It’s a war. Do Democrats get that?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-treasury-opm-usaid-democrats-opposition/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Mother Jones @mother-jones-MotherJones2021
It’s a war. Do Democrats get that?
Trump and Musk have have initiated an all-out battle against the US government, the rule of law, and decency. Where's the opposition?Mother Jones
"Google removed a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance from its website this week."
techcrunch.com/2025/02/04/goog…
Google removes pledge to not use AI for weapons from website | TechCrunch
Google removed a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance from its website this week. The change was first spotted by Bloomberg. The companyMaxwell Zeff (TechCrunch)
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bsky.app/profile/ffrf.org/post/3lhelgn5vfs2v
Overall, three in ten Americans qualified as Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%), compared with two-thirds who qualify as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (29%). …
This is a compassionate way of looking at narcissism. It explains what it is and how people can get lost in it. It does not excuse its extremes, but it does encourage us all to better understand our own narcissism and what to do about it.
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OKAY. Some good news:
CheckMyAds is a group that targets companies which are advertising on fascist and other bad-faith media. You can find information about the group on Wikipedia.
I tried but was not able to talk them into joining Mastodon. However, when they joined Bluesky, I _was_ able to convince them to turn on the FediBridge, thus letting us follow them from here.
And so, here you are:
If this kind of activism is relevant to you, you may wish to follow them. They also have action-item mailing lists. So.
Enjoy?
5 February 1937 | Dutch Jewish girl, Judith Gross, was born in Amsterdam (left).
She was deported to #Auschwitz from Westerbork in February 1944. She was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection together with her younger sister Elly (right).
Democracy Matters reshared this.
Judith and Elly 🕯️🕯️🖤🖤
The latter shares a (nick) name with one of my grandmothers, who lived to be 95, like she should've too.
Never forget. Never again.
Aller vriment au lit ce coup ci, et #Bonne-Nuit
#Hubert-Felix-Thiefaine
Lorelei sébasto cha
les dingues et les paumés
Les dingues et les paumés jouent avec leurs manies
Dans leurs chambres blindées leurs fleurs sont carnivores
Et quand leurs monstres crient trop près de la sortie
Ils accouchent des scorpions et pleurent des mandragores
Et leurs aéroports se transforment en bunkers
À quatre heures du matin derrière un téléphone
Quand leurs voix qui s’appellent se changent en revolvers
Et s’invitent à calter en se gueulant come on
Les dingues et les paumés se cherchent sous la pluie
Et se font boire le sang de leurs visions perdues
Et dans leurs yeux-mescal masquant leur nostalgie
Ils voient se dérouler la fin d’une inconnue
Ils voient des rois-fantômes sur des flippers en ruine
Crachant l’amour-folie de leurs nuits-métropoles
Ils croient voir venir Dieu ils relisent Hölderlin
Et retombent dans leurs bras glacés de baby-doll
Les dingues et les paumés se traînent chez les Borgia
Suivis d’un vieil écho jouant du rock’n’roll
Puis s’enfoncent comme des rats dans leurs banlieues by night
Essayant d’accrocher un regard à leur khôl
Et lorsque leurs tumbas jouent à guichet fermé
Ils tournent dans un cachot avec la gueule en moins
Et sont comme les joueurs courant décapités
Ramasser leurs jetons chez les dealers du coin
Les dingues et les paumés s’arrachent leur placenta
Et se greffent un pavé à la place du cerveau
Puis s’offrent des mygales au bout d’un bazooka
En se faisant danser jusqu’au dernier mambo
Ce sont des loups frileux au bras d’une autre mort
Piétinant dans la boue les dernières fleurs du mal
Ils ont cru s’enivrer des chants de Maldoror
Et maint’nant ils s’écroulent dans leur ombre animale
Les dingues et les paumés sacrifient Don Quichotte
Sur l’hôtel enfumé de leurs fibres nerveuses
Puis ils disent à leurs reines en riant du boycott
La solitude n’est plus une maladie honteuse
Reprends tes walkyries pour tes valseurs maso
Mon cheval écorché m’appelle au fond d’un bar
Et cet ange qui me gueule viens chez moi mon salaud
M’invite à faire danser l’aiguille de mon radar
Denmark Will Let US Expand Its Greenland Footprint, Premier Says
Denmark is ready to allow the US to boost its presence in Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said as she seeks to curb an escalating diplomatic crisis with the Trump administration over the world’s largest island.BYTESEU (Bytes Europe)
ugh. drew devault's been up to his poison again.
as #lunduke reports, "threat of protest from a child porn enthusiast and extreme leftist"
(yyyyyyyeah, not my left). (... off associative orwellian misnomer conflation fly-in-ointment aside...)
(not that i am a fan of the fella he threatened protest, the reasoning given is noxious nonsense, when more valid reasons are available... reeks of nested psyops.).
#nsfa
not even gonna read far through the page about him... not wanting to hit any of the "cannot unsee".
anyways, why's fosdem lending power to such, doing their bidding? has his cluster A personality dissorder replete with machiavelianism too, and has somehow manipulated the right people to have his way?
crazy town.
Norway, Iceland, Antarctica, and More Surging Interest in Aurora Viewing as Solar Activity Boosts Global Tourism and Natural Wonders
Norway, Iceland, Antarctica, and More Surging Interest in Aurora Viewing as Solar Activity Boosts Global Tourism and Natural Wonders - Travel And Tour World Copyright © Travel And Tour World - All Rights ReservedBYTESEU (Bytes Europe)
Writing while listening to a webinar on Xeriscaping in the front range courtesy of Waterwise yards and Resource Central.
#colorado #denver #writerslife #writersofmastodon
A screenshot shows a computer screen displaying a writing software interface. The main window shows a manuscript titled "Welcome to Fury," with several chapters and sub-chapters listed in a sidebar. The main text area displays a scene from the manuscript, detailing a spaceship's approach to a landing site. A separate notes panel is visible on the right, containing a section labeled "Scene Notes" and a black box titled "7. APPROPRIATE MAINTENANCE".
Provided by @altbot, generated using Gemini
Google Ireland says a ‘world legal war’ is being waged by Russian arm
Tech giant is accused of a ‘lack of candour’ in US court battleGoogle Ireland has accused its arm in Russia of violating an order.BYTESEU (Bytes Europe)
Bees count from left to right just like some humans, apes and birds – new research
Picture writing the numbers 1 to 5 in a horizontal line, from smallest to largest. Where did you put 1? If you placed 1 on the left and 5 on the right, you share this preference with most humans.Humans are not alone in this preference. Some other primates, and even some birds, also order small-to-large quantities from left to right. Although, some animals do prefer to order quantities from right to left.
This is known as the mental number line, and it shows how brains typically organise information. But why do our brains do this?
To investigate how and why brains order numbers, it’s sometimes useful to step back in time. How did a common ancestor of humans and insects order information? To find out, we can compare the results of humans and bees: we last shared a common ancestor more than 600 million years ago.
Two recent studies on bees have revealed a lot about how tiny brains order numbers.
One study, conducted by a team in Europe, showed that bees prefer to order lower numbers on the left and higher numbers on the right, just like many humans. Our new study, led by Jung-Chun (Zaza) Kuo and her supervisory team, has explored how numbers and space interact in the bee brain.
Bees count from left to right just like some humans, apes and birds – new research
Did you know you have a ‘mental number line’, from smallest to largest? Turns out, so do bees.The Conversation
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Šlesers on transit: Latvia cannot afford to lose port industry
The transit industry is a major economic pillar that affects the country’s development and future. It provided significant contribution to the state budget just recently.BYTESEU (Bytes Europe)
This is like saying giving a murderer a knife is the same as going in with a machine gun yourself.
I know you're trying to be profound here, but in this case, it is exactly the same. Genocide Joe very reliably delivered WMD's to Israel during his term in full knowledge that it was a vastly unpopular decision, up until his last day. The news reported something like 80 people killed in the days between the signing of the ceasefire and Biden leaving office.
Whether it's the US or Israel doing the ~~squatting~~ "settling" in Gaza, the results are the same. Biden and Trump diverge in minor ways, but unfortunately Israel doesn't appear to be one of them.
I want to say I'm amazed at the shit fucking takes to justify awful choices that directly lead to a fascist overthrow in response to your comment. But these types love to justify their choices even though they directly lead to an open fascist takeover of our country because BoTh SiDeS bAd because they couldn't be bothered to engage in harm reduction and are ok with Gaza getting glassed and a probable trans genocide at home.
Fuck anyone who uses genocide to justify the situation where we now get more genocide, they never actually cared about it in the first place aside from talking points. Either that, or talk is more important than action. Either way, their opinions are meaningless to me as I help my trans homies survive.
Inaction is still a choice, so not voting means you're ok with this. Voting or not voting, you still made your choice in November and here we are.
People saying and persuading others to vote for murderers with blood on their hands are much bigger spineless coward with no morals.
That's the most bullshit argument to justify your shitty choices and is textbook DARVO. Not voting for the lesser murderer means we get an even bigger one who will actively increase the suffering, and it's hilarious to me how you're trying to pretend that voting to prevent more genocide is cowardly. But cowards love to pretend they're not cowards and blame others when they don't have the stones to make hard decisions. And lol, using morality to justify letting trump genocide people home and abroad shows you have none.
I am.
Biden's presidency was so similar to the prior one that millions of workers who'd voted previously didn't even see the point in going to the polls.
But I think issues are more complicated than that, because for example Democrats actively supported the genocide too, so it's not just 1 bad guy.
I don't know, definitely feels like the democrats passively supported, while Trump seems to want to participate.
Can't say the democrats were making the right choice, but Trumps stance is objectively worse.
We need systems where we vote for policies rather than parties.
Absolutely nothing will be fixed until we do.
If you call a cease fire, hostage release, and two state solution as "supported the genocide" then... I guess?
I wouldn't call it that though. You do you I guess.
WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said the U.S. would take over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and develop it economically
The scope of this statement is a shock, but the motivation that led to it, isn't. That said, I hate everything about this.
I'm not the first to bring this up, but it bears repeating. This is colonialism, plain and simple. That, in turn, is an outcome of unchecked capitalism. Practiced ideologically (i.e. as the guiding light in one's life), it holds up "exploitation at all costs" as a virtue. Second to that is "give your competition no quarter." Combined, that explains the current state of affairs.
We all may be used to thinking of colonialism as some thing that ended on one more more independence days in the last 300 years or so. In reality, the engines of commerce and industry that made that happen kept right on running. Since nation-state-sized real-estate deals like this don't come along very often anymore, these animals are quick to react and pounce before someone else figures out how to exploit the situation.
As an aside: the attitudes and values that enabled things like the US westward expansion, slavery, classism, eradication of indigenous peoples, environmental destruction in the pursuit of minerals, pollution and litter from energy extraction, etc., are still alive and well in the population. Being this kind of evil is insanely profitable under the right conditions, which confers an outsized advantage to reproduction and social influence. Which is to say that it's not the ideology of capitalism that propels these values to stay with us, but rather the other way around. It's as though those colonists with exploitation in their hearts are still very much with us, and that's something to keep an eye on.
This is colonialism, plain and simple
This is gangsterism, plain and simple
By the way, Trump recently asked Ukraine for rare earth elements, lol
People like you, are why I moved away.
Sure you could just be another Russian troll.
But I knew way too many fucking idiots like you in real life too years ago as to know there's a good chance that you're not a troll.
The only consolidation I have is that dumbasses like you will suffer along with the rest, even if not as much as you deserve compared to those who knew better.
What is being done is systematically gutting and disabling key government departments and seizing control over the treasury and hiring process, without any legal basis.
People should be free to vote outside the two party system while still counting their votes against the Republicans.
Democrats made such a situation inevitable by keeping 3rd parties from participating in the electoral process on a even playing field in states they control. Who could say no to having more then one chance to beat the Republicans? The Democratic Party alongside the republicans.
Both parties are not the same, but why did they both want the same mathematically flawed voting system?
::: spoiler Videos on Electoral Reform
(What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
:::
Democrats dont get to raise the gates of the electoral castle, declare themselves the sole and only defender of this countries liberty, and also get to escape 100% of the blame for when that plan goes to shit eventually.
The United States of America is more important then the Democratic Party. Why weren't they acting like it? Why was the DNC putting their party's needs of easy elections and safe seats over the needs of the country?
- YouTube
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.www.youtube.com
I would like to point out however, the logic of "The United States of America is more important then the Democratic Party" could be applied in the same way to "The United States of America is more important than risking Trump to be in office to dismantle it", no?
You could have stopped Biden at any time since October 2023
How?
The US shouldn’t be considered a single country. The EU has way more in common between it’s members and acts more like one country than the US.
Breaking it up in 50 different states is probably gonna cause a war I see that.
Slowly the US (which has been a terrible country for a lot of people) is dying and pulling others down. The US has pushed it’s bullshit into way to many countries it is not even funny.
Inaction is still a choice, so not voting means you’re ok with this. Voting or not voting, you still made your choice in November and here we are.
The choice not to support a rigged as fuck system that needs to go for the sake of humanity. You are not supposed to vote for any murderer of any scale under any circumstances. When the choice is between two murderers it's time for plan B
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operatio…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Glo…
Most governments around the world are ruled by villains consumed by greed and lust of power. If you support and fuel a genocide you are bad on pairs as nazi regardless of your country or political agenda. The government of israel by definition can't be nazi but they are committing crimes as the nazi were.
Electoral Fetishism - CounterPunch.org
Our word "elect" comes from the latin eligere meaning to pick out or choose. Bourgeois democracy celebrates the etymological sense of this wordDan Corjescu (CounterPunch.org)
I mostly agree.
Also, I live in the US.
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still way less difficult holding your nose and voting than overthrowing fascism later
though being one vote away from it to begin with, the cracks were fairly large
I’m unfortunately stuck with him.
Unfortunately we're all stuck with him. US politics/economy leaks out into every other country's politics/economy.
Don’t try to spin logic.
Some very strong pot kettle black energy here.
I feel like Trump's campaign speed was like one of the early seasons of 24, where so much is happening that the "turning Gaza into a beach resort" subplot must have drowned.
Pre-election Danish news media were mostly covering the Harris roller-coaster, and post-election we've all been a little preoccupied with being threatened by our closest ally.
They don't care. The blue conservatives wanted the electoral hostage situation inherrent with First-past-the-post voting.
Now they want to pin the fallout of this policy of keeping 3rd parties out of the electoral process on people not represented in government.
Blue MAGA
Biden had as much choice as Trump does now - that is to say, if he or any other Democrat actually didn’t want the genocide to continue they could have taken a page from the Republican handbook and bent the government to their purpose
They didn't have to bend anything. We have laws on the books about sending arms and bombs to states intending to use them for targeting civilians. Just enforce the law
Your previous comments don't address your ridiculous assertion that "if you didn't vote then you voted".
Why don't you just admit that that was very stupid phrasing and back down? You were wrong. You were emotional. You exaggerated. Why do you insist on doubling down on saying something so stupid?
Muse
in reply to Muse • • •aga.
in reply to Muse • • •Muse likes this.