I have been back in the USA for almost a week now. I am still dreaming about life in Ukraine, and finding myself kind of adrift.
I’m also jet lagged as hell and spending many of the polite hours asleep.
@davethegreat.bsky.social
Another refugee from the blue bird site. Volunteer firefighter/paramedic, disabled vet, crippled old man who doesn’t respect his body’s limitations. Yet another insufferable twit who insists on being a leftist rather than a liberal. PDX, queer, burner.
I have been back in the USA for almost a week now. I am still dreaming about life in Ukraine, and finding myself kind of adrift.
I’m also jet lagged as hell and spending many of the polite hours asleep.
I recall reading the news at the end of a long day of treating wounded soldiers in eastern Ukraine. Every single member of my crew were antifacists.
A few hours later, I woke up to our neighborhood getting bombed by trump’s second-best-friend, Vlad Putin.
(trump’s best friend being Jeff Epstein).
Yeah, but in no world are they from the “left.”
Putin is a right-winger. People that support him are either right-wingers or just generally simps, but they definitively are NOT lefties.
Those are not leftists.
They are right-wing bootlickers.
Life advice #1,852 - no not follow the Overton Window.
Stick to your convictions and just accept the fact that our society will decide you are an extremist from time to time because the rest of them are chasing “moderation” like a pack of chihuahuas in pursuit of a panicked, bacon-covered mailman.
If only she had the ability to do stuff like write legislation …
02.10.2025 14:09 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0A guy in a pickup truck emblazoned with fucktons of trump 2028 merch just asked me for directions at the airport.
(No of course I didn’t give him real directions. Fuck his entire cult)
Portland, I am in you
02.10.2025 04:18 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0JFK airport isn’t the worst place to have a 5-hour layover.
It’s like the third-worst at most.
The moment where Hegseth ends his speech and not a single officer claps is the most hopeful thing I have seen in a long time.
30.09.2025 18:15 — 👍 10019 🔁 1601 💬 232 📌 69They won’t just keep that person - they’ll promote them and cite “bipartisanship.”
30.09.2025 08:56 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I was planning to leave #Ukraine at the end of August, and thus I packed nothing but warm weather clothes.
But there’s a shortage of #medics, especially advanced life support #paramedics, so I #volunteered long enough to be very cold on my way home.
A smarter person would have just bought a coat…
The Chelm train station desperately needs an indoor waiting room. Or even a covered one.
Guess I get to stand out in 48° rain for a couple hours.
Wearing summer clothes.
Yeah, it’s not like the GOP can do anything. They only control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, every executive branch, most of the states, the presidency, the military … those poor, powerless republicans!
29.09.2025 14:17 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Leaving #Ukraine at the end of my third deployment as a #medic feels bittersweet. I’m happy to see my home again, but I feel like I can’t really walk away from the war and just go about my normal life.
I turned 50 years old in the middle of this tour, but my patients were often older.
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈 It’s always good to see people standing up for us.
And it’s always good to see nazis get punched.
Kapustin covering eyes after being pepper sprayed
After memorial ceremony for David at #Maidan russian neonazi Denis Kapustin "White Rex" was thrown to the ground and pepper sprayed by anarchists for trying to attack LGBTQ+ war medic and take away rainbow flag. The fight against fascism happens all around #Ukraine
#antifascism
Welcome back!
29.09.2025 12:47 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Maybe not. Practically-speaking, there isn’t really a difference. In fact, one drone here was basically just a Cessna 152 with some servos strapped into the pilot seat and a GPS glued on.
28.09.2025 14:59 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0We don’t have a playbook for dealing with the National Guard yet (presumably they will sleep in armories), but the invading feds are creatures of mid-range chain motels and they do not deserve a good night’s sleep.
Doxx ‘em.
Just a reminder to fellow Portlanders (and close-in suburbanites): if you see a bunch of guys that look like the default maga Tinder profile (Oakleys, ball caps, goatees, baggy unbuttoned shirt over t-shirt, jeans/cargo pants) checking into a hotel as a group: report those feds to the rest of us.
28.09.2025 08:28 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0… I’m not wild about coming home from a drone war to have similar drones circling over my house.
Not wild about this at all…
Kyiv was noisy last night. I haven’t checked the news for bomb damage, but I’m three blocks from Independence Square and was hearing explosions and anti-aircraft fire all morning.
28.09.2025 08:17 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Kyiv, after months of working near the eastern front lines, is surreal in its normalcy. It’s clean and pretty and everyone looks like a fashion model and there is no rubble anywhere.
26.09.2025 16:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0In Kyiv.
24.09.2025 19:36 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Happy birthday 😊
23.09.2025 21:51 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0IANAL obviously, but my take from this thread is that it’s not bribery since he wasn’t on the job yet, and it’s not fraud because he legitimately is corrupt.
But since it was apparently the FBI bribing him, they probably never demanded he make good on his promises, so … he just wins 50k I guess.
There’s an anti-tank weapon next to the tattoo artist’s desk … and I don’t think he bought it from a surplus store.
And I’m not positive that it’s just decorative.
Socialism.
22.09.2025 15:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0After he gained some momentum, the primary took off on the normal track of two people slugging it out and one eventually winning, with the loser supporting the winner. Nothing abnormal there.
Was *was* abnormal was significant national support for a person without a national profile.