Late to post this, but happy blue tsunami to all are not down for fascism. 🇺🇸

Somehow, my data has been sold to Pennsylvania Republicans. Every election season, I get inundated with texts to vote Republican, and support horrible causes. I have never lived in Pennsylvania, I don’t vote Republican, and I don’t support horrible causes. I am happy to waste their resources, I guess.

Thomas Frank writes about politically noxious nostalgia for Harpers. It’s connects the bicentennial in 1976 with our current impoverished political moment. I think it strikes a chord.

Donald Trump didn’t invent the eternal return of nostalgia any more than Ronald Reagan invented the retro style of the Seventies and Eighties. Nostalgia is today a structural feature of our modern world, the emptiness and vapidity at the heart of our culture, the inevitable mass-produced sentiment of a society that permanently feels that everything is constantly going wrong but is chronically unable to identify why.

I can certainly cop to rooting around in nostalgia (see my recent post on an old DOS game), and I do feel uncomfortable about it sometimes; the politics wrapped around nostalgia can be manipulative and harmful, and even if my idle musings on the past don’t have those goals, it feels like being too close to the past in thought can lead one astray in the present. Moderation in all things, perhaps?

The essay is worth reading in its entirety, and the conclusion is interesting, if unleavened. 🇺🇸

I voted in queens district 36’s special election to replace Zohran Mamdani’s seat. Felt good to participate in democracy. 🇺🇸

I made a donation to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Fuck ICE. 🇺🇸

New day, new way to be proud to be an American. This sarcastic post will be, I predict, evergreen. 🇺🇸 💀

Ahhhh, we have a good Mayer!!! 🇺🇸 🌆

Local Astoria politics: Tiffany Cabán’s legislative proposal to Curb Deadly NYPD Car Chases is a no brainer. As someone who lives in the neighborhood and has been to the community meetings, these chases are awful. No one needs to die because someone else committed a nonviolent crime. The police should be held accountable. 🇺🇸🏙️

As if you needed another reason to not take a yellow cab. Taxi TV Is MAGA Now. 🇺🇸

A long-held conservative dream is now a reality, the fuckers.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it’s shutting down. 🇺🇸

When Moderation Becomes Appeasement - by Toby Buckle

For almost two decades, our politicians have listened to anti-immigrant voices and prioritized their concerns—arguably over all others. To placate the anti-immigrant right, our leaders have stalled our economy, mangled our constitution, and diminished our standing in the world. And rather than recede in satisfaction, those voices have grown louder and angrier than ever. 🇺🇸

Liv Veazey writes a must-read expose on the banality of ICE evil for Hellgate.

Two agents, the woman who had already achieved 3,000 steps and a man in a black gaiter, began looking at articles written about the arrests in immigration court on the man’s phone. “There we are!” the man said, pointing to photographs of them. “Look, we’re famous! We’re rock stars. This is everywhere across the country.” They both laughed, then the woman leaned her head on the man’s shoulder.

What ICE Agents Talk About When They Think Nobody Is Listening 🇺🇸

Flock, a surveillance system ostensibly for traffic enforcement, is in reality a back door goldmine for authoritarians, ICE, and criminalizing women.

From the EFF, with original reporting by 404 Media.

Flock’s insistence that what’s happening with abortion criminalization and immigration enforcement has nothing to do with them—that these are just red-state problems or the fault of rogue officers—is concerning. Flock designed the network that is being used, and the public should hold them accountable for failing to build in protections from abuse that cannot be easily circumvented.

🇺🇸

I don’t say it enough, but fuck the New York Times. 🇺🇸

Anonymous, crowd-sourced, free app to track ICE movements. Like Waze, but for the new Gestapo. I downloaded. 🇺🇸

I can’t believe it. Zohran won the primary. Maybe we can have nice things! 🇺🇸🌇

Let’s have something nice in NYC. Everyone turn out tomorrow, and, of course, don’t you God damn rank Cuomo. Or Eric Adams, for that matter, but even he isn’t voting for himself. 🇺🇸🏙️

Todsy I learned that civil rights legislation in the United States was made possible by a peaceful protest of children.

The marches were stopped by the head of police, Bull Connor, who brought fire hoses to ward off the children and set police dogs after the children. This event compelled President John F. Kennedy to publicly support federal civil rights legislation and eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Corey Doctorow quoting others on fraud.

“The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero,” because “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Complexity is generative, but “all complex ecosystems have parasites.”

Something to keep in mind during this extended “conversation” on waste we’re having in America. Worth a read. 🇺🇸

I rarely link to the New York Times opinion section, because it usually sucks shit. We all know this. However, One Way to Keep Trump’s Authoritarian Fantasy From Becoming Our Reality? Pretty good.

Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality.