iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A well-written piece on what we have lost with the idiotic budget cuts to science and research, and this is just one of countless examples. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Medical Breakthroughs Are a Thrill. Then Comes the Hard Part. (Gift Article)

The Trump administration has dismantled the agency that ensures that research makes its way into medical practice.

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Michael D. Green, PhD @michaeldgreen.phd · 28/05/2026

President of MIT not mincing words today in @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2026/05/27/s...

So let me say it as clearly as I can: Without basic scientific research, supported by the kind of farsighted public investment that allows large-scale, undirected, curiosity-driven inquiry, the scientific pipeline will run dry.
In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn't or when other countries now
investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.
Sally Kornbluth is the president of MIT.

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Merrilee Proffitt @merrileeiam.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I'm excited to share that we've made a collection of historic Supreme Court Records and Briefs available via @archive.org I've written a blog post where I go into detail about the importance of this collection. blog.archive.org/2026/04/20/u...

blog.archive.org

U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs: The Arguments That Shaped America, Now Freely Available | Internet Archive Blogs

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DrSinBin @drsinbin.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Perhaps a good day to buy that CLE about toxic social media overuse.

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

"If we allow a man-made war to shatter a man-made safety shield, we are admitting that while we have learned how to harness the atom, we have failed to learn how to govern ourselves.” - Director of Chernobyl power plant, via FT today archive.ph/mD6NE

archive.ph

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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Judge Strikes Down Kennedy’s Vaccine Policies www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/h...

nytimes.com

Judge Strikes Down Kennedy’s Vaccine Policies

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Paul Shelley @paulshelley.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed...This is not a way of life...it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” -Dwight Eisenhower 1953

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Watching @musicologyduck.bsky.social 's clips of the police and buses in DC before the SOTU and trying to figure what all the lights and sirens are for. Show of potential force? A stern reminder to not be silly? (Have the Frogs arrived yet?)

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Touching to see U2 and Ed Sheeran remember this terrible anniversary in Ukraine and the men and women who are doing what they have to do. youtu.be/p92NzxFmseo?...

youtu.be

U2 - Yours Eternally ft. Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia (Documentary Short Film)

YouTube video by U2

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Thanks to The Hill for having the pulled-back camera view as we await the tariff ruling response. Such a tiny stage, with the fake Greek columns, upon which a tiny man tries to make grand pronouncements.

Press room showing rows of journalists waiting in front of a small stage with a giant lectern flanked by two flags. The stage decor includes two slim Greek columns. Overall effect is of a play in a tiny theatre.

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

I'm gonna shed a tear. Kid to friend: "It's in the Constitution. Every single person gets due process. Doesn't matter what you did. Bro. EVERY person. Dude, I have a copy of the Constitution right here. How about I read it to you."

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

So our national design team (!) - www.ndstudio.gov - is behind the Trump Rx site (and the food triangle), where the search box at the top right doesn't work on a MS browser. Looks like super expensive supplements brand. That font ... is a CHOICE. (And check out the Severance vibe photos.)

ndstudio.gov

National Design Studio

The National Design Studio is leading the America by Design initiative working to improve how Americans experience their government.

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Ink Radio @inkradio.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Love don’t keep score. Memory does.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Yelled at via text this morning by elder friend who was part of Poland's Solidarność movement: "GET UP already and do something for the world!" ("Wstawaj już i rób coś dla świata!") Going, doing!

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Common Sense, published 250 years ago today.

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

A poem for this evening. Not a new one, but one I come back to, and something to remind myself of in the new year.

The first page of a poem titled: "Timelessness." The poem reads:

We make a virtue out of
worshiping a clock-faced god,
living lives of tightly scheduled minutes
as if each lateness
were recorded in some
great and doomful book,
to be counted up and weighed against our hearts
when all our days are done.

As if Creation cared.

There is nothing natural
in the revolutions of a clock.
No ethics
in the rocking trap of the escapement.
Nothing holy
in the gears and springs
that cut the world to seconds.
We chose to treat these things as sacred,
to make a Faith of punctuality
and a Creed of “Don’t be late.”

But this is not a healing rite.
Punctuality is other people’s
demands upon your soul.
And it is not the only choice we are allowed.
The deep world moves but slowly
to the lingered dance
of sun and moon,
keeping time through
an abiding whirl of stars
that are for signs, and seasons, and days, and years.
And we can take that measure for our own

Against the ageless patience of the skies
what worth are all our spring-wrought hours?
Here, our careful liturgy of timeliness comes loose.
Here, it does not matter if the seconds run away from us.
Here, beneath this temple vault of heaven,
is a morality of timelessness
that begs of us to stay until we know enough,
to travel at the speed of peace,
and keep our faith with moments,
not with minutes.
An ethics of the time we owe ourselves
so that, when all our hours have run dry
and every substance of our days is judged,
it can be said that our short stay here was well-lived,
and not well-scheduled.

- John Wyatt Greenlee

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Taking away the de minimis tariff exemption means no longer being able to support artists and craftspeople from abroad. Back to needing to know someone who *might* be traveling to the US and can bring you the magical thing from FAR AWAY, a reverse sending packages to family in Poland in the 80s.

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Lev Parikian @levparikian.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

The size of life. So beautifully done by Neal Agarwal. neal.fun/size-of-life/

neal.fun

Size of Life

From an amoeba to a blue whale

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Wondermark Comics @wondermark.com · 11/11/2025

I mean, an echo is technically a second opinion Wondermark #1577; The Objective Oracle

Pemsbrey sits, glum and dejected, at his favorite table. Robotecca, his automaton assistant with huge naturals, stands waiting to give her sage advice.

PEMSBREY: Robotecca, I ain’t feeling too good.

ROBOTECCA: My programmed response is to say words that express a sympathy I can not truly feel.

PEMSBREY: I get it. Ain’t too different from people in that way.

PEMSBREY: Everyone’s out to shut me up or shut me down. And I mean, EVERYONE! I live the most PERSECUTED life IMAGINABLE!

ROBOTECCA: This information is noted and added to memory.

PEMSBREY: Why are things so HARD. Why can’t I just be HAPPY?

ROBOTECCA: It’s a good question—one worthy of serious contemplation. It seems like your feelings are quite justified.

ROBOTECCA: After all, everyone is out to shut you up or shut you down. Astonishing as it may sound, you live the most persecuted life imaginable.

PEMSBREY (agitated): I KNEW IT!

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Thesaurus Wrecks 2547 🎃👻🧛‍♂️ @thesauruswrecks.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

When rich people get help from the government they call it a subsidy, bailout, loophole, or tax break or incentive. When poor people get help from the government they call it free stuff, a hand out, socialism, or communism.

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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 23/09/2025

Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world, Thou cacodemon, there thy kingdom is.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

What America is going through is not unusual in historical terms. Plenty of examples like it today elsewhere in the world. What makes it unusual is the rapid collapse from a set of widely espoused norms and values that centered on liberty. It is the sacking of the shining city on hill that shocks.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Justice Sotomayor, not mincing words, also says that today's decision will lead to the "creation of [] a second-class citizenship status" for Latinos, who now will have the burden to "carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely."

The concurrence relegates the interests of U. S. citizens
and individuals with legal status to a single sentence, positing that the Government will free these individuals as
soon as they show they are legally in the United States.
Ante, at 8 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.). That blinks reality.
Two plaintiffs in this very case tried to explain that they
are U. S. citizens; one was then pushed against a fence with
his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning. More fundamentally, it is the Government’s burden to prove that it has reasonable suspicion to stop someone. The concurrence improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.

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Wondermark Comics @wondermark.com · 06/09/2025

I'm sure no one at all will find this relatable Wondermark #1573; The Threat of Doing

INT. SITTING ROOM - DAY

JENKEN (be-piped) and PRONCHIE (her hand on his chair back) are reviewing important documents when the longsuffering LEMMETHA comes in and leans on a doorframe.

LEMMETHA: I got tired of waiting, so I started fixing the chair by myself. Where do you keep the chair putty? Should I go buy some?

JENKEN (alarmed): CHAIR putty? HOLD ON, hold on…

INT. WORKSHOP - MOMENTS LATER

Jenken is now hard at work chiseling a chair, which is being held in a vise.

JENKEN: All we really have to do is adjust the back like this… In the box of IKEA LEFTOVERS there’s probably one of the right brackets…

Pronchie watches the whole thing with veiled amusement.

PRONCHIE: You realize, the whole “fixing it myself” bit was a ruse to get YOU to finally fix it.

PRONCHIE: She’s figured out how to hack your motivation circuit, dude!

JENKEN: Honestly, I’m glad SOMEONE has! I can be the owner OR the operator of this brain, but not both at the same time

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Bill Amend @billamend.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

"Ballard" was ten episodes of yelling "No! It's Shut the F Up Friday!" at the TV.

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

🚨BREAKING: The last journalists working for AFP in Gaza have said they can no longer work for the news agency. They are out of energy and they are starving to death. I have never seen a statement from a news organisation like it. 🧵

Sans intervention immédiate, les derniers reporters de Gaza vont mourir
21 juillet 2025
L'AFP travaille avec une pigiste texte, trois photographes et six pigistes vidéo dans la Bande de Gaza depuis le départ de ses journalistes staff courant 2024.
Avec quelques autres, ils sont aujourd'hui les seuls à rapporter ce qu'il se passe dans la Bande de Gaza. La presse internationale est interdite d'entrer dans ce territoire depuis près de deux ans.
Nous refusons de les voir mourir.
L'un deux, Bashar, collabore pour l'AFP depuis 2010, d'abord comme fixeur, ensuite comme photographe pigiste, et depuis 2024 comme principal photographe.
Samedi 19 juillet, il est parvenu à poster un message sur Facebook: « Je n'ai plus la force de travailler pour les médias.
Mon corps est maigre et je ne peux plus travailler ».
Bashar, 30 ans, travaille et vit dans des conditions égales à celles de tous les Gazaouis, allant d'un camp de réfugiés à un autre camp au gré des bombardements israéliens. Depuis plus d'un an il vit dans le dénuement le plus total et travaille en prenant d'énormes risques pour sa vie. L'hygiène est pour lui un problème majeur, avec des périodes de maladies intestinales sévères.
Bashar vit depuis février dans les ruines de sa maison de Gaza City avec sa mère, ses quatre frères et sœurs et la famille d'un de ses frères. Leur maison est vide de tout aménagement et confort, à part quelques coussins. Dimanche matin, il a rapporté que son frère aîné était « tombé, à cause de la faim ».
Même si ces journalistes reçoivent un salaire mensuel de l'AFP, il n'y a rien à acheter ou alors à des prix totalement exorbitants. Le système bancaire a disparu, et ceux qui pratiquent le change entre les comptes bancaires en ligne et l'argent liquide prennent une commission de près de 40%.
L'AFP n'a plus la possibilité d'avoir un véhicule et encore moins de l'essence pour permettre à ses journalistes de se déplacer pour leurs reportages. Circuler en voiture équivaut de toutes les façons à pre…

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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

We are doing this. Our governments. Our taxes. Our arms sales. This is our Holocaust. Our Cambodian killing fields. Our Balkans. Our Rwandan genocide. We are doing this and history will never forgive us. Gaza:

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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Every American should read this ACLU lawsuit about what is happening in Los Angeles and California. It is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. This is not immigration enforcement. It is positively stuffed with videos and articles documenting racial profiling on a scale unseen since Jim Crow.

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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 03/07/2025

The evil that men do lives after them

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

We are dismantling American higher education & scientific research & health care & all the other things to fund concentration camps

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 23/06/2025

Want to instead explore the Virgo Cluster as captured by Rubin at full resolution? Head to our Skyviewer and enjoy some cosmic joyscrolling! There's so much to explore and discover ✨ #RubinFirstLook #CaptureTheCosmos 🔭🧪 ➡️ skyviewer.app

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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

🧵 I often talk about VDA, Verification, Deliberation, Accountability, as the core functions that make democracy possible. But to understand what’s gone wrong, we need to look at how those functions have changed.

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

a nation on edge holds its breath as the former host of celebrity apprentice huddles with his advisors, the wrestlemania ceo and the former co-host of fox & friends weekends

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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Now, imagine a simple model in which activists opt to engage in nonviolent or violent resistance and then the state responds with typical or excess force. (To be clear, the world is more complicated, but these simplifying assumptions help us describe some common patterns.) 3/

Figure 2 from paper "Agenda Seeding" shows a decision-tree like diagram in protesters choose nonviolent or violent tactics and the state responds with violent or more restrained forms of force.

Figure 2 summarizes the model. In the first period, subordinate group activists attempt to raise awareness through agenda seeding that involves activists employing tactics, possibly nonviolent or violent, which might make the news. News organization still set public agendas but social movements, like any group seeking greater attention or publicity, attempt to entice media to prioritize their concerns. Southern civil rights protests, for example, were often planned for mornings so footage could be flown to New York in time to air nationally on the evening news (Torres Reference Torres2018). Similarly, movement leaders selected Selma, AL, as a site for voting rights protests partly for its proximity to television network affiliates in Montgomery (Torres Reference Torres2018).

Media attention, however, can be sympathetic or hostile. Even presented with similar facts, different reporters and news organizations often structure stories in systematically different ways (Davenport and Litras Reference Davenport and Litras2003). Civil disobedience, for example, can be covered as a form of justifiable protest or unjustifiable criminality. Kinder and Kam (Reference Kinder and Kam2010) find that whether an issue can overcome societal biases to become salient depends significantly “on the ability of the issue to command the public’s limited and fickle attention and on how the particular issue is framed” (38). Activists, attuned to the ways in which media can frame an issue, routinely fought to craft narratives through a kind of political theater in which protests were “staged” and injustice “dramatized” (King Jr. Reference King1964; Lewis Reference Lewis2017).

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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 07/06/2025

“Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.”

thebulwark.com

A Permanent Stain on Our History

The Trump administration’s embrace of nativism is as shameful as it is self-destructive.

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

I hate it here. This cruel, racist, thoughtless regime. So far have not figured out where to put skills, or how to balance appreciation for life with anger and disgust. The micro-world is great. Everything beyond is horrific.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

The full story is here. It is heartbreaking and infuriating simultaneously. ICE's actions are actively undermining the rule of law and telling people that they shouldn't comply; that if they follow the rules, they'll be punished for it. Stop this madness! www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/04/i...

thecity.nyc

Families in Tears and Panic Outside Immigration Office as ICE Accelerates Round-Ups

Over the course of Wednesday, THE CITY witnessed at least 15 people arrested at routine, mandatory check-ins with the agency as the Trump administration escalates its crackdown.

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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 23/05/2025

In other words, changes on the ground, changes to the material reality of voter lives, would cut through the information haze, overcome the information asymmetry. That was the theory. I heard people involved say it explicitly, more than once. It failed.

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Judge: There is no evidence here absent the op-ed. That creates very significant substantial claim that 1st Amendment protected speech formed the basis for the detention Suggests the reason she was detained was her expression.

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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

AC/DC performed a stirring rendition of our national anthem last night at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas

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Maya Sen @mayasen.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever they aren’t going into universities’ endowments they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Americans don’t realize that, outside of the Nazi-inspired version that prevails in pop culture, this is what the typical real-world authoritarian regime feels like: constant low-level fear, driven by a few visible cases of persecution that keep everyone else in line.

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Democracy Docket @democracydocket.com · 07/04/2025

NEW: Yesterday, the Justice Department sent armed marshals to warn former U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer not to disclose internal DOJ information during her Senate testimony. Today, Oyer is speaking out to condemn the DOJ’s actions and defend the rule of law.

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Olga @olgainseattle.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Back in the motherland for a few weeks. Neighbor brought over dill pickle soup with rabbit meat (!). Crusty bread from one of five bakeries within a two-block radius. It's going to be rough going.

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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

From a poetry collection by Mary Oliver, where after a hundred poems showcasing gentle observations on nature and animals, she hits you with this

OF THE EMPIRE
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

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