Notices by Carrie Shanafelt (carrideen@c18.masto.host), page 3

One of the reasons I'm grateful for my Baptist upbringing is that it offered me an alternative ideology to step into when I was told to support police or military or capitalism or racism. I know that many Baptists have lost our roots in resistance, because they cannot or will not understand what The Pilgrim's Progress is modeling. The entire thing is about rejecting oppressive ideologies because you have a *different* motivation for everything you do than capitalists and oppressors.

Americans are obsessed with the romance of revolution, of violently saying no to power, but because they are rarely clear about what they support instead of *this*, it devolves into chaos and rule of the cruelest every time. When you step outside the law to demand justice, you have to know what other than the law gives you meaning and guides your vision of the future. Not every resistor should be forced to invent their own dream of the universe; they fight for something not just against *this*.

This is why the social justice movements of Occupy and BLM have been so powerful--they are guided by specific questions and policy changes that are about improving the lives of workers and minoritized people. So of *course* they are the movements that have been demonized as not having goals or an endgame--because their endgame would necessitate the end of the unchallenged, unmitigated right of the investor class to exploit suffering infinitely. "Hey, that's my moral chaos you're dismantling!"

2024 boardgame rehoming season is upon us! @mxtiffanyleigh and I have to get rid of games every 6 months or so, and selling them is way too tedious. Knowing they will get played helps us to part with them. If you live in North America and will pay us back for shipping (packing materials and USPS Ground), you can adopt some of these beauties for your game group. (If you live in NYC, you can come get them, but you do need to come to us in the Bronx.) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TMuZloPXN_mZuMmgmY87mKjzTo3wGtuhR5_ZS2vMJ7M

Being an academic is so weird, because you're too busy 9 months out of the year to do anything but maintain basic life functions, and then, in the summer, there's plenty to do but there is time to discover an enthralling hobby (if you're not having to move to another state for the 10th time to stay employed). I can think back through my whole career and name what I got into each summer: food gardening, learning Mandarin, World Cup soccer, singing in a band, getting tattoos, making fresh pasta...

Really unbelievable how great the Royals are playing right now. It's the best season start they've had in half a century, and it's this heady, popping action where one guy gets going and then the rest want to contribute... Except MJ, who has the look of a guy in therapy for the first time, having breakthroughs but unable to think of what to do next. #baseball #MLB #KansasCity

Since his debut game, it was clear his dad was this drill monster who ran him ragged. Nobody has better fundamentals. He's in great shape, and he's desperate to live up to that expectation, but last year and this year so far, we're just waiting for him to stop panicking at the plate. The guys love him. He's clearly talented. But those eyes at the plate are not those of a guy who loves baseball right now.

@tokyo_0 It's really sweet! I hope you enjoy it!

Machiko Kyō eats so much in this movie that we basically *had* to go to Nishida Shōten before going home. They've added a spicy fried tofu ramen to the menu, so now I'm going to be making all these weird excuses to be near the UN.

So excited to see Machiko Kyō in Hiroshi Shimizu's Dancing Girl (1957) at Japan Society!
https://japansociety.org/events/dancing-girl/

Summer Bean Club haul arrived! #RanchoGordo #BeanClub

And some of them are already soup! This is a baby lima soup with charred red onion and orange pepper, zucchini, cilantro, tomato, smoked paprika, ground coriander, and black pepper, served with buttered pan-seared toast.

Young kitty gets into it! #CatsOfMastodon

City kitty dreams of freedom #CatsOfMastodon

@Adam_Cadmon1 It's so loathsome. None of it is even about the testimony; it's hours and hours of amateur body language analysis. He lifted his head, he blinked, she touched her hair. Who cares??

@Adam_Cadmon1 During W's candidacy, the NYT started focusing exclusively on gestures and meta analysis of clothes and hairstyles. You couldn't even find coverage of policy proposals. Then everyone was like, oh, this is much easier than talking about proposed war crimes and civil rights abuses.

Dolores is practicing both of her settings for #Caturday
#CatsOfMastodon

Someone in an office behind mine is trying to get an AI assistant to simplify a fraction and it's taking sooooooo many steps of miscommunication and correction. At one point, "OK. I'm looking up 'can you represent that as a fraction' on the web. I found some cool answers; check it out!"

New candidate for NYC mayor emerges! My excitement about this fact reminds me of when everyone was falling in love with Barack Obama, and everything we learned about him was better than the previous detail, and some friends of mine started tempering emerging unreasonable expectations with the slogan "Get disappointed by someone new!" (gift link)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/zellnor-myrie-nyc-mayor-election.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU0.P0EC.YV5PQHyNNmW3&smid=url-share

A piece of advice, for free:

Don't try putting an onion somewhere new. Just put the onions in the same place every time, so that you don't forget about them until they gradually liquify and mysteriously fill your home with a faint, untraceable odor, that, when finally exposed directly to the organs of sense, results in an hour of retching and cleansing and sorrow. Onions go in the onion place, every time!