persephone

Getting good mileage out of this one this year

Screenshot of top of message form user named “Bluesky” with handle @usa2today.bsky.social stating, “We regret to inform you that your Bluesky account has been temporarily suspended due to security-related restrictions. To prevent the permanent termination of your account, it is imperative that you complete the verification process within the next 24 hours by using the following link:”

PSA: scam message going around

Always check handle of sender.

Reported to BlueSky.

Today my mind is with my good friend & veteran, GL, who took his own life a few years ago after going offline. No one told me bc I was pregnant & on stress leave. Then the world shut down & it wasn’t until things returned to something like normal that anyone realized. Always reach out. Always.

At the time I remember having little sympathy & being highly critical. But now with the wisdom of age & a career spent working with teens, I have compassion for the ideals they had as children & the truths they did not know at the time. Speaking for the boys I knew & men I know, not anyone else.

Even tho Canadians didn’t fight in Iraq some of us have American family members who did. Some were also sent to Iraq not as combatants but as peace-keepers, & came back traumatized. I say boys & men bc I personally don’t know anyone who identifies as female who served.

My generation’s war is one of shame, sorrow, & loss. Boys left for Afghanistan or Iraq in the confused wake of 9/11 to return to a recession. Those boys are now men w masters degrees & a debt they paid w their youth, their health, & their sanity. Yet they still can’t afford to live even here in TO.

On Veterans Day, we honor those who served and commit to serving them in return — not just in words, but in actions.

Affordability and a real commitment to mental health are essential to ensure that every veteran can build a future here in New York City.

instead of saying this was good strategy, maybe senate dems should say: "the republicans were going to kill people by starving them to death, and because we aren't monsters, we decided to let this fight go. We'll keep fighting. Stop electing monsters."

P.S. My Nonno would have been conscripted right at the end of the war. We never got many details from him as he only spoke about it at the very end of his life, and almost exclusively to me. One detail I know is that after surrender, Allies & Axis alike would still kill an Italian soldier on sight.

*the relatively young (unified) nation of Italy had mandatory conscription at age 18 & my Nonno’s only choice would have been to serve or be killed

Maybe you or I would make a different choice. All I know is that if he had, I would not be here today as his witness to the atrocities of that time.

What I do know is that my family came here after being devastated & traumatized by the facts of living thru fascism & war, leaving behind the ancestral homeland of the three tribes, bc of those experiences. Fascism is a beast we must work to keep at bay, every day, no matter what. 2/2

I often post a pic of my Nonno on his horse in his Italian army* uniform on Remembrance Day to remind ppl of the consequences of not resisting fascism & the forces that feed it (hate, greed, intolerance) before it is too late, but I don’t think anyone needs to see that rn. 1/2

I would hire someone to build me an advent calendar where each day you get a new book and a small treat and beverage paired to the book. Also day one comes with incredibly cozy socks.

I got one of those for my tenth birthday (born in Nov) & it was the best. I lost many of them over the years of keeping them in my pocket, on my dresser, etc. I was super duper into rocks for most of my childhood.

Ooh yes if I could still drink I would love a whisky advent calendar!

I also said yarn even tho I’m also not supposed to buy any more until I’ve made a dent in my current stash. Working on my first cardigan atm

FAQ: Hobbii’s 2025 Advent Calendar The Hobbii Advent Calendar 2025 includes 4 surprise projects in knit, crochet, or amigurumi with exclusive patterns, handpicked yarn, and more!

Easy: hobbii.ca/blogs/news/a...

(Or any other yarn advent calendar, really.)

From Bertolt Brecht:

“Ja, renn nur nach dem Glück
Doch renne nicht zu sehr
Denn alle rennen nach dem Glück
Das Glück rennt hinterher.”

“Yes, run after happiness,
But don't run too fast,
Because everyone is running after happiness,
And happiness runs behind.”

there's a moment in PARADISE LOST where Satan arrives in Eden and realizes Hell isn't a place; it's a thing he carries within him and it'll follow him wherever he goes. and i think about that when i see these awful rich men whose monstrous wealth has enriched them not at all

The reason why I'm so angry has a lot to do with the lives that will be lost — people are absolutely going to die as a direct result of Senate Democrats folding on health care. It also has a lot to do with the suffering that was endured — people were struggling to get by without food assistance. 🧵

we’re about to start seeing a lot of “here’s a cost effective meal your grandparents made during the great depression”

Democratic leaders have failed us again. It's time to get new leaders. After yet another capitulation by Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats, it's clear we need new leadership capable of mounting a serious opposition to Trump's authoritarian regime. We're launching our la...

After yesterday’s surrender, we’re launching the largest Democratic primary program that we’ve ever run.

We will not back any Senate primary candidate unless they call for Schumer to step down as Minority Leader.

If you’re as pissed as we are, join this campaign to rebuild the Democratic Party. 👇

so joyce carol oates owned elon so hard he's been taking out ads on X saying he has in fact read a book and watched a movie and he's clearly spiraling and unable to recover from such a vicious own i say to my wife as she frantically pulls out of the driveway

My partner made a good point re all of these things being dismantled: they worked so well that no one even realized they did anything at all.

Life is too short to give up the things that make you happy for some broken idea of what “adulthood” and “responsibility” look like. Keep your weird hobbies. Wear what you want to wear. You should never have to minimize yourself for the comfort of boring people. Be weird. Be cringe. Be happy.

I can't remember where I heard this, but I thought it was funny and accurate in my case:

"In your 20s, you care what other people think of you. In your 30s, you don't care what anyone thinks of you. In your 40s, you realize no one was ever thinking about you."

I don’t have a whole lot of advice for people younger than me but the earlier in life you stop worrying about what other people will think and just wholeheartedly enjoy the stuff you like the happier you’ll be

The thing about Mamdani is that he’s a talented politician but not otherworldly or one in a billion, he’s just a competent guy with popular ideas who ran against an entitled piece of shit and to me it’s a lot more optimistic to imagine 1000 campaigns like his than to view him as a unique phenomenon

This could very well happen & is another one of those things ppl don’t understand about the past & how things were actually worse not better.

International, not just interstate.
Basically a small sea in the middle of our countries.

In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last.

The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes.

Why?

It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.