Worddancer21
@worddancer21.bsky.social
620 followers 190 following 2.1K posts
Writer, editor, cool aunt for hire. She/her. Here for nonsense, fandom and otherwise. Rumor has it I might be Kelinswriter on AO3. It ain’t easy running a universe. #SANVERS 🏳️‍🌈
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Reposted by Worddancer21
pedsortho.bsky.social
Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....
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mattzollerseitz.bsky.social
"By the time she died at the age of 79, she had as strong a star persona as her original screen fashion idol Katharine Hepburn — the kind that made inattentive viewers assume she was just playing herself." Wherein I write about the incomparable Diane Keaton. www.vulture.com/article/the-...
The Unfading Beauty of Diane Keaton
For over five decades, cinema bent itself around her profoundly original image. It had no choice.
www.vulture.com
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ceej.online
caught my vampire neighbor creeping through my front door. he claims my saying “for sure dude, we should definitely hang out sometime” the other night counts as an invitation, but I disagree. we’re on hold with the etiquette hotline
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jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). 

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. 
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. 
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
worddancer21.bsky.social
🧵🧵🧵🧵👇🏻
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:
We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly
Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy
steady.page
Reposted by Worddancer21
jelenawoehr.bsky.social
they think the government forces total adherence to an extreme set of beliefs on a population that would otherwise be radically different because they all grew up in churches that operate exactly that way
jamellebouie.net
a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.
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newrepublic.com
His slip of the tongue reveals who’s really in charge. trib.al/mIvP0yE

“Illinois governor says we’re provoking actions that are unlawful,” Miller said on CNN. “If I put federal law enforcement and National Guard into a nice sleepy Southern town, is anyone gonna riot?”
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Reposted by Worddancer21
dieworkwear.bsky.social
It's hard to help Americans left behind because so much of US identity is rooted in individualism. The average American conservative holds all three positions at once:

— Virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing
— Against raising the minimum wage
— Buys foreign imports because they're cheap
HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "I'm willing to pay more for quality products if they are made in America, by Americans, who are paid a decent income." The tweet shows Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" painting, which is often used to show the tweeter is expressing a brave opinion. HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "MINIMUM WAGE JOBS WERE NOT MEANT TO BE A CAREER. Why does no one understand this? Entry level jobs are STEPPING STONES to better jobs. No one wants to work towards that though." HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "Buy $5 gloves instead of $50 ones. Trust me." The tweet shows a box of "Gorilla Grip" gloves. The label on Gorilla Grip gloves show they're made in China.
Reposted by Worddancer21
maddow.msnbc.com
tell me more about republicans being the pro-business party.

www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...
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thetnholler.bsky.social
Chicago not letting Portland have all the fun 🐧
worddancer21.bsky.social
We invented lol so get off my lawn, Z babies
wilwheaton.net
Yesterday, I read that, according to Gen Z, when a Millenial puts "lol" at the end of something, it makes them sound old.

They said nothing about Gen X, but, whatever, lol
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ronfilipkowski.bsky.social
Epstein files giving House Republicans over two months paid vacation and counting.
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bradleywhitford.bsky.social
Who was President that day, Pumpkin?????
worddancer21.bsky.social
Quote of the weekend:

“You’re the vanity credit”
- @lzrdthevampireslyr.bsky.social
worddancer21.bsky.social
“We have an activation”
impavid.us
In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.
Reposted by Worddancer21
davelevitan.bsky.social
“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument
worddancer21.bsky.social
The class action on this is going to be insane
dieworkwear.bsky.social
About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages
Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.
worddancer21.bsky.social
Software that can’t understand the word “no” created by dudes who can’t understand the word “no”.

Got it.
spavel.bsky.social
As an example: AI doesn't understand "no." Because the statements "no ketchup on my burger" and "ketchup on my burger" are almost identical to a machine that does not and cannot actually reason. It's only a 2 letter difference.
AI doesn't know 'no' – and that's a huge problem for medical bots
Many AI models fail to recognise negation words such as “no” and “not”, which means they can’t easily distinguish between medical images labelled as showing a disease and images labelled as not showin...
www.newscientist.com
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nora.zone
cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war