Francis 🇾🇪 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @francis@greenplenty.social

Many of us are lucky enough to be enjoying another bank holiday today, but I think it’s important to take a moment to thank all the people who don’t get the day off, especially those working extremely hard on the front line of our National Health Service.

Thank you
#ThankYouNHS

"Introductions from just six Conservative Party politicians led to ‘VIPs’ being awarded contracts worth an eye-watering £5 billion."
@GoodLawProject@twitter.com
https://goodlawproject.org/revealed-the-names-of-those-who-referred-covid-testing-firms-into-the-vip-lane/

Staggering charts in the FT by John Burn-Murdoch show that after 12 years of Tory rule we are poorer, sicker and will die sooner than our peers. Utterly disgraceful.

EDIT May 12, 2023:
I was inspired to compile a thread of threads, links and quotes, all assembled around this quote (the final version) to tell the story of "HOW DID WE GET HERE?"

I hope you'll check it out:

https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/110357255122736031

______________________________

"It took 10,000 years of violent aggression to force almost everybody around the world into the position where they have to follow a boss’s orders to get access to resources essential for survival. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."

Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall "The Prehistory of Private Property"

EDIT May 6, 2023:
I just realized that this quote comes from an early draft version of the book.

Here is the quote as it appears in the final published version:

"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of
people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a
few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."

"The power to say no" is an important concept that Widerquist has written extensively on.
See for example his doctoral thesis "Property and the Power to Say No: A Freedom-Based Argument For Basic Income"

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#11b

#capitalism

Auschwitz is a place that shows where hatred, #antisemitism and contempt for a fellow man led people decades ago.

It is also a place where we should reflect on our own responsibility for the world we live in. The warnings of the past should be a key to better future.

Help us commemorate the victims & preserve memory.

Use your voice to amplify ours. Help us build this incredible community & encourage others to follow

#Auschwitz #Memorial #history #Holocaust #ww2 #community #follow #boost

Curious what Gov. Greg Abbott's church, the University Catholic Center in Austin, thinks of his freakishly sadistic attack on traditional #Christian values last night. This is the real #WarOnChristmas, with human lives at stake. #politics https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/25/kamala-harris-migrant-buses-christmas-eve-texas

@cstross
Could be worse, it could be the day they celebrate the rising of an undead horror from his tomb...

It's that particular day of the year when the Screaming Jeezus People just kind of assume everybody shares their superstition and associate it with peace and goodwill rather than mass murder and oppression and throw a massive street party.

Sigh.

Most people figure when they get to their 60s, it’s time to slow down, take stock, and hit cruise control.
That’s not what I did.
I came out of the closet, figured out this social media thing, and then made my Broadway debut in my 70s. Now I’m taking on London in my 80s!

To see me live and on stage in the West End, get tickets before they’re gone! https://Allegiancemusical.com

Been five days since Twitter suspended a bunch of journalists, including me, for tweeting out factual reporting. And we're still suspended.

CNN's @donieosullivan, NYT's Ryan Mac and I can't access Twitter until we delete specific tweets that they said included "private information" but were actually just reporting.

Journalists Linette Lopez and Susan Li, who also covered Musk, are still suspended. No explanation given.

No, skepticism of crypto doesn't "stem from lack of understanding".

Skepticism of crypto stems from it being an endless barrage of fraud, scams and the worst of human greed and criminality.