I am pretty tired and wiped out. I have been having a lot of thoughts the past few days, way too fucking many, to be exact. I bet some days I have more thoughts by noon than most people have all week. I am by no means bragging about this- I am not saying these are quality thoughts- in fact quite the opposite. Most of the them are rather vile and stupid. Thoughts that even I, someone with little filter, don’t feel sharing. I’ll just tuck them down in my stomach with the rest of the stuff we keep down there that we don’t even tell the therapist about.
One of my thoughts yesterday, though, was that in my entire life, and I mean from the day I was born until now, in every story I have heard, poem, book, comic book I have read, every play, show, or movie I have been to, every piece of art and movie poster I have ever seen, in every single one of them with no exception that I can think of, the heavily armed unidentified masked guys murdering and raping and abusing civilians were the bad guys. Again, without exception.
And I am never gonna unlearn that unanimously taught lesson. Ever.
Also, this shirt was very popular today in WV:
Fuck ’em all.
WTFGhost
I have the same issue when neuro pain is bad. My brain just jumps tracks, and can come up with all kinds of nonsense. If your brain makes up some vile nonsense, and you know it’s vile nonsense, that’s *good*. It’s when you think “since I thought it ,it must be reasonable” that you need to worry.
ETA: it might help your therapist to know you have a collection of vile thoughts you’d never share, because you know they’re vile nonsense.
Salty Sam
Still are.
tobie
I feel like I’m barging into this thread. If anyone’s interested, the ACLU is holding an event right now, “Know your rights,” for the No Kings Rallies coming up on Oct 18!
act.aclu.org/a/no-kings-kyr-eng1
jowriter
I don’t argue with those folks John Brown would have shot, either. To me, he had vision that encompassed our times. He understood the evil of slavers, and went to his death to defend the equality of all humanity. I stood on the place of his hanging when my husband and I took a Civil War tour of the battlefieds where my great grandfather fought for the Union. I got a bit of a chill in that moment. He was Connecticut born, and as I have Browns in my ancestry, perhaps we were related. I would not be ashamed.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
An ICE unit is being dispatched to your location and will escort you to a re-education center where you will learn to love America, de-wokeifying you /s
FastEdD
I just got to vote YES on the “Texas Can Go Fuck Itself Act” of 2025, aka Prop. 50. It feels good.
TheOtherHank
My ballot arrived yesterday. I think I’ll fill it out tonight and go drop my Yes on 50 vote in my local drop box tomorrow morning.
dnfree
There have been brain studies recently that indicate that some people actually are not thinking anything part of the time. If scientists ask them what they are thinking at random times, they may say “nothing”. Their mental lives are more boring but possibly also less stressful than the mental lives of those of us who are always thinking something, however stupid it might be.
Youve been under a lot of stress lately and you NEED rest. Give yourself time!
Pete Downunder
@FastEdD: I just got an email from CA confirming my vote was just counted. Mailed two weeks ago.
Professor Bigfoot
I do dearly love that shirt.
FastEdD
@TheOtherHank:
Good goin’ you guys.
@Pete Downunder:
I think we’re gonna win this one.
Matt McIrvin
There are movies where those guys are the good guys, they just make up some justification for why the victims are worse.
“Birth Of A Nation.” “Gone With The Wind.”
Notice the pattern.
frosty
With no exception. Bad guys, with no exception. Absolutely right!!
sab
Just in family dynamics: My husband is amazing. Both kids also. Stepdaughter also.
After 20 years with these kids I am horrified what I wrote of the stepkid.
She is my daughter who i love and reapect. Respect her because she is such a g ood mother.
Booger
@Geminid (and all the other various and sundry Virginians) Have y’all noticed how the (R) Goobernatorial candidate is advertised as “WINSOME” but the men are “LASTNAME!” ?
just like the (R) oppo signs were “Kamala!” (will tax eating your puppies or whatever)?
Trying to find the common thread…
VFX Lurker
Got my ballot on Friday. Dropped my YES vote for Prop 50 into the nearest secure official Los Angeles County ballot box yesterday. Looking forward to the BallotTrax “ballot received” notification!
You got your ballot two weeks ago?! …and I thought I got my ballot early!
Thank you both for voting YES on 50.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@dnfree: I wonder what that’s like.
sab
@sab: Neuro normal kids versus neuro other kids.
My autist grand-daughter has classmates who have known her for years and love her. They don’t think she cannot love. My guess is that they think she is kinda weird but that is just her being her.
Our tech overlords hate us, hate women and want to do us harm.
Just saying.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: You know, I’ve often thought that this isn’t “hate,” per se.
The best analogy I’ve come up with is the farmer and his mule.
He doesn’t hate the mule, but just let that mule start talking about its rights and watch what happens.
It goes along with the profound sense of entitlement exhibited by conservatives.
Karen Gail
I was reading something about people who are called “neurodivergent” and had the stray thought that each and everyone of us could be called neurodivergent since each of us is unique and none of us are #2 yellow pencils.
I was like me trying for three years to explain to a multitude of “experts” or specialists what my symptoms were; if it isn’t textbook they had no clue other than to run more expensive tests. I felt like a guinea pig; now some of my symptoms are listed under shingles in women.
Ishiyama
@Professor Bigfoot: Something we wholeheartedly agree on.
TONYG
@jowriter: One of the many repulsive aspects of our current “culture” is the number of assholes in northern states that proudly display Confederate flags. I should be used to racism and stupidity at this point, but I’m still not used to it.
Trivia Man
I know someone who just named their baby John Brown. I am afraid to ask if they did it on purpose.
dnfree
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I’ve thought about it, but I can’t imagine how it feels!
I learned recently that a neighbor says she “never dreams”. Scientifically I’ve read that everyone has REM sleep, but not everyone remembers dreams. But maybe their REM sleep doesn’t even produce images?
My husband and I often discuss what we remember from our dreams in the morning. It seems like part of my life in a way. Sometimes we can come up with a correlation to something going on in our lives and other times the dream content seems unrelated to anything “real”.
frosty
@TONYG: That’s why I say I live in Confederate Pennsylvania.
Trivia Man
@Karen Gail:
Mrs Trivia hates doing it, but always lets the students join her appointments because she wants to educate them for all the other misdiagnosed women. And every time a doctor says “I’ve never seen it present like this” or some other version of WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT??? we buy a lottery ticket. She also wants to donate her body/ brain for research but it is surprisingly difficult to find out who is willing to take it and willing to start the paperwork now while she is relatively healthy.
Tehanu
@VFX Lurker: I got mine on Friday too, haven’t mailed it yet (with Yes on 50, of course). The disingenuousness of the opposition mailer we got — talking about “preserving impartial, nonpartisan democracy” — made me want to throw up.
WaterGirl
@Karen Gail: I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.
Karen Gail
@Trivia Man: Good for her, I had a health problem before the shingles mess and doctors kept telling me it is all in your head. Then had back surgery and while was on table the visiting surgeon noticed something strange. Which lead to “guess it wasn’t all in your head.”
Karen Gail
@WaterGirl: At the time it was a horror movie come to life; but now am glad I was so very vocal about it since it lead at least one medical student to ask questions which has lead to the acknowledgement that women and men present differently when it comes to diseases, illness and heart attacks.
Though by the time I was done was willing to undead any doctor who suggested to another person “you sure you aren’t over reacting?”
WTFGhost
Blue state governors should immediately stop automatically sending taxes to the US government, and pause all payments to check for “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and their judges should all say “it’s true, given the enormous sums involved, it only makes sense to investigate them for waste, fraud, and abuse, and although this seems like a transparent payback to the Trump administration, we defer to the executive of our respective states anyway, and add, to President Trump, with all due respect, (pbpbpbbpbpbpbpbbpbpbpt) (or however you choose to spell the raspberry).”
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@jowriter: John Brown was a secular saint. Driven and a bit crazy (of course) but definitely a saint, IMHO.
RaflW
@dnfree: I just drove for almost five hours. My partner will say, when I complain about other people driving badly “You say you love to drive, but you don’t actually seem to!”
But it’s two things: 1.) When driving is fun – and that’s a reasonable percent of the time, like the sun is lovely, the view is good, the car is humming well, I’m on my game – it’s really quite fun for me. But also,
2.) Driving is one of the activities that seems to at least slow down, or help still, the endless parade of thoughts. Driving can be time to either think things through more thoroughly that I’ve set aside, to daydream (I plan remodels, travel, things like that), or just crank satellite radio and be away from most of the shit in this world for a few minutes or an hour.
Then I get home and the brain chatter just resumes it’s regularly scheduled blah blah blah.
RaflW
@WTFGhost: I do think “No taxation while under occupation!” could have some legs. But I’m not really sure what funds governors can intervene in? Most taxes that go to D.C. come from us workers (and a pittance from corporate taxes, thanks to 50 years of GOP evil shenanigans).
eclare
I just heard rumbling thunder here in Memphis, love it. We are in extreme drought, any rain is welcome.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@dnfree: I have had vivid dreams since I was young. I still have crazy dreams. And they are usually tied to something that’s going on in my life currently. My wife and I discuss our dreams all the time. I honestly think people that can’t remember their dreams are missing out on some serious introspection.
David Collier-Brown
Sorta-offtopic…
I was reading Amos Elon’s introduction to a recent printing of “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, something that scared me when I first read it. Guess what: it still does. Elon wrote:
To oversimplify, he didn’t make sense because he couldn’t imagine the harm done, because he lived in a Nazi make-believe world where non-Nazis deserved punishment for being non-Nazis.
That’s a risk to all of us, and I fear we have a good example to look at.
rikyrah
I am so confused…
Mainly with…
where are the hell are these people holding some of these animals in NYC???😳😳🧐🧐🤔🤔
tiktok.com/t/ZP8AMKesx/
David Collier-Brown
@Trivia Man: One of my grand-2^x-fathers was a “John Brown”, but not the famous one. Mine settled in Ontario and took the name about 12 years before the white John Brown attacked Harper’s Ferry.
WTFGhost
@Karen Gail: You know what’s also fun? Imagine you don’t seem neurodivergent – most of the time, when your neuro pain isn’t too bad. But when your neuro pain gets bad, it gets hard to speak your brain reacts differently, and, you are neurodivergent..
Well, I eventually realized, I need to say “neurodivergent” because people need to know they might freak the eff out at something about me, and need to process “wait, nothing bad happened, it was just startling.” Plus, if you say “sometimes neurodivergent,” people feel especially betrayed if they are the ones who get the neurodivergent boost.
I’m not lying about that, either – people do feel betrayed. Another fun fact, is, sometimes, I can’t talk. Well, what I mean is, when I try to put a thought into words, I can’t find the right words. Sometimes, I need to say “sorry me go now,” or, “me no talk good now,” or, if I’m among friends, simply say “I am Groot.” At that point, they understand I can’t make words.
Fun fact 2: when I can’t speak(/write) words, I can’t hear (/read) them either. People can use a whole lot of words explaining how they understand “…that you can’t talk, can’t converse ,not the way normal people do, with no pain, it’s like every word hits you like a xylophone hammer, I bet that’s extremely unpleasant…”.
Important Fact 1: we all acknowledge that it’s wrong to lie to people, about something sufficiently important; we also all agree that, even if you have a right to express annoyance, or otherwise punish another (let’s be honest – that’s what it is!), it’s wrong to do that for unreasonable failures. If you knew your friend couldn’t easily be on time, and crapped on their head, every time they were (even a tiny bit) late, you know that’s not right. You should acknowledge they made a huge effort to be there, just a tiny bit late.
My whole life, I’ve come to realize, is people lying to me “dude, you’re *fine*, there’s *nothing wrong with you*” and people demanding things I couldn’t do… sometimes fundamental things like “being able to speak” which, geez, hard to blame them for that, but, WTF am I supposed to do if I’m literally having difficulty speaking, and don’t even understand it, because how is it difficult to *speak*?
With those two facts to clutch to you, you can see how I, and a lot of ND people, have had to deal with a world that feels (to us) to be actively hostile and nastily abusive… sometimes, at least.
Now think how hard it is, for us not to allow actual abuse (and not stuff painful stuff that feels abusive) into our lives. I bet I’m not the only person who has difficulty.
Sorry – I’m going through a massive spirit quest right now, so I may have blabbed a lot here.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@rikyrah: I think that’s the Cathedral of St John on 110th street. There are still stables in Brooklyn near Prospect Park, but my guess is the bigger animals such as the horses were trucked into NYC from New Jersey over the GW bridge
Karen Gail
@WTFGhost: Blab all you want; I will listen, I might not completely understand but I will listen
I can’t hear some sounds, never could; hearing loss makes it even harder. There are voices I have never heard because the range at which they naturally speak doesn’t register; people don’t understand those who don’t fix into their little boxes nor do most people try. For some it is easier to ridicule than admit wrongs or lack of empathy or lack of compassion.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@rikyrah: yep, Cathedral of St. John. Good car access to New Jersey
HopefullyNotCassandra
@WTFGhost: I do believe governors are thinking about how to do just that.
WTFGhost
@Karen Gail: First – I do want to acknowledge your main thrust, with male vs female presentations, and all that.
Second, I confess, I already learned the “aren’t you overreacting?” from my first wife, who was overweight, and hence, couldn’t have a medical problem – if she’d died of Covid-19, they’d say she died of obesity, “with Covid-19” because, hey, fat woman.
But having searched down a mystery diagnosis, “you sure you aren’t over reacting?” now activates my throat-punching reflex, which is a pain to deactivate and monitor. But as with all decent humans, it’s a bit stronger when it happens to someone else, and not to “someone unimportant, like me.”
@RaflW: “we have payroll accountants automatically sending huge sums to the federal government, and we have to check, to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.”
“WTF are you talking about, you crazy innumerate asshole?”
“WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE! We’re pausing all payments to make sure they’re all proper!”
“But there’s no evidence of improper payment!”
“That didn’t stop the Trump admin.”
Karen Gail
Found this:
‘The ground has shifted’: Experts sound alarm after Trump’s ‘gnat’ speech to US Navy – Alternet.org
dm
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Terry Bisson has a novel Fire on the mountain in which Harriet Tubman joins up with Brown at Harper’s Ferry, and through her superior strategic skills, they get the weapons from the armory and take to the hills, initializing a slave revolt which succeeds, and a socialist New Africa is formed from what would have been the Confederacy.
Most of that part is told from the letters of a doctor who traveled with the guerrillas, the framing story is set in the 1960s (the letters are family heirlooms being transported to a museum).
Lyrebird
@rikyrah: Yes as others have said, that’s the Cathedral of St John the Divine, up near Columbia, and they have been doing blessings of the animals there for many many moons, more than 50 yrs. They have a very small but nice garden that anyone can (or at least could) sit and eat lunch in. The animals wouldn’t fit there, but as others have said, it’s not far from NJ (Ft Lee etc) and wow.
iirc that’s the same type of church (Episcopal) as the National Cathedral with the gutsy priest or bishop who had the nerve (my sarcasm) to make a sermon about showing mercy
Karen Gail
Time for me to catch up with Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson will be next.
Trump’s Plan – Robert Reich
rikyrah
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
I can almost understand the horses..
But THE CAMEL?
That huge 🦉 🦉 that big owl was majestic
PJ
@rikyrah: I hear NJ is a cultural desert.
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: Oh, blessing of the animals day! The Episcopal Diocese of New York covers 8 of the NYS counties in the metro area, plus two up the Hudson, so in addition to some zoos in town, there’s a fair amount of rural land.
Pennsylvanian
JC, you are a national treasure, per all internet traditions.
Joelle, he’s a keeper. Good on you both. JC, she’s a keeper.
Who could ask for anything more? Be well, all.
prostratedragon
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: It is. They have one of the biggest of these every year, for St. Francis. Looks like there are still stables on Staten Island, where I did a tiny bit of riding ages ago.
Sister Golden Bear
@FastEdD: Just dropped of my ballot for Prop 50. Felt good. Real good.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I need to up my shirt game. Can’t keep being shamed for not representin’ like the Blogfather…lol! No shit, great taste in shirts, John.
Keep bringin’ it!
Melancholy Jaques
@FastEdD:
Awesome. I was just notified that my ballot is in the mail. Riverside County.
John Sterling
Honestly John, I was really hoping you’d be happy on your honeymoon.
Sister Golden Bear
@Professor Bigfoot:
I work in Silicon Valley, trust me, our
tech overlordsbillionaire incels hate women and want to do us harm. It’s not coincidence that they keep inventingwomensexbots—be it ChatGPT “women” or virtual AI-generated “actresses”—who can’t say no, can’t object to how they’re treated, can’t question why they’re beingaskedtold to do something demeaning.Jay
Sister Golden Bear
@rikyrah: Blessing of the Animals ceremony* at the Cathedral of St. John.
*Not unique to NYC.
Kayla Rudbek
@Sister Golden Bear: yes, and they also don’t take copyright or trademark law seriously because it’s got girl cooties…
BlueGuitarist
Here’s a link to John Brown Lives!
johnbrownlives.org/
WTFGhost
@dm: And what would really piss off the white people in New Africa, is, they couldn’t get any sympathy at all for their plight, from anyone, because they were free and equal citizens of a democratic republic, so what are they whining about….
(I say this, because what has amazed me about African Americans for decades, is, they just want *justice*. They don’t hate *cops*. They hate cops who kill Black people unjustifiably! And cops should at least understand that idea, because if you kill an off duty cop, accidentally, in a fight initiated by the cop, you still better surrender your ass ASAP so you don’t get gunned down. Black citizens don’t want all white people’s property – but, hey, good schools, good medical care, good food assistance, so for a generation, no Black child suffers the effects of poverty, and, oh, yeah, because it’s just effing easier, make sure no *child*, of any race, does either? How does that sound? And when we really are the “hottest” nation around, because we’ve done that, how about we continue to make sure no child ever has to lack for food, education, or medical care, and, oh, eff, it’s just *easier* to do that for the adults as well.
WTFGhost
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, it’s not just if the mule gets uppity. Sometimes, the farmer needs the mule to *mind* and *comply with lawful orders* even though it’s the cop – I mean, farmer – who created the need for the mule to comply.