jkottke

[jkottke]

Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? Sherrilyn Ifill has a list of what people are doing to counter the coup and more importantly, what you can do. I’m working on this one: “Make sure you have and can share good information”.

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Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege. “[We’re writing] this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary & capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful & corrosive to our democracy.”

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Voting for the Mayor Who Promised to Blow Up the City Doesn’t Mean I Approve of the Mayor Blowing Up the City. “I just wanted him to fix the old bowling alley like he promised in passing once.”

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The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump. “Anticipatory obedience is a key building block of their power. The autocracies of the 20th century relied on mass terror. Those of the 21st often don’t need to; their subjects comply willingly.”

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One of the attributes of the modern condition is an inability to be bored. “In one study, nearly half of participants left alone for 15 minutes with no stimulation chose to have an electric shock.” !!!

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From Greg Storey, a list of “ways to take in information without getting pulled under”. Including the Control Test: “Is this within my control? If yes, what’s my next step? If no, how do I adjust to move forward anyway?”

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“The private companies in control of social-media networks possess an unprecedented ability to manipulate and control the populace, to keep them in a kind of algorithmic cage divorced from reality.”

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It’s a Coup, But It’s Not Just Musk’s Coup. It’s important to remember that no matter how bad Musk’s actions are, Trump’s executive branch & Republican-controlled Congress are full participants in this coup against the American people.

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This is a great thread on how an ordinary person stepped up to help her community during a crisis (her kids’ school burned down in the recent LA fires).

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This is about Hitler & Germany: “a [democratic] country…handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown…” (Sound familiar tho?)

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Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Kendrick said, “The revolution ‘bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” — with the wrong guy sitting in the audience.

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Judith Butler: “Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?”

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I recently went wild ice skating on the 4.5-mile loop on Vermont’s Lake Morey — great fun!

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This short video is best explanation I’ve seen of why the racism, sexism, and hate of the MAGA movement has getting more extreme. It’s because of a psychological concept called an extinction burst (basically, things get worse before they get better).

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According to Wired’s reporting, a US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis has called the incursion by “DOGE” staff “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced”. And it recommends suspending their access.

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Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert. It’s Friday and I don’t know about you, but I think we need to unwind a little bit with this Tiny Desk Concert from Doechii, who just won the best rap album Grammy.

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Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting, including donating to a food program, volunteering your skills to local groups, joining or starting a union, and helping with disaster relief.