nuttysaladtree

[nuttysaladtree]

Soy milk has a wider spectrum of variation, imo, than the other products listed. Extremely anecdotally (n = 1), it took me a long time to get used to the Kirkland version after growing up on other brands. And that's ignoring any variation in flavor: now, I'm lucky if I can find something other than vanilla, which is in my mind be almost fusion cuisine-adjacent. (I have not found a box of soy milk that both has labeling entirely in English and some hint of soy bean in at the bare minimum its aftertaste. Once my relative bought a box of soy milk, drank it, and thought some cow's milk had been mixed in, which I found hilarious.)

The Seven Steps Poem is probably not about soy beans, but it doesn't specify the bean kind. If you want ultimate soybeancest (never thought I'd say that sequence of words in that order), you can't get much more metal than "本是同根生，相煎何太急！".

there's something incestuous about seasoning tofu with soy sauce

[nuttysaladtree]

red blood cell girl bringing you oxygen on a cute little platter and then curtseying

[nuttysaladtree]

Ornate snaphaunce revolver, Germany, late 16th-early 17th century

from The Kremlin Museums

[nuttysaladtree]

The AOC-Sanders anti-oligarch tour is all about organizing

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2, and in BLOOMINGTON on Apr 4. More tour dates here.

It's hard to imagine today, but Barack Obama ran as a populist outsider, buoyed into office by a grassroots organizing campaign that used an incredibly innovative online organizing tool called MyBarackObama.com, which directly connected rank-and-file supporters so they could self-organize, creating an unstoppable force.

But as far as Obama was concerned, MyBarackObama.com was a campaigning tool, not a governing tool. The last thing Obama wanted was a clamorous electorate jostling his elbow while he made the grand bargains that defined his presidency: secret drone killings, immunity for telcos that profited from in illegal NSA spying, impunity for CIA torturers, bailing out bankers, complicity in the foreclosure epidemic, and, of course, unlimited free money for health insurance companies through the ACA.

Obama ran like a populist, but governed like Chuck Schumer. Meanwhile, the GOP of his day was dominated by its own "grassroots" groups, the Tea Party movement that was funded and organized by the Kochs but who quickly slipped the leash and became an ungovernable force that conquered the party. It turns out that the kind of people who get really involved in party activism are, well, passionate (a less charitable term might be cranks – and I say this as a certified, grade-A crank). They really believe in the principles that bring them into party activism, and the only people they hate more than the other party are their own sellout leaders (oh, hi, Senator Fetterman!).

For a leader whose theory of governance involves a lot of back-room favor-trading and Extremely Grown Up compromising, an activated, organized base represents a powerful obstacle. Obama's seeming genius was his ability to awaken a grassroots campaigning force that he could then hit pause on once he attained office, then re-activate on demand (Obama "revived" MyBarackObama.com for his second presidential campaign):

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1532634/barack-obama-s-big-data-won-the-us-election-2.html

But ultimately, I think we have to conclude that Obama's strategy was a losing one. By putting his own organization into an induced coma between elections, Obama lost an important source of discipline and feedback that would have told him when his compromises overstepped the tolerance of the electorate – and the fact that Obama didn't have an organized base meant that his Democratic Party rivals and his Republican opponents could force him into bad compromises, as with the ACA.

Contrast Obama with another "populist outsider" in the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders. Sanders has never been afraid of his own base or their passion. Members of his staff disproportionately come from community and union organizing backgrounds. Think of the difference between Sanders' "Not me, US" and "Our revolution" slogans and Obama's dotcom URL, "MyBarackObama.com." Sanders' presidential campaigns were always organizing campaigns, and he's kept those going in non-election years.

Since Trump/Musk's shock therapy assault on American democracy, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been made headlines with a series of gigantic rallies across the country. The two Democratic Socialists have turned out vast crowds in Republican strongholds: 11,000 in Greely, CO; 15,000 in Tempe, AZ – and even bigger crowds in traditional Democratic turf: 34,000 in Denver.

Writing for The American Prospect, Micah Sifry describes the larger strategy behind these rallies. According to Faiz Shakur, the Sanders staffer who's organizing the events, the point of these events is to build a massive, grassroots organization that gets shit done:

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-03-26-bernies-fighting-oligarchy-tour-organizing/

The campaign is hiring full-time organizers in "Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and several Western states," and they're already actively fighting in state-level battles, like a Colorado bill to make it easier to form a union:

https://www.cpr.org/2025/02/03/colorado-labor-peace-action-union-history/

These people-powered movements are mobilizing directly against Musk's dark money operation, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where Musk is paying people $100 each to vote against Susan Crawford, a progressive candidate:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-03-21-wisconsin-court-election-drawing-elon-musks-money/

The campaign is using online RSVPs to build out mailing lists. One interesting fact from Sifry's article: 65% of the signups are from people who are new to Sanders' mailing lists. 107,000 people have RSVPed so far. You can sign up here:

https://berniesanders.com/oligarchy/

Rationalization is easy to slip into and impossible to avoid. Politicians who make themselves beholden to organized supporters who really care about the issues are armoring themselves against the enormous pressure on elected representatives to make compromises. Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have made compromises in their careers that I disagree with. I don't support them because I think they're perfect or immune to self-serving justifications. I support them because they are deliberately putting themselves in a position where it's much harder for them to make excuses and get away with it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/26/not-me-us/#the-people-no

Image: Matt A.J. (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sanders_rally_Council_Bluffs_IMG_4014_(49036624512).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[nuttysaladtree]

“But he’s done evil things!”

Yes, that’s why he’s so dear to me.

[nuttysaladtree]

anyway if i'm being totally frank i suspect that those who tag the homophrosyne post with some variation of "need a relationship like that" did not understand the post. likemindedness on its own is great to have with your partner i'm sure. however a marriage like odysseus and penelope's would kill you

[nuttysaladtree]

Spring is in the air, and hopefully California poppies are blooming on the ground. If the spring hasn't sprung where you're at yet, gaze upon this hand tinted 1890s image from our collection, that's a close-up of blooming California poppies.

[nuttysaladtree]

really cannot emphasise enough that "All Men Bad" and "masculinity is inherently violent, dangerous, and evil" are load-bearing pillars of radfeminism and these ideas cannot have a place in any truly progressive queer theorising.

[nuttysaladtree]

Grind culture and exhaustion being a badge of honor makes it really hard for neuro/immune disorders like narcolepsy/fibromyalgia (+ many others) to be taken seriously. People say, "Don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee lol, I know just how you feel!" You don't want to know how I feel. At the same time, it's not healthy to be so tired from overworking just to survive either, but there's a big difference when a disabled person HAS to schedule recovery (stay in bed!!) days to avoid causing a disastrous relapse that makes us more disabled. In the end, it isn't good for anyone.

[nuttysaladtree]

2024-04-10 post from OP that says she captioned an image found on Pinterest.

August 2020 upload to the Facebook of the Valais Blacknose Sheep Lakeland - Moorahill flock of this image to serve as the page's cover photo. TinEye was unhelpful; Google Images found nothing older and nothing of a higher resolution.

The likely photographer, Jackie Simonini, replied to comments on the photo mentioning a calendar (so probably 2021). I didn't find a website, and I do not have the energy now to dig through their FB and Instagram. A 2023 article in the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald confirms she and a Jack Simonini run the flock together.

[nuttysaladtree]

This machine kills AI

[nuttysaladtree]

Can we please get one thing straight?

Nobody should be giving Mao Zedong any ups. None whatsoever.

This is a man who accidentally killed tens of millions of his own citizens (look up Great Leap Forward) and then killed or brutalized millions more on purpose while also decimating his country’s intellectual and artistic landscape in ways that took decades to recover from (look up the Cultural Revolution - and if you could stomach Neil Gaiman’s interview, you may be able to stomach firsthand accounts from survivors of it).

I LOVE what’s happening on 小红书 right now! I am SO EXCITED for more Americans to realize the lies they’ve been sold about modern China and to discover this rich cultural, historical, and linguistic landscape that many of us in Chinese fandoms have become obsessed with.

But do not romanticize Mao or the devastation he wrought. The only reason he’s still venerated there is that the CCP felt like admitting he was wrong would undermine people’s trust in The Party and so after his death they managed to blame most of the worst of his shit on his wife Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four.

There are other issues, obviously - it will be interesting to see what happens when TikTok refugees run up against CCP censorship, which tends to be harder to get around than just saying “unalive” - but this is one that I’m truly worried about. Don’t forget that capitalism and communism are economic systems, not systems of government, and they can both be paired with many types of government - yes, we’ve got a guy who wants to be a capitalist dictator, but that doesn’t make Mao less of a communist dictator.

[nuttysaladtree]

Franz Liszt

[nuttysaladtree]

Pi Day also coincides with White Day, if you want to organize a [fandom] shipping event.

Tumblr Holidays:

• March 14th: Pi Day

• March 15th: Ides of March

• April 1st: April Fools Day and Mishapocalypse Memorial Day

• April 13th: Homestuck Day

• April 20th: Weed Day

• September 8th: Queen Elizabeth Killed By Sans Undertale Day

• November 5th: Destiel Canon Day

[nuttysaladtree]

Can ordinary aluminum foil be transformed into something beautiful? Check out these recent examples from our Adult Crafts program!