Maybe I’m posting
Lately, in every newsletter I read, people are talking about the onslaught of our sanity. It’s a tactic, folks have pointed out, clearly outlined during Orange Administration Numero Uno. They told us all they were going to implement their weird and darkly terrifying policy junk. Everything is going according to plan. Hopefully there are some adults somewhere who are going to bring us all back from the brink.
A lot of people are feeling helpless. My advice if you are feeling like there’s nothing to be done is to just do anything beyond feeling afraid. Doing nothing is easy, doing anything is easy too. My neighbour gave me On Tyranny and I read it this week. That’s a thing to do. Read books, plan springtime projects, talk to your people, feel, think, process, look for opportunities to help someone, live. It’s still our one wild and precious life, we cannot look away, but we also can’t spend all our time staring at the beasties.
The quality of our attention should not be underestimated, but the quantity of bullshit we can process before poop comes out of our ears shouldn’t be overestimated. You’re welcome for the visual.
“Thing is, not only is the news all the bloody same, all about the same country and the same handful of main characters, and every news service reports all the incremental updates to the same bloody stories every sixty seconds: but that constant battering tide of zone-flooding shit compresses time and shrinks space to think.” Warren Ellis wrote in his newsletter
- Project 2025 Tracker > https://www.project2025.observer/
- ‘Tesla Takedown’ underscores the importance of moving from protest to resistance > https://wagingnonviolence.org/ipra/2025/02/tesla-takedown-musk-moving-from-protest-to-resistance/
- A Law Dork post that might make you feel better > https://www.lawdork.com/p/donald-trump-elon-musk-democracy
There’s also been the left on left pile ons. We can’t be keyboard cowboys, people are typing on their keyboards. We need to organise, as if there isn’t loads of organisation. We can’t post our way out of fascism, is an admittedly great post on the Internet.
Truth be told my last protest was like six months ago. I went to three last year, I think. I also run a cooperative, work in tech for good, started a neighbourhood nonprofit, take care of my people, donate what I can to a wide variety of groups fighting for a better world and yell kind words at clouds.
Some of us aren’t trying to post our way out of anything. Some of us have spent our adult lives awake and thinking out loud, and it just so happens that we’ve been doing that on the Internet. Some of us have been fighting the good fight or whatever for decades. Some of us have been doing the slow desperate slog that is living our values every single goddamn day since even before that time I wrote a judge that the Presidential Physical Fitness programme was violating my civil rights (LOL full disclosure, I just didn’t want to run in gym class).
I’m thankful, I guess, that other people are using their megaphones to tell others to get off the Internet and get into the streets. It is important to physically show up, find ways to protest, find ways to help others, make our voices heard. But also, in-fighting is especially unhelpful in the current climate, and there’s some great, great posting happening that is, indeed, resistance.
- You can’t post your way out of fascism > https://www.404media.co/you-cant-post-your-way-out-of-fascism/
- Thousands of people protest on Presidents Day > https://www.npr.org/2025/02/17/nx-s1-5299915/dc-protests
- DOGE is hiring. The response did not disappoint. > https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/doge-is-hiring-the-response-did-not-disappoint/
- Presidential physical fitness (1966-1987) > https://clickamericana.com/topics/culture-and-lifestyle/school-education/presidential-physical-fitness-award-1968-1981
Maybe I’m gardening
Right, so now that I too have posted about not being able to post our way out of this shit show, let me tell you about the birds and the bees. The other day I saw a Eurasian green woodpecker futzing around in a tree so despite the negative temperature, spring is about to arrive. That’s actually all I have to say about birds. I don’t have anything to say about bees at the moment, and it was your own dirty mind that thought I was going somewhere else with this.
I generally don’t have a plan when I’m writing. I’m not that kind of writer. Sometimes I hit a flow and write something I think is good. Sometimes, the flow is elsewhere in life. This week I didn’t write FBT until the very last moment, and it took me way too long and I think this episode is pretty crappy. No flow.
Flow, this week, was found in my garden planning project. I’m having a big piece of my garden dug up and levelled. Old cement chipped out. A wall rebuilt. The world is chaotic, the new Amnesty project doesn’t start until it starts, the co-op just doesn’t have enough work on, I can’t deal with the news, so I’ve been overthinking the garden.
- Exploring New Horizons (aka “Hire Me!”) > https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2025/02/20/exploring-new-horizons-aka-hire-me/
- Starting principles for the ethical use of AI > https://blog.weareopen.coop/starting-principles-for-the-ethical-use-of-ai-c3eee0863ae6
- Open is an extreme > https://ko-fi.com/s/ab0b46817f
- It’s better than strapping clay crocodiles to people’s heads and praying for the best > https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2025/02/19/its-better-than-strapping-clay.html
Maybe I need help
It’s been a rough few months for a variety of reasons. I hope it hasn’t been too awful for you. Hit reply if you need a friend.