Notices by simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp), page 4
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:15:33 JST 
simsa03
Returned from the hospital. The surgery of the second eye went well. Both cataracts have been removed and I can see with both eyes at the same acuity. Even though the world now appears in a harsh bluish light, it's the first time in more than 50 yeras that I can see her without glasses. Strange. And pretty lovely. (I won't get into the astounding unprofessionality of the eye clinic's staff. The surgeon did a good job but administration and care have awful.) -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 25-Apr-2025 21:03:58 JST
simsa03
The woman I talked about in the previous post was US-ian. Although it's only early in the tourist season, US-ians are a quite large part of the folks running around.
Yep, that walk was great, with the chilly winds, the rain, even snow, although Mrs. Dr. Omed had to fight a lot in this weather. Should have taken you to the best "traditional" café instead of the Indian restaurant, but we will come to that. Or I dare the fascists and try to get a visum to the U.S. Kentucky is said to be a lovely place nowadays when MAGA and the fascists dance to their death march polka. Even the reptile McConnell looks human nowadys. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 24-Apr-2025 11:17:02 JST
simsa03
In many ways, America is becoming a golfocracy.
— Mark Galeotti -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 22-Apr-2025 21:47:59 JST
simsa03
Early this morning I walked through the old part of my town for an appointment with my health insurer. A sunny spring day & tourists were already strolling in the streets. As I walked past, I saw a woman taking pictures of a front door with elaborate forged metal decoration.
I wasn't quick enough to tell her what spontaneously crossed my mind: "Thank you for paying such close attention to this detail of my city." And it occurred to me that the tourists' gaze makes me re-see my own city. So not only to do tourists nourish the city by paying attention, they also nudge me to look at areas which I normally overlook. Given how crowded my city is with tourists, this attentiveness kind of reconciled me with their sometimes annoying presence.
But this may be a good reminder: They come to pay attention, and by that they nourish the place. Perhaps the place is in need of such care even though it looks quite the opposite. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 19-Apr-2025 04:52:35 JST
simsa03
New blog post : "The «Eternal Palestinian» – Post-Colonialism as Lateral Violence" https://simsa01.wordpress.com/2025/04/18/the-eternal-palestinian-post-colonialism-as-lateral-violence/
The image of the "eternal Palestinian" without agency and responsibility not only distorts the view on the Middle East conflict but constitutes a form of lateral violence. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 11:28:18 JST
simsa03
And this happens when you have a supporting and carrying crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJjE5oS3Dcw
In the rendition in the post above Patti Smith had to fill and thus build the space for the song due to the absence of the audience engagement whereas in this clip the crowd fills the space and Patti Smith can turn to actually radiating calm, vastness, intensity, and passion. More modulation is possible, and the song soars. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 11:15:10 JST
simsa03
This is a live version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JMSkcCV790
And now imagine performing this song with absolutely no support from the fucking consumer audience – and still achieving THAT intensity. Then you may get a glimpse of what a splendid artist Patti Smith is. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 11:06:55 JST
simsa03
And the fools over on BlueSky turned it into this. https://gnusocial.jp/attachment/6e4591566dc94486214477d49e07c1f6dd299b5917bb16182304aebda122a487/view -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 11:03:35 JST
simsa03
♪ Patti Smith, "Gloria" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPO0bTaWcFQ
This easily rechaes the level the rendition of Van Morrison & John Lee Hooker.
!listening -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 10:47:30 JST
simsa03
Strange. Why was there never a musical biography of Patti Smith with Charlotte Gainsbourg playing lead character? -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Apr-2025 07:46:54 JST
simsa03
Trump is the largest Rorschach test ever invented. Everyone sees in him what he fears most. Are you people still not yet bored by your own fears and anxieties? Why are you turning the world into a chamber of creeps? What is this with you people that you crave so much for creeps? Don't you see how much you need Trump to provide you with this form of entertainment?
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Apr-2025 07:31:54 JST
simsa03
Everything is "fascism" nowadays. I'm so utterly bored by all the doomerism of those pretending to be sensitive and caring whereas in reality (and in effect) they only abuse the world in their own fashion, objectify the world, to make it a mining pit for their self-righteous screeching. Hey, lovely folks: You abhor "the rich" for exploiting the planet for their own materialistic gains? Look into the mirror: You're doing exactly the same, turning the world into a dumpster of garbage, the result of your outrage and "care".
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Apr-2025 07:19:23 JST
simsa03
Everything is "fascism" nowadays. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 13-Apr-2025 10:55:09 JST
simsa03
The interesting thing about our time is that it provides such ample opportunity for so many forms of doom and fear. 30 years ago people were fond of the manifold of strange, beautiful, and hilarious possibilites, today that is gone. And has been substituted by a rich palette of so many different possibilities of apocalypse. When was our world so incredibly rich of that so that we could choose *simultaneously* from so many convincing ways the world may go down the drain? The richness that lies in this myriad of awfulness is richness nonetheless: Climate, various wars, end of NATo, Russia's imperialism, end of liberal democracy, the rise of evangelical theocracy in the U.S., pandemics, worldwide finacial breakdown... Rarely have been things so rich in dark manifold. Poetic justice, it seems.
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 13-Apr-2025 10:38:52 JST
simsa03
And I experience you not as bitter or resentful but, among all the other things, as angry about how the Regime destroys all that comes with care, decency, and beauty. Righteous anger. Which kind of proves my point. Not that I'm in the business of point-proving. But you're a nice illustration of what I have in mind here... keep that, your "community" (writ large and in absence of a better word) will need it. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 13-Apr-2025 10:31:05 JST
simsa03
Yes, I forgot "Heavy Metal", its copies still in a few folders on the shelves :-) -
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 12-Apr-2025 21:45:51 JST 
tinydoctor
Fresh Scissor Dance: Start
A #scissordance is a #collage cut and pasted the old fashioned way, with scissors, glue, and a stack of old magazines. Finished last night.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 11-Apr-2025 22:39:18 JST
simsa03
Perhaps as after-thought:
I miss the magazines of the 90s and 2000s. I still carry my copies of "Whole Earth", "Utne", "Yes", "The Sun", "No Depression", "Kyoto Magazine" – although none of them were exactly mainstream or glossy magazine. Still I like to leaf through fashion magazines ("Harper's Bazaar" still my favourite) when I'm at the newsstand at the train station. And obviously I miss the times when magazines had various formats and ... well, the times then were more playful and ideas seemed to sparkle on every page.
What I resent is the mix of weepiness and entitlement (the latter bordering on arrogance) of people in whom I miss a sense of, well, gratitude for the luck they have had to live in magnificent times. Times when we were neither bothered about gadgets or the realities of war at the next border, where there was time and playfulness to try out ideas, to just indulge in the luxuury of playing with the arts and our daily self-expression as well as self-obsessions. Where we actually thought about the future as something better to achieve, and where the present – and that seems even more important – breathed the air of possibility. Where the idea of endless summer – not that I am personally into festivals and heat and people but you get what I mean – was not a threat that we're already runnig out of groundwater in spring, when we lived only slightly bothered by practical constraints and all the niches were plentiful.
The ecology of niches. The manifold of niches that seems to have shrunk considerably and now bestows a sense of drag and an not rich with scents but the stale fug of Victorian workhouses.
I've never been a real boomer, being too young for that, but even I enjoyed happy times. And what I miss in articles like the one in the post I now reply to is a lack of gratitude. Gratitude towards life, peers, possibilities, the exuberant fun everybody (or at least many) have had. Do you really think this could have been an endless summer? Did you really think that this merry-go.round would provide a retirement plan with which to retire safely and comfortably? How much privilege did you take for granted to think that was an eternal bliss?
Privileged we were, and I come think that privilege, when unacknowledged and appreciated with gratitude, will take away the splendour that comes with it. Privileged people are bitter and resentful because they lack gratitude. And offering gratitude is the first step to change ways of living and career paths.
In fact, it's the lack of gratitude that makes people like those interviewed in the article, wary and resentful, clinging to a better past while making those times all about them.
Don't grow some spine –and that didn't come out more clearly in my first post –, don't grow some spine, grow some gratitude.
And spine will grow from that.
#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 11-Apr-2025 05:42:08 JST
simsa03
It takes longer than forseen as the process is more complicated than expected. -
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 11-Apr-2025 01:53:02 JST
simsa03
Steven Kurutz, "The Gen X Career Meltdown" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/style/gen-x-creative-work.html
Reading this piece and listening to his interview on Amanpour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i55CKDCm6dY I'm a bit baffled. What did you people expect?
«Typically, workers in their 40s and 50s are entering their peak earning years. But for many Gen-X creatives, compensation has remained flat or decreased, factoring in the rising cost of living. The usual rate for freelance journalists is 50 cents to $1 per word — the same as it was 25 years ago.»
Yes. And I work as a dishwasher getting € 13/hour pre-tax. I only get this by having joined the union. And by that I now get the same salary again that I got 24 years ago. So, what's the fuss? You knew what you were doing, what you signed up for.
«Aside from lost income, there is the emotional toll — feelings of grief and loss — experienced by those whose careers are short-circuited. Some may say that the Gen X-ers in publishing, music, advertising and entertainment were lucky to have such jobs at all, that they stayed too long at the party. But it’s hard to leave a vocation that provided fulfillment and a sense of identity. And it isn’t easy to reinvent yourself in your 50s, especially in industries that put a premium on youth culture.»
Yes, it's hard. Which is why everyone's grieving when pushed out on the dole or pushed into a field where all that is left are low-paying menial jobs for which such older folks then compete with younger ones. But, again, what did you expect? And do you expect pity now? Capitalism offered you a magnificent time, and now you complain about that very capitalism coming after you? Gee.
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