I’m using a fake Facebook account to get news about the flood from the county and the regional water management organization. I hate fucking Facebook and shuttered my real account ages ago.
It pisses me off that public organizations make you use Facebook to keep up with things. It sucks that x-Twitter is also in that mix, but here we are.
Anyhoo, even with the scant information I provided to create the page, the evil algorithm offers enticing suggestions of pages to explore. I took the bait on a page called Abandoned Florida, which features fascinating stories and photos about derelict homes and properties.
These ruins were part of a hotel and sanitarium at Suwannee Springs. Early hucksters claimed the mineral springs could cure everything from malaria to “female troubles.” I wish it were true!
The state has been overrun by a new breed of hucksters. What they’re selling is a heap worse than fake cures for health ills: It’s poison for the soul. The good news is someday their works will lie in ruins too.
Open thread.
On The Road – swiftfox – Tanzania Safari Part 6 – Zanzibar
Elizabelle
Good morning, Betty. I am glad every time I see you have put up a post.
Baud
Agree about Facebook and Twitter.
Lots of foreign local businesses rely on Facebook, basically as a replacement for having their own website.
NotMax
Accidentally put in a thread downstairs.
Y’know, I think maybe Ricky Ricardo summed it up best.
;)
raven
I wonder if that building is made of tabby?
MazeDancer
Some local businesses use FaceBook to post daily menus or business hours. Frotunately, one doesn’t have to have an FB account to view theirs.
Layer8Problem
I occasionally get dragged by my partner about having abandoned Facebook since so much local stuff lands on it, some of it potentially useful or informative. I decided long ago I didn’t want to work at curating what it showed me and I sure as hell hate the thought that I’m doing data entry for them and their purposes.
Spanky
@raven: It’s a cathouse?
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
Me too 😁
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Maybe. I took it for limestone rock. Caught any more huge fish lately?
Layer8Problem
@rikyrah: Hiya!
raven
@Spanky:Tabby is a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime, then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells.[1] Tabby was used by early Spanish settlers in present-day Florida, then by British colonists primarily in coastal South Carolina and Georgia.[1] It is a man-made analogue of coquina, a naturally-occurring sedimentary rock derived from shells and also used for building.[2]
NotMax
5 Abandoned and Creepy Parts of Disney World.
raven
@Betty Cracker: The Kings cooperated. We’re headed to 30a Sunday, hoping Sara stay away.
raven
Tabby cement is a building material used by enslaved Gullah Geechee people in Colonial America to construct homes, roads, and other structures
sab
@raven: I remember seeing it in my Florida childhood, but I never knew what it was called. Back in the 1960s it was still around in older buildings.
ETA I may be remembering, but I think there was a lot of it around St. Augustine.
Raven
@sab: I think so. Do you know about American Beach?
sab
I went to see Florida native Reginald Mobley in concert last night. He is an amazing countertenor (he sings in the alto voice range). The program was mostly Baroque, with some spirituals at the end. If any of you ever get a chance to see him in concert jump at it.
sab
@Raven: No. I just googled it. Wow.
ETA When I was a child near Daytona, Black people were not allowed on the public beaches.
Raven
@sab: I was lucky enough to meet “Beach Lady”!
https://www.nps.gov/people/mavynee-beach-lady-betsch.htm
WereBear
@NotMax: Lately I hear that is all of them.
Layer8Problem
@NotMax: Speaking of abandoned, we had a local historical society presentation on Freedomland the other week. My partner had an interest in the talk having visited it with the family. Try and find any of that now. For the non-New York folks, it was a theme park that came and went stupid fast in the early 1960s.
Chris Johnson
For me it’s not because Twitter is so completely enemy territory that I can’t imagine relying on it for anything, however innocuous.
I had a whole THING this morning where I stumbled across something. It looks very much to me like the Trump people are staging an attack on the New York Times, some huge Putinesque lawsuit. I was of course outraged and nearly flipped out in hyper-posting until I caught myself and pulled back.
Outraged, because it appears very much to me like this is purely reputation laundering, complete with seeding the ground with ‘well, now we HAVE to trust the NYT, because to fail to side with them over this is like attacking journalism!’. Much like Trump’s assassination attempt, whatever the hell THAT was.
I was outraged when I saw people feeding in that ‘now we HAVE to trust the NYT’ message, and the whole time I was most definitely certain that they had picked a side and were so fully on that side as to be one of the strongest weapons that side had… except they were SO in the tank that they fully burned their reputation doing it.
And so now we all see a convenient ‘attack’ trotted out, to show that oh hey, the NYT of all people were trustworthy all along, because how could their benefactors EVER stage-manage a pretend attack on them to salvage their obliterated reputation among stupid people? How could that EVER happen? That would be like… lying! O_O
It would be as if Tim Pool turned out not to be a centrist after all, but was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by literal Russia to do what he does. Oh, wait, that is what happened. Coincidence, I’m sure.
I get so mad. I’m gonna have to back off and focus on the positive things I do. Seeing people falling for it and even hypothetically rep-washing the NYT… it’s as bad as seeking out Trump news. Yikes on bikes.
If I get too mad about it, I sound too mad and it’s less effective…
WereBear
@Layer8Problem: It was a magic place for my Brooklyn-born first husband.
NotMax
Trivia:
A Florida landmark is featured in the sexploitation flick Nude on the Moon.
;0
sab
@sab: We had an old old hotel in Ormond called the Cocina that was probably tabby. It was huge and pink. I doubt if it is still aound. A local landmark that we were very proud of.
WereBear
@Chris Johnson: Like Trump, businesses won’t have to deliver anything for the money. Like the tasteless fruit that is all I can find. I make smoothies with jam because I don’t want to forget what “strawberry” is supposed to taste like.
I’ve noticed how they watered down publishing and movie-making and music along with the chicken and that vitamin water they call nut-milk.
I mean, you’d think the name would turn people off…
Good luck complaining.
Good luck finding a human to complain to.
geg6
@NotMax:
My niece’s best friend just returned to the ‘Burgh after two years working at Disney World, one in their college program and another after they asked her stay after graduation. She has all kinds of tales about wild and weird hidey holes that only employees know. She, however, abhorred living in FL, so she’s back and just got a very nice job offer with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. She’s over the moon. I’m going to see “MJ” with her (and my niece and sister) in a couple of weeks. I’ll see if I can get her tell me some juicy stories and, hopefully, if I can remember them, I’ll report back.
NotMax
Bad linky above. Fix.
Trivia:
A Florida landmark is featured n the sexploitation flick Nude on the Moon.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
The NYT has the money to take care of itself, and if Trump destroys them, The Onion can buy their assets in bankruptcy.
geg6
@Baud:
😆😆😆
geg6
@Chris Johnson:
FTFNYT.
Princess
I don’t know if any of you find poetry helpful but I found this in my FB memories this morning from 2016
THE LOW ROAD
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
-Marge Piercy
NotMax
Crap on toast. One more time.
Trivia:
A Florida landmark is featured n the sexploitation flick Nude on the Moon.
sab
@Princess: Thank you.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Whoa, they sure did! Here’s hoping that damn storm fizzles. I can’t even bear to think about it!
Mnitabach
Best that I can tell, the (vast?) majority of the images on “Abandoned Whatever” facebook pages are AI-generated fakes. Dunno abt this particular one tho.
JMG
In other social media news, NYC Mayor Adams has ordered city departments to set up Bluesky accounts, due to employee complaints about TwitterX promoting racism and Nazis in their feeds.
Baud
@JMG:
Whoa. First thing he’s done that I’ve approved of.
Suzanne
I will likely hold onto my Facebook account, but post there much less.
I am on Bluesky, but annoyed by the lack of a tablet app. And I don’t like that there isn’t a way to sort photos.
The thrust of the “news” seems to be that “the Resistance” is not really materializing this time. On one level, I worry about capitulation. OTOH, I also look to cost/benefit analysis, and I’m not sure it was a good use of resources and time.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Speaking of abandoned buildings, you’ve probably noticed this one locally: heading north out of Prince Fred on Route 2, well past the light at the hospital but before the road heads downhill towards the light at Plum Point Road, on the right (east) side of the road, set back a ways, there’s what looks like it must’ve been a handsome old house, but has gotten increasingly overgrown over the years.
I’ve long wondered what the story about that house was, but never bothered to try to find out. Fifteen or twenty years ago, maybe even more recently than that, it probably could have been rescued and fixed up, but I reckon it’s too late for that now, sadly.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: Dude, I trust them as much as I trust your pants!
No, wait. Less, way less.
Your pants are not collaborators with the regime. I’m sure wherever they are, they’re living their best life. :D
Layer8Problem
@Suzanne: “The thrust of the ‘news’ seems to be that ‘the Resistance’ is not really materializing this time.”
What, on the order of “Where are you people, you’re supposed to be giving us stuff to write about for the both-sidesing!”? Screw them, they collaborated, let them stew watching the results of their work.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: My sister, kiddo and I went to the Women’s March in DC after 2016. I felt like I had to be there, and while I don’t know that it had a meaningful political impact, I’m glad I went. It gave me hope and motivation in a dark time.
Feels different now. In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote and eked out a win after a whole flock of black swans landed. This feels less like a fluke and more like a confirmation that our national experiment is a failure.
Baud
@Layer8Problem:
“Liberals no longer willing to let nation free ride on their efforts.”
/Headlines they won’t print
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Elizabelle:@rikyrah:
Ditto both of you
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Correct.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed.
The risk profile also feels different this time. More severe. That’s why I am narrowing my focus from here.
Suzanne
@Baud:
I think of it more like, “Liberals putting their own oxygen masks on first”.
Chris Johnson
@Suzanne: That’s actually really reassuring to me, though it’s a weird thing to say.
Right now I think the regime desperately, desperately needs ‘the Resistance’ to jump around being big noisy radicals. If they’re deprived of that, all they have left is to live up to their many positive promises they made to the normies, and they’re super not ready to do anything like that.
Reminds me a little bit of my recovery network (which, since staying clean has to come before ALL other things and since our program and traditions has language explicitly forbidding politics, sexuality etc. being a dividing factor, my recovery network is strong and committed so long as we’re true to our principles)
The way our service structure works is, it’s an inverted pyramid. The MOST important part is one addict helping another. The next step, that’s the home group. As you go DOWN the pyramid (not up), you get delegates and gathering together the groups into larger areas and regions, and then World. World’s exciting, but anything they do has to be passed up the service structure to get the votes of all the home groups.
It’s like that. Your local community is what matters right now, and your principles. Living your principles. Being good.
‘the Resistance’ being a total fizzle is a good sign that efforts to goad people into being a good scapegoat and justifying a massive tyrannical ‘protection’ show, are likewise a total fizzle. I could’ve predicted that. Lefties and libs are better at community building, at planning, at cooperating, than they are at building a creepy voltron of true believers waging a conspiracy war.
It’s the RIGHT that are good at that, and so it’s the right which will be the regime’s downfall, in the event that the Trump regime turns out to be astonishingly bad at making anything actually great.
Shocking, I know. It is just possible that Trump is an asshole and sucks at everything. Like all his would-be picks for things, because they’re actually meant to make everything suck, not make it great.
We’ve got work to do patiently building shelter as these feckless assholes try to make an assault on us look optically good to normies.
espierce
@raven:
That first run by a King sounds like a sheet ripping.
Excellent catch!
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
I agree. We are a distraction that they rely on.
JeanneT
That is a very useful thought!!
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: Oh, our national experiment is still the best way to run a giant multicultural nation and the economic engine of the world.
This doesn’t in any way disprove that, and it doesn’t stop it from still being the best way in future.
It’s like saying a wonderful engine isn’t a wonderful engine if you smash it to bits. Well DUH. Nobody ever said the thing works if you go to great lengths to break it! The national experiment is 100% proven and I’m not sure it’ll ever be topped, certainly not by autocracies and tyrants. You have to break it SO MUCH to even slow it down. Breaking it does not count.
Baud
Everyone is sharing that very cool video out of New Zealand and demanding Dems do something similar. But that’s exactly the kind of thing Trump would love.
TBone
@Baud: I’m not making any noises in public yet, only here at BJ. Covert resistance is the best resistance.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Yep.
Baud
@TBone:
On BJ, no one can hear you scream.
Ksmiami
@Betty Cracker: that’s where I am. Why fight the collapse? Let it redound to the people who voted for it. I’ll wait until measles or something wipes out their ranks.
TBone
@MazeDancer: those are the businesses I try to avoid. We have many here in my locale.
Jeffg166
@Betty Cracker:
I told my 89 year old neighbor I hoped he lives long enough to see just what he voted for.
I haven’t heard from him since.
TBone
Off to the hairdresser to get gay solar panels church-ready.
TBone
@Jeffg166: 😆
TBone
@Baud: exactly!
stinger
@sab:
Reginald Mobley! I hear him on NPR’s Sunday Baroque all the time. Great voice.
Raven
@espierce: It was funny, the small lizard fish were harder to land!
VeniceRiley
https://x.com/ClimateBen/status/1857140415956172850?t=1_yqJPf9UXPowDddNsB0pg&s=19
Important thread on plankton not adapting to warming.
prostratedragon
“Les Folies d’Espagne,” Chris Bos
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just had to close the door to my office. Mr DAW is watching last night’s Daily Show. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t change things now.
Chris Johnson
@TBone: I mean there’s literally no place to hide but it’s about what I said. Local community, being good, protecting folks that are clearly targeted as scapegoats. I’ve mentioned how I’m reaching out to the Episcopal church, which I got raised in, so many years ago.
The world is not a series of conspiracies and death battles. Somebody’s gotta pick the crops, fix the roofs, carry the water. The people seizing power seem not to believe it, and want to wreck everything… as if THAT’S what people actually want.
LOL nope.
So ‘covert resistance’, I mean don’t even worry about it. There is more than enough positive to do and there doesn’t have to be anything covert about it.
Put it another way. This regime NEEDS you to actually be secretly plotting and scheming to hurt all the good people. If instead you’re good people, which we ARE and it’s their side that has a lot of trouble with the concept, then they’re supposed to actually protect you and make things great for you.
Bets on how well they can pretend to do that, even with the full support of all the entirely captured and controlled media outlets? While, I might add, they carry out the real instructions of ruining all our shit and pretending they’re not doing THAT?
Stevie Wonder’s ‘Big Brother’ is a great song, and it ends ‘You’ve killed all our leaders, I don’t even have to do nothin’ to you: you’ll cause your own country to fall’.
How much more this is true, when it’s actually a war of conquest and diminishment.
Not in my backyard. I can continue to hold up the good things even in the face of evil ascendant. I’ll just try to stay cool and remember what reality is: we’re so many years post-reality at this stage, but it has a tendency of setting in.
I get to stick to positive noise combined with reality checks. So do we all. Remember what the Trump regime is, the sanewashing has only just begun.
lowtechcyclist
Back in the day, a bunch of us from my old online community had a thriving group on LiveJournal. When we adopted the kiddo, spare time disappeared for awhile, and when I finally checked back in, everyone had migrated to Facebook.
I tried a few times over the years to like Facebook, but it just never worked out for me. And the last time I tried, I noticed that if I got in an argument about something with a friend of a friend, Facebook wouldn’t let it drop off over time, it would keep their last post right up there. I didn’t know about the algorithm back then, but there was no question that it was actively encouraging discord. And that got me to stop using it more or less permanently, and left me with a permanent loathing of the site.
Fortunately, my county and the local towns all have viable websites, and don’t expect you to check Facebook for any news.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My wife flew back to the Women’s March while I went to STL (and missed meeting up with a bunch of folks from here dammit). And yeah, it was inspiring but ultimately frustrating because Here. We. Are.
And yet, in my many circles, I see the same kind of steely determination now. Okay, it’s quiet thus far but obviously the same outrage (okay more outrage) is still there. Perhaps a little less “showy” but now in that pick-yourself-off-dust-yourself-off-and-still-work-like-mad effort to not watch the national experiment go down the toilet. It’s heartening to see some Dem leaders I’ve never been thrilled with surprise me in the steps they’re taking to make (R)’s rue the day “states rights” became one of their calling cards: NOT LIKE THAT!!
As has been pointed out here the last couple of days as vote counts continue to meander in and we get a fuller picture of what happened. It tells us nothing we didn’t already know in terms of numbers and that it’s not all that different than 2020.
Okay, it does re-confirm that we are a massively divided country but damned if I’m gonna let those clowns vision of ‘Murka be the one that ultimately prevails.
So it’s time to implement a 10,000 marbles strategy (let’s see if anybody gets the reference) on a national scale.
Chris Johnson
@Jeffg166: I hope that too! Because we will need him back, if he can ever find reality again.
MattF
Re: Florida, no one has mentioned Carl Hiaasen, so I will. I’m reading his Skink novels, in which ex-Florida governor Skink, who now lives on roadkill and has an all-too-accurate understanding of his fellow Floridians, sometimes saves the day. Good reads.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris Johnson:
Agreed. Kinda like how the lefty orgs passed the word to stay the hell away from the Capitol on 1/6/21. Any visible action will be them, not us.
Layer8Problem
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I wonder how Entertaining Voice of Sanity Jon Stewart is doing given what’s happened since he was last on. There’s probably tons of humor in all of this mishegoss.
Layer8Problem
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I say National Lampoon’s Animal House.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: Dunno.
I too was at the Women’s March in DC. It was huge and had all kinds of speakers. (Michael Moore was, as usual, tone-deaf… :-/)
IIRC, Indivisible and Run For Something got a big boost/started there.
Run For Something has had a pretty decent impact in School Board and Local and maybe some State races.
It’s a slog. It’s always a slog. But people are continuing to be in the trenches and are continuing doing the work.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WereBear
@Baud: After all, they are “” this close to parody already.
WereBear
I was raised in backwoods places, so whatever my actual age, I was raised like it was a hundred years ago. WIth faster cars.
Democrats ran the most incredible bleeding heart liberal campaign of my lifetime and it took crazy billionaire money and decades of propaganda in willing ears to win by a 1%.
WE are the living part of the country. It may be our responsibility… but we sure don’t want THEM to do it.
That is why were are here. Not the criminal or the defensive or the lazy minds…
but the ones who do care. That will get us up in the morning, every time.
And they don’t have that.
TBone
@Chris Johnson: see my comment #63. I’m going back to church on Sunday. Not my little, old, country church. Not my Ukrainian-filled DelCo church. A new to me Episcopalian church right down the road.
And I’m still covertly plotting random acts of kindness as well as small sabotage where necessary.
I am on your team and thank you for your encouragement!
Yesterday, I pulled a 1902 hardback of Robert G. Ingersoll lectures out of my Ancestor Treasure Box!
lowtechcyclist
@Chris Johnson:
Back in 2017, falling for the “we’ve got to support our media due to Trump,” I bought a one-year subscription to the FTFNYT. I let it lapse at the end of that year, and they haven’t seen a dime from me since.
After all they’ve done to normalize that bastard, I don’t give a damn if the Trumpists really are attacking them. They’ve brought it on themselves and they’re on their own.
MattF
Some news about X/Twitter. FWIW, I’ve moved to BlueSky, despite the odor of techbro.
Baud
@WereBear: We shouldn’t erase ourselves. But we should recognize that we’re not some majority that would win big if only Dems got their messaging right or moved slightly to the left or the right, as the pundits and social media influencers seem to want to believe.
WereBear
@Jeffg166: See? They KNOW.
Back when Twitter, not X, was operational, a woman raised in a white supremacy cult made that point over and over.
They like lying to people. They do it all the time. They lie to themselves.
They wanted to fly their butthurt flag and be taken care of by liberals. The hate got ahead of them.
Thing is, you think we are feeling fear? Watch them as realization trickles in that they have gotten themselves into a big mess, and now that Mom isn’t letting them come over any more, who will front their bail money?
Maybe being kind and patient with their blatant embrace of a dream world should not have yielded to “but you are always saying you’re tolerant, why can’t you tolerate me?”
AM in NC
@Suzanne: Yep, none of my friends who went to DC last time are interested this time. We are focusing on more local stuff and figuring out how to fuck their MAGA shit up in concrete ways to limit their power. Also on building capacity for our side in the future. Also on mitigating the very real damage these Christofascist assholes are going to do to so many people.
We used the metaphorical bullhorn. Now we’re shifting to the metaphorical stiletto.
The women I know are very serious about this. We aren’t giving up. We are shifting focus.
Nelle
@Baud: And it was so valuable that “we” didn’t show up on Jan. 6. It laid bare who was doing what.
BellyCat
Brilliant! Wish I had seen this before telling my 88 year old mother what I thought about her Trump vote.
WereBear
@MattF: Not in this thread, but in others. Favorite Florida novelist evah because he gets it.
The good, and the bad.
TBone
@AM in NC: come sit by me, please!
Nelle
@TBone: Let’s list those small acts of kindness here. Suggestions from everyone? Get the quiet ball of kindness, kindly rolling in the background.
Not sure if the husband will go along with this, but our Thanksgiving plans just collapsed. Favorite holiday of the year. I’m thinking of calling the local college to see if they have students (particularly international ones) stranded here. We did that when we lived near a large university. One year, I looked around the table and saw atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish. Oh, a scattering of nominal Christians, too. I have to gauge my old lady energy first.
When we lived in NZ, my son depended on the kindness of strangers for his holidays back in the States.
TBone
Waiting for hairdresser to unlock the door music 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v31wwyteRqo
Indigo eyes for Ozark
TBone
@Nelle: I will list some soon. Hairdresser just unlocked the front door.
The truffle
Gonna keep playing Jon Stewart’s clips for a while. Especially as he tells his audience, “This is not the end. It will pass.”
There go two miscreants
@Raven:
Thanks for the link. Very interesting person and place!
Salty Sam
If you aren’t familiar with it, look up “The Paradox of Tolerance”.
ETA- someone much smarter than I will have to provide a counter to that paradox. It is beyond me.
Elizabelle
@MattF: I love Carl Hiassen! Have not read the Skink novels (maybe one), but Carl is an astute observer. The best satirists and comedians always are.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: The most irritating fucking thing in the wake of this catastrophe is how it confirmed so many people’s preexisting theory of the case, and they can’t shut up about how if only we’d listened to them, things would be different or we would have foreseen the outcome blah blah blah. I don’t exempt myself from this; I’ve got my priors too. But I’m trying to keep that shit to myself as much as possible.
Nancy
@raven:
Learning from informed sources. Always a good way to start the day. Good morning all.
Starfish
@Suzanne: This feels true. Last time, there were a bunch of mobilized people and no real message. This time, it is just a bunch of depressed people.
I do like that some people turned out to kill that house bill that would give Trump power to defund non-profits that he labeled as terrorist organizations.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: It is way too soon after the election for us to really sort anything out. All the facts aren’t in yet and emotions are too raw. Anyone who claims to know why is either fooling themselves or try to fool others. It’s one of the reasons I have been pushing back at the narratives that it was Biden’s fault or that Harris didn’t emphasize whatever enough.* The only thing that is pretty clear is that white people did not cover themselves in glory.
*Quite frankly, that has probably been mistake in the current environment.
Starfish
@NotMax: Sometimes, it is too early in the morning for the facts I learn on this blog.
The Truffle
There is a heartening thing: Swing Left and other groups are already planning.
A 1 percent difference means there is a razor thing majority that voted for this. It still is horrible but the country remains divided just as we figured.
Ramalama
@Princess: Yes the poem has helped me this morning. Thanks.
Suzanne
@AM in NC:
Yes, agreed.
An anecdote: my neighborhood is very Dem-heavy. Historically a working-class neighborhood with a lot of Italians and Poles, in recent years getting more Latinos and Arabs. Our neighborhood page is the usual drama. Someone posted after the election that she wanted to start a neighborhood Democrats group. So, of course, some idiot made some comment about “Wouldn’t it be better to listen to everybody and not just Democrats?”.
I’m like….. NOPE. I genuinely do try to listen and will even steelman some of their arguments when I think they’re not completely full of shit (see my discussion yesterday about how I do believe that the economy is not working well for a lot of people as an example). But, like…. NOPE. Not platforming GOP nonsense.
And, I’m sorry, a shitty media environment is not a good excuse for their dumbness and moral vacancy. It doesn’t help them make better choices, but it isn’t the root cause of those choices. We all live in the same country and we all have smartphones and access to better information, and they choose poorly. That’s on them, and I can’t really be chuffed to save them from it. My oxygen mask on first.
Starfish
@lowtechcyclist: A lot of LiveJournal communities died because most people don’t keep much in public blogs anymore. Dreamwidth replaced some of LiveJournal, but the communities are not as great as they were.
Reddit still seems to have some interesting communities.
A lot of this selection between Facebook and other stuff is not a real choice because the algorithm has decided that hiding the thing that you are there for is the path to greatest profitability.
I am not in the market for “a community designed to tear the community apart.”
TBone
Starter pack for random acts of kindness:
Compliment strangers while smiling broadly.
Pick up litter.
Check in on elderly neighbors no matter their politics.
Hold the door open for people. Let someone go in front of you at checkout.
Dance in inappropriate places, even if it’s just a little wiggle.
Wear uplifting clothing that people love (I have a Snoopy & Woodstock on the doghouse with a wreath of oak leaves sweatshirt on today).
I have much more to add. WQSU was playing this song during my composing! 🎶
https://youtu.be/5nNyepzXUlg?si=z554XGFp4BPJHYZ8
Spanish Moss
@MattF: I love Hiaasen! Did you know that they made Bad Monkey into a limited series? We watched it recently and really enjoyed it.
Starfish
@TBone: I saw this yard sign while walking through the neighborhood the other day, and I think you might like it. But I am about here with my political opinions.
The Truffle
Maybe also get involved in Swing Left or a similar group?
Nancy
@Princess: Thank you for posting the poem. You reminded me of a Marge Piercy novel. I don’t have time to find it right now since I’m “working” ie: reading Balloon-Juice instead of.
In the novel Piercy expressed these sentiments in the words of experienced women who had organized in the past. Their younger friends were discouraged and needed to be shown as well as told. I hope someone has time to look on her website if interested in more practical inspiration.
TBone
@TBone: someone at the supermarket always needs assistance! Reach the top shelf item for someone who can’t!
Nancy
@Suzanne:
Yup.
TBone
@Starfish: ❤️ of course I love that Pennsylvania proud! One of my more distant neighbors has such a sign permanently posted under a small apple tree on a corner down the road apiece. Some fucker just crashed his car into the apple tree yesterday overnight! No matter, the tree will LIVE with its new scar! There were tree specialists hired to be sure of it.
😆 for Vanilla Ice!
TBone
@Princess: thank you, I had forgotten about that one. I’m sending it out across the nation today.
DougL
@Betty Cracker:
Couldn’t agree more with your comment at #99. Most are just loudly announcing how their priors have been confirmed. For me, the only prior confirmed is that despite my attempts to squash any tendency toward optimism or idealism when it comes to politics, I still have a willingness to believe a better world is possible. And of course, I suffer all the consequences of having that belief. But on everything else about what to do next politically, I’m very much in listening mode atm.
ETA: that’s why I appreciate the discussions on BJ so much!
Nancy
@Nelle:
Acts of kindness given to me:
I struggle physically while waiting for a hip replacement.
A young woman offered to pulling my rolling file cart so I could manage my cane and the door.
As I worked to untangle a shopping cart from the corral, a young man came up behind me and said “I got ya.” He retrieved a cart for me.
TBone
@Chris Johnson: among friends, there is no such thing as “too mad.”
Madcap!
espierce
@Raven: those guys are a nuisance when trolling. I’m on the West coast near Clearwater and with our relatively shallow waters, it’s a sign that the planer is running too deep.
Gloria DryGarden
@Princess: thank you. I used to read her novels, loved her stories
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I tried Colbert on YouTube last night. Couldn’t get through 10 min clip. Nope.
frosty
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ms F just told me she’s going to maintain her news bubble for four years. That means I can’t read her all the best comments from everyone here – just the non-political ones. And of course, BC’s finest invective.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: You know, the votes are still being tabulated but this election was truly razor thin. I’m doing this from memory but pretty sure Harris got more votes in WI, NC, GA, and NV than Biden 2020 (and more than any other prez candidate in history in those states except for Trump 2024). Margins in the other swing states were exceedingly small again except for AZ. Trump’s overall vote share is under 50% now. That Harris mostly held her own where she campaigned tells me that background misinformation & propaganda work & that deck is stacked for the R’s & conservatives.
Obviously that’s small consolation considering he won, but all this talk about mandates is total bullshit. And no, I have no freaking clue how to get disconnected Americans back to paying attention & caring & voting. I tend to believe that’s just a societal artifact of the internet & social media & our culture but not necessarily a sign the entire country has shifted MAGA. Hell, it appears to me a substantial portion of Trump voters didn’t even know what he said he’d do if he got elected. They just wanted change & something new (particularly after the pandemic) and that appears to also have been the case in every developed nation where an election has occurred in the past couple years.
I don’t know what to expect via a vis all these craptastic cabinet nominees (I did call my 2 R senators & told them “advise & consent” is a power they have and they should definitely use it on some of these jokers—that what happens will be partly their legacy but neither has much of a spine) or what kind of public response will occur when awful policies take effect but let’s no surrender in advance.
Edited to add: Amanda Litman of Run for Something did just announce 9000 folks have signed up w/ them to run for various offices since Election Day. Seems like there is a lot of energy out there perhaps manifesting a little differently than 2016.
leeleeFL
@Layer8Problem:went there when I was maybe 13-14. Loved it. My older cousin, not really my cousin, was a huge crush of mine and we spent the whole day and night with his sister and her boyfriend. Loved it, still a great memory.
Harry
Beautiful @Betty. Both the picture and the words. Thank you.
The Truffle
@Marcopolo: That…sounds pretty cool actually. I keep meaning to donate to Run for Something.