Notices by Patricia Aas (patricia@social.vivaldi.net), page 5

And pirate anything the book burners might get rid of.

Also the cloud infra of basically everything might end up in the hands of a fascist regime so this would be a good time to delete everything you don’t need and encrypt the rest.

Do not keep any information that could be used to track the menstrual cycle of people. If you work at a grocery chain this should be brought up right away or just silently lost.

Delete delete delete.

Don’t track whether someone is trans, think long and hard about tracking gender at all.

Do not store any information that Hitler might’ve used to select folks.

How can we use the skills we have to protect others, or to disseminate information? How can we sabotage? I need to print up the CIA handbook on subversive sabotage.

Ok, I’m less mad. I’m working my way through the stages of grief, though that doesn’t really work. What are the stages of anticipation of terror? Anyway… I’m getting there. We need to figure out what something like the Underground Railroad would look like today.

Norwegian newspapers going: What does this mean for us?
1. NATO is fucked
2. Ukraine is fucked
3. Palestine is fucked
4. Climate is fucked
Oh yeah, and your interest rate?
Yeah, that’s fucked too

Excuse me, I need to watch Star Trek and pretend we’re not screwed

They had an immensely competent and normal person and still they chose a fascist rapist.

We need so much more social science and especially history in school, actual factual history. People fall for the same shit every time.

People who condescendingly tell you to “calm down” are amongst the most dangerous there is.

What I have learned from this and the pandemic is the seemingly “adult” people are willing to risk absolutely everything to avoid taking even a minor personal loss.

When I was a teenager I was training to become a member of a search and rescue team. And our instructor in first aid drilled a thing into us, and since I still remember I guess he succeeded:

“What’s going to kill them first?”

The basic logic was that if they died none of the other stuff would matter. So you do stuff in that order: “What’s going to kill them first?”

And that’s how I feel about the American election and so many things. Focusing on this election isn’t communicating that certain other issues aren’t important. This is about making sure we’ll have the opportunity to have that debate/fight/whatever.

The goal isn’t only this election, the goal is (maybe even mainly) that there will be another election.

Because once the patient isn’t dying, suddenly all the other issues can be addressed.

@cstross I was about to give her a bit of a pass because of the time she lived in, but being on the wrong side of the ADIS crisis is unforgivable to me. “I hate you so much I think you should die, actually I’m going to, through action and inaction, make sure you do”. And the subsequent absolute disaster of AIDS in Africa and other places… They should’ve gone down for crimes against humanity.

@cstross this is Trumps “trans illegals” argument. “You are paying for reassignment surgeries for illegal immigrants”.

It’s a precursor to violence against those groups, it’s a part of a platform of stochastic terrorism/hate crime.

@cstross I agree with that there is nuance there, but that nuance sounds to me like a condemnation, a condemnation of the “freeloaders” in society, and that rhetoric of pitting one group against another is fundamentally immoral to me.

The narrative becomes: you feel that you’re strapped for cash? That’s because [immigants, disabled, etc] are taking your money. Tbh I think that’s in many ways worse than my initial interpretation, because this scapegoating of one group is on the pathway to violence against that group. I think it’s dangerous.

@cstross ah thanks!

Related random long winded thought:

I was watching this interview with Margaret Atwood, after watching an interview by Hasan Minhaj of Pete Buttigieg. And in Hasan’s interview he quotes Margaret Thatcher: “who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families”

And all that reminded me of the meme “how did the pandemic radicalize you?”

And for me it was the realization of how much my literal existence, my life and death, is tied to there being a functioning society. That “rugged individualism” is a fantasy. And in many respects an absolute nightmare.

I came out of the pandemic as a pretty chill introvert who struggled with crowds and loud noises, but who had realized how much I need everyone else to survive myself.

I always believed in democracy, but now I believe in a state, a functioning caring collective in a way I hadn’t fully realized before.

Fascism is the antithesis of that, it is a state that views the population as enemies and tools for hoarding power and resources for the few.
https://youtu.be/Ta3FaoKgHtA?si=VxD05e2P2Wj1vSNd
https://social.vivaldi.net/@Patricia/113410829858445758