Because the birds sculpted the air with their song —
I sent that flash across the sea. Candle in a paper lantern,
the flame rose and dipped.
I’ve been hiding from my father.
Fog-damp pall over the city. I ink this bruise onto paper.
Years ago, in Highland Park, we’d picnic in the backyard.
We slept in the living room. I clung to my beautiful mother.
Flipped the pillow and pressed against its coolness.
I held grudges like tiny fists of sand, then, let go.
I kissed the fog and sky and the ocean’s cobalt hue.
You. I hadn’t yet met you.
Murky alphabet —
I falter the letter, I elide the gaps. If the opalescent dew meant anything,
it meant that one day I’d be lifted above my feelings.
You’d become less than a feeling, the way every lover I’ve known
no longer hurts me. Those old charges detonated.
Here and now, I make room for joy. Birds ribbon the air with their singing.
Bird voices riot up. The planes with their hulking engines —
they fly too. The jags of each cliff head — Your lips — I uninterrupt.
I charley horse and miracle ride your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean.
Puddle of salt water, shivering wound. Seaweed, we sing of losses.
Cold under this blanket, I wait for my alarm to sing.
I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife. I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave
with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick of history dragging behind me.
Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father has retreated into silence and the lashes
across his back have not healed, and my mother tells me he could have killed
himself that night and we’d be blamed. Call the police, she said.
We stood barefoot on the street, listening to him throw things
against the garage walls, detonations of only what we could imagine.
I hurl stones into the ether. I wash my hands in ink.
The lost in the fog body borne of matter, history-less, untethered.
Better to be alive and bewildered. At least I can name the thing.
To love my father is to love his wounds.
In times like these, we present our hurts like old toys we polish up
to show each other who we used to be.
Yes, you're right about the English definition - talking politics is difficult in a global forum because of these strange idiosyncrasies.
I do try to use the language flatly, avoiding emotive words where possible. It's interesting you say that "woke" has positive connotations, as I think the Republican🇺🇲 and Conservative🇬🇧 crowds have been using that word as something approaching a slur!
When I say "conservatism" I am strictly referring to the definition in the dictionary or the wiki. I feel like the UK Tory party is definitely following a more anarcho-capitalist expression of the ideology, but their trans exclusionary rhetoric does have the air of "traditional" CoE values around it. In the states, the creeping in of a Christian flavoured version of Sharia law is an interesting development under a lib president, as I would consider this an expression of conservatism.
Personally, I think the connotations that the term conservatism has earned over the last hundred years are well earned, especially as the core values of conservatism seem to be somewhat nebulous. Ultimately we can only judge by the totally flawed implementation of the system that we have - just as we have judged Communism to be a totally unworkable and flawed system by studying the facist regimes of Russia and China as examples - despite the similarities between communism and what the USSR/CCP were/are being almost nil; though this is probably what you were driving at with your closing statement! 😅
I will be real with you here Spider - if you follow anything objectionable up stream you'll always end up with a handful of ethically and morally bankrupt capitalists. My emphatic "fuck Spez" isn't just groupthink on this occasion. I appreciate that CEO is a job, and ultimately there's a level of corporate responsibility - but Spez lied to us, ignored us (the AmA was laughably bad, answered 6 comments disingenuously and then dipped), attempted to defame or gaslight 3rd party Devs, violated data protection laws to preserve the sinking ship and has directed the entire company to basically dig in and starve us out. Users are the only thing bringing value to the platform - and this change is only harming the most productive users.
He might have the faith of the greed council backing his idiotic decision - but they weren't the ones pissing off of the top diving board into our swimming pool.
He could have stood with us, we could have had transparent communication and even if we didn't get compromise we could have had at least a conversation about why this is happening. but instead of any good faith engagement he decided to tell a bunch of transparent lies and throw a tantrum and then change the rules of moderation to reduce our power to fight for what we wanted.
Fuck Spez specifically for these reasons.
Fuck capitalism for everything else.
I'm using Jerboa, and it still got me.
Still figuring out what view mode works best, it's going to take me a long time to unlearn over a decade of BaconReader..!
"hide all child comments" was a much beloved feature on BaconReader, at least for me.
I also preferred the card view of content, and that all read content would get hidden.
But this is something new, so I'm trying not to compare them directly - I don't really want Lemmy to just be new Reddit, but something new.
Legit thought Lemmy was serving me an advert for a moment there...!
But yeah, the official R*ddit app is Garbo, they even bought Alien Blue years ago and have just failed to keep pace with Apollo, RIF or BaconReader. This API move is just a monopolisation of their content stream, hugely anti-competition.
Even if they sorted out their app, rolled back API to free, I'd never go back. Fuck Spez.
Samurai Batman was bad, I can't see this being anything different.
Yeah, I saw that, I'm just not really interested in this kind of content but would like to keep the rest - but I guess I'm not that wedded to anything. Maybe someone will spin up a SFW alternative some time in the future.
Do you think we could break these more risqué images into a dedicated community? There's good content that I want to keep without the smut.
First of all, ✊
But I think the extermination of humanity would be specioside. Genocide is the extermination of a race and maybe a sub-species if being applied to non-humans.
I feel that's a lot of countries right now. USA didn't want Biden, but it was better than Trump. The UK is facing an election where we'll have to chose between Starmer or Sunak(?).
The system feels broken beyond repair.
So I'm new here - I wondered if there's a way to "block" entire other federations?
E.g. I've seen complaints about "exploding head" being a wellspring for undesirable content, so turning that off individually gives users control over their experience without giving a power of censorship to the admin of this instance.
Also there are servers out there where English is not the default language - which is of no interest to monolingual me. I'd rather turn off content from that server entirely rather than just playing whack a mole with every new community that gets federated(?) Across.
TIA! 🙂
11yr r*ddit refugee here.
Franky - nothing short of torching it and rebuilding it from scratch.
Firing Spez is the bare minimum, but there's no guarantee that the successor won't be another moron oinker. Federating won't be profitable (not that R*ddit ever was) and there's no way that they'll be making every contributor a shareholder.
There's no way I'll be going back, the system will fail again because it's predicated on a flawed ideology.
Reminder not to trust this view - Google your username with "site:reddit.com" and you'll no doubt find things that Reddit has chosen not to show you for... Reasons.
Filed a GDPR "right to erasure" request for mine - but I don't doubt that I'll be going to the ICO in 28 days because Spez has failed yet again.
Thanks for the thread, gave me a couple more tools to pursue...!
I mean - there are protected classes, right? You can't say "no whites" or "no Jews", I'm not a religious man - but where's the line between a political ideology and a religious one?
Or am I totally mistaken and this is completely permitted in the states?
Have we got any reps from ReVanced over here yet? It's not a federated or decentralised approach, but it at least removes the layer of scum enveloping YouTube.
I guess you have to pick your poison.
Personally I can't think of a single traditional value worth preserving and I've got nothing worth conserving - given the pollution of the right that modern day corruption has completed, I'll stick to the lesser, at least until I can't dodge advertising anymore.
Well I'll definitely raise a glass to a new tomorrow! And here's hoping this is a first step in getting us out from under the thrall of for-profit organisations more broadly
This whole thing takes me right back to wild west internet days, or the first steps for Blockchain.
It's exciting to see what the community decides is best, and I'm looking forward to seeing if this takes off or at least becomes as natural to me (and others) as R*ddit was.
A lot of things I need to learn and un-learn.
Thanks for your insight - small comments like this are really helping me get my bearings here. 💚