There are so many good, valid reasons to hate The Algorithms That Govern Us, but I have to say, my IG account serves up so much great content.

Currently I'm getting multiple posts telling me all about the batshit insane infrastructure of Chongqing, China:

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I somehow expect you all already knew this, but the footage is still dazzling.

Here's another one explaining more, for and by a newbie Westerner.

Lurid linked to The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary in the comments.

Muse here.

I just can't quite wrap my head around how January 6th has gotten relegated to the history books. Like, you can't have a single coherent view that simultaneously holds "it was a day of infamy" and "we should re-elect this guy", and in the short term at least, the former has been submerged in deference to the latter.

Anyway! This lady has a halfway house for J6 insurrectionists:

The housing is a key component of Cudd's J6 Road Home Project, aimed, per its website, at "fostering healing, wellness, and wholeness in body, soul, and spirit" for those arrested for involvement in the Capitol riot and helping them "reintegrate" into a society that has allegedly left them behind. The website laments the lack of resources and community support faced by the formerly incarcerated. It is teeming with the sort of language one might more commonly associate with bleeding-heart lefties--but "once something happens to you, then all of a sudden you care about it," Cudd told me. "One of the blessings that's come out of January sixth is now there's a whole bunch of us middle-class Americans that never cared about criminal justice reform--and now we do."

That last sentence is the type of thing that makes me lose my mind.

This made a big impression on me, probably 15 years ago: a family I knew had a severely disabled son - on a feeding tube, non-verbal, and so on. It took that experience for his parents to believe that sometimes people can't afford medical care, even though they're good people* So on that one issue they were extremely liberal, and on everything else, fuck those guys. I continue to believe that one of the hallmarks of everyday Republicans is a dogged refusal to believe someone's description of reality if it hasn't happened to them personally.

*And then while I'm ranting, the relentless belief that you can neatly separate the world into good people and bad people, and good people deserve things and bad people don't, is so fucking toxic.**

**okay actually I can think of some bad people.

Obviously none of the Republican bullshit on wokeness/DEI is worth talking about, but there are a lot of other complicated conversations about water rights and climate change and so on.

I have no expertise to spearhead such a thing! But I'm great at starting a thread to let you introduce good content.