maudenificent

maudenificent, 5 days ago

@luciedigitalni @firstdogonthemoon @caity

i’m hoping this cat will become a regular character in First Dog cartoons…

maudenificent, 6 days ago

@RickiTarr @Theorem_Poem

Spot on, Rikki

very few people “choose” to be homeless.
after graduating from the foster system and left with no support network, little cash reserves to get started, no safety net if they make just one mistake etc

not to mention people escaping domestic violence, sexual assault, psychological cruelty etc. the assumption all parents are “naturally
better” than living on the street is rubbish.

but also, physical housing shortages in many western countries are exacerbating the problem. even if people could afford the outrageous rents in the areas where there are jobs, there are no houses/flats available to rent. landlords which can make capital gains by buying and selling properties have no incentive to actually build extra homes.

during covid the problem was highlighted here (australia) because many people who are unhoused actually have jobs, and maintained gym memberships so they could shower before/after work, but gyms and similar facilities were closed during covid lock-downs.

some unhoused people even have furniture /possessions in storage waiting for the day there is something available to rent again.

sweeps of homeless camps are the beginning of the end, imo

maudenificent, 10 days ago

@RickiTarr

🎶i know I’m #Fabulous🎶

(from the TV series Empire)

https://youtu.be/M69Ofn_B_Rg?feature=shared

maudenificent, 10 days ago

@RickiTarr

🎶When you’re good to Mama🎶

from Chicago - Queen Latifah

https://youtu.be/3t6_odu4lNc?feature=shared

maudenificent, 18 days ago

@RustyBertrand @susankayequinn @farah

#AltText4You

picture of a freeway, sign pointing straight ahead says “Men”, exit sign says “Bears”. A car labelled “Women” has seen the Bears sign and with a squeal of burning tyre rubber decides to take the exit

maudenificent, 21 days ago

@Mary625

every day i shake my head about ‘murica - today is no exception. do you think biden will actually sign it?

(i mean, ‘straya’s a worry too, but youse lot all have my greatest sympathy 💐)

maudenificent, 21 days ago

@hannah @MorpheusB

💐

maudenificent, 1 month ago

@StillIRise1963

maudenificent, 1 month ago

@fkamiah17 @bobjmsn

it’s all in here: and what do you do? - what the royal family don’t want you to know. published 2020 ——

The royal family: the quintessential British institution or an antiquated, overindulged drain on the taxpayer?

For all their foibles and idiosyncrasies, the royal family wield considerable influence – and yet rather than facing the scrutiny their position merits, they enjoy sickeningly obsequious coverage which reports their activities with breathless awe.

… And What Do You Do? is a provocative and hard-hitting analysis, exposing the royals’ extravagant use of public money and the highly dubious behaviour of some among their number. Former Minister of State and current Privy Counsellor Norman Baker breaks ranks to explore the wider role the royals play in society, including the link with House of Lords reform and the constitutional position of the monarch.

Now fully updated to include new material on Prince Andrew, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, this irreverent and uncompromising account asks urgent questions about the future of the world’s most famous royal family.

maudenificent, 2 months ago

@dgar

💐

maudenificent, 2 months ago

@RickiTarr @anne_twain @anarchic_teapot

“i’m off to the rodney” or “i need a rodney”
aka Rodney Hogg = bog

(in australia we speak english english, ‘murican english, and strine english, though in parliaments everywhere everyone talks horse-plop)

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@bastardsheep

as much as I don’t;t like to agree with Katter, I am with him on this. F*** being forced to use a commercial service (banks). no, not even a service in any meaningful sense of the word.

and also, wherever there is no “medium of exchange” like cash, people will create their own. (think e.g cigarettes as currency in prisons etc).

going cashless will never stamp out barter or tax-dodging.
this article is just one more example of capitalism planning to extort low income earners with the blessing/collusion of government (recent suggestions of government charging people to use cash)

#Auspol #CashlessSociety

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@RickiTarr

i wait until absolutely the last minute and then probably won’t do it.
nothing more motivating than oanic

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@RickiTarr
i’m old. i don’t have many photos of anything 🙁

the hardest jobs are working for horrible people/corporations, whether the work is physically demanding or not.

i once worked in a tuna cannery, a job which is now done “offshore”. every time I open a can of tuna i imagine myself sending good vibes to the poor buggers who have the job now, because if the management there is half as bad as here, they are suffering while earning a pittance.

the worst job, physically, was bean picking. theoretically, there are two picks of beans, and pickers are supposed to leave the bubby beans behind on the first run so there is something to pick later. the plants are really low on the ground. I agreed to pick beans one day, not knowing that a few weeks before, some people had stripped rows of beans completely bare. I spent 7 hours bending over in a hot field, and made $1.49, then spent the next 3 days in agony.

anyway, let’s remember the poor field hands.

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@Throsby @RickiTarr

tried mushrooms. i’m really, really short and my arms have a length proportionate with my height, so i couldn’t reach far into the trays.

but again, the problem is always the people. there was a time when picking was mostly done for growers who knew what they were doing, now growers are “too big”, and subcontract seasonal work to hire companies who are clueless. and it was once a family type occupation with an air of camaraderie on the field. more recently, there is a “type” that is horrible/crude /unbearable to work with, and out for themselves.

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@mythologyandhistory

australia is a shemozzle of mismanagement. natural resources inconveniently dare to cross state boundaries. Many water ways run underground.

the Indigenous people of pre-/post invasion Australia have always had the best ideas: look after water. don’t shit where you live. water will last longer if you leave it where it is. only take what you need. if it’s not water season, don’t travel there - common sense. (you would think)

then my people arrived. we moved rivers, and soiled them. many kms of rivers which once served cargo carrying paddle steamers are now barely navigable. rivers are now where fish go to die.

the murray darling basin authority sells water rights to cotton and rice growing megacorporations. A second major water system is the Lake Eyre Basin.
a hydro electric scheme (built 1949) straddles the border between New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria.

Largest population centres are state capitals Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Melbourne once relied on two major dams - twenty years ago it was possibly to walk across eildon weir the bottom completely dry. The state government built a dirty great pipeline to carry water 70km from one of our northern rivers in time of need. too bad if you live where it starts.
water restrictions are not unusual. new houses must now have (small) rainwater tanks for toilet cisterns, tanks which we regularly fill from mains water. dual flush toilets have been standard for years. (tanks were once common, but fell out of favour because of lead in the air from petrol). Victoria also has a desalination plant which cost obscene amounts, and has to date contributed little water.

I suspect the main plan is for federal govt to subsidise fossil fuels and mining exploration indefinitely. when the country floods we have more water than we know what to do with. and we will then be reliant on water in plastic bottles.

you can ignore the southernmost island state of tasmania. most australians do. also it is just an ecological freak

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/11/menindee-mass-fish-kill-satellite-images-researchers-blackwater-release-darling-baaka-river-australia

map shows mainland of australia with states. marked but not labelled are the rivers of the murray darling system, and the rivers of the lake eyre system. the lake eyre system has south flowing rivers in queensland, and in the northern territory, draining into central and eastern section of south australia. Lake eyre is the “inland sea” early white explorers burke and wills went in search of. If you like history the best book about white hubris you can ever read is about this expedition and called “The Dig Tree” by Sarah Murgatroyd.

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@fulanigirl @blackmastodon

an interesting question when addressed locally, because change is relative.
where i live (australia) the slide to fascism will be/ has been gradual, and not obvious. current signs, in my opinion, include

*very concentrated media ownership (Murdoch, and now others) largely control the narrative. a conservative government recently installed a chairperson in our government sponsored “independent” media body, and their TV, radio and press have become increasingly conservative in terms of content and news reporting

*an erosion of freedom to protest. 50 years ago 100,000 could march against the war in Vietnam without incident. now, there is sometimes violence, and police are selective about how they react. for example, in the year 2000 the S11 protests against globalisation were bad, with police removing name tags, and charging people etc.
during more peaceful protests police are more likely to arrest left-leaning protestors, and Indigenous activists. even though some australian states have now outlawed things like nazi flags, police will often exercise their discretion selectively

*it has been said we will know we have fascism when whites are treated as badly as people of colour. australia has historically been a “white” and segregated country, so Indigenous issues of race are easy to ignore. Indigenous people here have always been over-incarcerated, but prisons are now more likely privatised and an “industry” rather than an inconvenient expense.
Using pre-covid figures (2018) there is an increase over time in prison population and community based corrections (link below)

• because of our population make-up, conservative politicians who would like to scapegoat non-whites have to be more creative. 20 years ago conservative government focused on asylum seekers (UK is now following our example), or on specific communities (our opposition leader quite famously claiming - with help of mainstream media - that Melbourne (my state capital) was at the mercy of roving gangs of Sudanese youth. The scare tactics had little impact on state election results so it was patently rubbish. What I find interesting is the willingness of some politicians to keep resorting to this tactic. I guess they are confident they will one day find the right target to inspire fear in the rest of us. The standby is usually any recipient of welfare payments. Over time, both major parties have gradually shifted right, the current centrist government so desperate not to lose ground they are compromised. a significant feature of fascism in the past is its reliance on public /popular opinion to initially seize power (as opposed to top-down power grabs like monarchy or military rule)

continued next toot

https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4512.0Main+Features1June%20quarter%202018?OpenDocument=

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@fulanigirl @blackmastodon

part 2

*lack of accountability is growing. we have a federal constitution heavily reliant on westminster “convention” but these traditional safeguards are being eroded because they are easily broken. for example, there was a tradition that a minister would resign if found to have acted in conflict of interest, or to have made some grievous error. politicians are now more brazenly indifferent and will just lie, even though “they know we know they are lying”. our outgoing prime minister, during covid, gave himself extraordinary powers simply because he could, continually silenced the opposition in parliament and so on.

*finally, I would add that a feature of fascism in the past is that it favoured large corporations (rather than state ownership), and like other western democracies, we have been increasingly caught by neo-liberal nonsense. Covid response saw an explosion in payments to corporations with little or no accountability

maudenificent, 3 months ago

@pinskal @Mary625

#AltText4You accompanies toot with quote from Cider House Rules;

image of a postcard addressed to the Supreme Court of the United States at 1 First Street NE Washington DC.

text of postcard reads There is a term for living creatures who are not permitted to control their own reproduction. That term is: livestock.

maudenificent, 4 months ago

@blogdiva

and in australia. it’s one of the few privileges we share with the british aristocracy.
Indigenous people of not-Australia have a similar idea to yours of siblings once removed, and complex systems for monitoring blood relationships (too complex for my own tiny white brain)

presumably formalising marriage (in Britain, at least) was once all about consolidation of family wealth, so permitting marriage between first cousins would be necessary.

The eugenics movement of early 1900s almost got a grip in my state in australia (Vic) but with revelations about the holocaust some proposed legislation was quietly shelved.

In the USA it seems to have had more success, with people needing blood tests to get a marriage licence in some places.

Globally eugenics seems to have been about social control as much as consanguinity, so prostitutes, homosexuals, alcoholics and mental deficiency were targets. (And, of course, any laws against miscegenation)

maudenificent, 4 months ago

@RickiTarr

find a comfortable sum of money in my savings account

maudenificent, 4 months ago

@RickiTarr @averagehousewife

ooh yea! i have several hand-knitted pure wool sweaters from 2nd hand shops. i always think “this was knitted by somebody who lived somebody else”

and tbh the best 2nd hand shops are in areas you might call “god’s waiting room”.

it’s distressing when we lose somebody we care about, but otherwise death itself is not creepy, it’s just, well… life.
and i think people have died would like knowing that somebody else likes their whatever it is.
think of the planet