#democracy without borders

[mysharona1987]

[bopinion]

2025 / 14

Aperçu of the week

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

(Theodore Roosevelt, inspiration for the Teddy bear and US president, who was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after making a significant contribution to ending the Russo-Japanese War)

Bad News of the Week

If all the clouds in the world were condensed into water, they would cover the globe with a film of just 0.1 millimetres. Just as thick as a sheet of paper. This seemingly minimal hint of moisture has an incredible effect. If it were to decrease by just 4 percent, the Earth would rise by two degrees Celsius due to the lack of a cooling effect - which would be the death of much of today's vegetation, biodiversity and food supply. As if humanity, which is a very stupid species, were not already working very effectively on global warming.

Unfortunately, it is not so easy as just to stop wishing that the sun would please come out again soon. Because the cloud cover is currently decreasing by 1.5 percent every decade. So that's a lot. In 1997, NASA launched the Ceres satellite-based Earth observation program. Among other things, it records how much radiation from the sun hits the earth's atmosphere and how much is thrown back into space by the earth - a kind of energy balance. Which is currently positive. Which is negative. The Earth absorbs more energy than it emits, so it heats up.

This sets a lot of things in motion. A very simplified example: the more heat there is, the more ice melts at the polar ice caps. The more ice melts, the less sun-reflecting surface there is. The ice that melts into water in turn makes the water deeper and therefore darker, so it reflects less. This generates more heat. Melting more ice. That's what I call a vicious circle.

Aerosols offer another explanation for the alarming Ceres data. In the course of industrialization, smog has settled around the earth as a fine veil of tiny particles. These catch sunlight, reflect it back into space and thus cool the Earth. More recently, however, the trend has reversed: air pollution control measures have significantly reduced smog emissions. This is good for health, but bad for the radiation balance. The cooling veil is dissolving, resulting in warming. Absurdly, this puts us in a strange dilemma: we could almost choose between two evils.

Normally, everyone involved in an ecosystem comes to an arrangement with each other. Because only then is joint survival ensured. Zoology has a term for this. It is called symbiosis. Selfishly seeking our own interests without regard for the losses of those around us seems to be our thing. A colleague of mine recently said that human existence makes no sense in this respect. Humans behave as if they are not of this world, as if they have learned nothing from evolution. Zoology also has a term for this. It is called parasitism.

Good News of the Week

Marine Le Pen, figurehead of the at least right-wing populist, if not right-wing extremist Rassemblement National (RN) party in France, made a very clear statement: anyone who steals should lose their passive voting rights - for life. Why not? After all, politicians should clearly subordinate themselves to the rule of law, if not be a role model. After all, it would be absurd if the legislator himself would not abide to the law. This is why French case law provides for the loss of eligibility for public office for defined crimes - yes: crimes, not misdemeanors or administrative offenses.

And that is exactly what Le Pen is now facing. Because she has stolen. She diverted several million euros from the EU budget into her party's coffers using non-existent jobs in her group in the European Parliament. She has now been sentenced for this. The four years in prison hardly matter. Two of them were suspended, the other two she is to spend in house arrest and wear an electronic ankle tag. More decisive is the loss of the right to stand for election. Because in 2027, the French will be asked to go to the polls again for the presidential election. And Marine Le Pen, who already came close to incumbent Emmanuel Macron in 2022, is clearly leading in the polls.

For me, it's simple: no one is above the law. And anyone who commits a crime should be prosecuted for it. That's why I don't understand the current uproar that the ruling could be politically motivated. Because none of this is new. For example, Alain Juppé lost his right to stand for election in 2004, although the then mayor of Bordeaux was supposed to be the candidate of the conservative UMP party in the 2007 presidential elections. And former President Nicolas Sarkozy is also currently wearing an electronic ankle tag - for illegal campaign financing.

So the rule of law simply works here. Just as it should be. I can live with the fact that - as a positive side effect, so to speak - a far-right politician is being denied access to France's highest office. But one thing must not be forgotten: The chairman of the RN is Jordan Bardella, who is just 29 years old. And even against his hypothetical candidacy, the incumbent Macron would currently lose. But he still has two years to turn things around. Because right now we need nothing more than convinced Europeans. And certainly not separatists.

Personal happy moment of the week

Fortunately, there is a lot of culture whose relevance I can agree on with my children. And with some of my passions, their enthusiasm even overtakes me - as is the case with my daughter and the "Rocky Horror Picture Show". For Christmas, she gave me tickets to Richard O'Brien's original musical. Now we were in the theater, feather boas and lipstick included. And had a great evening. Thank you.

I couldn't care less...

...that Boris Becker is now also being accused of a Hitler conspiracy theory. The former German prodigy on the tennis court has had an unprecedented fall from grace: first a national icon, pop culture superstar and Wimbledon legend, then bad investments, insolvency, prison. It seems very desperate when someone who is only good enough for the C-list celebrity jungle camp is so desperate for the limelight that he loses all style in the process.

It's fine with me...

...that the civil courage of civilian aid organizations does not shy away from a military regime. Myanmar is suffering from the consequences of a severe earthquake with thousands of victims. Fortunately, the military junta, which is back in power after a brief democratic interlude with Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, is allowing external aid into the desperately poor country. And the aid is coming. Even without the USA. There are few things that deserve as much admiration as the civil courage of these people. I know one of them personally, she is going to Chad in a few weeks with "Doctors without Borders". Respect.

As I write this...

...I realize that not only people who stand up for others deserve my honors. Sometimes it's also animals that provide valuable services to humanity that we can't do ourselves. Ronin the mine-detecting rat from Cambodia has now been entered in the Guinness Book of Records for his incredible sniffer nose. The five-year-old rodent has detected 109 landmines and 15 unexploded ordnance since it began its mission three and a half years ago. With better accuracy than technical detectors. Respect.

Post Scriptum

When something doesn't seem complicated, people like to say that it's not rocket science. After all, this still seems to be the pinnacle of engineering. And it seems that this field is not to be left to the American trillionaires, for whom space travel apparently serves to top superyachts. More and more European companies are also managing to mobilize the not inconsiderable financial resources to conquer space for communication and science. But there are often misunderstandings.

A Munich startup - aptly named "Isar Aerospace" - launched its first rocket in Norway, which did anything but land in the water. It exploded after 30 seconds and you couldn't help but wonder why the employees were still downright euphorically happy. I learned two things: firstly, that the decisive factor (despite all the computer simulations) is the launch - when the rocket takes off, you've already won. And secondly, that the explosion is intentional. Because shortly after the launch and still over controlled terrain, the wreckage can simply be collected again - for technical analysis and so that it doesn't fall on inhabited areas. Fly me to the moon, Frankieboy would probably comment now.

[persephoneflouwers]

[ladybugmania]

BE AWARE: HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF

Trump & Hitler Compared

Comparison 1: Nationalism and Scapegoating Minorities

Hitler (1930s Germany):

Hitler’s rhetoric emphasized an ethnically pure German identity and national rebirth, exploiting economic despair and cultural anxiety following WWI. He blamed Jews, communists, and other minority groups for Germany’s defeat and economic troubles. The Nuremberg Laws institutionalized racial discrimination, stripping Jews of their rights as citizens.

Trump and the GOP (2015–Present):

Trump has repeatedly used xenophobic and racially charged language, calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and proposing a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. His administration instituted the Muslim ban, attempted to eliminate DACA, and enacted family separation at the border. Republican-backed state laws increasingly target immigrants and minority voters, using the guise of security or voter integrity, echoing exclusionary policies of the past.

Comparison 2: Undermining Democratic Institutions

Hitler:

After becoming Chancellor, Hitler manipulated the Reichstag Fire in 1933 to invoke emergency powers. The Enabling Act gave him the authority to legislate without parliamentary consent, effectively dismantling democracy. He repeatedly painted political opponents as traitors or enemies of the state.

Trump and the GOP:

After losing the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede, launched dozens of baseless legal challenges, and incited the January 6 insurrection—an unprecedented attack on the peaceful transfer of power. He and his allies have labeled political opponents as “deep state,” “communists,” or “enemies,” aiming to delegitimize dissent and create a hostile political climate. Many GOP figures continue to downplay or deny the events of January 6, paralleling historical patterns of rewriting or ignoring threats to democracy.

Comparison 3: Control of Media and Disinformation

Hitler:

Joseph Goebbels led the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, controlling all media, art, and public messaging. The regime spread disinformation, suppressed dissenting voices, and crafted a narrative that glorified the regime while demonizing its enemies.

Trump and the GOP:

Trump labeled mainstream media “the enemy of the people,” a term used by authoritarian regimes to delegitimize journalism. He and GOP-aligned media outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN have been pivotal in spreading conspiracy theories (e.g., QAnon, election fraud), while vilifying fact-based reporting. This creates an alternate reality for supporters and undermines trust in factual information, similar to propaganda methods used by authoritarian regimes.

Comparison 4: Cult of Personality and Loyalty Above Law

Hitler:

The Nazi regime revolved around the Führerprinzip—absolute loyalty to Hitler. Personal loyalty to him was expected above all else, including law, ethics, or reason. Independent institutions were absorbed or dismantled.

Trump:

Trump demands personal loyalty from public officials, often attacking or firing those who disagree with him (e.g., FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or military leaders). Loyalty to Trump—not the Constitution or democratic norms—has become a defining feature of many in the GOP. Those who criticized his actions, including former allies, are frequently branded as traitors or RINOs (“Republicans In Name Only”).

Comparison 5: Militarization of Patriotism and Law Enforcement

Hitler:

The SA (Sturmabteilung) and later the SS were paramilitary forces used to intimidate opposition, enforce Nazi ideology, and maintain “order.” Hitler used them to blur the line between state power and partisan violence.

Trump and the GOP:

During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump deployed federal agents (often unmarked) to suppress demonstrations, particularly in Portland, Oregon. He encouraged violent responses to protesters, infamously saying, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Some extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others that support Trump have acted as quasi-paramilitary forces—prominent among those who stormed the Capitol.

Conclusion:

While the U.S. remains a functioning democracy, the parallels between Hitler’s authoritarian rise and the tactics employed by Donald Trump and elements of the Republican Party are real and well-documented. They include:

Scapegoating and demonizing minorities

Discrediting democratic institutions

Spreading propaganda and disinformation

Fostering a cult of personality

Encouraging or ignoring political violence

These tactics, if unchecked, threaten the foundations of democratic society—just as they did in 1930s Germany. As history shows, democracies often crumble not from external attack, but from internal erosion.

Be Aware: History will repeat. This has happened in the past and it can happen again.

[mariacallous]

https://meidasnews.com/news/republican-mayor-of-3rd-largest-city-in-az-endorses-harris

John Giles, the Republican Mayor of Mesa, Arizona, wrote an OpEd today for the Arizona Republic stating the reasons why he is endorsing Kamala Harris for President. Mesa is the 3rd largest city in Arizona, and the Arizona Republic is the largest newspaper by circulation in the crucial battleground state. 

Giles listed the following reasons why he can't support Donald Trump: 1. He refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and continues to do so. 2. He continues to trash the American legal system to delegitimize it. 3. He orchestrated the "fake elector" scheme in Arizona. 4. He orchestrated the sham "audit" of the election by the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas. 5. He blocked the bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate. 6. He treated Infrastructure Week like a joke when cities like his badly needed it.

7. He is a convicted felon and threat to the nation. 8. He has threatened to abandoned NATO. 9. He has eroded public confidence in our institutions. 10. His advisors and associates drafted Project 2025, which is a threat to our freedoms. 11. He is crude and vulgar. Giles then listed the reasons why he isn't just anti-Trump, he is also pro-Harris: 1. The Administration delivered on their promise with infrastructure funding for the Phoenix-Mesa Airport, and made technological investments in the transportation sector. 2. Thousands of new jobs are being created in Arizona with the CHIPS Act. 3. She has taken a strong stand against gun violence. 4. She has taken a strong stand for women's rights which are under assault from MAGA Republicans.

Giles then concluded with the following: "We can choose a future for our children and grandchildren based on decency, respect and morality — or succumb to the crudeness and vulgarity of Trump and J.D. Vance and the far-right agenda they would champion.

Arizona leaders like McCain and Sen. Mark Kelly have embodied the commitment to country over party. And it’s that same high caliber of character and leadership I see in Vice President Harris.

That’s why I’m standing with her. Kamala Harris is the competent, just and fair leader our country deserves. This year too much is at stake to vote Republican at the top of the ticket.

It will take Arizona Republicans, independents and Democrats standing together against a far-right agenda. Let us put country over party by voting to stop Trump and protect our democracy."

Powerful stuff. 

Winning back Arizona is crucial for Donald Trump. It is difficult to see any electoral path to victory for Trump without Arizona. He has continued to support candidates in that state like Kari Lake and Blake Masters who are toxic to moderate voters. He continues to attack the McCain family, who remain popular with those same moderate Arizona voters. 

This endorsement by Giles certainly doesn't help Donald Trump, and gives a big boost to Kamala Harris in Arizona.

[immigration-news]

There Is No Invasion

Dear Secretaries Hegeseth and Noem,

We know the truth. There is no invasion. The people coming to this country are coming from countries shattered by violence, and want nothing to do with criminal gangs. They see your broken promises to seniors, veterans, parents and workers and wonder if they should not have made some other land of freedom and opportunity their home instead. They know how painful the rule of autocrats and criminals is, and want nothing more than to be left in peace. 

Yet, on January 20, Donald Trump signed a proclamation demanding that on April 20, you recommend the deployment of the military so these peaceful people can be arrested and deported without trial. Even if they are exercising the first amendment, like the students who are being kidnapped off the streets for peaceful protest. Even if they are our closest friends, like our NATO allies being turned away at the airport for tweets that offend the president. Even if they are citizens, like the ten year old recovering from a brain tumor deported to Mexico with her whole family.

Are these your invaders? Allies? Students? The parents of dying citizen children desperately seeking our medical care? To recommend the use of the insurrection act on April 20th will end American democracy as we know it. Trump can immediately act to jail so called invaders using military force. He has already used this power to disappear people without trial, and while justice tries to claw them back from foreign prisons your staff parade them on social media. If you sign that order, if you open those floodgates, you will be remembered as the greatest traitors in American History.

The invasion at the southern border is a fantasy of an autocrat and the American People will not let you abandon our founding civil rights. If you betray the american people and sign a recommendation that insurrection be declared on that day, know that the American People will resist your illegal regime with every legal tool available.

Sincerely,

The People of the United States

[liberalsarecool]

After reflecting further on Piers Akerman's recent assertion that my analysis of the situation in the Middle East was "utter bullshit" and not tethered to reality, I realised how angry that made me feel. As a white, elderly, Anglo-Saxon male, I believe I have earned the right to be most distressed by Western privilege and the arrogance which so often distorts reality, much like a fairground mirror. It paints Palestinians as irrational terrorists and Iranians as fanatical mobs, erasing the colonial fingerprints smeared across their histories. That is the real bullshit.

Take Iran: a democracy overthrown in 1953 by Anglo-American operatives for the crime of nationalizing its oil. The CIA’s coup reinstated the Shah—a tyrant whose torture squads (trained by SAVAK and Mossad) disappeared thousands. When Iranians finally revolted in 1979, the West recoiled not at the Shah’s brutality but at the loss of a pliant client. Now, the same powers that strangled Iranian democracy lecture its theocrats on human rights—a grotesque pantomime.

I am sorry to say that Netanyahu embodies this hypocrisy. He rails against Iran’s "aggression" while annexing Palestinian land, arms settlers who burn olive groves, and starves Gaza into submission. His hysteria over Iran’s nuclear program (still unproven after decades of sanctions) mirrors the WMD lies he helped sell in 2003. Remember his cartoon bomb stunt at the UN? Pure theatre. What truly terrifies him isn’t ayatollahs with centrifuges but a regional order where Israel isn’t the unchecked hegemon.

The West has perfected a sinister alchemy of psychological inversion—an Orwellian recalibration of language that transforms resistance into terrorism, domination into peace, and sovereignty into existential threat. When Hamas fires rockets, it's decried as barbarism, while Israel's 56-year occupation of Palestinian land vanishes from view like morning mist. Apartheid walls that carve up stolen territory are rebranded as "security measures", their concrete brutality softened by bureaucratic euphemisms. Iran's civilian nuclear program sparks apocalyptic warnings, while Israel's arsenal of 90 thermonuclear warheads—never inspected, never acknowledged—sits quietly in the Negev desert. This linguistic jujitsu doesn't merely describe reality; it manufactures it, ensuring Western audiences see only mirrors and shadows where power and oppression stand plain as day.

I urge you to consider that none of this emerged in a vacuum. The US and UK engineered the Middle East’s instability—from Sykes-Picot’s arbitrary borders to arming Saddam against Iran, then crying havoc when blowback came. October 7th didn’t erupt from ancient hatreds; it was the predictable eruption of a people caged, humiliated, and drone-struck for generations. To focus solely on Hamas’ atrocities while ignoring Israel’s 56-year occupation is like condemning a burning man for screaming.

There can be no meaningful progress without first confronting uncomfortable truths. The West must reckon with its destructive legacy—the CIA's 1953 coup in Iran that strangled democracy, the 1967 war that birthed an occupation now in its sixth decade, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on fabricated WMD claims. These aren't ancient histories but open wounds that continue to shape regional dynamics. Pretending otherwise isn't diplomacy; it's willful blindness.

Netanyahu's hysterical warnings about "existential threats" must be exposed for what they are—not genuine security concerns but a naked fear of justice. His real nightmare isn't Iranian centrifuges but the collapse of the apartheid system that preserves Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Every settlement expansion, every Gaza blockade, and every racist nation-state law reveals the true project: not coexistence but permanent domination.

We must fearlessly reject the false symmetry of "both sides" narratives. While Israelis live with the psychological trauma of potential violence, Palestinians endure the daily reality of military checkpoints, land theft, and indiscriminate bombardment. Comparing Hamas rockets to Israel's occupation is like comparing a slingshot to a tank battalion—technically both weapons, but existing in fundamentally different universes of destructive power. True peace begins when we stop equating the oppressed with their oppressors.

The future demands more than temporary ceasefires. It requires dismantling the myths that let the West play both arsonist and firefighter. Otherwise, we’re just counting the days until the next explosion.

[fo3lonewanderer]

Spread the word. Call everyone in congress and tell them to say no to dictatorship. The bill removes the ability for judges to hold the president accountable with the courts which is a very very essential check for our democracy and especially at present time as Trump has only been stopped(or attempted to be stopped) from committing major unlawful, unethical, and immoral orders in the form of deportation without due process(kidnapping), holding law firms he doesn’t like hostage with executive orders until they pay him a ransom, and more. More additional problematic propositions: allowing no limits to be put on AI for 10 years, scaling back funding for consumer protection, needless billions of dollars of border protection and immigration jail, blocking gender affirming care being handled by the Affordable Care Act(Verge), allowing the government to selectively cancel the nonprofit status of activist groups, gutting the estate tax while weakening the child tax credit, and making it less expensive to get gun silencers(Prospect).

After looking into a couple of the additional claims in my original source, some of them turned out to be unsourced. I had never gotten false information from the page I reposted after looking into them multiple times before, I knew at least that the removing the power of the courts to hold the president accountable was true, I was right about to go to sleep, and also couldn’t find the bill itself so assumed the page was a trustworthy source and will be much more careful in the future. Sorry about that.

Sources:

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Harry J. Sisson:

On May 12, 2025, Taylor Lorenz reported that Hasanabi, aka Hasan Piker, was flying home from a family vacation to France when he was detained by Customs and Border Protection. During his detention, he was asked a number of questions that, frankly, should not be asked of the west’s biggest political streamer. Questions like “Do you like Donald Trump?” “Have you ever interviewed Hamas, Houthis, or Hezbollah members?” “What are your opinions on Israel?” To virtually every question, Hasan claims he responded, “I'm on the side of civilians. I want the endless bloodshed to end. I am a pacifist. I want wars to end… which is insane because up until this moment. If you were to say as an American citizen, you stand 10 toes down with Hamas, or you stand 10 toes down with the Houthis, they can’t deny you entry into the country for that shit.” Under the protections of the constitution, this is not supposed to happen. As Taylor Lorenz writes, “In a functioning democracy, public figures and journalists are supposed to be able to criticize the government without fear of retaliation. That criticism is vital in holding power to account. When authorities start treating political beliefs like security threats, it sends a loud, chilling message to anyone expressing themselves online, especially those with a platform, that they might be targeted.” And she’s right. Although we don’t know for sure what the exact motivations were for Hasan’s detention, we can infer based on the fact that he was also questioned for his bans on Twitch, where he primarily streams, that this may have been a political act. Hasan Piker is unapologetically vocal about every stance he takes politically, and with nearly 3 million followers on Twitch, that voice of his reaches a lot of ears. Detaining him for speaking his mind isn’t outside the realm of reason, either - especially since it’s legal. According to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, "Upon entering the country, this individual was referred for further inspection — a routine, lawful process that occurs daily, and can apply to any traveler.” 

A further investigation by Ken Klippenstein found that, “federal authorities have broad power to question and search U.S. citizens at the border without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Though the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, the Supreme Court has recognized a so-called border search exception. This authority applies to anyone located within 100 miles of a land border or coastline — the "border zone" — which incidentally covers over two-thirds of the U.S. population. CBP has frequently used these powers since 9/11 to target Muslims, but up until Trump, they rarely targeted American citizens so overtly for voicing their opinions. As Hasan told me, he had never been targeted before.” Because of the legal gray area this administration has placed hundreds of thousands of Americans in, Hasan’s is merely one of the highest profile examples of this happening - and it’s going to keep on happening until Trump is stopped. Look at this smaller story from just yesterday - one day after Hasan’s detention. The “psych sludge” band Lord Buffalo from Austin, TX, had just hopped on a plane at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to embark on a nine day tour of Europe with the band Orsak:Oslo. A dream come true for any aspiring band that quickly became a complete and utter nightmare. As they wrote across social media, they had to cancel their tour before even leaving the country - because Customs and Border Protection had detained their drummer Yamal Said, pulling him forcibly off of his flight. [...] The crackdown from the Trump administration even applies in places you may not expect; on May 10, Sarah Slater for the Irish Times reported on an Irish woman named Cliona Ward, who was detained by ICE for nearly three weeks… after she flew overseas to visit her dad. Ward is 54 with two prior felony drug charges and four misdemeanors, but she was also here with a green card active until 2033 - and she claims her convictions had been expunged. “[This prompted] customs to temporarily release her to obtain the appropriate documentation to prove that her records had been cleared in California,” Slater writes. “When she went to plead her case at San Francisco airport to customs on April 21st and present proof of her expungement, she was detained again and told to argue her case in front of an immigration judge. The expungement had been carried out at a state not federal level.” Although Ward is now free, she claims the experience has left her with a form of PTSD due to the lights never being turned out, meaning “when she closes her eyes all she sees is fluorescent lights.” Ward’s story matches that of countless others who have been detained simply for the “crime” of not being a U.S. citizen.  [...] There are so many stories of this happening. A Pro-Palestinian protester’s lawyer getting stopped and searched at the border. The 70-year-old permanent resident detained after a trip to Zimbabwe. The New England couple held for hours and treated so inhumanely the husband’s blood pressure hit 153 over 112, requiring the attention of paramedics. That husband is a TRUMP VOTER, according to Newsweek, meaning the motivations are not always political.

Hasan Piker (hasanabi) isn’t the only notable person to be detained by ICE and CBP when headed to and from airports when returning or leaving the country.

This is the result of the 47 Regime’s obsession with being tougher on immigration than any other Presidency.

[alpaca-clouds]

Let me talk Anarchism

Okay, let me quickly talk about it, because I am so annoyed with this. For once in the way how it relates to Solarpunk, but also in relation to media. And yeah, choosing good old Hobie here, because while it was kinda played for humor with him a lot, he was one of the few characters in media I have seen, that are actually kinda a positive representation of anarchism.

You know, media in general misrepresents anarchism all the time. Sometimes for propaganda purposes, and sometimes because the creator does not know any better and has grown up with said propaganda themselves and just believe it. Most of the time, media hence represents Anarchism as "Society without rules!", which is most certainly not what anarchism is.

The word Anarchism comes from the Greek An Arkhos, which translates into "Without Rulers". That is exactly what Anarchism means. Anarchism is a political philosophy that aims to get rid of all unjustified, involuntary hierarchies.

This is, by the way, why Anarcho Capitalism might use the word, but can never be anarchist, because capitalism aims to build unjustifiable hierarchies. It is exactly the goal of the system. So Anarcho Capitalism is a contradiction in itself.

An anarchist society will still have rules. We know that, because there have actually been societies in history, that today we would call anarchist. It is just that instead of a sort of some group of people ruling over everyone else deciding on those rules, everyone would get to have their say in it. That is, why those historical examples of anarchism for the most part have sprung up in smaller, close-nit societies, because before the age of the internet it would've been rather hard to make everyone's voice heard.

If you are wondering: "But isn't democracy already doing that?" The answer is no. Because democracy is not working, due to the politicians having all the power and the populus not being able to force them to stick to whatever they promised during the election. We cannot recall politicians, who have lied to us. So for the most part, it is the people with big money, who influence the politics. People, who were not even elected, but who the politicians will try to please more than the average joe, who has voted for them. 

It is another reason, why a lot of anarchists are against the police. Not only do they use police violence, but they are in a position, where they are allowed to use it against people, often without much reprecussions. And all of that, without the people having any say in who does and does not get to be a police(wo)man. It is another unjustified hierarchy.

And, yes, it is also why anarchists tend to be against the concept of nation states. Because internationally some states rule over others. Colonialism might've ended on paper, but it has not ended in practice. The reason some nations are poor, while others are rich, is that the poor nations get exploited by rich nations. An unjustified hierarchy. And that is without starting on the fact how many borders have been drawn by people, who had no right to do so.

On the small scale, though, anarchism first and foremost is about helping people. Mutual aid is one of the core principles of the anarchist movement. Helping people, who got left behind by the unjustified state and the people who are in power. It is also about empowering people and allowing them to find their own voice.

See, here is the fact: One of the core believes in anarchy is, that people are actually not terrible. If the state stopped existing tomorrow, people would not run around, murder and pillage. They would still help one another. We have seen this time and time again when through war or natural catastrophies systems of power have failed. People help each other. Because we are actually a pretty social species.

This is also why I absolutely loathe the depiction we see in a lot of media. Most of all in Legend of Korra. Where not only the Red Lotus, as an anarchist group, does not do jack shit in terms of mutual aid and things like that... We also see basically the Earth Kingdom go to ruins and violence within minutes of the Earth Queen having been killed. Like, no, that is not how people would react in that situation. There would not be instant riots or some shit. Jesus. What made them think that?

And yes, sure. Some anarchists might riot on the streets, because they riot AGAINST the unjust system. But always remember: Usually, when there is police violence for example against a protest, it is your friendly neighborhood anarchist, who will be willing to put themselves between you and the police.

[my-midlife-crisis]

You claim you support free speech...

Then why do you support a man who attacks free speech?

Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is an international broadcasting state media network funded by the federal government of the United States. It is the largest and oldest of the U.S. international broadcasters, producing digital, TV, and radio content in 48 languages for affiliate stations around the world. Its targeted and primary audience is non-Americans outside the US borders, especially those living in countries without press freedom or independent journalism.

VOA was established in 1942, during World War II.

[shu-of-the-wind]

The Founding Fathers wanted a democracy that, unlike the king of England, would derive its power from "the consent of the governed." But they also wanted an empire. And so they built both: a democracy that at its center gave every citizen a voice and a vote, and an empire that, as it constantly expanded, controlled the lives and lands of people who had no say. While over the centuries who was included in that center of democracy changed, the edge of empire never went away. From Indigenous nations, to Guam and Puerto Rico, to migrants detained at our border, there have always been people who lived under the raw power of our government but without the liberties and privileges of our Constitution. Our inheritance as American citizens is a democracy that is often wildly undemocratic--a government that rules both by consent and by conquest. ~Rebecca Nagle, By The Fire We Carry

[robertreich]

Can We Still Find Common Ground? 

Many Americans today worry that our nation is losing its national identity. Some claim loudly that the core of that identity requires better policing of our borders and preventing other races or religions or ethnicities from supplanting white Christian America.

But that is not what defines our national identity. It’s the ideals we share, the good we hold in common.

That common good is a set of shared commitments. To the rule of law. To democracy. To tolerance of our differences. To equal rights and equal opportunities for everyone. To upholding the truth.

We cannot have a functioning society without these shared commitments. Without a shared sense of common good, there can be no “we” to begin with.

If we’re losing our national identity, it is because we are losing our sense of the common good. That is what must be restored.

Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. Well, I disagree.

Almost every day, I witness or hear of the compassion and generosity of ordinary Americans. Their actions rarely make headlines, but they constitute much of our daily life together.

The moral fiber of our society has been weakened but it has not been destroyed.

We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in our democracy.

We can fight against all forms of bigotry. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another.

We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies.

Together, we can rebuild a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the institutions of the nation.

America is not made great by whom we exclude but by the ideals we uphold together.

We’ve never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we have sought to live up to those shared ideals.

I hope you’ll join me in carrying forward the fight for the common good.

You might start by sharing this video with your friends and loved ones.

[guitarhappyman]

So I get into it with a friend on another platform who keeps spewing the same propaganda as if anyone who voted for Trump lost their minds and rely on him like God to make our lives better. He also accused me of being willing to sidestep democracy to get the things I want.

I may have lost a friend, because my correction was as follows:

“You folks and your propaganda are nauseating. You think it’s about making my life better? It’s all about me?

You know what I wanted out of Trump?

The same damn thing I wanted out of Obama, Biden, Bush, Big Bush and and Clinton.

Those those things are the following

- Transparency

- A secure border

- Honesty

- Common sense leadership

- Doing exactly what you campaigned on

- A strong military

- An end to political indoctrination in our schools

- Respect for personal freedom

- And someone who would think about America first before giving everything to the world while his own people suffer.

Not one of them came through. Each one of them failed. Most didn’t even try. They just faked it well enough that you are still pining for their pipe dream. But guess who did come through? As flawed as he is as a person, it was freaking Trump. A man I was never a fan of personally but respect because he does the hell what he says he’s going to do or tries.

That’s what I voted for. Not some polished fake politician who pretends to be an angel but is doing the devils work as we are distracted by their platitudes and symbolic gestures that get us absolutely no where.

No one is side stepping democracy, genius. By the way, we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic.

But let’s go with your twisted idea of democracy.

Was it democracy when Biden coerced Big Tech into silencing millions of Americans for their opinions and thoughts?

Was it democracy when that old man lied to you and told you he didn’t know about his sons dealings and that the laptop didn’t exist? Because for many that may have changed their vote in the 2020 election if they knew then candidate Biden was compromised.

Was it democracy when he got 51 intelligence agents who we are supposed to trust, to go along with the lie and call it Russian disinformation?

Was it democracy to force people to choose between feeding their damn family and a damn shot in the arm that is causing damage to a lot of people?

Was it democracy when Biden flew in hundreds of thousands of migrants in the middle of the night without telling us and also opened the borders? Did we the American people have a say in that? No the heck we didn’t.

Was it democracy when if we question elections or vaccines that we get silenced and are forced to self sensor just to survive?

It that’s your democracy? You can keep that crap bro, respectfully.

Trump is no God or saint but it’s a damn shame it took a flawed man to do right by the American people. He’s showing you how corrupt your government truly is and I’m here for it. No regrets whatsoever.”

[mariacallous]

“Don’t mention the word ‘liberalism,’ ” the talk-show host says to the guy who’s written a book on it. “Liberalism,” he explains, might mean Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to his suspicious audience, alienating more people than it invites. Talk instead about “liberal democracy,” a more expansive term that includes John McCain and Ronald Reagan. When you cross the border to Canada, you are allowed to say “liberalism” but are asked never to praise “liberals,” since that means implicitly endorsing the ruling Trudeau government and the long-dominant Liberal Party. In England, you are warned off both words, since “liberals” suggests the membership of a quaintly failed political party and “liberalism” its dated program. In France, of course, the vagaries of language have made “liberalism” mean free-market fervor, doomed from the start in that country, while what we call liberalism is more hygienically referred to as “republicanism.” Say that.

Liberalism is, truly, the love that dare not speak its name. Liberal thinkers hardly improve matters, since the first thing they will say is that the thing called “liberalism” is not actually a thing. This discouraging reflection is, to be sure, usually followed by an explanation: liberalism is a practice, a set of institutions, a tradition, a temperament, even. A clear contrast can be made with its ideological competitors: both Marxism and Catholicism, for instance, have more or less explicable rules—call them, nonpejoratively, dogmas. You can’t really be a Marxist without believing that a revolution against the existing capitalist order would be a good thing, and that parliamentary government is something of a bourgeois trick played on the working class. You can’t really be a Catholic without believing that a crisis point in cosmic history came two millennia ago in the Middle East, when a dissident rabbi was crucified and mysteriously revived. You can push either of these beliefs to the edge of metaphor—maybe the rabbi was only believed to be resurrected, and the inner experience of that epiphany is what counts; maybe the revolution will take place peacefully within a parliament and without Molotov cocktails—but you can’t really discard them. Liberalism, on the other hand, can include both faith in free markets and skepticism of free markets, an embrace of social democracy and a rejection of its statism. Its greatest figure, the nineteenth-century British philosopher and parliamentarian John Stuart Mill, was a socialist but also the author of “On Liberty,” which is (to the leftist imagination, at least) a suspiciously libertarian manifesto.

Whatever liberalism is, we’re regularly assured that it’s dying—in need of those shock paddles they regularly take out in TV medical dramas. (“C’mon! Breathe, damn it! Breathe! ”) As on television, this is not guaranteed to work. (“We’ve lost him, Holly. Damn it, we’ve lost him.”) Later this year, a certain demagogue who hates all these terms—liberals, liberalism, liberal democracy—might be lifted to power again. So what is to be done? New books on the liberal crisis tend to divide into three kinds: the professional, the professorial, and the polemical—books by those with practical experience; books by academics, outlining, sometimes in dreamily abstract form, a reformed liberal democracy; and then a few wishing the whole damn thing over, and well rid of it.

The professional books tend to come from people whose lives have been spent as pundits and as advisers to politicians. Robert Kagan, a Brookings fellow and a former State Department maven who has made the brave journey from neoconservatism to resolute anti-Trumpism, has a new book on the subject, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again” (Knopf). Kagan’s is a particular type of book—I have written one myself—that makes the case for liberalism mostly to other liberals, by trying to remind readers of what they have and what they stand to lose. For Kagan, that “again” in the title is the crucial word; instead of seeing Trumpism as a new danger, he recapitulates the long history of anti-liberalism in the U.S., characterizing the current crisis as an especially foul wave rising from otherwise predictable currents. Since the founding of the secular-liberal Republic—secular at least in declining to pick one faith over another as official, liberal at least in its faith in individualism—anti-liberal elements have been at war with it. Kagan details, mordantly, the anti-liberalism that emerged during and after the Civil War, a strain that, just as much as today’s version, insisted on a “Christian commonwealth” founded essentially on wounded white working-class pride.

The relevance of such books may be manifest, but their contemplative depth is, of necessity, limited. Not to worry. Two welcomely ambitious and professorial books are joining them: “Liberalism as a Way of Life” (Princeton), by Alexandre Lefebvre, who teaches politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney, and “Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society” (Knopf), by Daniel Chandler, an economist and a philosopher at the London School of Economics.

The two take slightly different tacks. Chandler emphasizes programs of reform, and toys with the many bells and whistles on the liberal busy box: he’s inclined to try more random advancements, like elevating ordinary people into temporary power, on an Athenian model that’s now restricted to jury service. But, on the whole, his is a sanely conventional vision of a state reformed in the direction of ever greater fairness and equity, one able to curb the excesses of capitalism and to accommodate the demands of diversity.

The program that Chandler recommends to save liberalism essentially represents the politics of the leftier edge of the British Labour Party—which historically has been unpopular with the very people he wants to appeal to, gaining power only after exhaustion with Tory governments. In the classic Fabian manner, though, Chandler tends to breeze past some formidable practical problems. While advocating for more aggressive government intervention in the market, he admits equably that there may be problems with state ownership of industry and infrastructure. Yet the problem with state ownership is not a theoretical one: Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because of the widely felt failures of state ownership in the nineteen-seventies. The overreaction to those failures may have been destructive, but it was certainly democratic, and Tony Blair’s much criticized temporizing began in this recognition. Chandler is essentially arguing for an updated version of the social-democratic status quo—no bad place to be but not exactly a new place, either.

Lefebvre, on the other hand, wants to write about liberalism chiefly as a cultural phenomenon—as the water we swim in without knowing that it’s wet—and his book is packed, in the tradition of William James, with racy anecdotes and pop-culture references. He finds more truths about contemporary liberals in the earnest figures of the comedy series “Parks and Recreation” than in the words of any professional pundit. A lot of this is fun, and none of it is frivolous.

Yet, given that we may be months away from the greatest crisis the liberal state has known since the Civil War, both books seem curiously calm. Lefebvre suggests that liberalism may be passing away, but he doesn’t seem especially perturbed by the prospect, and at his book’s climax he recommends a permanent stance of “reflective equilibrium” as an antidote to all anxiety, a stance that seems not unlike Richard Rorty’s idea of irony—cultivating an ability both to hold to a position and to recognize its provisionality. “Reflective equilibrium trains us to see weakness and difference in ourselves,” Lefebvre writes, and to see “how singular each of us is in that any equilibrium we reach will be specific to us as individuals and our constellation of considered judgments.” However excellent as a spiritual exercise, a posture of reflective equilibrium seems scarcely more likely to get us through 2024 than smoking weed all day, though that, too, can certainly be calming in a crisis.

Both professors, significantly, are passionate evangelists for the great American philosopher John Rawls, and both books use Rawls as their fount of wisdom about the ideal liberal arrangement. Indeed, the dust-jacket sell line of Chandler’s book is a distillation of Rawls: “Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like?” Lefebvre’s “reflective equilibrium” is borrowed from Rawls, too. Rawls’s classic “A Theory of Justice” (1971) was a theory about fairness, which revolved around the “liberty principle” (you’re entitled to the basic liberties you’d get from a scheme in which everyone got those same liberties) and the “difference principle” (any inequalities must benefit the worst off). The emphasis on “justice as fairness” presses both professors to stress equality; it’s not “A Theory of Liberty,” after all. “Free and equal” is not the same as “free and fair,” and the difference is where most of the arguing happens among people committed to a liberal society.

Indeed, readers may feel that the work of reconciling Rawls’s very abstract consideration of ideal justice and community with actual experience is more daunting than these books, written by professional philosophers who swim in this water, make it out to be. A confidence that our problems can be managed with the right adjustments to the right model helps explain why the tone of both books—richly erudite and thoughtful—is, for all their implication of crisis, so contemplative and even-humored. No doubt it is a good idea to tell people to keep cool in a fire, but that does not make the fire cooler.

Rawls devised one of the most powerful of all thought experiments: the idea of the “veil of ignorance,” behind which we must imagine the society we would want to live in without knowing which role in that society’s hierarchy we would occupy. Simple as it is, it has ever-arresting force, making it clear that, behind this veil, rational and self-interested people would never design a society like that of, say, the slave states of the American South, given that, dropped into it at random, they could very well be enslaved. It also suggests that Norway might be a fairly just place, because a person would almost certainly land in a comfortable and secure middle-class life, however boringly Norwegian.

Still, thought experiments may not translate well to the real world. Einstein’s similarly epoch-altering account of what it would be like to travel on a beam of light, and how it would affect the hands on one’s watch, is profound for what it reveals about the nature of time. Yet it isn’t much of a guide to setting the timer on the coffeemaker in the kitchen so that the pot will fill in time for breakfast. Actual politics is much more like setting the timer on the coffeemaker than like riding on a beam of light. Breakfast is part of the cosmos, but studying the cosmos won’t cook breakfast. It’s telling that in neither of these Rawlsian books is there any real study of the life and the working method of an actual, functioning liberal politician. No F.D.R. or Clement Attlee, Pierre Mendès France or François Mitterrand (a socialist who was such a master of coalition politics that he effectively killed off the French Communist Party). Not to mention Tony Blair or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Biden’s name appears once in Chandler’s index; Obama’s, though he gets a passing mention, not at all.

The reason is that theirs are not ideal stories about the unimpeded pursuit of freedom and fairness but necessarily contingent tales of adjustments and amendments—compromised stories, in every sense. Both philosophers would, I think, accept this truth in principle, yet neither is drawn to it from the heart. Still, this is how the good work of governing gets done, by those who accept the weight of the world as they act to lighten it. Obama’s history—including the feints back and forth on national health insurance, which ended, amid all the compromises, with the closest thing America has had to a just health-care system—is uninspiring to the idealizing mind. But these compromises were not a result of neglecting to analyze the idea of justice adequately; they were the result of the pluralism of an open society marked by disagreement on fundamental values. The troubles of current American politics do not arise from a failure on the part of people in Ohio to have read Rawls; they are the consequence of the truth that, even if everybody in Ohio read Rawls, not everybody would agree with him.

Ideals can shape the real world. In some ultimate sense, Biden, like F.D.R. before him, has tried to build the sort of society we might design from behind the veil of ignorance—but, also like F.D.R., he has had to do so empirically, and often through tactics overloaded with contradictions. If your thought experiment is premised on a group of free and equal planners, it may not tell you what you need to know about a society marred by entrenched hierarchies. Ask Biden if he wants a free and fair society and he would say that he does. But Thatcher would have said so, too, and just as passionately. Oscillation of power and points of view within that common framework are what makes liberal democracies liberal. It has less to do with the ideally just plan than with the guarantee of the right to talk back to the planner. That is the great breakthrough in human affairs, as much as the far older search for social justice. Plato’s rulers wanted social justice, of a kind; what they didn’t want was back talk.

Both philosophers also seem to accept, at least by implication, the familiar idea that there is a natural tension between two aspects of the liberal project. One is the desire for social justice, the other the practice of individual freedom. Wanting to speak our minds is very different from wanting to feed our neighbors. An egalitarian society might seem inherently limited in liberty, while one that emphasizes individual rights might seem limited in its capacity for social fairness.

Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. Show me a society in which people are able to curse the king and I will show you a society more broadly equal than the one next door, if only because the ability to curse the king will make the king more likely to spread the royal wealth, for fear of the cursing. The rights of sexual minorities are uniquely protected in Western liberal democracies, but this gain in social equality is the result of a history of protected expression that allowed gay experience to be articulated and “normalized,” in high and popular culture. We want to live on common streets, not in fortified castles. It isn’t a paradox that John Stuart Mill and his partner, Harriet Taylor, threw themselves into both “On Liberty,” a testament to individual freedom, and “The Subjection of Women,” a program for social justice and mass emancipation through group action. The habit of seeking happiness for one through the fulfillment of many others was part of the habit of their liberalism. Mill wanted to be happy, and he couldn’t be if Taylor wasn’t.

Liberals are at a disadvantage when it comes to authoritarians, because liberals are committed to procedures and institutions, and persist in that commitment even when those things falter and let them down. The asymmetry between the Trumpite assault on the judiciary and Biden’s reluctance even to consider enlarging the Supreme Court is typical. Trumpites can and will say anything on earth about judges; liberals are far more reticent, since they don’t want to undermine the institutions that give reality to their ideals.

Where Kagan, Lefebvre, and Chandler are all more or less sympathetic to the liberal “project,” the British political philosopher John Gray deplores it, and his recent book, “The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is one long complaint. Gray is one of those leftists so repelled by the follies of the progressive party of the moment—to borrow a phrase of Orwell’s about Jonathan Swift—that, in a familiar horseshoe pattern, he has become hard to distinguish from a reactionary. He insists that liberalism is a product of Christianity (being in thrall to the notion of the world’s perfectibility) and that it has culminated in what he calls “hyper-liberalism,” which would emancipate individuals from history and historically shaped identities. Gray hates all things “woke”—a word that he seems to know secondhand from news reports about American universities. If “woke” points to anything except the rage of those who use it, however, it is a discourse directed against liberalism—Ibram X. Kendi is no ally of Bayard Rustin, nor Judith Butler of John Stuart Mill. So it is hard to see it as an expression of the same trends, any more than Trump is a product of Burke’s conservative philosophy, despite strenuous efforts on the progressive side to make it seem so.

Gray’s views are learned, and his targets are many and often deserved: he has sharp things to say about how certain left liberals have reclaimed the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and his thesis that politics is a battle to the death between friends and foes. In the end, Gray turns to Dostoyevsky’s warning that (as Gray reads him) “the logic of limitless freedom is unlimited despotism.” Hyper-liberals, Gray tells us, think that we can compete with the authority of God, and what they leave behind is wild disorder and crazed egotism.

As for Dostoyevsky’s positive doctrines—authoritarian and mystical in nature—Gray waves them away as being “of no interest.” But they are of interest, exactly because they raise the central pragmatic issue: If you believe all this about liberal modernity, what do you propose to do about it? Given that the announced alternatives are obviously worse or just crazy (as is the idea of a Christian commonwealth, something that could be achieved only by a degree of social coercion that makes the worst of “woke” culture look benign), perhaps the evil might better be ameliorated than abolished.

Between authority and anarchy lies argument. The trick is not to have unified societies that “share values”—those societies have never existed or have existed only at the edge of a headsman’s axe—but to have societies that can get along nonviolently without shared values, aside from the shared value of trying to settle disputes nonviolently. Certainly, Americans were far more polarized in the nineteen-sixties than they are today—many favored permanent apartheid (“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”)—and what happened was not that values changed on their own but that a form of rights-based liberalism of protest and free speech convinced just enough people that the old order wouldn’t work and that it wasn’t worth fighting for a clearly lost cause.

What’s curious about anti-liberal critics such as Gray is their evident belief that, after the institutions and the practices on which their working lives and welfare depend are destroyed, the features of the liberal state they like will somehow survive. After liberalism is over, the neat bits will be easily reassembled, and the nasty bits will be gone. Gray can revile what he perceives to be a ruling élite and call to burn it all down, and nothing impedes the dissemination of his views. Without the institutions and the practices that he despises, fear would prevent oppositional books from being published. Try publishing an anti-Communist book in China or a critique of theocracy in Iran. Liberal institutions are the reason that he is allowed to publish his views and to have the career that he and all the other authors here rightly have. Liberal values and practices allow their most fervent critics a livelihood and a life—which they believe will somehow magically be reconstituted “after liberalism.” They won’t be.

The vociferous critics of liberalism are like passengers on the Titanic who root for the iceberg. After all, an iceberg is thrilling, and anyway the White Star Line has classes, and the music the band plays is second-rate, and why is the food French instead of honestly English? “Just as I told you, the age of the steamship is over!” they cry as the water slips over their shoes. They imagine that another boat will miraculously appear—where all will be in first class, the food will be authentic, and the band will perform only Mozart or Motown, depending on your wishes. Meanwhile, the ship goes down. At least the band will be playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which they will take as some vindication. The rest of us may drown.

One turns back to Helena Rosenblatt’s 2018 book, “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which makes the case that liberalism is not a recent ideology but an age-old series of intuitions about existence. When the book appeared, it may have seemed unduly overgeneralized—depicting liberalism as a humane generosity that flared up at moments and then died down again. But, as the world picture darkens, her dark picture illuminates. There surely are a set of identifiable values that connect men and women of different times along a single golden thread: an aversion to fanaticism, a will toward the coexistence of different kinds and creeds, a readiness for reform, a belief in the public criticism of power without penalty, and perhaps, above all, a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine. These values will persist no matter how evil the moment may become, and by whatever name we choose to whisper in the dark.

[cleolinda]

Weekend links: April 6, 2025

My posts

I'm STILL working on the fourth video writeups for our Silent Hill 2 project, and I am a bit frustrated that life is getting in the way. 

(OH AND ALSO I HAVE A CAVITY AND FRAUDULENT BANK CHARGES)

Anyway (ANYWAY?!) Ian's fourth stream is up. HE HAS SEEN WHAT I RECORDED AND ANSWERS MY QUESTIONS I SWEAR IT'S REAL. 

Reblogs of interest

If you'd like to help the survivors of the Myanmar and Thailand earthquake, World Central Kitchen and MSF/Doctors Without Borders are on the ground.

Val Kilmer passed away earlier this week.

"babe are you ok you reblogged 'it's coming back but we'll see it through' again"

The Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance is raising money to save black-footed ferrets on tribal grounds, after the current administration froze conservation funds.

RIP Stumpy the cherry tree, who will live on through his cuttings in D.C.

James Baldwin: "Love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win." 

"You lead a very interesting life"

Don't take the easy way out with AI: "Imagine what you can do if you learn to bullshit like I can bullshit"

The Sad Bastard Cookbook, a free e-book for your low spoons

"Put baby in pelican mouth for Instagram photo. Facebook photo of baby in pelican mouth for many likes"

How Many Cigarettes are in any given movie?

In defense of Mr. Darcy's proposal

Going snail mode

A hungry axolotl: "Fuckibg superb you funky little kirby"

Grip, snacking at my chamber door

"More actual things that happen in the 1897 Dracula novel without context"

A recommendation for A Dictionary of Color Combinations

Like I knew Ariana Grande had been up to some shit but I wasn't ready for this

Love a perfume review that says "Nothing wrong with a bit of fear"

"It’s a misconception that the mimics are hunting humans when they trail along at the back of hiking groups"

"But hey, there’s nothing wrong with having a completely absurd contingency plan. In case of time loops."

Video

Wet Beast Wednesday: Pitiful cranky baby otter sounds

Star Wars was not worthy of Amandla Stenberg and her violin (bring back The Acolyte if you want to prove me wrong)

Yes, Rick Astley has more songs

Hybrid Calisthenics: "Being on the right path often FEELS better and more natural - even if it’s more work."

Is this cat a goalie, technically?

"Sexy Nation Army," a mashup (only technically "video")

The sacred texts

"for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits"

"when will mcr return from the war"

Personal tags of the week

1) Art, which had some real bangers this week, including Remedios Varo, Mexican Gothic, Diane & Leo Dillon, a genuine Hokusai print found at an antique market, a wee Eohippus, something that doesn't listen, AND MORE;

2) Honestly birds had some good ones as well;

3) One orange braincell had two good ones, including a painting of a cat about town;

4) and U.S. politics, since there were some good things:

First, Senator Cory Booker gave a marathon speech for more than 25 hours, reading from "multiple three-ring binders, including articles from bipartisan sources and letters from his constituents, in what he called 'terrified people' with 'heartbreaking' stories" in protest of the current administration, and breaking Strom Thurmond's filibuster record (which "itself was a last ditch attempt to block the Civil Rights Act"). And it was not just a filibuster; it was representation.

Meanwhile, April 5 had “Hands Off” demonstrations across all 50 states, "targeting threats to democracy, bodily autonomy, and climate justice." Here's how the St. Paul, MN, protest went (direct link for the tags).