It's not just fine but amazing to make amateur art. Humans are artmakers. You don't have to be professionalized as an artist, you don't have to make art of professional merit. Just create!
i agree with this, as long as by “take accountability” you mean “prepare your horrid souls for damnation because you will find no quarter on this Earth”
If you visit Chicago I will welcome you. I’ll buy you a drink and a meal and give you a hand crocheted scarf. Or a hat. Depending on your preference.
If you turn on me to impose your values over my hospitality, may the wrath of a Midwest winter descend on you. All you deserve is piercing ice.
I won’t stop buying shots for my neighbors.
I can’t let invading forces tell me what it means to be at home.
But. In the Midwest we still seek each other through record cold and terror campaigns designed to keep us frozen.
All I can think lately is that my homeland treats compassion as more deadly than armaments. I ought to be afraid of incidental connection. God forbid I seek community.
What if I have a legally concealed personal weapon that I do not use? Should that supposed right change my personal risk profile?
To what degree should I be concerned for my personal safety when interacting with someone I’ve never met whose metadata might intersect mine?
Do my incidental cash transactions carry a moral weight worthy of outside judgement?
Even though I spent no digital currency tonight, how long would it take to identity the three people I bought shots for via metadata?
I’ll try to start. I’m trying to develop a thought.
Tonight I bought shots for three other bar patrons using cash. I know them socially and don’t know their last names.
Is this remarkable? How remarkable is it compared to 5 years ago? 10? 25?
General query:
When was the last time you had an entire human interaction with someone where you didn’t have to provide your identity or show an ID number of some sort?
I’m actually quite moved by how swiftly she pivots away from her own grief and trauma - real and justified though it is - to remind us not to take our eyes off the women who were assaulted
ICE hasn't stopped brutalizing people or shredding the Constitution, it's just that corporate media turned the camera as the call for action got too loud and the Democrats stepped in and made sure the issue got changed.
If you sit for a second, you'll recognize that's what happened with BLM, too.
“The operational logistics are equally difficult to envision: To serve 1,000 travelers an hour, the low end of Boring’s estimate, would require a car with one passenger to depart every 3.6 seconds.”
Otoh: You’d need just one New York subway train — www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
This is action EVERY city in the country can take. If your hotels cooperate with ICE, goodbye liquor revenue.
Sounds like you’re gesturing toward reaching the peak of a mountain and realize that the only way forward is down.
The only way out is through has another sinister side: you can only run so far before ending where you started.
I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud but this thread is speaking to me.
Maybe I’ll actually keep up with moisturizing now.
I wish I could untag myself from this sentiment, but now it lives in my brain.
It all sounded very woo-woo to me. But the science backs it up: if you think you won't succeed, you never even try. Your brain is building a hallucination of your world all the time. If you REALLY want to focus on something you can control, the stories you tell about the world and experiences are it
And, that, there: "talking about how fucked we are changes nothing about how fucked we" that I took into the other parts of my life. I was tired of pointing out how fucked we are. It FEELS like action, but it's not. By end of 2025, there was nothing left to say, for me.
Senator, I’m your constituent and lifelong registered Dem. That’s not what I want. ICE cannot be reformed; I want it ended.
I think in February, my #writing goal is a poem or flash fiction piece a day inspired by Tim Peters #TheZenOfPython. Having a lot of feelings about being a writer and coder in the age of uncritical AI boosterism. Maybe noodling on one of my formative software texts will shake something loose.
My #writing year so far has been somewhat lackluster. Having difficulty motivating myself to do things in the face of *waves hands vaguely*. But not writing isn't the answer. Is anyone else giving themself a structured challenge or assignment for February 2026?
This is basically correct to me, as to what the correct attitude towards social media right now is. Use writing and reading to think and understand, use video to tell the world about it.
bsky.app/profile/jame...
"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"
We keep seeing startups who want to replace something valuable (therapy, counseling, tutoring, artistic expression) with some tech bullshit under the banner of democratization. But why do we need to invest so much in bad tech that doesn't work instead of just giving people access to what they need?
“What am I going to do, go back to my Zoom call when people across the street are being denied their constitutional rights?”
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...
Tear gas everywhere.
"How you die does not redeem how you lived." 👏🏼
