Virginia S. O'Possum

@virginiaopossum.bsky.social

115

Followers

128

Following

3149

Posts

Posts Replies Media

I was halfway through an audiobook when the site's (audiobooks dot com) certificate expired and now I can't listen to the rest of it. (I'm just indulging in the kind of complaint I would make if democracy weren't hanging by a thread for its calming effect.)

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

I will bang this drum forever: in THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45 Milton Mayer interviewed 10 ordinary Germans after WW2 to learn how fascism took hold. There was never a moment when everyone woke up:

if you’re waiting for everyone around you to wake up, you’ll wait forever. this is how the people grinding our bones to make their bread WANT you to be. paralyzed, alienated & purposeless

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Step down for the birthday boys

Well, yeah. Biden is still old. I'm going to check back in six weeks.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Just like none of the bold investigators backfilling Joe Biden's feeble debate performance with punchy anonymous quotes have ever figured out why Trump was rushed to Walter Reed, claimed he wanted a spur-of-the-moment weekend checkup, and a year later declared that he had NOT had a series of strokes

"Executive Time" fell out of the coverage of Donald Trump in the most incredible way. Nobody writing about his quest to become president again ever mentions the fact that he hated the job when he had it and he couldn't and wouldn't really do it!

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

The thing I keep coming back to on this post is “bloodless if the left allows it to be.” He’s not saying “bloodless if the left doesn’t fire the first shot.” He’s saying “bloodless unless the left wins.” He’s advocating for violence if he doesn’t like the outcome of the election.

That Heritage Foundation statement threatening a violent revolution against the left = that moment in a movie in which the forces of evil loudly announce their evil plans. except in real life, unlike in a movie, most normal people don’t even realize this has *happened* (which is our job).

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Can someone check if the guy who writes for the Federalist, Washington Free Beacon, and National Review printed stories telling those readers not to vote?

lol. lmao even

So very...interesting...to live in a giddily ageist society run by a gerontocracy.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Remember how the "retail theft crime wave" disappeared as soon as companies had to do their annual reports? That's because it's illegal to lie to shareholders. AI is booming (if you're a pleb) but if you have money - Goldman Sachs will be honest with you instead web.archive.org/web/20240629...

🤷🏿‍♂️

There's a Small Problem With the AI Industry: It's Making Absolutely No Moneyfuturism.com AI is not making money for investors which may be connected to businesses having trouble adopting the technology.

web.archive.org

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

The New York Times Crisis of Confidence: badly shaken in the wake of bad editorial decisions, many are calling for the paper to resign.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

So hey, here's a thing I don't think a lot of folks know: That whole "Patient Zero" thing? The French-Canadian airhost who supposedly spread HIV all over America? That's not real. That's not what happened or how it happened.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

The first person who was killed for the cause of US independence was Black and Indigenous.

Crispus Attucks was Black and Indigenous. This country was literally founded on the blood of Black and Native people. We built this shit.

Crispus Attucks (U.S. National Park Service)www.nps.gov

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Over at the Bad Place, I made a tradition of posting Douglass' "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July," and I intend to carry on that tradition here. Since most versions you read in classes or in textbooks have parts omitted, the link below has the full text of the speech.

(1852) Frederick Douglass, "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July" •www.blackpast.org On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the D...

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Reply to

Pwnallthethings

Anyway, billionaires spend a lot of money on depriving their opponents of the right or will to vote, and they aren't opening their wallet out of the kindness of their hearts. It's because it does, when all is said and done, matter quite a lot

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Reply to

Kameron Hurley

Write a good take. Share the good take. Use the good take as the mic drop. You've said what you've said. Plant the stake in the ground and move on. The very real purpose of these convos, to paraphrase, is to exhaust us and keep us from doing our work www.goodreads.com/quotes/32287...

A quote by Toni Morrisonwww.goodreads.com The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your r...

So if you're feeling exhausted, like you can't do your work: that's mission accomplished, for bad takes. And I dunno about all of you, but I spent far too many years of last few years not doing my work. So I will build and disseminate my good takes about the world I want, do the work, take a nap

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Gaza now has the largest number of child amputees in history.

In personal reaction news, I have now had Yakety Sax as an earworm for almost a week and have decided that flying my US flag in support of democracy might be misinterpreted as its opposite so am not flying it. I need to find a "Rule of Law" flag.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

I know where the “Say No To Doomerism!” is coming from, but I want folks to make sure they aren’t slipping into some toxic positivity remix. Shock and sadness are among the reasonable responses to the situations we face. And those feelings can exist with others, it’s not always either/or… 1/

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

Artist Hitomi Terasawa drew a meticulous cross-sectioned rendering of Hong Kong's infamous Kowloon Walled City before it was razed in 1994. Now we have rare scans revealing the inner workings of the labyrinth-like metropolis. www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/07/kowl...

Happy Independence Day to our nation's capitol.

The DC Water and Sewer Authority has just issued a Boil Water Advisory for all customers in DC www.dcwater.com/about-dc-wat...

Y'know, this week just keeps getting worse.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

It really is making *me* feel crazy to see a bunch of other Democrat voters running around screaming about how Biden is now unelectable, on the basis of one bad debate and an incredibly obvious ratfucking campaign by America’s most craven newspaper.

I'm doing a thing where the client wants it designed to look "newsy." My colleagues, who are oldish, think this means narrow columns of black serif type. This is not how news looks anymore. If you wanted to give something a "newsy" look, what would it be? What does news look like now?

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

they have these gatherings of annoying people called city council meetings and if you bring a couple other annoying people regularly you can actually accomplish a lot

Being annoying as praxis is only the first step. The second step is to gather likeminded neighbors and friends and ask each other how you can maximize your joint annoyingness. Congrats: this is called organizing, you’re building a base of your common man united on a common cause.

Reposted by

Virginia S. O'Possum

President Biden can now, as an official act, fire Louis DeJoy immediately.

One of those weeks: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd1c...

I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Gluewww.youtube.com Airplane (1980) - One of the all-time classic goofball parodies.More info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/

Went back to read some of Tom Scocca's in memorium about Steve Albini and rediscovered that repulsive and horrendous Apple iPad ad. Steve Albini's apology for contrarianism is still important. The ad is still repulsive and horrendous. And I'm still glad I get Scocca's essays in my email every day.

Aaaaand -- it's talk on social media about how you're fleeing the country day again!

Gee whiz. I have no concentration today and I am craving all the junk food. Whatever could it be?