Notices by Sandra (sandra@idiomdrottning.org)

What a ray of hope!

Phoenix is a new X server, written from scratch in Zig (not a fork of Xorg server). This X server is designed to be a modern alternative to the Xorg server.

https://git.dec05eba.com/phoenix/about/

In the 1970s oil crisis, governments (at least here in Sweden) responded by rationing the limited supply. 👍🏻

In the 2020s instead the governments instead are subsidizing the oil by lowering taxes (at least UK but here in Sweden the opposition is already arguing for it). Can I get off mad world, please? As oil and gas are burning and oil reserves are being opened and nothing is sequestered and the climate has a fever, this is not the response I want.

Happy Buy Nothing Day to those who celebrate.♥︎

Den solklart vanligaste och farligaste cancerogenen i vår omgivning är bilavgaser (både från röret och från vad som rivs upp av däcken). Det är ungefär sjutusen svenskar som dör i förtid varje år på grund av luftföroreningar—hundratusentals per generation—och ungefär en fjärdedel eller femtedel av det är då mer direkt kopplade till trafiken.

https://idiomdrottning.org/automobyl

A friend told me this joke yesterday:

A journalist interviews a farmer: “if you have two bungalows, are you willing to give one to the country?”
The farmer, without hesitation, “sure! For communism!”

Journalist: “if you have two tractors, will you give one to the country?”
Farmer: “of course! For the better development of our country!”

Journalist: “if you have two million bucks, will you give one million to the country?”
Farmer: yes! For the livelihood of our comrades!”

Journalist: “if you have two cows, will you give one to the country?”

The farmer keeps silent and looking at the journalist, so the journalist has to ask again: “will you?”

The farmer answers firmly: “No”.

The journalist is confused: “you are so generous about money and houses and tractors, but why do you draw the line at cows?”

“Because”, says the farmer: “I do have two cows”.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1inaktr/a_communist_joke_from_my_former_communist_country/

This is why it’s so much harder for folks to see the problems with cars. They have cars. Suddenly I’m judging them not just the nuclear bosses whom they’ll never meet let alone be. They’re not temporarily inconvenienced Montgomery Burns.

An I’ve said before, when I went dumbphone in 2017, to my own surprise I got way less annoyed at other people being on their phone. I just felt free and happy and like “oh they wanna be connected to people or info or culture they care about, how nice”.

But when I then went anti glowy screen in 2025, that annoyance at people being on their phone returned a hundredfold. I just want to put a lead shield over every reels-scrolling knucklescraper who has brightness on full blast. I long for a cityscape that isn’t a visual loudness competition. I hate phones and I hate seeing other people’s phones.

There is a huge nostalgia component to my phone-hatred but I don’t know what’s chicken and what’s egg there.

In the twisted world of “Hockey Jersey Ethics”, the team justifies the means. This mentality acts as if no act is too evil if it’s done by your own team.

https://idiomdrottning.org/hje

Dear Team at idiomdrottning.org, Hope you are doing great today!

Not sure if you knew that your website idiomdrottning.org has some problems that you might need to consider looking into. I spent 2-3 minutes on your website and found those errors which I have listed below:

• It doesn’t work properly on Mobile Phones, at all (30% of visitors browse the web from mobile these days).
• It doesn’t adjust properly when you resize the screen (Google and most of the other Search Engines recommends RESPONSIVE Websites rather than ADAPTIVE)
• It’s hard to read on larger displays (Your viewer might getting issues to read the contents)
• The design looks really, really dated compared to some of your competitors.

So now I’m getting cruel April’s Fools pranks over email, too. There’s just no getting away.

The audacious climate denial of Russia and the United States, and the greenwashed expand-green-but-also-expand-drilling of Europe and China, while first and formost it’s wrecking the Earth… secondarily, it’s a global gaslight on an unprecedented scale.

My head hurts from the doublespeak of these leaders outright denying reality this way. It’s a lie beyond all conceptions of what a lie can be.

Calling it a “minerals deal” is fossil fuel propaganda because in addition to minerals it’s also oil and gas.

I read “Indistractable” today. Since I’m already so long down the road, a lot of the practical advice was useless to me (“here’s how to use Facebook slightly less”) but the core message of how the opposite of distraction is setting and making goals matches with the trip I’ve been on lately. I’m finding that I need both: just cutting the screen without a clear plan of what to do instead doesn’t work, but neither does vice versa: I can have all the plans in the world but addiction to the shiny is a 🐝 and a half. By addressing both, I’m finally in a good place, at least for now.

As for the book, I’d call it mid tier as far as applied psych productivity books go. While some of the lingo gets unbearable (“indistractable” is a great punny book title but he uses it throughout as an adjective with inconsistent meaning) and there are some red flags among the endorsing names, I’ve seen worse. Main disappointment is that I’d want it to go much further. Annihilate all silo accounts and dark patterns.

But that it doesn’t is kind of a strength, too. It also addresses the internal struggle. You could have a perfect set up (probably better known as no phone) and still be a wreck addicted to novels and jigsaw puzzles. Sometimes we make our own distraction.

Oavsett vad ni tycker om att vi kommer hit till Sverige så är stramare medborgarskap inte ett sätt att hålla folk ute (till skillnad från t.ex. uppehållstillstånd).

Medborgarskap är ett sätt att öka integrationen och minska skillnaden mellan “oss” och “dom”. Men den klyftan tjänar ju högerpartierna på. Det är som vanligt en kilfråga. Förut var det “rösta på dom rika för skatt är typ nästan som stöld och stöld är ju fel så då måste ju skatt vara stöld det med (fast kontraktsenlig profitexploitering är ju absoluuut inte stöld)” och när det inte höll längre i en värld allt mer söndersliten av kapitalismen och en allt prekärare väljarkår så blev det “rösta på dom rika så skyddar vi er mot fjollorna och svartskallarna”.

Att deras skyddsförslag inte funkar utan bara ökar utsattheten och utanförskapet, det får Tidöpartierna bara att garva hela vägen till banken.

https://idiomdrottning.org/medborgarskap

Incarceration does not effectively reduce recidivism.
Prison doesn’t work.

⛓️💥

Really hated how Across the Spider-Verse made many of my spidey faves (like Miguel) cruel and dumb. The whole idea of a canon disruption / “gotta let the tragedy happen” goes against what makes Spidey cool.

It sucks a little bit that this is the situation and they know about it, that takes away some from the “whyyy me!” / hope against hope that I love about Spidey.

It sucks a lot that they wanted to be actively complicit in this.

@ViXY_DBC

We’ve got to stop the genocide, I’m not disagreeing on that part. Juat saying that Trump isn’t the answer there. He has never been the friend of Gazans, or of West Bank palestinians for that matter. Trump accelerated the annexation of Golan Heights and of Jerusalem.

It’s insane that the Biden has kept on delivering bombs. I never defended that. We need to keep the pressure up for that to stop.

This is the ratchet theory in action. The right makes things worse but then the so-called left keeps up the beatings. Biden’s administration announced in 2021 that they’ll continue to recognize “Trump Heights” in the Golan Heights. Voting GOP is not the answer. GOP has consistently been even worse for palestians.

The first-past-the-post US electoral system is broken. It’s so hard to understand that such an utterly evil and corrupt party is by a pretty huge margin the “lesser evil”.

When Trump is talking about the genocide he talks about “finishing the job”: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/28/trump-calls-biden-a-bad-palestinian-in-us-presidential-debate-jab

@ViXY_DBC

Biden has absolutely not been OK but sickeningly Trump promises to be even worse:

Shahid thinks Trump would be even worse for their cause. During his first administration, Trump bragged that he “fought for Israel like no president ever before” by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the country’s capital, a provocative move. And while he’s been mum on plans for his second term, the Republican Party outlined support for Israel in its platform at the Republican National Convention.

Yet Trump hasn’t been the focus of protests. In fact, Shahid said his group formed in an effort to encourage Democrats to address their concerns so that voters wouldn’t sit the election out or vote for Trump. They want their voters back into the Democratic fold.

“We are deeply afraid of Trump and Vance winning,” Shahid said. “Our understanding of Donald Trump’s plan for Palestinians is to accelerate violence against Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/harris-win-back-bidens-israel-gaza-critics/story?id=112899195

What’s ghoulish is the current ways art is tangled up with making a living. Most of the widely used forms of monetization are tied up with making the work worse, ad-ridden, copyright-laden, less accessible, less sharable, more controlled, more limited, less available, gunked up with DRM, and placed in an exploitative structure where execs and distributors of course always make sure that their slice of the pie is the biggest, in a world where the village troubador needs to compete with the world’s biggest stars or starve.

https://idiomdrottning.org/utopian-ghouls