We wonder, What ever happened to Malena? Is she happy in her new home?

Loads of good accounts over at BlueSky

Go, join

It's a good place to be

Fairbanks: FUN WITH DRAG!

Fairbanks Drama Association is holding early auditions on Tuesday, November 5, for the lead role in its April show "The Legend of Georgia McBride," a comedy about a struggling Elvis impersonator who finds unexpected success as a drag queen. See bit.ly/lgm-casey-auditions for full details.

I exist in a near-constant state somewhere between "heightened irritation" and "blistering rage"

I used to be a passably pleasant person. This is my new nature now.

Eight hours apart but a world of difference in the landscape. These photos capture the stunning Granite Tors in Alaska in the different lights of early May. The first image, taken at 10:30 p.m., shows the tor silhouetted against a sunset that lingered until almost 11:00 p.m. The second, taken at 6:30 a.m., shows the tor illuminated by the morning sun with our small campsite nestled below, displaying the immense scale of this natural granite tower. Area info: https://www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-guide/granite-tors-trail/

My advice, for those who need it:
Be like moss.
Sink into a dark nook or cranny, gather moisture, and wait.

Don't like cities? Get your goods and services someplace else then, and STAY OUT. Community doesn't need parasites.

@steven Impromptu neighborhood gathering? Do you mean when we chatted over the fence with my former drug dealer?

When did you last regularly believe that life was good in the balance, and what was your favorite Saturday-morning cartoon?

BE IT PROPOSED that every community historically or currently dependent on a non-renewable extraction industry should be razed to the ground

My list for Fairbanks, so far:
Dog mushing culture
Solstice celebrations
Sandhill crane festival
Int'l ice-carving competition
Historically decent public university
Festival of Native Arts
WEIO

Alaskans: What draw does your community have for a person who enjoys humanity and is not a misanthrope? What human activities or cultural expressions elevate your community above others? What that is human would draw someone to visit, or relocate to, the place where you live?

(If you say THE NATURE or THE OPPORTUNITIES WE'VE MADE TO ISOLATE OURSELVES FROM OTHERS, you are answering the wrong question.)

@rickirobin
If anyone told me a new hobby would take literal YEARS to enjoy, I would instead fall back on existing hobbies that were known to be enjoyable.
Was someone pressuring you? Have supposed friends been making you feel "less than"?
Was taking up an exhausting new hobby a condition of receiving your share of the inheritance?
If you need an intervention, cough twice.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I am SO glad you put a "language" content warning on a photo containing the word "fuck" because otherwise I'd have been unprepared for the POWER OF LANGUAGE

Don't hide your light from the world.
Use it to draw unwary travelers deeper into the forest, towards their mossy doom.

I see only the link to the article. There is no preview image, no pull-out text to hint at what the article might say.

#Mastodon is a dogshit platform. Very polite, not engaging, not helpful.

For the 38th year running, I have missed the annual Burning Man festival. Seems like a good year for it. https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/no-access-after-burning-man-rain-storm-18344393.php

Republicans understand that rationality doesn’t work. They understand that people actually think in terms of frames and metaphors and images and emotions. So they’re great at marketing their ideas, even when they're not based on facts.

Through constant repetition, they have falsely framed the Republican party as superior on economic matters -- despite decades of facts proving otherwise.

They have framed this false idea millions of brains.

And when the facts don't fit the frame, they bounce right off.

Until Democrats and progressives learn and embrace cognitive science, they will continue to lose ground to the false framing imposed by Republicans.

"Speech acts" are instances of speech that constitute action, such as when a command, desire or threat is expressed. If the action constituted by the speech is illegal, the speech constitutes an illegal act. A linguistic assessment of Trump's "free speech" defense w/ @georgelakoff

https://framelab.substack.com/p/trumps-criminal-speech-acts-vs-free

Sorry to get heavy but I view this in pretty comparable terms to violence-enabling pacifism. If you tell the world that you'll never use violence, ever, not even in self defense or to resist fascism, you're telling fascists that you're a vulnerable target. Violent resistance always has to be on the table because of what will happen if it isn't.
And I say that as someone who *abhors* violence, can't stand even a faint whiff of american gun culture (even leftist spins on it), etc.