bloomer

"I've been to the future, we won."

This quote on a t-shirt was brought up in this podcast episode and it made me tear up in the bus. A pretty powerful reaction. The quest in this episode is Rob Hobkins who has written a book called How to Fall in Love with the Future. which is essentially a book that invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.

The podcast episode is sort of lib and idealist, but imo it reaches something very important. It for example goes over possible future soundscapes and places like carless cities but the important part is the whole idea of why we should spend time imagining better futures. It made me think about how Marx points out that humans make things first in their mind and how this also applies to the futures we build. We imagine them first.

And if we can only build things that we can imagine and can only imagine doom and despair, then only those get cultivated.

I feel like this might sort of explain the China bloomer/doomer mentalities we now see or the hard crackdown on the solidarity that tried to spring up at the start of covid (it did show some people a possible better world). The machines of conservativity like LLMs also only serve to destroy our ability to dream better futures imo.

So I thought it would be lovely to hear others stories of the futures they imagine. I'll add my own once I've really thought about it. I'd suggest listening to the podcast episode as a primer if your cupboard of better futures is all empty.

I have family out in Arizona and seeing/hearing liberals waking up to the ways water and energy development threatens their future, as well as their lack of inclusion in the so-called democracy that enables it gives me some hope. Maybe it's just liberal reaction to the cheeto?

mad props to this yellowshirted fellow with the courage to wear this to a city council meeting

Could have posted this to the podcast com too, but decided to post here, because I do think things are changing. My anecdotal evidence this time is the podcasts I listen to.

So, around 2020-21 I restarted studies at uni, in social sciences. It's a field I went into, because I had this need to try and change the world. Was definitely altready a leftist, but not yet a marxist and definitely not ML. I was into all the identity stuff, social justice, anti-fascism, anti-racism etc. so I went looking for stuff to listen that would expand my views and found the Upstream podcast. They were nicely social sciency for me and doing all the neurodiversity, body positivity, feminist, etc. things I wanted to know more about.

It's been years and I haven't listened to this podcast in a long long time as it didn't take me long to move past it. I then went back to look at this podcast a few weeks ago and to my surprise they have gone full marxist alongside with me. Just yesterday I listened to their latest with Richard Wolff and Shahram Azhar and found it very enlightening (so much so that today I spent half my workday listening to Dialectic At Work, the episodes called "Crisis of democracy, part 1 and 2" I highly recommend although on some parts I disagree with them.)

The point is that I truly think that anyone with a drive for good understanding of the world around us will come to these same conclusions if the conditions are right and the material is available to them. I find this to be very life giving for myself in these times.

Stolen from here

I don't actually know if this is real

My contribution: My health has improved greatly and I'm feeling better than I have in years. Also look at this stupid bird, how can you look at that unsettling face and not feel joy? He's so happy to be a freak. I love him.

The Great Green Wall is a project adopted by the African Union back in 2007

Finally, some good fucking news

Hey y'all, I know things are pretty fucked right now, just wanted to share an optimistic perspective. (Copied from a comment here).

I have honestly never been more bloomer in my life.

EVERYONE is thinks things suck.
EVERYONE is pissed.
EVERYONE is trying to do something about it.

The only problem is that people don't know why things suck, or how to make it better.

Fascists think things suck because of [minority], and so they want to get rid of [minority].

Liberals think things suck because of the fascists, and so would like everyone to just play nice and we can work this all out, please.

But WE know.
WE know the problem! IT'S CAPITALISM!!!
WE know the solution! KILL CAPITALISM!!!

If everyone in the world woke up tomorrow and knew what we know, the suffering would stop.

The collective rage that we see in society would be directed at the true enemy instead of each other, and nothing in the world is more powerful than people working together to make things better.

The only thing we must do to win, the only thing that truly matters, is to get everyone to understand.

History has blessed us with the ultimate weapon.

A material power that Marx and Lenin and Sankara and Newton could not dream of wielding in their wildest fantasies.

NOW is the moment in history for revolution.
Capitalism WILL fall in our lifetimes.
I'll be surprised if it lasts twenty years.

The contradictions have become undeniable.
The people want change, they just need direction.

And for the first time in history, we have a direct line to every single one of them.

Don't you DARE quit on us.
We need everyone we can get.

Now get back to posting, soldier.

holy shit, are they learning?

Im thankful to be alive. Im thankful for my kids. Im thankful for homegrown tomatoes and roadside peach stands. Im thankful for spaghetti bolognese and real Alfredo sauce. Im thankful for living next to an ocean where i can sit and watch the waves and tune out. Im thankful for being a tiny little spec of insignificant nothing on a mote of dust floating in the beam of a star in the middle of a cosmic vastness that brings me to tears when contemplating its vastness and my place amongst it all. Im thankful for being able to go camping the couple times a year i can afford it, its always low tech and cheap (bedsheets and ramen noodles in cheap walmart/amazon tents) but it affords me a chance to be somewhere semi quiet, semi alone and attempt some self reflection. Lately it placates the urge to go back home when im feeling needlessly wistful.

I think back on my life and there are things im thankful for. Im thankful for the year i spent in a squat in New Orleans sparing for change. Im thankful that year, and the years after spent dealing with drug addiction didnt kill me despite my best efforts. Im thankful for the folks i met out hitching the roads who showed me how to get by. Im thankful to have achieved sobriety (well, 90% anyway) or some semblance of it despite it not bringing the much longed for clarity of mind. Yet. I hope. Im middle aged so who knows. Maybe 2025 is my year.

Im thankful for this place and the mostly anonymous folks that make it up. It tempers my misanthropic tendencies and i enjoy shitposting with some real elites. It encourages me to get better at shitposting and get better at being a good person.

Im thankful i am the age i am. I am at best, halfway through my expected lifespan. Likely closer to 2/3-3/4 of the way through given all the previously referenced drugs and efforts to off myself, but still. I am learning to look back on my life less with embarassment and more with grace, i guess. Beating myself up over it will not change the decisions i have already made. There really is no use crying over spilt milk. All the same, i would not do my 20s again. Likely not my 30s either. Its taken me a long time to even grasp the concept of being comfortable with oneself, let alone understanding that eventually i can get there too. Slowly becoming comfortable enough with my own skin to no longer hide behind a shirt at the pool. Not literally, im a chubby dad bod but metaphorically im getting my swimmers body, svelte even.

Im still broke. Chronically behind on bills, always more going out than coming in. Im not thankful for that, however.

Life seems to pose more questions than answers the older i become and even more so recently than the norm but i have moments where i am happy, life is truly enjoyable, and im thankful for those too. Im trying to make the most of my time here, and despite being generally a misanthrope, and a grumpus, i see how to be happy i think. I guess we will find out.

Anyway. Goodnight yall.

A few months ago in January, I posted on this sub when Google updated the images to early November 2023. The damage was extensive, but I was definitely cherry-picking the worst areas. Now there are images available from 13 months later, and the scale of destruction is almost incomprehensible. Entire villages have been wiped off the map. In the Netzarim Corridor, there are entire square miles without a single standing building. Just vast networks of damaged roads which lead only to dunes of rubble. It’s more than destruction, it’s utter razing.

The majority of these are from northern Gaza (Jabalia, Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Gaza City) and the Netzarim Corridor, except for the village of Khuza’a which is in the southeast where the Gazan border juts out. I included a more zoomed out version of the photo of Mughraqa since the damage in the Netzarim Corridor was particularly extensive. In the south, images are only available from June 2024 which is before the large scale demolitions in Rafah began.

I see nothing. / This statement is provided by r/worldnews

They even destroy the fields. Because hunger is a weapon.

After the Holocaust where it was being broadcasted on radio worldwide they said never again. / After the Rwandan genocide where it was being broadcasted on TV worldwide they said never again. / Now literally open Google Maps and this genocide is being given to us in 4K. Humanity never learns.

Reminder that Israel has blocked food from entering Gaza since March 2, meaning that they are actively dying from starvation. And this is a war crime.

Israel: trust me bro the whole village was Hamas. The orchards? Hamas trained birds in the trees

Wassup, comrades? I used to post on here constantly. Then I very consciously took a break because I thought it would be good for me. Removing some internet stimuli from my life brought me some peace I hadn't felt in many years. More importantly, since I had some extra time on my hands I went ahead and organized a union. We won our certification vote yesterday.

There was a little more to it. Some people at other worksites had already started the campaign, but as soon as someone approached me about I jumped in all the way. It's the coolest thing I've done in years.

I just wanted to remind you all that working class organizing cuts through a lot of bullshit and it's good for the soul. I'm sure all run into frustrations with this project, but at least it's real.

If you're looking for direction for your political energy, the AFL-CIO organizing institute is something to look into. I went into the program a long time ago (decades ago). They gave me a little training and gave me a list of factories to apply to so I could work on organizing campaigns. The experienced has shaped my entire adult life and given me skills and experience that have made me both a better organizer and Marxist.

I am Joseph Stalin now.

Took a much needed day away from as much as possible. Burned off for a local beach along the Gulf of Mexico with my two tweenagers. Not much surf to speak of today but i don't surf anymore, so not that much of a deal. Found a nice flat spot, we brought out boogie boards, a wood skimboard and a Zap board and just goofed off in less than 2" of water almost all day. Didn't go out much past the knees/mid thigh though. Calmer days like today the sharks come closer to shore and we are multiple miles from city proper here. Built sand castles, dug holes, watched minnows in the foreshore, saw redfish swimming in the breakers, cleaned up some flotsam, ate a picnic lunch under a sun shade ..

All around just a great day and I'm thankful for it.

A couple months ago I posted about finally getting a interview, and today they called me back with an offer! I'm finally gonna be employed!

Im schizophrenic and have been struggling with paranoia and anxiety these past few months, but I recently got a higher medication dosage, and I think Im feeling much better.

It feels like I can actually win. Not that I necessarily will—but theres a legit shot at it.

I know the world is a scary place for a lot of people, but , I’m feeling kind of upbeat, even though it feels like were reliving the final days of the Weimar Republic in a way.

It's kind of weird when I think about it, but even in a grimdark setting, there will be people who, somehow, despite bad odds, remain hopeful. I want to be someone like that.