For the past five months the only refugees the USA has accepted are white South Africans fleeing equality & safety meanwhile they are disappearing or strapping ankle monitors on any Haitian they can get ahold of. It needs to be understood how thoroughly connected these two things are.

It’s something I’m sure I’m going to continue to struggle with. Even in Portland those who are masking still are proportionately few. But woah. Just seeing a couple of events that *require* masking is such a powerful message of solidarity to receive. It’s like being given water in a vast desert.

Frankly, that dynamic has been a huge contributing factor to the suicidal ideation I’ve been struggling mightily with the last couple of years. Hard to want to live sometimes when you feel *very purposefully* left to die.

When I was living somewhere with no mask-required spaces and only a few individuals still masking it pretty much felt like my social life was forever over. Everywhere, the message of abandonment was blaring with little to no reprieve. It’s impossible to communicate how heartbreaking that has been.

There are masked-required events and groups in my city and even though they’re still a small minority just the fact that they exist makes me feel more valued as a disabled person than I have in years. Please require masks at your events. Such a comparatively easy act with a huge impact.

US Liberals are engaging in a lot of counterinsurgency discourse atm because they imagine themselves taking the reins of power in November and are worried about the anger and solidarity stirred up by the current situation becoming their problem

They want you to forget that you took care of yourselves and others im 2020 because they want you to be helpless and frightened in the face of the violence and robbery theyre doing

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

wapo.st

There was a very strong “the machine built for eating people must get back to eating people as soon as possible” vibe coming from halls of power and platforms of influence.

the Mountain Goats@themountaingoats.bsky.social · 3d ago

I agree strongly with this -- in that difficult moment, the possibility of collective effort was conceivable. Not everybody felt it, but many did. I think the political class did not like this one bit.

Liberals still don't understand it is these systems themselves that are the cause of environmental destruction. They require destruction to function every day. If you don't change--ideally, eliminate--them, environmental problems will get worse indefinitely.

Laura@tutusntinyhats.bsky.social · 5d ago

Like, if your vision of a better future involves somehow solving climate change without transformative change to our global political and economic systems? Yeah, no thanks.

I agree strongly with this -- in that difficult moment, the possibility of collective effort was conceivable. Not everybody felt it, but many did. I think the political class did not like this one bit.

Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 4d ago

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

Sitting here in a n95 mask and realizing that this is my life from now on because nobody cares about public health.

The most infuriating thing about all the Fauci stuff this week is that everyone is past tensing a pandemic that is still happening. Covid is still disabling and killing people.

The hearing is stupid and self gratifying for the worst people, but so many people defending Fauci now will look down on anyone still wearing a mask in public, because they think COVID is over. COVID being over was a policy decision, not a scientific reality, and we will all continue to pay for it.

Reminder while fascists are prosecuting Fauci for suggesting they care about people getting sick and dying from COVID, Fauci cooperated with Biden to give everyone else permission to stop caring way too early, leading to it still running rampant and wrecking our organs and immune systems to this day

Reminder while fascists are prosecuting Fauci for suggesting they care about people getting sick and dying from COVID, Fauci cooperated with Biden to give everyone else permission to stop caring way too early, leading to it still running rampant and wrecking our organs and immune systems to this day

Started reading The Dreamthief's Daughter for some escapism, and was not expecting the last descendant of Elric of Melnibone recounting in painful detail the failures of German democratic society against rising fascism in Chapter 1.

It’s so fascinating to me that people who are arguing about this insist on calling it a slogan. It’s not a slogan. Abolition of the carceral state has never been a slogan. Nobody is running on it. Certainly nobody is using it as a slogan. To my perception that reflects a desire to minimize it

Slogans are downstream of tactics which are downstream of strategies which are downstream of causes which are downstream of principles. Maybe I’m wrong—it sure seems as if a lot of people start with slogans. Like starting a house with the shingles. I don’t know what they expect to achieve. Do they?

Propounding a cause isn’t about winning an election. It’s about expanding the scope of social imagination, which expands the scope of practical possibilities, which changes many other things, including but not limited to what positions and candidates (and even slogans!) can and cannot win elections.

Yes they’ve been very clear at the same time that they’ve lied about their intentions. But their (unjust) cause has always been clear, and it gave people something to which to respond. bsky.app/profile/perv...

Cliff Pervocracy@pervocracy.bsky.social · last wk.

Pretty sure *some* Republicans have said that they want to make abortion illegal, and nobody ran up to them like "shush you can't say that what about the moderates"

It’s not a slogan. It’s a cause. Abolishing slavery was a cause, and everything that’s written below about prison abolition was written about abolition of slavery. It’s good to have causes, if they are just.

@takethepith.bsky.social · last wk.

"Abolish Prisons" is a slogan that will immediately turn off 95% of people, regardless of the nuances in the literature. Far more harmful than helpful. The right clearly always wanted to make abortion illegal and punish women who got them. But they didn't make that their slogan! They knew better!

1) The Diary of Anne Frank shouldn't be copyrighted, and that it is is abhorrent and ghoulish. 2) Nothing should be copyrighted, intellectual property is one of the greatest evils of today. 3) Thank fucking god we've gone one more day without illegalizing VPNs. www.pcgamer.com/software/eu-...

'VPNs are lawful technical tools' according to EU judge

That's a welcome legal precedent.

pcgamer.com

Democracy is authoritarian and irrational. We should not be trying to win these dipshits over but eroding the mechanisms of power their votes impact. The issue isn't that these venal fools determine the direction of the murder machine, but that we allow the murder machine to function at all.

brent sewer socialist🚰🌹@therealbrent.bsky.social · 3w ago

Anyway going to preserve my sanity and end this here lmao The good news is these Trump 2024 voters have clearly soured on him and think his economy sucks. That’s good for 2026 and probably 2028. The bad news is they are genuine idiots and I just do not see how Democrats can ever reach them.

Judging from the number of laugh reacts, I doubt it will be taken seriously. If it gets even a few people to start again, I’d be thrilled, though.

Wow. Huffpost: we should be wearing face masks again, according to experts I didn’t actually read it because I was so stunned to see the headline my feed refreshed. Will anyone? Probably not. Selfishness is not a disease, but it does kill!

“I wrote a long extremely personal essay on the intersection of long covid, transness & desire called ‘The Crash: Gender, Crime, and Disability’ if anyone wants to check out the zine version.” ~ Gay Debord (@Parasite on fedi) a taste of a very well written piece👇🏽

The Crash: Gender, Crime, and Disability : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A zine about the intersection of long covid, transness, and desire. A criminal path forward.

archive.org

The US may soon enter a 13th wave. We will likely know on Friday the 17th. If no major increase by the 24th, the pandemic dynamic will have shifted. 🧵3/3

The US is estimated to experience 1.35 million SARS-CoV-2 infections/week during a "lull." Infections continue to cause excess deaths, the plurality being from cardiovascular events (e.g., tinyurl.com/swiss19). 🧵2/3

PMC COVlD Update, Week of Jul 13, 2026 (US) ▪️1 in 250 Americans estimated actively infectious ▪️8 hot spots ▪️Texas and Guam outbreaks persist ▪️Florida outbreak worsens ▪️California Bay Area now with high levels See Alt text for more detail. pmc19.com THREAD 🧵1/3