Monkinetic Weblog

Nothing's wrong, GameRant.

(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)

And it's your #tracking I'm blocking, not #advertising (well, ok, it's that too)

I recently learned about a small town in Alabama that has not held a public election for more than sixty years. The town is Newbern, Alabama. While nearly eighty-five percent of the town residents are Black, before 2020 the town never had a Black mayor.

An unbelievable and yet completely believable story of voter suppression in the deep south

Guy Nave, Jr gives a well-written and succint history of voting rights for former enslaved Black people in the south, then tells the story describing the incredible "hand-me-down" white mayorship in the majority-Black town.

"We've never had an election out here. We don't have ballots and machines to do it." Stokes became mayor in 2008, when he inherited the position from Haywood Stokes Jr. Their ancestor, Peter P. Stokes, served in the Confederate Army and “owned” enslaved Black people when Newbern was a cotton plantation town.

A tiny fediverse wishlist:

• Quote toots
• A real DM implementation w/ E2E encryption (black-box, ie. even the host cannot read them)

From the Black Voters Matter Fund mailing list (I can't find a web link for this on the website):

Georgia Voters, Your Voter Status Is At Risk

Hundreds of thousands of Georgians could see their registrations canceled, causing concerns among voting rights advocates. The Georgia Secretary of State plans to remove 191,473 inactive voters, citing outdated lists. While accuracy is essential, this will disenfranchise voters in the process. Protect your right to vote - check your status today at https://mvp.sos.ga.gov, and stay informed about these changes. Let your voice be heard in Georgia's elections!

It's a good reminder for all of us - especially anyone who believes in actual Democracy, justice, and law - that that the GOP's "best" chance these days is to repeatedly attack our voting rights, most particularly those of oppressed "minorities".

("People of the global majority" I saw someone brilliantly describe those we often call "people of color".)

Anyone got a recommendation for a good RSS reader for Android (like NetNewsWire on iOS)?

And now for something different from NovaColor: Understanding the Color Gray and Its Shades

I use NovaColor acrylics for my artwork, and love their occasional articles on the theory and history of pigments #art #painting #arthistory

Been wanting to re-focus on the ol' blog here, and a friend told me about https://shutupwrite.com/ -- there's a local event tomorrow night so going to go hang out and work on some longer posts with a bunch of other writers #writing #blogging #community

"[T]he problem is, if you let them get away with it, it gets worse and worse and worse."

Small town newpaper doing the good work in small town America.

Corporate media, please go back to #journalism 101.

Atopia

Archiving our anxious fears as precious artifact
We make a Story
Stripped to bare words encoding our natures faiths and selves
These and all in grit and grim warning 
Dystopia

Bleak grey hued rough hewn the view from future's window
Staring eyes in hope forlorn
Dust and ash the gifts our benefactors leave in progress' wake
Every memory and bright treasure stripped melted for coin

Mechanized servant eaters of all growing green feeling loving things
If not fled are fed
The shining things from heart head and gut once born now consumed
Our inner voice fed back become lies so sterile and ape'd

Semi-sentient vastly parasitic the collectives cancerous intent to only grow 
Choked full on us it is us in the mill in the dirty grist
The fluttering trembling lights only ours to give are drowned in grasping dark

In mirrored certainty the self-satisfied boast ignorance toast ignorance
Read our troubled Story and see
Utopia