I have a poet friend

    let poet = Friend(Names.Persephone);

She's kind and she's rad

    poet.set('crunchy vibe', true)

She's AWAKE she's got that third eye open energy

    she's making the world a better place

        and she

✨ doesn't take shit from anybody ✨

(gracias por todo tu querer, apoyo y amistad, tía.)

On Charles Koch and the scam of right-wing philanthropy

Right-wing “solutions” keep failing to meet the most basic needs of tens of millions of Americans. We know that these failures are neither failures of imagination, nor a design flaw, but the intentional outcome of neoliberal institutional design. When Charles Koch announces a new non-profit, it communicates recognition that the price he's paid for stability is too low; the stability isn't there. American plutocrats have been getting away with paying too little to keep the masses content, and now they're nervous about the consequences. Charles Koch in particular has spent decades funding efforts to shrink the welfare state, and now his network is funding an initiative to address... the wholly predictable social fraying that occurs when communities can no longer cooperate to solve problems together, but each person is treated as an individual with few means of cooperation beyond for-profit economic transactions. In its place is growing populist sentiment, and extremism. If we are fortunate, before American society becomes more precarious, or even collapses under the weight of capitalism's well-known, studied, and understood internal contradictions, some relief to “the masses” - the non-owners who vote but who have no real power in the political system that makes decisions despite their needs, or analyses - might come to fruition. If it does, great for us! Capitalists of the future: take note that the cost of stability is not inexpensive, but it is a necessary expense. If not, and inequality and the exigencies of capital growth continue to create intolerable conditions for those who must live under their physical and psychological burdens, whose bodies and attention are a valuable resource, and the basis of all wealth, then socialism will come sooner rather than later.

apnews.com

The new ‘Be The People’ campaign wants to unite hundreds of millions of Americans to solve problems

A privately funded initiative called “Be The People” will try to connect hundreds of millions of Americans with efforts to solve local problems.

“Through state-owned organizations, as well as the broader public sector, [Nordic societies] disprove the belief that governments stifle innovation. Moreover, Nordic governments show how to use new technologies to solve the biggest social and environmental problems while ensuring the disruptions and gains of innovation are distributed fairly.”

www.peoplespolicyproject.org

The Nordic Model Invents The Goods ❖ People’s Policy Project

Through state-owned organizations and the broader public sector, Nordic societies are leaders at the technological frontier.

“It is so fucking wild to me, how skepticism toward American intervention abroad is still waved off as knee-jerk lefty radicalism, as if the last quarter-century never happened. The recent history of U.S. meddling in the Middle East - wars sold on false premises, states shattered rather than stabilized, millions killed, tens of millions displaced, trillions wasted, resentments deepened for generations - ought to have made caution a baseline, not a fringe posture. Opposing yet another intervention isn’t a matter of ideological purity or reflexive anti-Americanism; it’s the only rational response to a track record of catastrophic unintended consequences that we seem determined to forget.”

— Freddie deBoer

freddiedeboer.substack.com

If You Want Freedom and Democracy For Iranian People and All Peoples, You Must Start By Admitting What America Is and Does

we do not liberate, we do not rescue, and we do not permit democracy to get in the way of getting what we want

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

I pay for YouTube premium to not see ads, but every video now has sponsored content. Why am I paying YouTube?

Also pushed a quick fix to hide the language selection UI for code blocks. It's not needed when rendering a post; I know what language I'm putting into the editor when I write it! No big changes today unless I start feeling super motivated later, trying to find the willpower to get invested elsewhere... on a Sunday.

uhhh... simpler poetry forms, pls. Maybe just customizable fonts and for the editor to respect whitespace 😂

gooduniversenextdoor.com

20+ Examples of Unique Poetic Forms for Writing Inspiration

A collection of unique poetic forms, plus examples and observations about what these inventive poems are able achieve and inspire.