I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests.
Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another’s existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain.
I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
From: The Optimism of Uncertainty
By Howard Zinn •
ZCommunications • September 30, 2004; The Nation • September 20, 2004
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
From:
The Optimism of Uncertainty
By Howard Zinn •
ZCommunications • September 30, 2004; The Nation • September 20, 2004
Homework:
"Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world." -- Howard Zinn
www.howardzinn.org/collection/t...
19.10.2025 02:45 — 👍 61 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0
MSNBC Grandmas in Skechers seamlessly reclaiming the frog from 4chan Nazis in about six weeks has gotta be the political upset of the century.
18.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 15720 🔁 3046 💬 164 📌 131
“You can win elections by tacking to the middle; lots of people have. But you can also win elections by staking a moral position and convincing people to agree with you. You can earn support by demonstrating what is important to you instead of just being determined to nod along with what you hear.”
18.10.2025 21:21 — 👍 9187 🔁 1591 💬 94 📌 49
I’ve been reposting all of the crowd videos of today’s NO KINGS rallies because at some point they’ll try to say it didn’t happen.
18.10.2025 23:08 — 👍 15189 🔁 2571 💬 538 📌 78
M.I.T.
Brown.
Penn.
USC.
Now UVA — “the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of White House demands.”
@nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/u...
18.10.2025 12:31 — 👍 6169 🔁 1647 💬 188 📌 103
Head to a protest today. I can almost promise you will feel less hopeless. That's exactly what they don't want. There are more of us than there are of them.
18.10.2025 15:26 — 👍 9255 🔁 1795 💬 119 📌 90
The president is making a lot of comfortably middle class white people feel like revolutionaries.
18.10.2025 19:30 — 👍 855 🔁 142 💬 33 📌 4
to this i would add a good amount of self-loathing stemming from a belief that liberal political views are somehow “inauthentic” or an affectation of “elites”
18.10.2025 18:50 — 👍 3552 🔁 387 💬 83 📌 6
I've never seen and felt as much love for America as we're seeing across the country today.
18.10.2025 17:43 — 👍 9832 🔁 1858 💬 189 📌 57
Proud papa moment: my son J published a letter in the @nytimes.com today (in print tomorrow) on the need to think our definitions of autism.
18.10.2025 20:06 — 👍 4717 🔁 967 💬 121 📌 59
I feel it
18.10.2025 20:50 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
they call it Spirit Week because it fuckin haunts me
18.10.2025 20:43 — 👍 19 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
This is one of those posts I think about a lot now. Especially on a day when the White House press secretary replied "your mom" to an earnest question about peace negotiations.
17.10.2025 21:18 — 👍 2225 🔁 388 💬 25 📌 6
Good.
17.10.2025 18:28 — 👍 1481 🔁 221 💬 26 📌 3
@DHSGov account says "Ratio." They are QTing a post that I wrote (next picture reproduces in full) asking, with a fair amount of snark, why DHS was blaming Governor Pritzker for the Hanover Park PD having hiring someone who allegedly was a visa overstay. They post two headlines about an Illinois law which authorized noncitizens with valid work authorization to become cops.
The post that set this off, in which I too was QTing the DHS account. The DHS post about the Hanover Park PD incident reads as follows: ".
@GovPritzker
doesn’t just allow illegal aliens to terrorize Illinois’s communities, he allows them to work as sworn police officers.
Radule Bojovic overstayed a B2 tourist visa that required him to depart the U.S. on March 31, 2015. Over a decade later, he was still illegally in the U.S. working as a police officer for the Hanover Park Police Department earning a salary of $78,955.
Criminal illegal aliens have NO PLACE in our communities, especially on our police forces."
My QT response to this was: "What the heck does Governor Pritzker have to do with a local police department hiring decision?
Do the people running @DHSgov not even know the basics about how state governments work?"
Excited to inform you all that the Department of Homeland Security is currently attempting to ratio me (and failing, as of more than two hours later).
With a heavy sigh, I repeat: bring back professionalism. For the love of god. You're running comms for the government of the USA. Act like it.
17.10.2025 21:02 — 👍 6573 🔁 1159 💬 141 📌 59
It costs ~$70 to produce a year’s supply of insulin.
Yet, the average annual cost of insulin went from $2,864 in 2012 to $5,705 in 2016 to $18,000 in 2025. A 25,714% markup. That isn’t inflation or supply chain—It’s corporate greed.
Now—California will sell insulin for $11. Make this nationwide!
17.10.2025 03:43 — 👍 15542 🔁 5558 💬 311 📌 195
Heavens to Betsy
Betsy to Heavens
Heavens BACK to Betsy
Betsy GOOOOOAAAALLLLLLLL
17.10.2025 11:54 — 👍 2057 🔁 453 💬 30 📌 6
This is what the official website of the US Department of Agriculture, an agency whose job and duty is to represent the interests of all Americans, looks like currently.
www.usda.gov
Our US laws explicitly bar Administration officials from publishing political propaganda (5 U.S.C. §§ 7321–7326)
17.10.2025 15:21 — 👍 21 🔁 9 💬 0 📌 0
What I don't have in experience, I make up for in integrity.
And what Andrew Cuomo lacks in integrity, he could never make up for with experience.
16.10.2025 23:16 — 👍 33227 🔁 6187 💬 943 📌 945
A getty image by Mike Powles of a chameleon that is mall enough to sit on someone's thumb, its tail is curling ever so slightly
another getty image, this time by Alexis Rosenfeld, of another stump-tailed chameleon, this one small enough to sit comfortably on the tip of someone's thumb. Its mouth is slightly open, and its little toes are so small it is making me want to die a little bit.
BREAKING: I've just learned that there are teeny-tiny chameleons called stumped-tailed chameleons and they look like this AND I CANNOT HANDLE IT
17.10.2025 02:08 — 👍 1213 🔁 234 💬 10 📌 18
more of this
17.10.2025 02:19 — 👍 3708 🔁 527 💬 44 📌 6
Vertical comic structured like flow chart. (1) Einstein had an insight that overturned physics, thus proving his value. (2) I hope *I* have value. I’ll try to have an insight that overturns physics, to check. (3) [Time Passes] (4) Oh no! My insight didn’t overturn physics! But I don’t think I’m worthless… [arrows to two different options] (5a) Healthy Path: Maybe this was not a well-thought-out test of my value. (5b) Path of Ruin: The establishment must be *suppressing* my insight!
Physics Paths
xkcd.com/3155/
16.10.2025 20:12 — 👍 3486 🔁 491 💬 34 📌 26
Nobody ever says "I wish I'd played more video games" when they die. Video games haven't been around long enough. I may be the first to say it.
16.10.2025 20:18 — 👍 1653 🔁 208 💬 44 📌 16
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
Bernie Sanders
200000
Number of Donations
150000
100000
50000
Elizabeth Warren
60000
40000
20000
01
25
50
Donor Age
75
Hakeem Jeffries
40000
30000
20000
10000
Nancy Pelosi
100000
Number of
Donations
75000
50000
25000
Suzan DelBene
2000
1500
1000
500
25
50
75
Donor Age
AOC has just officially become the top House fundraiser, beating out Hakeem Jeffries. Now lemme take a big sip of coffee as I look at the age distribution of donors to AOC vs Jeffries
16.10.2025 20:50 — 👍 9599 🔁 1920 💬 246 📌 157
“Young adults aren’t having enough kids” bro I’m employed full-time with a damn PhD and I’m struggling to afford both groceries and rent.
I love kids but I can barely afford my pets.
Want us to have kids? Try UBI, rent control, universal healthcare, cheaper child care.
16.10.2025 21:30 — 👍 3351 🔁 755 💬 85 📌 47
oh fuck, it's people isn't it
16.10.2025 21:29 — 👍 1044 🔁 134 💬 85 📌 7
Good morning to everyone, but especially women who don’t like the vehicle
16.10.2025 16:23 — 👍 3475 🔁 424 💬 26 📌 14
Special Investigative Correspondent @texasobserver.org • bernd@texasobserver.org • Signal: Candice.49
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