iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Here's an example of her being humble.

National Medal of the Arts. Kennedy Center Honoree. She actually declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom three times: twice during Trump’s first term because of her husband being ill and then COVID and then again from Pres. Biden because she didn’t want people to think the first two rejections were political.

Perhaps most famously, after the Tennessee state legislature enthusiastically began moving to pass a resolution that would pay for a statue of her on the Capitol grounds, she released a public statement requesting they withdraw it.

Why?

“I am honored and humbled by their intention but I have asked the leaders of the state legislature to remove the bill from any and all consideration. Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time.”

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I'm covered like you too, @mmjdanny.bsky.social ! Was very lucky I got it earlier this year!

Black Lagoon Blu-ray with Revy on the cover.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

This theory can be added on why the far right and MAGA want to go after Trans rights too. @esqueer.net said something about this (I think) a while back. Can't remember if it's a repost or an original post about it.

But it's time to stop looking away from the facts staring us in the face. The time for polite pretense is long over. Pedocon theory is not about a unique kind of mental illness that just happens to be concentrated in the Republican Party. It is not about "uncontrollable animal urges." It is about how racial anxieties and obsessions, fantasies of patriarchal domination and control, lead inexorably towards the idea that women and children exist for men's use—including sexual use. Pedophilia is simply this libidinal obsession with power and domination put into practice.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

A related example to private equity and how bad they are is from the book Bad Company and the Toys R US executives going to Disney World while the workers suffer makes my blood boil. #booksky 📚

In 2017, Liz said, Tovs R Us took everyone in management to Disney World. "Everyone" meant regional and district managers, but also the manager of every store across the country--hundreds of people in all The company covered airfare, hote stays, food, drinks, and entertainment for evervone. Organizers handed out swag, including plush knit Toys R Us sweaters. Swanky corporate retreats were common in finance and other white-collar industries. but Liz hac never heard of retail managers receivina such treatment
Yet when her boss came back from the trip, he was demoralized "We're not giving our employees decent raises because thev're tellind us not to," she remembered him saying. "You guys are working your butts off for this company, making all this money, and they're wasting money on handmade sweaters and Disney World."
It seemed strange to Liz too. Practically every request her team

made-for more staff. store improvements, anything-was rejectec by corporate as too expensive. How could sendinc hundreds of people to Disney World be in the budaet?
That year, Toys R Us owed $1.2 billion in loan payments; the next year, another $668 million. And it had no way to pay: lenders were sick of riding the Toys R Us merry-go-round. There would be no miracle deal or new set of loans. To make things worse, many suppliers began demanding payment before shipping merchandise to stores so they weren't at risk of getting stiffed. By September, stock- up time for the holiday rush, there wasn't nearly enough money in the coffers to buy an entire Christmas's worth of toys and pay off the loans. On September 18, a few months after the Disney World trip, Toys R Us filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which helped secure a new $3.1 billion loan to finance a total company overhaul.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Today I learned that Crunchyroll removed some anime like Black Lagoon, the greatest treasure of all time. Luckily, I have the Blu-ray from earlier this year and digital versions on Microsoft (for now) and Apple TV (Roberta's Blood Trail) #tv 📺

Black Lagoon complete collection Blu-ray with Revy

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Here's a tough lesson with democracy and institutions.

American neofascism under Trump offers a “tough lesson” about the atrophy of the country’s democracy and institutions. Too many Americans thought our democracy was forever — and perhaps even worse, they wanted it on the cheap. They assumed that others would do the work of protecting our institutions, norms and values, which left our democracy exposed.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

This should be a good reason why.

But while Carlson is taking a more mainstream, moderate-seeming view on the war, closer observation shows that most of his gripes with the Trump-led GOP is that it’s not right-wing enough. This week, Matthew Taylor, a religious studies visiting scholar at Georgetown, noted that Carlson has removed the American flag from his show’s set and replaced it with the Appeal to Heaven flag that was popular with Jan. 6 rioters.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

This Q&A from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social reminded me of a skeet from @gregpak.net a while back on Microsoft and how annoying subscriptions are for Office now; back in the day, you just get a disc of it and keep it forever.

One solution is to record your words in ways you can control. I hate that Microsoft Word and some printers now require subscriptions to work instead of letting you own them and use them in private. They have managed to cheapen self-expression while making it more expensive. The future may lie in the past: pen and paper, typewriters, other analog tools. But it is difficult to share your ideas without using the internet, which means battling algorithms, censorship, paywalls, and AI fakes. They want you to trade your humanity for chatbot hallucinations. They want you to surrender. Don’t.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

“Cities give you anonymity, and rural places give you isolation, but I think suburbs give you kind of neither and both,”

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

@karenattiah.bsky.social on the dangers of nostalgia and how it can lead to political repression.

Nostalgia— real or manufactured— can also lead to political repression, and in the worst cases, identity-based atrocities.

“..the promise to rebuild the ideal home lies at the core of many powerful ideologies today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional bonding…In extreme cases, it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.”

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

From 2024, @sarahkendzior.bsky.social . Also I wonder if you sometimes go analog when it comes to movies and TV shows. Earlier this month I found out that Microsoft stopped selling TV shows and movies last year. Even though I'm still able to access my stuff, I got a Blu-ray for one of them.

They ruined every good innovation of my life. They encouraged us to destroy the analog world, and after we did, they replaced it with bullshit and lies.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Also found this related quote from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social 's the Invaders on Eyes Wide Shut

My phone offers “news”: pseudo-revelations about Jeffrey Epstein that his victims told in the 1990s, back when Stanley Kubrick was making Eyes Wide Shut. The media ignored the victims because the media are friends with the predators. They dismissed them until 2025, when media itself crumbled and US institutions abandoned even the pretense of law. Now the predators are purchasing social media outlets, the last bastions of unfiltered inquiry, like they’re plugging leaks on their yachts.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

And a more recent favorite: spicy chili ramen with some milk, chili crunch and cheese. Tip: creamy oat milk makes it tasty.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

@sarahkendzior.bsky.social , was MTV precious to you? Also did you heard about what Microsoft did for CDS on their media player for Windows 11?

You’re right that the last few years have felt flat and dull. Peak TV ended after decades of shows reflecting on the moral crisis of the US (Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc.) We’ve been flooded with boring shows about the ultra-rich; this shift started around 2022. The downfall of TV was preceded by the downfall of the music industry: the murder of radio, MTV, and the musical pop monoculture — and with it, the counterculture that had formed in reaction. Like streaming TV, digital music is siloed and repressed by algorithms. Politically conscious songs exist but are hard to find. Americans still long for them: that’s why the “Fast Car” duet in 2024 entranced the nation.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Here's the consequences of invading Greenland for the US from reddit.

If the US invades Greenland, it will be the end of NATO, and the end of the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency. No one will buy and subsidize our military equipment and our military will become unsustainable. The US bond market would experience a price collapse and yield surge as foreign countries dump US treasuries. The US government would face much higher borrowing costs and risk debt default. Retail interest rates will soar to levels never seen before. The dollar would collapse which would make foreign products too prohibit to buy even if you pulled Trump's tantrum tariffs. And finally, say goodbye to your Social Security and your Medicare, forever. This will play out over one to two decades, but it would happen and it would be permanent.

We will become even more a country of have's and have nots. And the rich won't care. The rich in the US are already independent of the swings in the US economy. Their fortunes literally and figuratively are no longer tied to ours. And Europe won't care. And Asia won't care. And all the "third world" countries won't care. Why should they? We don't give a shit anymore about anything or anyone beyond our selfish interests. Our former allies and trade partners will all experience the purest form of schadenfreude as the US collapses inward. Because of our greed, our shallow nationalism and our native bigotry. We deserve what's coming because we are a nation of narcissists, gluttons, bigots and myopes.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Found this book at my local library and Wednesday in Spanish is something I never knew I needed. #booksky 📚

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Just randomly browsing on Reddit then it led me to an article on the consequences invading Greenland and saw @sarahkendzior.bsky.social getting referenced.

Liked by Brent Molnar: Voice of Reason
The end of NATO is the reason he's doing this. This is Putin wish and Trump is somehow beholden to Putin. Kompromat in action.
LIKE (6) REPLY
Liked by Brent Molnar: Voice of Reason
Exactly this. Trump has been compromised by Russia since the 1980's. It is well documented in the book "Hiding in Plain Sight" By Sarah Kendzior.
LIKE (7) . REPLY

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Almost a year later #academicsky and 2025 has passed. Looking at the military misadventure part from @salon.com since we're into Greenland now. Looks like this article might be off by a year.

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Reading this @sarahkendzior.bsky.social article from 2023. Here's on losing memories from a transition to a mafia state autocracy and keeping your values.

In times of severe crisis, people lose their expectations, and what is worse, they lose their memories of their expectations. They lose their memories of who they were and what they valued and what they hoped their world would be. This is a natural process when a flawed democracy turns into a mafia state autocracy, which is why you need to stay vigilant. That this is a predictable process does not make it less threatening.

You need to remember your moral boundaries and not cross them. You need to remember who you are.

And that is a great challenge during a pandemic – two years in which time itself seems to have lost meaning, and in which nearly everything that was reliable was stripped from us at some point.

But holding onto your values is the most important challenge you face. If you are trying to figure out how to proceed, look to who is suffering. Who is suffering, who enables that suffering, who excuses that suffering, how do we abate that suffering? And then proceed from there.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Loved your answer on Spotify and Amazon. I also have a portable CD player mainly for Christmas music I can't find on streaming services like Mavis Staples' Christmas Vacation and Christmas with Rosemary Clooney. Also I don't think I'll have room for multiple of CDs. 😞

SK: I boycott Spotify. It was easy because I never streamed music. I wanted to own my collection and not rely on internet when it doesn’t work on Missouri backroads. When I learned about how Spotify rips off artists, it became a moral boycott. As for Amazon, I use it as little as possible. I make part of my living from Amazon, so when there is a Kindle sale, I’ll tell people, since not everyone can afford my books. But I hype up independent bookstores much more. (Speaking of, get signed copies at Left Bank Books in St Louis!) Supporting small businesses is the way to go: the strike against big corporations is less important than strengthening the underdog for the long run.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Here's one. It's my favorite because it explains how a lie can become powerful due to repetition. #booksky 📚

Beware: All too often.
We say What we hear others say.
We think What we're told that we think.
We see
What we're permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we're told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we've said it
And at last to embrace it
Because we've defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we've embraced and defended
An obvious lie.

Thus, without thought,
Without intent,
We make
Mere echoes
Of ourselves-
And we say
What we hear others say.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Sorry #booksky 📚 and #academicsky it's been a while. Butler would continue with the parable series on how demagogues use their charisma to charm and trick their followers to self-destruction.

It seems inevitable that people who can't read are going to lear more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Logged in today and didn't expect Alice to die. RIP Alice 😭😢

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

While @sarahkendzior.bsky.social was gone for a while, here's the Substack post on Trump and Epstein along with the excerpt from Hiding in Plain Sight

An excerpt of a 2020 interview about my book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, which covers the relationship between Trump and Epstein, as well as the institutional complicity that let both of them thrive. Many of the details in my book are the same details reported now as “new”. This is why:

I know there are a lot of people who trust me: I show my work, I footnote evervthing, I give examples, Im very concrete. But if you were just to repeat, to somebody who doesn't know anvthing about the situation. what's in this book, [they would] be like, That's completely wild! If that were true someone would have done something about it! And that's when vou get to the fundamental horror of the book: It's not that no one knows, it's that they all know. Most people in official power, they know. I'm not breaking news. The reason they don't want to talk about it is that they have failed to combat it.
Sarah Kendzior

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Remembering what @sarahkendzior.bsky.social said about the government being shutdown a long time ago in 2016 at the end of October. substack.com/app-link/pos...

Congress is shut down; Congress was already shut down. Congress shut down in 2016 after spending decades running on dying batteries until the invisible hand yanked them out for good. The mafia state was made plain; civics drowned in corrupt institutionalism. We were told to keep pretending representative government was real.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Here's a clear explanation from @davelevitan.bsky.social on why the shutdown deal is bad.

The deal, which still needs to get through the House, would fund the government temporarily, reverse shutdown-enacted reductions in force (RIFs), and ensure federal employee back pay. It notably does not, however, include the extension of healthcare subsidies that was, it should be stressed, the entire argument on which Democrats had pinned their holdout. Instead, majority leader John Thune has agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies in December — all that pain for a shallow promise to hold a vote they will lose.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

@truthout.org shows how Wall Street and NYC gave rise to Trump from last month. truthout.org/articles/the...

This “social welfare” economy of NYC came crashing down with a punch delivered by Wall Street in the 1970s. The 1975 fiscal crisis was the result of a collapsing municipal bond market and a severe economic depression. The city lost a whopping 500,000 manufacturing jobs between 1969 and 1975 as North American manufacturers moved plants out of cities and eventually out of the country. Both the depression and the market collapse were the result of actions by the “masters of the universe,” the Wall Street investors whose funds flowed to overseas investments rather than supporting domestic industry and the cities where they were rooted.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

It's so funny that Cuomo was supposed to win until summer of this year. 🤣

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

From @kristencrowell.bsky.social and @rollingstone.com . Here's an excerpt on how the beautiful bill will be a nightmare for SNAP and states. www.msn.com/en-us/money/...

The law's cruelty doesn't end with benefit cuts. Beginning in 2027, the federal government will slash its share of SNAP's administrative costs from 50 percent to 25 percent, forcing states to cover the rest. Ten states, including California, New York, and North Carolina, rely on county governments to manage SNAP. Those counties serve 14.6 million people, or roughly one-third of all participants. In Alabama, nearly one in seven residents rely on the SNAP program to help them meet their basic needs.

That shift will devastate local budgets. States and counties will be forced to either raise taxes, cut services, or both. SNAP offices will be overwhelmed, leading to longer processing times and fewer resources to help families navigate the system. People won't just lose benefits because of budget cuts; they'll lose them because the bureaucracy collapses under its own weight.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Hey @runwithskizzers.bsky.social I wonder if you're a Peanuts fan and love waffle designs, especially around holiday seasons? 🧛🏿‍♀️🎃 #food 🍜

Dash vampire and jack o lantern snoopy waffle makers

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Hi #food 🍜 which Halloween peanuts waffle maker would you like?

Dash snoopy vampire and jack o lantern waffle makers

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

"I document the news of September 9, 2025, in case America is at a turning point. As we learned after 9/11, turning points have a way of dissolving into spin. Remember the recent past — and reclaim the stolen future." @sarahkendzior.bsky.social

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Celebrating first day of fall with pumpkin waffles 🎃 🧇 😋. #food 🍜

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Also remembering about @sarahkendzior.bsky.social saying about the rich and wealthy taking advantage of crises in Hiding in Plain Sight and/or They Knew (can't remember which book she said it or was it both?) #booksky 📚💙 #academicsky

If every crisis is also an opportunity, New York’s near-bankruptcy was an opening for elites to discipline a restive working class and to reconfigure the city’s political economy along market-friendly lines. When the dust settled on the fiscal crisis, New York’s social-democratic polity had been whittled down, its institutions weakened by austerity, and real estate and finance interests were more powerful than before. To this end, the geographer Samuel Stein has characterized what emerged in New York City in the mid-

the fiscal crisis, New York’s social-democratic polity had been whittled down, its institutions weakened by austerity, and real estate and finance interests were more powerful than before. To this end, the geographer Samuel Stein has characterized what emerged in New York City in the mid-1970s as the “real estate state,” a political economic paradigm in which “land is a commodity and so is everything atop it; property rights are sacred and should never be impinged; a healthy real estate market is the measure of a healthy city; growth is… god.”

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Here's a fun easter egg from Duckduckgo, if you search for Labubu, you'll get a Labubu themed duck icon. #justforfun

Labubu on Duckduckgo engine with the Duck image being dressed like a Labubu.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Thanks for the good news @bsky.app . Now I wish you can do folders for saved posts!

Jerry Chen's post and the announcement of saved post for bluesky.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Got When the Reckoning Comes just in time for spooky season. When getting it, the book cover art looked very different than the one I saw online. #booksky 📚💙 #blacksky

Book cover of When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Just read the transcript of @wajali.bsky.social 's latest chat with Dr.Patel and this is what I learned about the Bird Flu vaccine from Moderna. Was really surprised about that. #science 🧪

And right now, if you haven't paid attention, there's an all-out war on vaccines. This current administration has canceled the $800 million Moderna contract to build a vaccine for bird flu because, you know, even though bird flu has transferred to humans, who needs a vaccine? Of course, right, Kavita?

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Read this new @salon.com interview with Chauncey DeVega and Allan Lichtman. We underestimated the impact of misinformation and the propaganda machine of the right. www.salon.com/2025/08/30/d...

For the first time in over 40 years, I made a missed call when I predicted a Harris victory. My system presumes a reasonably rational, pragmatic electorate that makes decisions based upon real information. The 2024 election was the misinformation election. There was no way for the average voter, especially low-information voters, to make a rational decision because misinformation was everywhere. One example would be abortion rights. This was an issue that should have powered the Democrats to victory. Harris and the Democrats should have won by a landslide based on just that issue and the public’s great support for a woman’s right to have an abortion. Trump and the right-wing propaganda machine so distorted and confused the facts about where Harris and the Democrats stood on women’s reproductive rights that they were able to neutralize that advantage.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Trying out the Peanuts cookbook

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Here's an excerpt from @elienyc.bsky.social linking the racist law and order backlash of the 70s and 80s to Trump and Cuomo's formative years back in 2021 www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Soon-to-be-former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is one of those people who seems to think that aggression and bullying are the true hallmarks of the Empire State.

Cuomo resigned much as he governed, which is to say he tried to impose his personal will onto the reality of the situation. This is a guy who wrote a book about defeating Covid-19 even as the virus still raged and his own cover-up of nursing home deaths was being investigated. He’s been known to call up political rivals and shout at them, and people who have worked for him talk of their fear of telling the governor anything he doesn’t want to hear.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Got the news about Dobson's passing and decided to check back @swordsjew.bsky.social 's Wild Faith via Libby. Searched for his name and he is mentioned in CH 10 a lot. Was very disturbed at the top of pg 203. #booksky 📚💙

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Leatherhead was Sarah's David Bowie.

Hansen died of pancreatic cancer before Trump took office, autocracy spread worldwide, and climate catastrophes devastated the lands he loved. He died before a technofascist belief in human disposability became mainstreamed into global politics: an extinction racket that shuns even the pretense of valuing life.

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

@joanwalsh.bsky.social 's conversation with @jeffsharlet.bsky.social reminded me of @esqueer.net 's article on US' years of lead www.thenation.com/article/poli...

In an e-mail to me, Sharlet made clear that he essentially agrees with Dayal. Civil war is not “an inevitability,” he said, adding, “I agree that ‘mass casualty event’ is the next big risk, and that the ‘grey and the blue’ is not a risk, but I’d argue that the simmer that we see, our years of lead, are a 21st century American slow civil war.”

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Angtha Thar @untamespirit.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

From Octavia Butler: the consequences of neglecting our problems and we're seeing this now.

"I didn't make up the problems;" I pointed out. 'All I did was look around at the problems were neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters."

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