Notices by Bodhipaksa (bodhipaksa@mastodon.scot)

Heather Cox Richardson has a brilliant article today. It's based on a WWII-era US Army pamphlet explaining fascism, which perfectly describes the Trump regime.

Do yourself a favor and read it.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-9-2026

I loved this, but the person who posted it had crappy alt text, so I'm re-posting.

Sometimes you get a perfect conjunction of posts in your timeline.

@kims Actually, the OneTab extension is available for Safari as well. It should allow you to open all the links at once, but I can't be sure.

@kims The onetab extension for Chrome lets you save all your tabs into a list, which you can share as a web page. You can open that page in Safari and click all the links one by one. I don't know of any way to open them all at one time.

@kims I didn’t have time to reply to this last night. Yesterday I taught meditation and talked a bit about Buddhism to a lovely bunch of guys in New Hampshire’s main prison. It went very well. I was involved in doing this years ago then had to stop, but the group continued with different leaders until Covid. I managed to gather together a team of volunteers to restart the group the week before Thanksgiving. I’m looking at starting a group in the women’s prison as well.

Usha Vance visiting a Marine Corps base in North Carolina a couple of days ago. Notice anything missing from her left hand?

This is where the US is right now.

A Jewish friend with a (US citizen) Latino husband is making a drive across several US states. They're having to plan their route to avoid areas where ICE is active, in case they get stopped and assaulted (and probably end up with smashed windows on their vehicle).

She compared it to the times of the Green Book, where Black Americans had to share how to travel safely around the country.

#Fascism

The #Aurora isn’t as bright here as it is in other places, but it is still clearly visible to the naked eye

@kims You say "this image" but there's no toot that you're quoting. I'm wondering if something went wrong.

@Life_is @kims I don't see the quoted toot at all.

This photograph of Trump holding a rendering of his new ballroom reveals it to be a ghastly gilded confection of hideousness.

The idea of the capital city containing a permanent monument to Trump's vanity and lack of taste is just intolerable.

I look forward to seeing it demolished, and something more appropriate (perhaps a restoration of the original East Wing) put up in its place.

‘In response to a Facebook post about an upcoming vigil for Kirk, Bushart shared an image of President Donald Trump with the quote, "We have to get over it," which Trump said in January 2024 after a shooting at Iowa's Perry High School. Text added to the image said, "This seems relevant today."’

And for this: $2 million bail and the threat of years in prison.

https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-million-bond-for-posting-facebook-meme/

Still incredibly disturbed by this account of a 1 AM raid on an apartment building in Chicago, where Border Patrol and FBI agents in military clothing smashed in people's doors—even those of citizens—and dragged everyone out onto the street, including naked children. Citizens & others were zip-tied. Non-citizens were taken away. Citizens were left outside in zip-ties for hours.

Of all the fascisty things that I've heard of, this so far strikes me as the most fascist.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated

“The media keeps wondering why trust in journalism is at historic lows. Here’s a thought: maybe it’s because when the President reveals he’s making military decisions based on old Fox News footage and lies from his advisors, the reporter who got that admission decides it’s not worth mentioning.”

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/30/the-mainstream-media-is-catastrophically-failing-to-meet-the-moment/

Not surprisingly, Canadians no longer trust the United States, are happy to pay more if it means avoiding buying American products, and are reluctant to come here.

It takes a special kind of Stable Genius to destroy an international friendship so completely and so quickly.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11435168/ipsos-polling-canada-us-relationship/

The Trump regime's security forces zip-tied and arrested more than a dozen New York lawmakers yesterday as they insisted on their right to inspect an ICE facility that's been accused of holding prisoners in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.

I don't see how, at this point, anyone can fail to recognize that we're living under full-blown fascism.

https://www.amny.com/news/brad-lander-jumaane-williams-nyc-officials-arrested-ice/

@DroidPort @passwordsarehard4

Often a screenshot of text contains more text than can fit into one post, or takes up so much of the character allowance that there's no room to comment. (The alt text field can hold much more text.)

Also, I prefer how it looks. I think it's more striking and more likely to be read than a simply text post.

Lastly, it contains information that might be useful to some people. I don't know whether it's from BlueSky or Twitter, for example, but others might.

@nightoo No, I'm not saying that not adding alt text is an "active attack" on people with visual impairments. I'm saying that it's not taking them into account.

And I haven't put anyone down.

@passwordsarehard4 @DroidPort The main point of alt text is to make images accessible to people with visual impairments. When someone uses technology to read aloud what's on the screen, and that technology encounters an image without alt text, the person doesn't know what's being posted, which is frustrating and excludes them. If the alt text is of an image that's composed almost entirely of text, then the alt text will duplicate what you see. But the alt text can be heard by a blind person.