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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 18:50:19 JST Adrianna Tan

   I’ve been thinking about the difference between growing up in an authoritarian city state and now living in an increasingly authoritarian large country.

   Friends from home ask ‘isn’t it bad when X happens?’ And I think of how:

   For the most part, the distance between politics and real life feels very large here. That, unless I make a point to go online and read certain things, many things about politics take a long time to filter over into ‘real life’.

   Whereas back home if someone made a speech or changed a policy, I would hear talk about it, feel it, discuss it, immediately. That’s also one of the differences in centralized states vs whatever this is.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 18:53:41 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     People who live in very centralized states don’t understand (and this was me when I first got here) that there is no The Government. It’s many governments, or none, and sometimes they all want different things and you interact with them on very different levels.

     For example the only government interactions I can think of that require my immigration status would be when I apply for a drivers license (and in many states there are ways to get one without status); when I apply for a visa / other immigration situation. No other part of the government knows about your immigration status most of the time and it would be bad / weird for them for ask it.

     Vs a constant state of everybody knows lots of things about you due to hyper-centralized stuff in many other places.

     That’s one of the primary differences.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 18:56:59 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     So for the most part, your experience with whatever is going on is very much contained to your immediate environment. This really is many countries in one. Or feels like it.

     Things are starting to feel weird because at the federal level horrible things like trans people gender marker stuff is being messed with, but I also remind myself that this country hasn’t been able to get even 20% of the population to switch over to ‘mandatory real IDs’ for the last 25 years they’ve been trying.

     So I’m hopeful that the slow grind of bureaucracy will take an even longer time for the most harmful of things.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:09:09 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Being far from DC, and living in a solidly blue state, the primary vectors for me to feel the deterioration of the empire is in extremely abstract things.

     Some late night rantings of a despot. Some forms that have been very awkwardly changed overnight in order to make life harder for immigrants.

     People here assuming that we are all living in a state of squalor and dereliction when really the true crime and shame is:

     That I live in a city in a state that is so immensely rich that it’s GDP is as large as or larger than one of Europe’s richest countries, and yet is okay to not building housing even as thousands of people are homeless. Where poverty is a moral failing, not a failing of the state. Where there is so much power and no good candidates to wield it.

     I don’t feel at all like I’m living in collapse, I feel that I am surrounded by hoarders who hoard money and power and that where I am is the center of all of this excess. There is more stuff here than anywhere else on earth.

     But at the same time, also great beauty: of people, nature, care and community. That I have come to care about and become a part of.

     I feel greater sense of ability and mobility and solidarity in being able to do something about the things that are falling apart, more than I ever have anywhere else that is so-called ‘better’. And I’m at the point in my life where that means a lot to me.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:20:57 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • jenshoffmann

     @jenshoffmann yes, I know. And it is horrific that the American electorate by and large don’t feel many consequences for the reasons I have described. The politics are extremely removed.

     An example is also that I almost never hear about the world outside America here, even in San Francisco, ever, unless I go out of my way to find information about it. As someone who came in from the outside, it’s extremely weird reconciling all of this.

   • Embed this notice
     jenshoffmann (jenshoffmann@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:20:58 JST jenshoffmann

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte As much as I understand that this is written from your personal perspective, I also want to mention that meanwhile the decisions of the US electorate have massive consequences elsewhere on earth: The Ukrainians now dying in masses because the USA delivered them on a silver plate to Putin, the millions who depended on medical aid and now are doomed to die in agony. The planned nearly irreversible destruction of 280 acres of forests.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:22:29 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Telepyleia

     @telepyleia there’s that too. It takes 6 hours to fly to New York from where I am; the same distance from Singapore would take me to the start of Eastern Europe.

   • Embed this notice
     Telepyleia (telepyleia@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:22:30 JST Telepyleia

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I think that's not just a centralisation issue perhaps, but also a locality / nearness aspect in a literal physical sense? Greek style or swiss "stand in the marketplace and vote" states are also not centralized like an authoritarian city state, but the politics are very local due to proximity?

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:24:17 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Acknowledging of course the negative impact of U.S. politics on the rest of the world, which does feel and experience many things as a result of what some people here choose.

     Which makes it even more frustrating that the average person here doesn’t even seem to think about the rest of the world at all.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:47:08 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • ClaraBlackInk

     @clarablackink my primary resistance to the idea of ever leaving where I am is, it’s hard to find my very specific queer / Asian / radical / activism overlaps outside of SF / Oakland. So yes, I did have to move to America to get that, but also I specifically have to not leave SF / Oakland to keep it

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     ClaraBlackInk (clarablackink@writing.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:47:09 JST ClaraBlackInk

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte there's this idea of: "oh, California is a different culture" or "those people from Vermont are totally different" that I started encountering in Florida but also, once I was in Florida I noticed how often people in California do that about places like Florida and Louisiana.

     And, it's not totally wrong on some levels. There are regional differences. But, there's a lot of sameness. It often feels like bickering about if teal is blue or green.

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     ClaraBlackInk (clarablackink@writing.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 09-Mar-2025 19:47:10 JST ClaraBlackInk

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte This thread is so on point.

     It's been weird because I lived in California for most of my life but with portions of that in the mountains, the valley and the coast so it was a broad experience of the state. Although each area is different it did feel connected.

     Then I lived in Florida for a time and now in NC. It feels like Americans don't think about the world because we often barely grasp the rest of our country.

     It's all very similar, connected via media culture, and yet...

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     Douglas (douglasvb@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 08:15:18 JST Douglas

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I feel everything immediately considering who I work for. 😬😬

     Y'all are losing something like $12m in grants so soon you'll feel it, too. 😬😬

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 08:15:18 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Douglas

     @douglasvb ahahaha yes the wheels of federal bureaucracy don’t often turn so quickly

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     Clark Shishido (cshishido@infosec.exchange)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 08:54:54 JST Clark Shishido

     in reply to

     • Douglas

     @skinnylatte @douglasvb the NOAA cuts hurt too.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 10-Mar-2025 08:54:54 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Douglas
     • Clark Shishido

     @cshishido @douglasvb yep and this also speaks to what some of the feds I know are struggling with. There are huge changes! But lots of people don’t seem to know / care (especially the indoctrinated).