Cal Ryder

Thank you for saying this because I just do not fucking understand what is going on with that shit, like, at all

Thread

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

The part of Mamdani's speech that I found most exciting was "you dismantle the conditions that allowed him to gain power. That's how we stop Trump — and the next one."

We need popular political figures to point out that Trump is not an anomaly and there are plenty more to take his place.

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

reading slaughterhouse 5 for the first time and i was absolutely knocked senseless by this passage, which is so true and relevant that it feels like it was pulled from a history book

The songs are all SO GOOD that I constantly want to play them for people but they cannot fully appreciate HOW GOOD the songs really are without the context of the show and no one I tell to watch it will actually watch it. It's one of my great tragedies in life.

As Toni Morrison said, "the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work." But she also reminded us never to lose our capacity to be shocked.

Part of my conversation on @ayman.msnbc.com earlier today.

Look, little kids actually love musings on early twentieth century social class and gender anxiety set against a jazz age backdrop.

Absolutely ashamed of myself!

Goddamn, mortified for myself!

Underappreciated Futurama reference hereby appreciated!

Maybe watch a classic of cinema. You'll have some idea of why that picture is an incredible choice.

Ms Rachel schools Obama on why he really should stop using dehumanizing language.

So fucking what tho

The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…

Wanda. Lovely quote!

Naturalists for Palestine Naturalists for Palestine is a call from individuals and organisations in the UK nature sector to stand for an end to the genocide in Gaza, and to the suffering and oppression of the people of Palesti...

Calling all nature people and orgs, please consider adding your name to Naturalists for Palestine.

It's essential we recognise that ecocide and genocide are two sides of the same coin, and resist both.
share.google/gLPRtQzDGC3v...

IMPORTANT

All freelancers, self-employed, creatives

This is the first I've heard of this, but the Department for Business and Trade is running a consultation on the scourge of late payments, they want to introduce new legislation to tackle poor practices

Deadline to respond is 23 October

1/2

Every time you use stupid ChatGPT, a thing that I once saw get a long multiplication sum wrong, it uses ten times as much electricity as searching the same thing on Google and the server cooling systems mean each use consumes half a litre of water.

David Cross folks.

Israel’s ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn’t live here | George Monbiot Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

“When you consider the ecocide alongside the genocide, you begin to grasp the totality of the Israeli state’s attempt to eliminate both the Palestinians & their homeland”

Hugely powerful from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social

Former Observer big-hitters launch new title with redundancy payouts Five former Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr have launched their own culture publication using their redundancy money.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/former-...

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them...The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
― Frederick Douglass

Love this poem. I teach in an all-girls school and I've given it to classes of young teens with no explanation and ask them to solve the riddle of who she's speaking to. It always takes them a while but they're really gratified when they figure it out.

You’re much closer to becoming disabled or homeless than you are to becoming rich and wealthy.

It’s not a moral failing. It’s not something you can “try harder” your way out of.

We need robust social supports & safety nets to ensure everyone is properly cared for.

Fascinating data. There are three things here that really matter to people, and they think matter to everyone:

Healthcare
Economy
Prices

There is ONE thing that they assume matters to everyone, because it dominates so much of the narrative, but it is NOT affecting them personally:

Immigration

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

this exists it is called thinking