• 1 Post
  • 17 Comments
Joined 9 days ago
Cake day: November 5th, 2024
  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.orgtoHumanities & Cultures@beehaw.org•Two scenarios for the years ahead
    4·
    21 hours ago
    Grousing about Mr. Graff's silly hyperbolic description of the DOT

    Want to take this seriously as much of it merits serious discussion, but I just don’t know what to do with weird nonsense like this:

    The Transportation Department, which has had such a literal renaissance of imagination, innovation, and investment under Mayor Pete and the flood of infrastructure money from the Inflation Reduction Act, would be cut back extensively.

    Here is the DOT’s own propaganda: [https://blog.bayareametro.gov/posts/us-dot-highlights-infrastructure-accomplishments](US DOT highlights infrastructure accomplishments) What the heck does “literal renaissance of imagination, innovation-” mean here? Gosh Biden’s years were such a letdown, and then they tout the barest accomplishment of their jobs as the second coming as if people don’t have eyes and ears.

    What if suddenly living in Denver versus Austin or Charlotte versus Tampa start to come with very different sets of rights as an individual in terms of your family’s access to basic health care, what books your child gets to read in school, whether you can walk the streets without carrying your “papers,” whether your kid’s school requires basic vaccines, or even whether the public water supply is considered safe?

    This is already the case in the Rust Belt. Default is you don’t have basic healthcare, your kid goes to some fake voucher school or an extremely underfunded school (books comment is weird, Texas decides most of the books already), you can’t get vaxed or operate in the economy without your “papers”, public water supplies are not safe by modern standards. This crumbling ramped up during Trump 1 and became the default in the pandemic and the region didn’t really recover.

    Anyway the Fed isn’t my friend and the decline of that faction isn’t the part of this mess that has me worried. Has the Fed been really helpful or a positive influence where you are located? Mostly to me they are ICE and FBI offices and I don’t think those folks do good work.

  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.orgtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Pluralistic: Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification (07 Nov 2024)
    2·
    6 days ago

    I can see why you might read my post that way because what other context do you have. I don’t belong to the “us” group you mentioned. I spent 2015-2022ish doing direct service activism and it cost me a great deal. Part of the reason I sound disillusioned is because the fascists directly attacked and destroyed much of my work as I was performing it (especially in 2018 2019 when they were a little better organized). I did literacy and library access work for the incarcerated, primarily. My work was primarily volunteer so it seriously hurt my family’s economy, in addition to being undone in real time as paper bans and mail bans were put in place. People at the universities I “worked” for would provide verbal support, but that was all it ever amounted to.

    Part of the reason I like Doctorow is because he gave a pretty accurate description of how literacy access within the prison system works in The Bezzle except for the part where he was using it to distribute LSD. That sounds cool but its largely based on a myth made up to protect prison employees who trade drugs inside.

    You don’t even have to do anything and there are thousands of people out there trying to protect you from getting more fucked[…]

    Don’t go around telling them they don’t have to “do anything” plz 😅

    Not trying to call you out otherwise, how are you supposed to know

  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.orgtoChat@beehaw.org•This is a friendly reminder to visit your local libraryEnglish
    8·
    7 days ago

    Since all my local newspaper websites went pay-to-read, I walk two blocks to my local library and read the hard copies maybe once a week. There’s only about one or three articles per week that aren’t just USA Today internet drivel, so it’s not like I’m sitting there for hours pouring through papers like a maniac, and how dare you picture me that way.

    If you are a traveler, it is a good trick to pick up as many library cards as you can get your hands on. So many libraries are traveler friendly from old COVID policies and if you aren’t working touristy towns, even pretty flimsy community connections can get you a card. “Oh I work for this practice in the community, can I-” and when your contract in that community ends, what, are you going to go turn in your library card? And let your community’s ebook DRM go to waste? No 😜

  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.orgtoPolitics@beehaw.org•The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide
    10·
    8 days ago

    There are some things you can do that hurt America.

    1. Leave. You won’t be welcome elsewhere unless you have roughly 125k saved, liquid cash. That may not matter based on where you are at on the ladder but it really wrecks my family. For example, if you’re broke and unwelcome in the USA, maybe roll the dice? This is not legal advice. We’re stuck by family and fake middle class assets. “Not welcome” means you cannot legally work elsewhere, you are subject to the USA. We live under feudalism internationally.
    2. Stop spending money. All USD money is Nazi money. The less you spend, the less the machine goes.
    3. Don’t work for cops. As in outright refuse to do anything to help cops, ever.
    4. Donate to causes that actually erode US sovereignty like Indigenous legal defense funds, and leave your assets to the people your land was stolen from.

    edit* This is all assuming you won’t fight, because I was there in 22 and there wasn’t a fight. That’s when we lost our rights. So don’t pretend like fighting is an option please, this isn’t that kind of forum anyway.

  • ErsatzCoalButter@beehaw.orgtoGaming@beehaw.org•Let's discuss: Uplifting Games
    3·
    9 days ago

    in about 201X I was having a terrible time trying to get through the thesis period of a master’s program

    picked up some bundle of the OG 2DS (black & blue variant) and Pokemon X and loved it

    a world where I could pick my friends, people were pleasant, my next career moves were obvious, and my work was rewarded? To this day, this is my escapist fantasy.