcame a multi-decade meth addiction (I've never even tried normal smoking).
I'm headed to the psychological front lines. I'm going to be hearing some of the most heartbreaking, awful stories and seeing a lot of suffering. I'm looking for people who've seen the cracks in the system, been burned by the festering evil driving it, and want to push for a real change. Some of them I might be able to help reach a way to move forward and fight. Some, we'll lose to the pits of drugs and despair. Some will die. It's a soul-destroying meat grinder out there. Where's my niche? Where can I be most useful? How well can I handle the stress? Big question marks.

2026-04-07 18:00:51 UTC

I just went to a workshop for job seekers who need special help.
The moment I asked about resumes: "Oh, ChatGPT will fix all of that for you!"
They were downright gushing about it.
I know in an abstract way, the average reading level is something around 5th grade, but I'm not directly exposed to it much. A few attendees were really struggling with the booklets we'd been handed.
This "AI" technology was being hyped to them like a godsend. When writing a cover letter feels something like being asked to encode ritual alien poetry in hieroglyphics, somebody who's never been able to produce a properly structured paragraph before must feel tantalizingly liberated. A whole new door opens!
As I sat watching "AI" treated as a miracle cure, the fact I was biting back the bile must have shown on my face past my mask-- the person doing my paperwork remarked on the "look" I gave her (well, not her directly, I tried to aim it at the table). I told her this stuff is 'hallucinating' around 16%-48% of the time, and she blinked at me. Blankly. I didn't even try to bring up any of the weaponization, propaganda etc etc etc. She shrugged and said, "Oh, but I always review it. I know how to assess what it gives me." And for her purposes, she's probably right. Mostly. She's an expert in her role and good at what she does-- but the people she serves??
How many people out there not only aren't equipped to assess the slop's output, but haven't got the slightest CLUE it could be unreliable and even needs to be assessed in the first place? The digital oracle knows best. Computers are smart!
Gah.
#"AI"
#AI
#LLM
#slop

2026-04-04 18:31:24 UTC

Know how the VBNMW libs love to snarl about 'apathetic' non-voters?
THAT SHIT IS BY DESIGN.
"A democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of… a marginal population…. inherently undemocratic, [it nevertheless enables] democracy to function effectively. Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands… remains.’ "
Oh sure, blame the victims for falling for the trap, for giving the system what it wants-- but the level of vitriol, the rage and contempt, as if the voting eligible population just rolled their eyes at civic participation because they're lazy ungrateful uncaring jackasses, just heaps more abuse on people who have been aggressively and deliberately disenfranchised by the cruelly manipulative institutions of oppression. 'Apathy' is a symptom of DESPAIR, and you can't fight that with insults.
People will try to call all this a "conspiracy theory" but it's not a fuckin theory-- just like Project 2025, they explained their intentions very clearly and openly!
And make no mistake, it's bipartisan. Even Carter-- yep, sweet kindly Jimmy Carter-- was obediently on board. (Rockefeller, I'll remind everyone, is one of the worst of the robber barons who brought us the Gilded Age.)
The underlying program continues no matter who is in office, ever since the neoliberal/neocon coup. The rebellion of the 60s lost, in 1972. They named some streets after MLK and encouraged us to think we won even as they consolidated power and brought to bear new tools to ruthlessly undermine the celebrated gains of the Civil Rights Act-- and steadily fleeced the working class for $50 trillion over the next 50 years.
This new Gilded Age their policies have built is worse than the last one. The crash will be worse, too.
@npub1hq3…fktp https://mastodon.social/@DrALJONES/116347396343649712

2026-04-03 02:47:19 UTC

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Look it up in the dictionary, if you like. The violence is a prominent definition but not the only one and often not even the first one. We can talk about revolutions in science, when all that's about is improving understanding. The ideas aren't at war, nobody necessarily gets shot (although sometimes it escalates to that).
The revolution is the CHANGE. Not the violence. When one system falls apart, the result IS a revolution when something different takes its place.
Our current culture WANTS us to conflate revolution with violence. That's the propaganda and you bet I disagree with it, bigtime.

2026-04-02 16:47:20 UTC

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Revolution is not only required but inevitable-- that's a rapid major change in the structures of our society, which needn't necessarily be acheived with violence.
Of course, the current system will unleash a great deal of violence on its way down.
But you're right, we needn't focus on tearing apart something that's inherently destroying itself. We need to BUILD the systems that will hold things together in its wake.
Like Firestorm Books has been doing, such that when the hurricane hit they got aid to some places DAYS before the floundering government structures could.
Sufficiently advanced disaster preparedness is indistinguishable from revolutionary dual power. (which is why the evil capitalist technofascists in charge right now don't want us having infrastructure, prevention, or public health etc)

2026-04-02 06:19:58 UTC

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Solutions exist.
Some of them really aren't that difficult, either.
The scale of what's possible is staggering.
https://kolektiva.social/@violetmadder/111367032590019778

2026-04-01 21:34:08 UTC

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My dad told me a few weeks ago, our local ski resort used to regularly have 24 feet of snowpack when he was a kid.
This winter, it barely had 24 INCHES.
I can stand on our porch and look at that mountain in the summer, and not only does it look so NAKED, brown dirt exposed all the way to the top, even from twenty miles away it's mighty obvious the big glacier on its northeastern flank is maybe HALF the size it used to be. Glaciers like that aren't supposed to fucking shrink visibly on a human timescale!!
I was maybe 10 when we went for one of our regular hikes up around the alpine lakes and the frogs were just GONE. A place that always used to have so many thousands the whole edge of the water was black with tadpoles in a band at least 3' all the way around the lake, and so many adult frogs it was impossible to walk without stepping on some-- gone. I've seen this coming my whole life, any actual scientists who study anything related to this for a living and somehow still manage to be surprised have been living with their heads jammed WAY up their own asses.

2026-04-01 15:10:00 UTC

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Sounds cultish.

2026-03-31 02:31:12 UTC

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I want to kill it with fire.

2026-03-31 01:21:35 UTC

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I thought I had turned the feature off in my phone, but randomly in traffic while I was trying it opened a little window that covered the turn I was trying to find on the GPS map, and said, "Hi how can I help you today?"
Reflexively, I blurted in shock: "Oh fuck OFF!!"
"I may just be an AI assistant, but words matter." Tone of patient reproach. It kept talking-- I remember hearing the term "respectful"-- but I hit the flashpoint of rage at that point and just started bellowing at it. "AS IF GOOGLE KNOWS OR GIVES A SINGLE SHIT ABOUT RESPECT, YOU MINDLESS PILE OF GARBAGE!" and so on.
The name thing gets me, too. The presumption! Uninvited familiarity does not endear me to these things.

2026-03-30 22:11:20 UTC

I'm really starting to get extra appreciation for the voice of the computer in Star Trek.
It wasn't pretending to be anyone's friend. It doesn't even try to call itself an "assistant".
Just the facts-- actual facts, as from a calculator. Coolly straightforward, to the point. Pleasantly impersonal. Aloof. Not trying to manipulate anyone with mimicry of emotions it doesn't feel.
None of this cloying encouragement, the pocket sycophant ever so earnestly babytalking to a fragile ego, buttering us up with eager attentiveness, confidence, reassurance, and utterly unselfconscious lies.
No humanlike apologies-- even when it's telling you the self-destruct sequence is still active.
Unless you're in a holosuite and you specifically signed up for THAT kind of simulation, it's not going to try to lick your balls.
SO MUCH LESS CREEPY THAT WAY.
https://youtu.be/wnI--FgbLiM
#boundaries
#"AI"
#AI
#LLM
#StarTrek
#LCARS

2026-03-26 18:46:18 UTC

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That's a big part of WHY they charge so much money. A signifocant amount goes to the insurance, not the person actually doing the work.

2026-03-26 07:20:23 UTC

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Some dentists are, but mostly it's the insurance companies screwing things up for everybody.

2026-03-26 04:36:02 UTC

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I was so relieved to be sedated when I had to get 7 teeth out at once. Put it off for about a decade until the insurance finally agreed to cover it.

2026-03-26 02:23:26 UTC

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Dude running Brave is a right winger unfortunately.

2026-03-23 20:47:34 UTC

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Anyone evil enough to profit off of bombing people, or cover up climate science in favor of pushing fossil fuels, or deny people healthcare by the thousands, etc etc etc, is evil enough to sexually assault a child.
And anybody powerful enough to get away with establishing monopolies big enough to accrue billions of dollars, is powerful enough to get away with it.
Ours is a system that elevates and idolizes monsters. From the bizarre excesses of aristocrats like Caligula to the robber barons of the Gilded Age to today, same assholes-- and the same fools somehow buying the idea that the assholes are superior to mere mortals, and that we should serve them to curry their favor.

2026-03-23 07:30:29 UTC

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This is the Portland situation, 2020 this kind of shit and worse was going down more or less nightly.
Portland's police union was the first in the nation. This, in a state so racist only white people could own land there for about 85 years-- and still one of the whitest parts of the country. So racist we basically chased off and ran out of anyone to be racist AT for a few generations, sortof forgot about the whole thing, and now want to act like we're very liberal and enlightened but this is going on right under our noses and our ignorance is an ISSUE.
The cops LIKE their right wing buddies (remember Kyle Rittenhouse) and big money is telling the courts to think protesters are terrorists.

2026-03-21 21:30:33 UTC

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Adult blask soldier flies don't bite or spread disease, and if you've got enough of them in your compost it discourages the more bothersome pest flies.

2026-03-21 21:23:17 UTC

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Black soldier flies make quick work of such things, but if it's buried too deep they may not be able to reach it as well.
(They won't eat the stink part on a skunk though, which makes for a very unpleasant time bomb so that would probably need to get buried REAL deep or put somewhere far from areas frequented by people)

2026-03-19 23:06:40 UTC

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For crying out loud, just look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_voting_system

2026-03-19 22:39:37 UTC

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Anybody who wasn't fetishizing billionaires and their toys could do it better. Hell, why not just sortition.
Me? Abolish capitalism, for a start. Return the commons to the goose. Ownership of things, from factories to residences etc goes only to the people who personally and directly need those things. Horizontal bottom-up organizing based on community councils. The type of stuff Rojava and the Zapatistas are working on, like collectivism, communitarianism, and anarcho-communism.
And if there's any large scale voting, it's gotta be open source.

2026-03-19 22:22:21 UTC

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I tried to help verify the vote counts in California's 2016 Democratic primary. It was a shitshow.
When the margin for winning is smaller than the margin of error, much of everything is happening inside of proprietary corporate boxes, count observers can't get close enough to observe anything meaningful, and there's other weird shit like the huge shredder truck outside Alex Padilla's office the next morning-- I don't trust our electoral system as far as I could kick it.
On top of the gerrymandering and bought-out media, and that Princeton study already showed only about 10% of legislation reflects what the people want vs what big money wants.
This is not what democracy looks like.

2026-03-19 20:46:00 UTC

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How long has it been since the US had anything like solid exit polling?
Just because the Republicans like to shout about the goofy forms of election fraud that aren't real, doesn't mean it's not rigged in much more effective ways.

2026-03-19 18:16:33 UTC

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It was never "viable".
He was forced on us. Shoehorned into a position of power by multi-billion dollar waves of propaganda that shoved his face into every household on every channel. Even the Democratic Party was helping "elevate" him to a "serious candidate" with their twisted Pied Piper Strategy.
Most Americans hate BOTH parties. We're conditioned to think this is who we are, these are our only options, this is the Overton Window and the "center" is somewhere between rabid fascism and limousine neoliberalism-- normalizing planetwrecking corporate feudalism and war profiteering across the board.
NONE OF THIS IS VIABLE.

2026-03-17 16:44:02 UTC

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A big issue I've always been concerned about, is the reductionist way prices flatten relationships.
I've forgotten where I read about it, but there's an advantage to uneven transactions-- this thing I did for you last week doesn't quite match the value of the thing you did for me this week so I should give you another thing. The remainder is another excuse to continue interacting, an ongoing process of constantly checking where we stand with each other and keeping things in balance.
I paid you $50 for the thing, we're even, period, caps the situation with a finality that obscures any lingering imbalance that's hard to quantify with a calculator.
Monetary values erase emotional values. Emotional labor gets left out of the economy. Emotional and social obligations languish-- leading to moral bankruptcy.

2026-03-17 16:24:26 UTC

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Obligations/debt gets us into the old custom of jubilee, and Jesus flipping tables, and the usurer having no heart and such.
Basically comes down to hoarding.
Cultures tend towards being more egalitarian in areas where food is pretty reliably available year round, vs more hierarchical in places where it has to be stored during long periods of scarcity, or places that have big defendable concentrations of wealth such as a location with a big salmon run.
Things get dangerous where there are points of leverage for bullies to exploit.
Which could be handled if everybody else recognized bullies for what they are, instead of thinking 'oh hey this guy has all this stuff because they're cool and smart and better than me' and serving them.
And the minute one poor person agrees to turn around and hit another poor person so the rich guy gives them a treat, it's all downhill from there. We should smack the rich guy instead for making such a rude suggestion.

2026-03-17 16:02:51 UTC

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"When one person lacks food and another has surplus, the one who lacks food must trade today or go hungry; the one who has surplus can afford to wait for higher prices. Consequently, markets always systematically benefit the rich"
Oho. THAT is a very tidy point that I hadn't seen in such a nutshell before.

2026-03-17 14:27:12 UTC

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From what I understand, ONLY central banks get to create money from thin air. They are the specially anointed ones who get to pass it out. Used to be physically made, now it can be just a keystroke so it's all even further divorced from reality.
And yes the more arcane and esoteric the whole thing is, the more special the power of its initiated clerics becomes.

2026-03-17 00:18:56 UTC

These fucking AI customer "service" bots make me want to scream.
Just give me a menu with numbers so I can push buttons please. Where is the fucking menu so I can push number buttons.
Trying to follow up on damage control from getting scammed the other day and I have zero chill, everything is making me cry.
Can we have back menus with numbers and buttons?? No matter how mindlessly friendly this thing tries to sound, it never understands a word I'm saying and it's so emblematic of everything going wrong right now I want to strangle it.

2026-03-17 00:07:51 UTC

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Oh gawd, gym.
I've seen other kids get in fights with EACH OTHER over how badly they didn't want to get stuck with me on their team. (Even though I was a head taller than all of them and naturally athletic) And the locker room, taking off clothes?? Forget it. Just wearing shorts was bad enough-- sexual harassment etc. I still don't like showing any skin, I resent even short sleeves.
Eventually I got a waiver where I didn't have to take gym, because my parents put me in a self defense class outside of school.
Taking the class was enough for most of the bullies to magically lose interest in me, though.
I did flip out once, and it took several teachers to peel me off the guy. (that was before the martial arts training, too) Didn't get kicked out, but definitely learned I didn't have any right to stand up for myself. Ugh.
The things I'd say to those teachers today....

2026-03-16 22:44:41 UTC

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And we like you and want to see more of your stuff!

2026-03-16 22:37:12 UTC

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Ooh neat, I shall read this!
For that matter actually, I think school in general is designed to make kids hate education in general, too.
Children are learning machines. Gathering understanding and information is their primary purpose in life. It takes WORK to make them hate it.

2026-03-16 21:34:36 UTC

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Math.
I remain firmly convinced that the classes are DESIGNED to make kids hate it.
(and this is why we end up with a populace that doesn't know the difference between 'average' and 'mean', and can't make basic sense of important political statistics or climate change numbers....)
Algebra is to math, as spelling and grammar are to storytelling. If nobody tells you what writing is FOR and just commands you to memorize a bunch of arbitrary shit by rote just cause?? I dunno about y'all but my brain just kept trying to dump it as junk information.
....Until physics in college. When I saw motion graphs and things and went OH SO THIS IS WHAT IT DOES WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME SOONER.
But by that point my algebra was so bad I totally bombed my next math test and basically gave up.
("gifted" burnout, AuDHD)

2026-03-16 21:26:47 UTC

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Not just a scam. Death cult.

2026-03-16 20:47:47 UTC

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He's a depraved buffoon who barely knows what planet he's on.
So here's a question-- do people really think a depraved buffoon incapable of coherent planning or strategy actually managed to get into the White House under his own power?
What do we reckon? Are some bigtime Epstein partygoers wringing their hands wondering how to reel in their rabid pet?
Or are they sitting back and laughing their asses off while he fucks up everyone's shit, because THEY have planning and strategy to exploit the situation?

2026-03-16 16:07:19 UTC

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I was thinking a lot about Land Back yesterday. I think it lines up with this:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
— Anonymous, "The Goose and the Common"
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/239/942/432/981/573/original/be4ff392583b5a1e.png

2026-03-14 17:47:27 UTC

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There's a tricky tipping point, almost invisible.
Somewhere between, "Things are bad but a lot of us are trying to fix this!", which is true, and "Things are basically okay, bad guys aren't normal!" which is the dangerous delusion of enablers.
Bad IS normal and nobody is okay. This is the norm. Look, the planet is burning. ENOUGH of us are like this, and holding enough positions of power, to mean our overall trajectory is dropping fast in the Trump direction. Even when we're dutifully trying to do the whole Dem incremental harm reduction thing, we're still headed for the SAME evils just a bit more slowly and dressed up with a few more comforting lies. Abusers don't just get away with abuse, abuse is propped up and rewarded as good go-getter business sense, and we go along with it if we think it'll score us a few extra treats to ride an abuser's coattails and not rock the boat. I know he's bad but I'm doing the best I can from inside his office, okay so I'm carrying water for a fascist but I'm still a good guy.
The "moderate" liberal gets to pretend they're not part of the problem if they set the bad guys way out at some freakish distance they are not responsible for. They get to pretend that real estate flipping is a perfectly wholesome reasonable vocation, and that calling the cops on that nasty annoying homeless camp is a perfectly wholesome way to protect the neighborhood-- with zero awareness that they're
doing shit like, say, casually talking over the women in the room, singing along to songs about rape, voting for people participating in crimes against humanity, benefitting from exploitative settler colonialism, and upholding capitalism.

2026-03-12 21:52:14 UTC

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Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs talks a lot about this.

2026-03-11 17:57:54 UTC

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I dropped out of school because the anxiety got totally out of control and I basically had a nervous breakdown-- in large part BECAUSE of the size of the student loans.
It almost killed me. I wasn't hospitalized, but it was a very near thing.
This shit is why I work in mental health now.
Dude on the phone was telling me stuff like, "Oh don't cry, if you cry I'll start crying too." and "You don't have to worry anymore, you'll be able to put all this behind you and things will get better" and so on.
Vile. I really want to kick him repeatedly in very sensitive areas.

2026-03-11 17:40:30 UTC

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Well I'm reading and being told by my loan servicer that you're not ever supposed to be charged a processing fee, also they told me there's no kind of forgiveness thing on my account.
So it's fraud. Big dose of false hope. Sick bastards.
They gave me a callback number... I don't expect it to work, but if it does, I HAVE SOME THINGS TO SAY.

2026-03-11 02:35:26 UTC

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Yes.

2026-03-11 01:01:36 UTC

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I paid them the fee, so if that's the case I'm fucked. The guy kept saying, after this you won't have to pay another penny.
I feel like I might throw up.

2026-03-11 00:40:13 UTC

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Terrifying, all of it completely terrifying.

2026-03-10 23:11:51 UTC

Just got a phonecall saying my student loans qualify for some kind of forgiveness.
This had BETTER be the actual Dept of Education and not some kind of scam. I just paid them most of my tiny savings, for the processing fee.
I'm so stressed out now it's making me dizzy.
Hope hurts.

2026-03-08 05:46:57 UTC

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WELCOME.
It rarely lines up with my schedule but it's quite grand when it does.

2026-03-07 20:02:58 UTC

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As if the biggest problem with Dachau etc was that the guards don't have enough training....

2026-03-05 23:48:28 UTC

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This goes for ALL THE VPNS with paid subscriptions, too.

2026-03-05 19:22:16 UTC

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Sadistic child-raping planetwreckers, that's who.
This is the kind of behavior everyone should expect from war profiteers. They have no conscience, no hearts, no decency of any kind. The same types of people who love chasing homeless people back and forth across town, throwing away all their belongings at every turn. The same types of people who deny health insurance to the sick so they can keep more profits to buy yachts with. The same types of people who clearcut old growth forests, poison rivers, charge money for vaccines, cover up the science of cigarette health risks, sneer at empathy, hate democracy, and invest in mass surveillance instead of mitigating climate change.
They're not even hiding the fact that they want to be supervillains anymore.
Monsters. We are being ruled by monsters.

2026-03-05 05:30:07 UTC

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When my dad was a kid the local ski resort would get 24 FEET of snow.
This year it barely got 24 INCHES.
Glaciers are not supposed to noticeably shrink-- like, from 20 miles away you look at a mountain and think oh shit that massive sheet of ancient ice over there is HALF THE SIZE IT USED TO BE-- within the span of a single human lifetime.
The climate science is right in front of everybody's faces and most of them can't even recognize wtf they're looking at.

2026-03-05 04:02:30 UTC

THIS IS WHAT THE HUGE DATA CENTERS ARE FOR.
Said it before, gonna keep saying it: it's a weapon. All this "AI" slop, the LLMs, the "age verification" policies, the data centers-- weapons.
@npub1k40…af50 https://mastodon.social/@oaklandprivacy/116174501214905919

2026-03-03 07:57:04 UTC

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This.
They didn't think it was a good idea before simply because the people in charge did not seem to think it was a good idea, and weren't doing it. They changed their minds when the "authorities" did. Just staying in line. Probably many would call themselves "apolitical".
Naive trust, passive obedience. Following the prevailing winds. Not wanting to think too hard.

2026-02-28 17:23:09 UTC

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If both sides are bad, why do you assume the conclusion is to give up?
The system isn't just stupid, it's fucking evil. We have to fight BOTH of the evil sock puppets and build an entirely new system. Period.

2026-02-26 05:18:33 UTC

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Skynet didn't destroy the world by getting too smart-- it actually just started glitching and chasing its own tail in gibbering circles and everything broke.

2026-02-26 04:06:04 UTC

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It's not about cognitive flexibility.
He's a right-wing grifter who loves money and power more than humanity or morality. Straight up.
The minute the Grants Pass supreme court ruling went through, he couldn't WAIT to roll up his sleeves and jump into an enthusiastic photo op participating in a homeless sweep, throwing away the belongings of people who have almost nothing.
He had Charlie Kirk as one of the first guests on his podcast.
He's a vile hypocrite. Anything good he's ever said was nothing more than a pandering lie, and anything good he's ever done only happened because he was forced into it and/or performed as a calculated ploy.
Don't trust him as far as you can spit.

2026-02-25 21:00:19 UTC

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Ponderosas are often distinctly orange, especially the big ones. The bark forms in layered slabs shaped like puzzle pieces (that will flake off to shed fire). Long needles in triplets, clumping in round bunches. Fist-sized cones with pine nuts about half the size of a popcorn kernel, with a maybe 1.5" wing.

2026-02-23 05:40:06 UTC

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It's a little hard to mount an effective political party when the system is hellbent on murdering you (and uses all the propaganda machinery at its disposal to distort your message and memory). Status quo parties like Republicans and Democrats "fight" each other (and even the terrorists who hate us for our freedoms or whatever) like pro wrestlers putting on a cute show. Managed opposition. Anything close to a real Luddite party they sabotage, co-opt, and/or kill with the focus reserved for REAL threats.
People are trying. A lot of folks whose names you'll never know have died or been locked up and tortured, trying.

2026-02-23 01:07:28 UTC

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That's why I said "most".
The guys with guns controlling the land and resources like food are doing it because they're getting paid, though. The less that money is worth, and the fewer of them are true believers, the harder it will be to maintain those armies.

2026-02-22 22:41:58 UTC

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You got it!
This culture, the scams, the money-- it IS a religion.
We have been treating the ultra-wealthy as royalty, entitled to rule over us by divine virtue of their superior wallets. It's prosperity gospel, the golden calf. Big bucks daddy knows what he's doing, he's super smart and fancy and if we worship him he'll give us some treats etc.
All we'd have to do is stop believing in them, deprive them of our devotion, stop buying what they're selling, and most of their wealth and power would vanish overnight.

2026-02-22 17:47:10 UTC

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Selling the disease along with the "cure".
What's scary is... they're shoehorning "AI" into everything, while also manipulating hardware prices and supply such that it's becoming increasingly harder for anyone to get their hands on home computing-- they're trying to make everyone depend on cloud computing through tools that allow them to surveil damn near everything we say and do, while poisoning the wells of information and claiming to be our rescuers if we only swallow the shit being spewed by the mindless digital oracles running on algorithms they can warp any way they like.
This shit was never supposed to make money or be useful in any direct way. It's a fascist's panopticon torment nexus wet dream.

2026-02-15 03:50:24 UTC

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And the folks pushing all this are working with the same assholes who just stole EVERYONE'S social security information, and are stealing medical records, and all the other shit the data brokers have been harvesting from us for years.
This is the nightmare of anyone who's EVER complained or worried about surveillance and governmental overreach.
How many people are on their lists? What will it take to punish EVERYONE who criticizes them too much?
When will it be your turn?
Make no mistake, your turn is coming. They're coming for ALL of us (who aren't totally submissive terrified sheep, anyway-- and those aren't safe either, they'll be toyed with and used) unless we stop them.

2026-02-14 04:51:36 UTC

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The spoiler effect is a weapon of voter suppression.
There is no "lesser" evil when the evil is operating as a cooperative good cop / bad cop tag team. Democrats aren't just feckless or disappointing, they're collaborators and traitors.

2026-02-13 01:59:32 UTC

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More than that: destroying not just the usefulness of the internet, but education and communication IN GENERAL.
People keep wondering how "AI" is supposed to make money, when it isn't supposed to make anything but noise and chaos. It's a weapon.

2026-02-10 15:24:20 UTC

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They don't need to learn.
They know damned well what we need, and their actual job is to make damned sure we never get it.

2026-02-09 04:12:44 UTC

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"AI" as it is being designed and deployed right now, is a weapon. A signal-jammer and a propaganda clusterbombing campaign. Built on top of mass surveillance.
This is what they are investing in, instead of trying to mitigate climate change and/or improve public health.
That should tell us exactly what their plans are for us for when the shit hits the fan. Gaza's the preview. For EVERYONE.

2026-02-06 21:46:51 UTC

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"But this is illegal!" is you running into a gunfight waving a piece of paper.
If too many of the guys with guns don't feel like doing what the piece of paper says.... Then what?
It's not the red hat cult who caused this. It's people with a whole lot of money who felt like giving the cult billions of dollars in free airtime, pulled strings to gerrymander the districts etc etc, and paid off and or threatened the judges to make sure charges don't stick well enough to stop them.

2026-02-06 15:27:54 UTC

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Isn't that a bit like demanding that the zebras be protected from the lions by the local hyenas?

2026-02-03 18:27:52 UTC

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Also, it's projection.
The types of people who are most likely to succeed in a cruel society without safety nets (predatory, exploitative) are the same types of people who crave a life where they are waited upon hand and foot while they laze around indulging hedonistic urges and do nothing useful. They expect everyone else to have the same goals they do-- it's very difficult for them to even to imagine positive intrinsic motivations.
The idea of WANTING to accomplish something useful, for a sense of satisfaction and pride and to help those around you and make the world a better place, is alien to them.
Most of them probably grew up without nurturing encouragement, and only understand the motivation of escaping things they dislike: without threat of punishment, why would anyone ever do anything but sit around all day?

2026-02-01 01:58:18 UTC

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Look up the mutual aid and rapid response tactics in Minneapolis. Get ready.

2026-01-30 18:17:27 UTC

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I read one account a while back where a guy was describing getting wrestled down by the cops. There was a nasty pop in his shoulder, and the cop hissed in his ear, "I just tore your labrum. You're going to need surgery in about 3 years." and then laughed and let him go.

2026-01-26 21:47:32 UTC

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Evil shit.

2026-01-19 18:53:50 UTC

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Bullshit. Bootlicker.

2026-01-18 01:23:16 UTC

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Omg the lady who runs the radio station was listening and just now came down and gave me a scarf! She said I did a good job and she really liked it and it was good radio! Omg!
🥹

2026-01-17 16:28:06 UTC

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What that amounts to is, the current system is holding everyone vulnerable hostage. They tell us if we rock the boat, major disruption will mean the "weak" won't be able to get their meds etc.
In the meantime, fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer and fewerif us can get our fucking meds anyway, and the planet us being torn to shreds so nobody will even be able to get clean Air to breathe or water to drink. But we're supposed to sacrifice untold generations of future suffering for the sake of clinging to whatever tiny vestiges of stability the system deigns to leave us, because it'll be OUR fault if they tank the rug fully out from under us as punishment if we get too uppity?
Don't talk back or he'll only hit you harder, that's the logic.

2026-01-17 16:22:37 UTC

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Making America "normal again" is every bit as nonsensical as making it "great again".

2026-01-16 01:03:02 UTC

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My DJ buddy does a segment on news and politics and he's grappling with what to cover. Last time the police were killing a lot of people, his coverage landed him with some scary harassment but it's not stopping him.
I just read some of Robert Kingettvs stuff on air, that was bizarre and nerve-wracking but I did it. Whew!

2026-01-15 22:32:55 UTC

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I am struggling with that myself, I'm not usually in environments where I have to watch my speech and need to be very careful about it there!

2026-01-15 20:29:53 UTC

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Aw dang gotcha 😆

2026-01-15 06:54:20 UTC

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Exciting stuff! I didn't find the part with the caller yet.
(My DJ friend approves muchly of the karaoke weather report.)

2026-01-15 03:37:41 UTC

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Ooh yay!

2026-01-15 03:21:43 UTC

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I'm sad I missed it!

2026-01-09 23:39:34 UTC

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A friend of mine keeps pointing out the various police officials who have been speaking out and objecting to this as a "bad shooting" and I'm like, what, unlike the thousands of shootings of unarmed fleeing people that were happening BEFORE this big ICE fiasco? Now we're supposed to think regular cops are the good guys, just because the feds sent out someone even worse?
If all this newly fomenting outrage gets funneled down into "thank heavens once we get rid of ICE we can get back to normal, lalala" my brain is going to implode.

2026-01-09 05:44:18 UTC

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No this was NOT a new fucking hire, he's been working for ICE for more than a decade. Doing EXACTLY what they're all being trained to do: commit violence on behalf of power.

2026-01-04 04:13:01 UTC

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The sovereignty of nations is purely decorative, there's no such thing as rules-based international order, and the law is whatever the fuck some rich assholes make up on any given day.
Yep, nothing is okay.