Notices tagged with talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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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?
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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".
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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 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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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 11:35:21 JST 
tinydoctor
#Shakespeare had Caesar say "cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste of death but once." Caesar may died but once, but he was stabbed a whole bunch that one time. "I am Cinna the poet!" Cowards may live to die many times, but it's the soul that gets stabbed. #JuliusCaesar #cowardice #USpol #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-fear-lobby-business-congress-00006608
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 01:13:27 JST
tinydoctor
Spring comes with a joy indistinguishable from pain.
#redbud #judastree #spring #springblooms #dailywalk #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 22:41:15 JST
simsa03
Masha Gessen once wrote this on the mechanics of terror:
«It was not just this client [of psychoanalyst Arutyunyan] who was living in a state of constant anxiety: the entire country [i.e., Russia] was. It was the oldest trick in the book – a constant state of low-level dread made people easy to control, because it robbed them of the sense that they could control anything themselves. This was not the sort of anxiety that moved people to action and accomplishment. This was the sort of anxiety that exceeded human capacity. Like if your teenage daughter has not come home – by morning you have run out of logical explanations, you can no longer calm yourself by pretending […] and you are left alone with your fear. You can no longer sit still or reason. You regress, and after a while the only thing you can do is scream, like a helpless, terrified baby. You need an adult, a figure of authority. Almost anyone willing to take charge will do. And then, if that someone wants to remain in charge, he will have to make sure that you feel helpless.»
— Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017), p. 467 f.
The perfidy of this mechanism is that the person who instills the insecurity and anxiety poses as safeguard against it. And while people trust him to "restore" "stability", all he does, under the guise of stability, is create more instability. The war never ends and is not allowed to ever end. This is true of Putin as it is of Trump.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 22-Mar-2025 22:21:13 JST
simsa03
The cruel, erratic, and contradictory character of Trump's and his coterie's actions is intentional. It's "strongman", i.e., mobster behaviour, to keep opponents in a reactive mode. In its unpredictability it serves as Rorschach test for everybody's fears and anxiety. And people spend their time and energy on trying to make sense of it all and on reducing the cognitive dissonance put upon them. Become a Rorschach test seems to be the most effective tool in power plays, esp. when you didn't gain it fully yet. Sadly, mostly intelligent and knowledgeable people fall for it. In case of Trump this is his main base of opposition.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 07:24:01 JST
simsa03
Unbearable: People who declare themselves a victim of the circumstances they themselves created.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 13-Mar-2025 02:24:22 JST
simsa03
Need to dive more into what the "Network State" concepts mean and how they are related to what Shoshana Zunoff wrote in her "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019) or Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson in their "Maschine, Platform, Crowd" (2017). Where is Evgeny Morozov, this George Scialabba of tech utopianism, when one needs him?
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 13-Mar-2025 01:41:21 JST
simsa03
Didn't see the parallels between the concept of "mafia state" – in my connotation, not as a state apparatus infiltrated by mafia crime families (and still capable to fight back) but as a mafia organisation posing as a national state and using its resources and sovereign rights (like Russia) – and the concept of a "network state" with its lead time of 50+ years of experimentation in the financial offshore world of venture capitalism.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Mar-2025 22:08:53 JST
simsa03
For each society the slide into authoritarianism is a pretty easy thing. Far more difficult is it for such a society to free itself again from authoritarian rule. Anecdotal evidence places the bar for such liberation pretty high. The society needs to be militarily conquered and defeated, then a program of "re-education" needs to be set in place by the victorious party. Self-liberation from authoritarianism usually isn't effective; the history of the fall of the USSR and the rise of the authoritarian and revisionist Russia is the prime example. But if that anecdotal evidence gives a reliable rule of thumb, then it is highly unlikely that the U.S. after the Trump regime can easily return to liberal values.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy put it bluntly recetnly:
« I guess we should have known that everyone who signs up to work for Donald Trump is signing up for one single project and that is the transition of American democracy to a kind of kleptocratic oligarchy in which the billionaires rule, in which they get to steal from regular Americans. And if that's the domestic project, then the way that you normalize that kind of government is to associate yourself with similar governments abroad, like the Kremlin. So it's all part of one big domestic project, the foreign policy, the affection for dictatorships abroad is, in effect, a means towards transitioning our democracy to something very, very different, something we've never, ever seen before in this country. »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTyCUqoVpfw
(Perhaps he should have added that such a procedure serves the purpose to make clear who has power and who has not, who is in charge and who has to obey.)
Thus, it is not just helpful for US-ians to think of the current U.S. foreign policy as in service of the domestic agenda. It also helps to explain to non-US-ians the seeming irrationality, the lack of principle, and the volatile nature of the current US foreign policy. There is neither a master plan nor a genuine interest in foreign events or states of affairs, because, like with Putin, the foreign policy is an opportunities-based approach that deals with world affairs solely in respect of how they are of use for the domestic policy.
#Authoritarianism (as is #fascism) is the figurehead and shining image of the mobster. It is what makes him think he is doing something worthwhile. And once the mobster class has hijacked and taken with it the whole society, there is no way back. Given that the U.S. will not be defeated militarily, it has no way to return or leave behind the authoritarian character it once acquired. There will be no re-education this time.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 13:07:14 JST
simsa03
As the dust settles after the White House incident:
It seems to me that the attempt by Vance and Trump to pressure Zelenskyy into submission and accept a truce or peace deal that grants all of Putin's demands not only "backfired". There is a sense that regardless how or if the relationships may be salvaged, Europeans have begun to acknowledge that the times of the transatlantic NATO alliance are effectively over. Sure, Trump may stick to Article 5 for a while. Or he may not. But to the Europeans it makes no sense to trust him or the U.S. any further. Because what sense does a military alliance make when you can only rely on it when a president of the Democratic party is in the White House? So Trump already killed that, to the great pleasure of Putin.
But that also means that there is no guarantee that in case of an attack on a NATO state in Europe Trump will think that Article 5 applies. And with such a withdrawal of the nuclear deterrence provided hitherto by the U.S., it's far more reasonable for Putin to start an attack on the Baltic states, on Moldova, or even Poland already this summer rather than wait three or five years until the European states have refilled their depleted arsenals.
Anyway, even though I think the chances for such a major war over Europe this summer is about 80% to 90%, we may get lucky. Or other things may happen instead, like Trump pressuring SWIFT in Belgium to reinstate Russia's access to this global financial exchange system. Or that he revokes all secondary sanctions and China starts providing Russia with military equipment (although that would take a while longer because the few railroad lines avaliable are already clogged by North Korean trash so that China would need a year or so to build a few more lines). In both cases, Russia could outlive the sanctions, the military shortages, and the war in Ukraine is then won by Russia.
Again, even if that happens, something else is already in the making: the forging of a new European identity. One that arises from opposition to Russia (which is already excluded from Europe) and by shaking-off this ingrained sense of existing solely by the mercy of the U.S. (as warrantor of security).
It is a European identity that stems from the surge in importance of the Eastern European countries, from Poland, the Baltic states, the South-Eastern European countries. An identity that insists on values like liberal democracy, rule of law, separation of powers, etc. Weaker in its mutual association than a federal state or even a confederacy, but still a union of nations sharing the same outlook. And that is new: It is a European identiy not fed by the past (of WW 2 and how to avoid another such catastrophe) but by a common interest of what to look for in the future.
Parallel to (or shortly after) the inception of this new European identity, a second major project may regain steam: the resurgence of the Union of the Mediterranean. Not as a cultural or infrastructure project – that's how German chancellor Angela Merkel watered it down – but as it was originally conceived by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak: as a political union of all littoral states of the Mediterranean Sea, a kind of "southern EU", strongly aligned with the northern one economically and politically. It would, e.g., include such antagonistic countries like Israel and Türkiye, effectively binding all countries and nations of a region that share a common history of 3.000 years.
Thus, should we in Europe survive 2025 and should the war in Ukraine at least not end to the benefit of Russia, then these are the two exciting developments that we may find already in the making.
That outlook gives me immense hope and helps me survive this current doom and gloom.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 02-Mar-2025 00:46:59 JST
tinydoctor
I am, of course, #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten.
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 11:43:04 JST
tinydoctor
Jathan Sadowski in Planetary Potemkin AI says AI is more an ideology than a technology. I think it's more a theology than an ideology--The theology of the would-be God Kings of Silicon Valley, the fairy dust instrumentality of their digital hydraulic empires.
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Thursday, 27-Feb-2025 06:43:39 JST
simsa03
Regardless who will succeed Trump in the White House, he already achieved his and Putin's goal of dissolving NATO. Because nobody can rely on the alliance only when there is a Democratic president who happens to comply with NATO obligations. The trust is gone. (And that means Russia's attack on Europe is imminent.)
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 11:05:30 JST
tinydoctor
People have asked me, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 14-Feb-2025 08:30:21 JST
simsa03
First Trump said that the Gaza-ISIS needs to release *all* hostages until Saturday noon or else "hell will brake lose". Then the Gaza-ISIS agreed to free the three hostages already scheduled for release in the "ceasefire agreements" and walked away from its threat to no longer abide by it.
(By the way, there are journalists who think that the images of the emaciated freed hostages which Israel compared to those of the survivors of the concentration camps made the Gaza-ISIS think twice about the PR impact. Nonsense. The similiartity to the camp survivors is deliberate and intentional, to show Israel and the Jews what the Gaza-ISIS has in mind for them. It rather was the stark contrast to the jubilant well-fed Palestinian criminals freed in exchange that made the Gaza-ISIS think twice because it makes Israel look too good and too humane. Which is what the terrorists cannot accept.)
First Trump announced that the U.S. will remould Gaza into a "Riviera" of the Middle East (after expelling the Gazans to various Middle East nations). Jordan then said to take in 2.000 Gazan children and Egypt announced it is working on a plan to reconstruct Gaza without expulsion of its inhabitants.
First Trump told Zelensky he wants Ukraine's rare earth deposits in exchange for military aid past and future and told the European NATO members to raise their defense budgets to 5% GDP. Then he came up with the direct communication with Putin, suggesting a) to meet him in person in Saudi Arabia, b) that Ukraine cannot join NATO and that c) it will have to face serious territorial losses in exchange for peace. Everybody cries: This is the end of NATO and a backstabbing of Ukraine. Well, yes.
Trump always makes bombastic claims, demands, and announcements in order to unrattle the other parties of a bargaining negotiation.
If he wanted to throw Ukraine into the bin, he wouldn't have asked for the rare earth resources (which in part lie in the Donbass trerritories).
What he did was forcing the European NATO states to prepare for a military conflict with Russia while taking the U.S. off the theatre.
What he gave – not offered, but gave – to Putin was what Vlad Vexler – in his otherwise misguided analysis in his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrWgHuCOMZ8 – aptly called "procedural concessions". But Vexler underestimates the importance and the impact of these "procedural concessions". In particular the telephone call initated by Trump, the suggestion to meet in person in Saudia Arabia but also in Moscow and Washington, they all provided Putin with "face". Not "face saving", but the "face" that is the publicly staged acknowledgement of space, strength, gravitas, respect, and "honour" so common between Mafia bosses. Trump came to Putin, and he acknowledged his "face", thereby reinstating it in the public global sphere. A weakling (!) like Putin is drooling for such pats.
But what Trump also did was to prepare the stage for a grandiose walkback, a slamming of doors, and the full support of Europe and Ukraine against Putin and Russia, should Putin not concede. All while getting the U.S. out of Europe (with or without leaving NATO) and forcing Europeans to buy his military equipment and Ukraine to hand over its material resources.
Obviously, everything can fall apart. But look and observe how Trump works and how he's playing his cards. The war against Russia isn't over yet, Ukraine is not defeated yet, and Europe may still come to its senses that it needs to support Ukraine even more and prepare for a war with Russia in a few years.
But until anybody can explain what Trump may get in return for handing over all the positions that Putin essentially asked for in December 2021 – including a withdrawal of U.S. forces behind the lines of the early 1990s prior to NATO enlargement – these manoeuvres look more like being aimed at the Europeans than substantial concessions to Russia. Again: Why should Trump (of all transactionists) offer Putin all these diamonds for free? What's in it for him? Until anybody can explain *that*, we have no useful explanation of what the Trump administration is now staging with regard to Ukraine. Things are way too much in flux to already call this the end of NATO, the demise of Ukraine, or Russia's victory.
#Ukraine #Russia #Trump #Putin
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Feb-2025 06:20:46 JST
tinydoctor
Some cats are wingless owls. Some, not all.
#superbowl #superb_owl everyday is #caturday #owls #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 21:56:39 JST
tinydoctor
A traffic light turns red, I brake, stop, think: The monsters are everywhere; that Polyphemus with his red eye, the giants of metal and frost shouldering the arcs of power lines against the dawn. You don't have to believe in, or even notice them. They move in the world with you. *Don't* believe in them; if you have to believe it, it isn't true. The light turns green. #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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