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Tracy Wise

@frauwise.bsky.social

3.2K followers 11K following 2.4K posts

Writer. Focused on the present moment in the US & around the world. Supporter of liberal democracy. Personal account. *opinions my own* re-posts=look at this (vs approval) She/her/ella

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Tracy Wise @frauwise.bsky.social · Mar 1

So grateful to #TheFriendsofSmileyPublicLibrary, @typeeighteenbooks.bsky.social (w/o a publisher, no book!), and @frugalfrigate.bsky.social for a wonderful book launch event on Feb. 26. Between 40-50 people came and books for sale sold out!
#community #reading #BookSky 💙📚📚💙
MADAME SOREL'S LODGER

Photo of event sign; photos of Tracy Wise speaking in a filled room; photo Tracy Wise with Type Eighteen Books founder MVWhite and publicist Elisabeth; photo of Tracy Wise and Frugal Frigate owner Erin

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 18h

Some good, brave stuff happening

Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 21h

"After the warning, neighbors showed up and formed a human chain outside the church to guide parishioners home. NBC Chicago found more organizers doing the same for the beginning of the 6 p.m. mass..."

www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/c...

Chicago priest urges parishioners to leave mass with caution after ICE agents reported nearby

Chicago's Rogers Park community remained vigilant after reports of federal agents near a Catholic church during Sunday mass.

www.nbcchicago.com

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Stacey Burns @wentrogue.bsky.social · 19h

Great. Now I’m cursed with the 867-5309 earworm 😡

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 22h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 21h

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 20h

Right on

Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 14d

Monopoly and totalitarianism go hand in hand.

The only way to stop the growing censorship of Trump's critics is to fight the consolidation of media outlets into the hands of a few families that do not care about the best interests of the country.

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Lambda Literary @lambdaliterary.org · 20h

Honor Indigenous People's Day with a selection of queer Indigenous writing from past Lammys.

Graphic acknowledging Indigenous People's Day highlighting past Lammy picks: "Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction" by Joshua Whitehead, "The Queerness of Native American Literature" by Lisa Tatonetti, "Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory" by Qwo-Li Driskill, "A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder" by Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Louisa Plummer, "Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature" edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti, and "Queer Childhoods: Institutional Futures of Indigeneity, Race, and Disability" by Mary Zaborskis.

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 20h

www.10news.com/news/local-n...

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Mike @mike.perham.net · 21h

One thing I haven’t seen reported about the ICE building protest: they have 10-20 costumes on a rack that anyone is free to use. Put it on, inflate it and protest!

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Joe Ura @joeura.bsky.social · 21h

This will devolve into a de facto requirement for everyone to show ID on demand.

If a federal agent alleges a US citizen isn't in the country legally, they would need papers to establish their identity and status to (hopefully) avoid detention.

Do you carry proof of citizenship? Do your kids?

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 21h

Do you want to live in a "papers, please" country?

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 20h

👇🏻👇🏻

Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 9d

There are any number of legitimate reasons to use the passive voice, including not knowing who did the action you’re describing, or the whom is more interesting/germane than the who.

Exonerating the Gestapo is not one of those legitimate reasons.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 20h

Remember we're already in a world of Kavanaugh stops based solely on ethnicity. If you are from a targeted group, this can happen to you no matter what your citizenship status is. What if you forget your wallet at home? You could end up in detention for days or worse.

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 21h

Do you want to live in a "papers, please" country?

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 20h

Everything else aside...Dems should not be running 77 yos for Senate

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d

The Dem establishment is going to back Mills over the absolute phenom outsider Platner in Maine, which tells you everything you need to know about how well they understand the current moment & how prepared they are to meet it.

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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 20h

The constant need for a white explainer of the horrors visited on the Indigenous is millennia old

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 22h

ALSO. ALSO. Needing us to find Europeans who condemned him for his actions at the time--and there are many! So many! My God so many!--is also some white supremacist bullshit, because the TAINO PEOPLE HE WAS MURDERING CERTAINLY CONDEMNED HIM FOR IT AND THEY WERE HUMAN BEINGS OF HIS TIME TOO.

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 1d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 1d

Most of rural Alaska is Alaska Native. Bonus donating to support Alaska Native people on Indigenous Peoples Day.

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 1d

Western Alaska was hit hard by the recent storms. Houses floated away in Kipnuk, houses flipped over, people lost everything from the flooding that came with the storms. Please donate if you can. This group has a long history of supporting AK communities.

alaskacf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/c...

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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 1d

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
--Hannah Arendt

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait.

At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 1d

a foundational belief of the modern right is that there is no such thing as organic disagreement with their policies, it’s all directed from the top down

they just can’t conceive that ordinary people find them horrifying

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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CM Janeese Lewis George @cmlewisgeorgew4.bsky.social · 2d

Every sign in DC marks the loss of someone’s neighbor, someone’s loved one, someone’s friend.

Every sign marks yet another step in the march toward authoritarianism.

Signs popping up around D.C. note: ‘ICE kidnapping happened here’

The signs range in style and mark numerous locations where people have been taken by federal agents.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 1d

By the time you get to the point where the Transportation Secretary is complaining about political protests, you know the administration is truly scared of the public backlash.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 1d

Your 'moment of doom' for Oct. 13, 2025 ~ The end of coral.

"We are rapidly approaching multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world, with devastating consequences for people and nature..."

www.cnn.com/2025/10/13/c...

The planet has entered a ‘new reality’ as it hits its first climate tipping point, report finds | CNN

The widespread death of coral reefs is the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible tipping points the world may hit, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists ac...

www.cnn.com

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DevinCow @devincow.bsky.social · 1d

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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 1d

Trump to the Israeli parliament today, gloating about U.S. weapons supplied to Israel over the past two years:

"You obviously used them very well."

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Guardian headline: "Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead"

The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims"

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 1d

“I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They beat us while we were naked day and night.

Until our last day, they cut us and hit us and abused us. We endured every kind of torture, emotional and physical.

We couldn’t even sleep. They told me they killed my children.”

- released Palestinian prisoner

Palestinian prisoner Shadi Abu Seed has given a harrowing account of life inside an Israeli prison after his release as part of the ceasefire deal.

“I went hungry for the past two years. I swear to God, they didn’t feed us. They kept us naked. They beat us while we were naked day and night. We were tortured,” Abu Seed said.

“Until our last day in Israeli prison, they cut us and hit us and abused us. We endured every kind of torture, emotional and physical.

“We couldn’t even sleep. They threatened us with our children. They told me they killed my children. They told us that Gaza was destroyed. I arrived here and found that everything was gone. It looked like the end of the world. Everything is different.”

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 1d

Heritage president Kevin Roberts, in a truly revealing passage of his Foreword to the Project 2025 policy agenda, states that the project of “dismantling the administrative state” is not about the actual size of government at all:

The goal is to cut “the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening.”

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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vijay iyer @vijayiyer.bsky.social · 1d

we are officially post-satire

ashley scarebanks 💀🕯️ @ziibiing.com · 1d

lol “find your own instead of stealing” in defense of columbus day

AJ West • 1h
Find your own holiday instead of stealing. Today is Columbus Day as designated by the federal government
Reply
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 1d

The notion that those who took part in slavery or conquest were merely abiding by the moral standards of their time necessary excludes those they targeted and kidnapped from those standards; *they* were never confused about this. But other white people were frequently disgusted by this stuff too!

George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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