Notices by Looking for explanations… (susan60@aus.social)

@goatsarah

I’m not sure I get you, unless you’re saying that some of the activism was pretty blatant & confrontational? Sometimes that is necessary, although it can also be counter-productive. There’s never just one “right” way to bring about change.

@goatsarah

I think it was similar with gay people a generation or so ago. Some straight people couldn’t look at a gay person without thinking about what they might get up to in the bedroom, or wherever. When I look at a person, I don’t immediately wonder what they do or don’t do in the bedroom & with whom.

I think this says a lot more about their personal insecurities about sex & gender than anything else, unless they’re just jumping on the bandwagon for political gain.

This pretty much sums up the US election result. #USPol

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I think she’s hit the nail right on the head.

Many women, when frightened, will either retreat & try to make themselves a small target (often necessary), or bravely face their fears and seek to overcome them.
Some men express their fear as anger, their violence & aggression driven by fear, not any carefully thought out rationale.

Trump is tapping into the fears of those men who don’t have the capacity (skills, education, temperament etc) to think things through. They like him, because he expresses his own fear & insecurity as anger. He doesn’t even try to be civil or measured now, making wild claims & promising hateful actions. He is running scared, scared of being shown up as an ignorant, incompetent fool, scared of rejection, scared of facing the consequences of his criminal actions. And some men relate.

@bmacDonald94

Teaching is a great way to learn. It’s one thing to think you know something, & another entirely to know it well enough to articulate & explain to someone else.

And food, good peasant food. The rice dish was better than any other paella we’ve had. The waiter is a rugby player & was rapt to discover that partner is a fan.

Hmmm. If you Google Free walking tours Cuenca Spain, a whole lot come up, which you then sift through to find the English language one. I’d done that, & booked… a tour of Cuenca Ecuador. So I cancelled that & with a tourist map, we took ourselves on a tour. The geology & geography were as fascinating as the town. Then train back “home” to Madrid.

Yesterday I had an unpleasant conversation with someone. It got a bit heated, & accusations were made by the other party. Some members of the autistic community came to my defence. (Thank you!) I tried to scale back in the ensuing conversations, The other person clearly has some issues (don’t we all!) and decided to try to make me the bad guy. I didn’t take it on (but was probably masking to some extent).

On another platform, the outrage would’ve been stoked & possibly a nasty pile on could’ve taken place. Thank goodness we weren’t in that space. The people who came to my defence did so civilly & in a low key way, not designed to inflame.

I’ve tried to delete my part in the thread.

Whatever their problems are, they’re not mine, & nor do I want to aggravate theirs. I don’t owe them anything, but nor do I wish them harm.

I hope everyone has a lovely day (or night if you’re in that part of the world that has things the wrong way round.) 🥰

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there’s a line where the professor says, “Logic!”… “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?…”, the comment of an autistic person if ever I read one. 😂

We could ask the same about history. Absolutely everything occurs in an historical context. When we ignore history, we ignore context. We look at the small picture instead of the big one. There are different reasons for doing so, ignorance being the most common, but there are other reasons.

Some deliberately seek to ignore the past, for reasons of their own, to deceive &/or protect their own interests. Taking history into account might highlight their own interests, and the duplicity of their motives.

Some are driven to ignore it for other reasons, such as a desire to simplify the situation, making it easier to understand & find solutions, but at the risk of getting it badly wrong.

Some are driven by the desire to blame, to simplify the situation enough to make it easy to direct blame at a single person or group of people. And their desire to do so might be understandable. Their own situation might be so untenable, a solution so far out of their reach, that they are overwhelmed by frustration & anger. And who can blame them?

But does it help? Does it actually move them any closer to a real situation, or does it merely create a space to vent their anger, often at people who have little or no relationship to the situation & most certainly aren’t the key drivers? Does it allow the real culprits to gleefully walk away, free to continue in their machinations to rule the world, openly or from behind the scenes?

Divide & conquer was the call centuries ago, and it still works.
#history #power #politics

@bmacDonald94

He was an interesting guy, complex. Did some great work, but some stuff was questionable. I remember my mother taking massive doses of vitamin C in the 70s, on her cancer journey. (I refuse to call it a battle. Living with cancer is not a militaristic exercise.)

Whether they’re far right extremists (fascists), opportunistic right wing politicians, poor quality media outlets & the people who work for them or social media giants, people who spread these lies need to be held accountable. They are fomenting division & violence.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-10/how-disinformation-fuelled-britain-far-right-riots/104202956?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

We used to watch the news on tv almost every night. We don’t watch as often now, & didn’t last night, so this mornings news of the IT collapse was… odd. Bit like day of the Triffids.

Saw this in an Op shop in Elsternwick Melbourne Australia on Monday.

@bmacDonald94
Abhorrent.

Let Afghan women join the UN talks next week. It’s what the Taliban fear most https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/27/un-doha-summit-taliban-afghan-women-rights?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Does anyone know why I have some “filtered notification” & how I can fix this?

@Snowshadow
Definitely worth a look. The countries involved have a more socialist approach. They’re still functioning as capitalist economies, but governments & business assume much higher levels of responsibility for the health & welfare of their citizens & employees, & much less of a survival if the fittest approach.

@Snowshadow
I think Australia & Canada are more similar to each other than the US, which is good, but not good enough.

@Snowshadow

Our last conservative government was roundly chased out of power, but are already gaining territory. They were so utterly incompetent, but admittedly not as bad as the British Tories, & are now suggesting we push are climate goals back 20 years & use unproven tech like modular nuclear reactors instead of renewables. This is in Australia, with so much sunshine, wind & space to harness those resources. And some people are buying it.

@Snowshadow

The opposite here. Temperatures below 5deg Celsius are unusual in Melbourne, so 3.9 was a bit chilly this morning. Awful for people sleeping rough.