Aside from anything else, it is astonishing that NASA can still control instruments on an object 25 billion kilometers/15.7 billion miles away from Earth.
The fact that they are preparing to change power sources to extend its functional life defies belief.
www.livescience.com/space/space-...
Billy!
Sarah Sharma has a super interesting, counterintuitive take on feminist technodeterminism. Fabulously enticing interview! Plus an amazing book and cover . . . @dukepress.bsky.social dukeupress.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/q...
And Congress is allowing it to continue, hoping they might get some of the graft too. The only reason Congress is not impeaching and removing this government is because they are benefiting from its corruption. The system has to be fixed.
I hang out in academia and no one talks like that there either. Ugh.
If you trust someone, it means you share a reality. If someone is operating with different rules for their reality, you can’t trust them to come up with the same answers as you do.
3/ Enough people believed they also would benefit from this alternative reality, that they allowed this shift away from democracy. Now, they are realizing that only a few people truly benefit, which is why MAGA is collapsing.
2/ What happened in the U.S. is that a few people got enough power to make new rules that benefited themselves, and they constructed an alternative reality that overlapped with the democratic reality we assumed we were living in. ...3
1/ We humans construct our social reality. In modern democracies, the majority get to say what the rules of that reality are. We each have the power to control our existence and in a democracy, we give some of that power to representatives who make the rules. ...2
Constructing an Alternative Reality
a short thread in 3 pieces
There’s also this take: bsky.app/profile/juli...
It’s all just legalized gambling.
Thread.
We need power to control people and events and we get power when other people give it to us, or we take it through violence and domination. Supremacy is also just dominance behavior. But we can’t be free when we are oppressed/dominated. US love of liberty will defeat the supremacists (eventually).
Knowledge is power, and stupidity is weakness.
This really is the key ingredient. People have a need to belong and to be seen and parasocial relationships fill that need, even if it is an illusion. We fool ourselves on purpose.
At the same time, heavily tax the profits being made by oil companies. Don’t slide into fake austerity! bsky.app/profile/chad...
Read the thread. It's not long.
Because people want to be able to construct their own reality, where they get to control the “facts”.
One of the ways news media often fail us is by giving us the microscopic rather than the telescopic view. Everything I mention in this essay is well-documented, but the dots are mostly not connected to make visible this death by a thousand cuts our country is undergoing.
Both of his elections have exposed how many Americans are selfish bigots. It’s sad but true. You may want a truth and reconciliation commission after it’s all over. Not that one changes reality (see Canada and S Africa) but it’s better than nothing.
@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social has a beautiful meditation on power at her website:
www.meditationsinanemergency.com/flowers-bloo...
I have been thinking about power as it relates to human action and have books on the subject but nothing compares to how lyrical her essay is. Thank you for this.
Why is it that false prophets so rarely apologize or admit that prophecy is a chump's game?
To be fair, people do run a marathon in four hours.
(sarcasm alert)
Worth listening to and then making noise about.
Pursue impeachment!
It’s all about domination. Sex is just one way to dominate and prove one’s supremacy against other people. More people believe in social hierarchy than believe in equality so you will find some of them on the Left as well.
Putin supports those who support his regime. That’s why he “likes” Trump.
They are not afraid of him. They are benefitting financially from his actions. When they stop benefitting, they will oust him.
They should be aware that he can’t give out pardons after he’s gone*.
*His health is visibly deteriorating. If he lasts past the midterms, he’ll be impeached and removed.
It’s “survival of the fittest”. It’s warped Darwin.