fifilamoura

fifilamoura, 5 months ago to random

While I don't believe in wasting empathy on fascists, when I see people posting "fascists aren't people" stuff I feel sick to my stomach because this kind of dehumanization of people we hate (even if they hate us) is fascist thinking. Fascists are people, terrible people who wish or don't care if they do the rest of us harm, but still human beings. This doesn't mean we have to indulge them, it just means that when we dehumanize other people we are in the process of becoming fascists ourselves (no matter how loudly we yell "freedom"). Freedom comes with responsibilities if you're not a fascist and one of those responsibilities is to recognize that we're all human, even the people we don't like or who may want to kill us.

fifilamoura, 1 year ago to random

So people do realize that automatically thinking Musk's new hire is being victimized and set up to be pushed off a glass cliff because she's a woman is also sexism, right? She's got agency, she's in pretty tight with Trump (worked on the Apprentice, was appointed to a government committee by him) and she's decided she'd love to work with Tucker Carlson and Musk to push right wing agendas and, no doubt, help Trump win via using Twitter to promote him and destroy democracy. Margaret Thatcher was nobody's pawn either. Women can be terrible people too, we're not innately better or less oppressive or exploitative people than men.

Tokenism works BECAUSE even lots of well meaning people who don't think they're sexist/racist/homophobic refuse to see people as individuals instead of their gender/race/sexuality. This is also why the anti-trans pseudo-feminist bullshit works on some people. Please, I beg of you, stop seeing people as categories (we may individually identify as parts of groups and join together to work towards common goals, we're all still individuals who are unique and our actions define who we are, not the categories we may belong to and identify with). Embrace a bit of complexity people!

fifilamoura, 4 months ago to random

I really hate when people compare Covid to AIDS. Firstly, it's hugely inaccurate on many many levels and it's minimizing and appropriating the experiences and suffering of others. Secondly, it usually reveals their complete ignorance of what it was like, both in terms of the activism and also just how people reacted individually and also as community. One thing that people who constantly compare Covid to AIDS very clearly don't understand or know is that people responded to it very differently, both those who thought they weren't at risk and those of us who knew we were. Some people, quite a few actually, did just go "fuck it, I've got one life and I'm going to live it hard and large now." We can talk about the complexities of it all but I am here to tell you that it wasn't some Utopian time when everyone was protecting each other and being cautious, and that lots of people didn't take it seriously back then either. So please stop trying to compare Covid to AIDS for dramatic affect, it's ahistorical and it's no more scientifically accurate than someone saying "Covid is just the flu" either.

fifilamoura, 9 months ago to random

People do realize the BBC is a massive organization with many different departments, right? I get the impression that a lot of Americans don't really understand much about public broadcasters like the BBC, CBC and ABC and kind of assume it all functions like commercial media does (it doesn't, even despite how right wing governments in various nations keep trying to make it into that to destroy it...and also to get everyone to turn against the idea of public broadcasters and to start attacking it like they get their right wing minions to do...public broadcasters aren't perfect but there's a reason why right wing governments work so hard to try to destroy or control them).

fifilamoura, 7 months ago to random

I just saw an article entitled "how millennials killed the guest room."

Can we please stop letting rich White people write articles or headlines? How about "how the real estate/rental industry is making it impossible to survive"

fifilamoura, 3 months ago to random

Really interesting new insight into autoimmunity...

"Such immune system disorders also disproportionately affect women. In the US, four in every five autoimmune patients are women.

New research has found this can be traced to an interaction between the two X chromosomes in people who've got a pair, predominantly cisgender women.

When there's two X chromosomes available, a cell can only use the information from one, or things get a bit messy."

https://www.sciencealert.com/4-out-of-5-autoimmune-patients-are-female-the-x-chromosome-could-explain-why

fifilamoura, 5 months ago to random

I swear the covid zero fanatics are like evangelicals, they're often puritanical and moralistic, and it's not at all about the science for most of them (I suspect, like with the antimask truckers, it's mainly about having found a sense of community among fellow true believers....which I have no problem with until you start knocking at my door trying to sell me a religion). I say this as someone who is covid cautious, has an autoimmune disorder, wears a mask in public and encourages others to get vaccinated and to mask up if it's not just going to make people defensive and more resistant.

I'm not sure if these people realize how counterproductive they're often being if they want to convince people to wear masks, particularly when they make it all about individual responsibility rather than recognizing the systemic failures that have led to people thinking masks don't do much and aren't necessary. FFS, even many hospitals aren't making people wear masks so why should Joe Blow think it's important to do so? And you're definitely not going to convince Joe Blow by being evangelical. Just like no meme pointing out Trump's hypocrisy is going to convince someone not to vote for Trump.

fifilamoura, 7 months ago to random

Watching my Jewish and Arab diaspora folks on FB traumatize themselves even more by watching TikTok and Insta videos about the horrors people are experiencing is making me very aware that this is a terrible thing to do to oneself and that visual media doesn't (and seemingly can't) serve the same purpose of documentation that it once did. I noticed this because it's something I used to do but don't anymore because it was bad for my mental and emotional health to bathe myself in the suffering of others that way, as well as triggering my own trauma around oppression and violence in a way that made me feel desperate. I can be just as compassionate, perhaps even more so, when I don't do this because I'm not acting from my own trauma. I'm not advocating ignoring atrocities in any way, shape or form, I'm questioning the utility of doing this to ourselves (particularly in a social media landscape that's rife with propaganda) and how it gets in the way of constructive healing action and even a just peace because it so often fragments information, silos people so they only see their "own side" if they have a side other than all of humanity (not that many people don't naturally do this) and is generally mentally unhealthy for us all on individual levels if we're not sociopaths.

fifilamoura, 9 months ago to random

Carbon credits are the contemporary equivalent of buying indulgences from the Vatican.

fifilamoura, 11 months ago to Montreal

So I've been struggling to find a new home I can realistically afford (and hopefully flourish) because #Montreal is suffering a massive affordable housing crisis driven by a combo of lack of social housing being built (the province has been holding back funding because it wants to give the money to private developers not the city), massive real estate conglomerates buying up rental properties, Airbnb (sooooo many far too expensive badly furnished apartments for rent right now) and real estate developers only building swanky apartments (and sidestepping having to make a portion affordable because fines are nothing next to profits). And many small landlords see all the high rents and quite a few get greedy so people keep getting forced out of their homes, lease transfers refused, etc.

Because the province basically manages housing and we have a right wing government in power, the few remaining shreds of tenant protection and means to keep housing affordable are being shredded to benefit real estate developers too so it's only going to get worse. And, I fully realize how lucky I am to have people around me to catch me temporarily if I fall, community is everything. Even if I end up homeless for a bit I won't be out on the street and some people don't have that (not that couch surfing at various friends places is ideal). Or I may end up finding refuge somewhere truly fabulous and get to spread my wings again.

Anyway, it's incredibly stressful (survival fears are survival fears) and a real rollercoaster of emotions but I'm trying to approach it by remaining open to exciting possibilities rather than catastrophising about fearful ones (I'm veering wildly between the two right now since looking for places is a constant cycle of hope and disappointment until something falls into place). Chaos and uncertainty can be both liberating and terrifying, it really IS the natural order, today I'm choosing to learning how to dance with her again after getting a bit set in my ways.

fifilamoura, 7 months ago to random

I wish people would stop bragging about not getting Covid, it's really not just because of your superior skills or even precautions and, while it feels like a personal achievement, like many things associated with having privileges it's the privileges combined with your caution that have kept you untouched by the disease infecting the social body. It almost always requires A LOT of economic and social privilege to be able to isolate away from the mass of the social body.

fifilamoura, 6 months ago to random

I keep seeing people try to blame the public for the media's failures regarding investigative journalism and it's all bullshit. Newsrooms were bought up and closed for political reasons not financial ones (even if they used that to disguise their political agenda). Subscribers flocked to the NYT but all they did was use that money to pay right wing op Ed writers to undermine democracy. It's not about the money, it's about the owners' politics.

fifilamoura, 2 months ago to random

Americans are ripe for the plucking for fascists because they think fascism is all uniforms and parades and Trump, they don't realize that's the end state of fascism establishing itself and it's fascism as performance not the beginning, especially in these times where an appearance of superficial democracy is at play. The actual practical aspects of fascism are practical stuff like corporations and governments being fused together, police states and using the police to oppress "undesirables" and things like deep desires for "clean streets" that involve oppressing homeless people rather than homing them, targeting antifascists but aiding fascist thugs, etc.

fifilamoura, 4 months ago to random

This is obviously about social media designed to sell advertising (how much applies here, I don't know, and I'd suspect most people here already know all these things about corporate social media). I also don't think online activism is that productive, but I do think social media can be useful to activists for organizing like-minded people (though becoming increasingly less useful due to enshittification).

"As the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, many on both sides have taken to social media to gather information and air their outrage. The impulse to do so is understandable: Political activism on social media provides people with an emotional outlet and gives them a sense that they can do something. The war is awful, and following it generates a sharp psychological need to get involved and do something.

In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the ethics of emerging technologies. I believe that political activism on social media is a counterproductive and sometimes even dangerous form of engagement. Here’s why."

https://theconversation.com/war-in-gaza-an-ethicist-explains-why-you-shouldnt-turn-to-social-media-for-information-about-the-conflict-or-to-do-something-about-it-218912

fifilamoura, 11 months ago to random

I wonder how many refugees could be safely transported, housed, settled and cared for with the amount of money poured into that stupid submergible project and the money the rich people paid to play lazy adventurer?

fifilamoura, 1 month ago to random

So, silly Mastodon question, if I block someone can they still see my posts? Or do I have to post things to "only followers" to prevent blocked people from seeing my posts?

fifilamoura, 9 days ago to random

One of my favorite songs....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm7BfuOEk9o

fifilamoura, 1 year ago to random

@Mikal It's always the promise of "directly into creator's hands" but that's never how it gets implemented. That's not even getting into the fact that micropayments are shitty and dystopian, even if they're beloved of people in tech who think it's a technological solution for not paying creators (or how scammers would find ways to hijack this). It's always tech people advocating for micropayments, often tied into crypto, not creators. We'd at least like people to buy us a cup of coffee, throwing pennies at us is really dystopian. @jeffjarvis

fifilamoura, 6 months ago to random

Likely unpopular opinion considering the demographics of the fediverse but I'm so sick of shiny happy necroconsumerism and necropop (aka the latest attempt to foist even more Beatles on us in the most recent episode of necropop, a genre that is less "discovered lost tapes by dead musician" and more "holograms of dead artists designed to continue making money for record labels that contributed to the death of said artist" etc.) it's all just another manifestation of an industry that sells product/content and doesn't support the making of art and real culture. It hollows out meaning to create zombie culture that's unresponsive to the living and even stifles the creation of nourishing culture that sustains living humans.

fifilamoura, 4 days ago to random

A fantastic piece prompt by man vs bear...

"Patriarchy has everything to do with men, but at the same time, nothing at all. In a male-centered society where maleness is associated with power, what’s really being centered is power itself. What’s suppressed is mutual relationality. Patriarchy is intertwined with colonialism, racism, and other oppressive social structures based on hierarchy. It is a fundamental fracturing of our human wholeness."

https://bikepacking.com/plog/man-or-bear-debate/

fifilamoura, 4 months ago to random

Look, if someone blocks you it's likely because you're being annoying or an asshole, it's not some revelation of a deep flaw in THEIR character or a reflection of their inability to communicate (they clearly communicated a hard boundary via their actions).

In my case, I can totally get why someone might want to block me, sometimes I'm a lot for me too! Sure it's disappointing when it's someone I respect or who's thoughts I value but that's still on me and up to me to reflect on my own actions. Sure maybe it's a combo of me and the other person having a bad day, maybe I didn't intend to be annoying or overly familiar but clearly I was being annoying in that moment. Nobody owes me their attention nor do I have a right to their thoughts on social media. So, please, when you get blocked stop trying to take it to the court of public appeals and trying to turn other people against that person. They're blocking you does not make them a danger to other people (and may indicate that you are lacking in self awareness and have a tendency to avoid responsibility for one's own words and actions).

fifilamoura, 3 months ago to random

Privileged parents need to stop believing that facing any challenge or having difficult experiences is bad for their children. Maybe your kid's experience with the pandemic was actually good for them in ways you don't even understand yet even if it changed them? Maybe it's helping prepare them for the difficult future climate change is bringing while you're pretending they're just going to live the same easy, privileged life you did? It also really ignores the reality of the hardships most children around the world live through. You know the only thing that's really important to kids and that fosters resiliency? Being seen and loved. Children are people, they're not toys to be kept in boxes so their value increases. (And I'd really like people to think about how class and Whiteness intersect with the experiences their affluent White children are having of the world and their understanding of how they participate in society....)

fifilamoura, 6 months ago to random

Men lecturing me about how space pollution doesn't exist and how Musk isn't a fascist. Le sigh. That will teach me to spend any time on FB doing anything other than checking on friends.

fifilamoura, 1 month ago to random

On this here day of Trans Visibility I will be out protesting my stupid, paternalistic, right wing government's "committee of the wise" convened to weigh in on trans rights. Dear reader, they are not wise, they are all cisgender old White people full of prejudice. Needless to say, this committee is unwise, harmful and everyone and all organizations in the community were very clear it was unhelpful at best.

https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/803235/comite-sages-identite-genre-personne-trans-parmi-membres?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/like-men-talking-about-abortion-trans-groups-troubled-by-lack-of-representation-on-que-committee-1.6674716

fifilamoura, 6 months ago to random

Your friendly reminder not to automatically trust articles published in Politico anymore because they're owned by a far right publisher with an agenda who uses the media he owns for this agenda.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-media-scandal-germany-bild/