Our Stories and Our Selves
ourstories.bsky.social
Our Stories and Our Selves
@ourstories.bsky.social
Podcast about how our minds make stories and stories make us. By https://bsky.app/profile/kirsty-sara-writes.bsky.social
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Boycotts are necessary! Big protests are necessary! Economic blackouts are necessary! Workers calling out sick or taking time off to support these causes is necessary! Mutual aid is BEYOND necessary! But they are not strikes.
January 30, 2026 at 6:47 PM
Words matter - it’s important to pick the right ones to tell the story of your movement
insisting on calling every mass day of protest or one-day boycott a "general strike" is not the move. it's good to see people rallying around the cause, it matters, but if you want to be part of a large-scale labor action that shuts down the gears of capital, start by unionizing your workplace!!!
January 30, 2026 at 9:47 PM
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Hi! Minnesotan here. We are not normally showy people. We don’t talk to strangers much. But all of us are desperately trying to tell you that something very bad is happening here. Not because Minnesota needs help (though we do), but as a warning. This is coming for everyone. Abolish ICE now.
January 24, 2026 at 4:49 PM
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This is why I like living in London. People from all over the world have made their homes here, built lives & families here, and they’ve made our shared city & the communities that exist here much better, more interesting places
I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"
January 17, 2026 at 9:54 AM
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This is the kind of shit that would make you completely outside the bounds of any ancient society, the gods bestow generational curses for violating hospitality
A few days ago, Fox News was whining about ICE agents getting heckled at a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, in the town of Willmar, ICE agents had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, waited until it closed, then confronted and arrested three workers as they left.
ICE agents ate at a Minnesota Mexican restaurant before arresting staff
Immigration law enforcement agents reportedly followed employees out of the restaurant after they closed for the evening
www.independent.co.uk
January 18, 2026 at 2:14 AM
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We're dropping this heater episode of @bloodwork.show behind the paywall at 6 P.M.

If you're not in, you can't win patreon.com/bloodworkshow
January 6, 2026 at 12:10 PM
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One of my favourite quotes is from Audre Lorde and it reminds me consistently why community is so urgent: “We are, each one of us, intricately woven into the other's existence.”
January 4, 2026 at 7:19 PM
Relistening to this episode for… well…
BLOOD WORK / EPISODE 11

DOWN BELOW THE BORDERLINE: THE MONROE DOCTRINE

We look at the geospatial order of the Western Hemisphere, James Monroe’s 1823 SotU address declaring the end of European colonialism in the Americas, and why Latin America continues to tremble in the shadow of his doctrine.
Down Below the Borderline: The Monroe Doctrine | Blood Work
Get more from Blood Work on Patreon
www.patreon.com
January 3, 2026 at 2:47 PM
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Bread and roses, lads. You don't work for permission to exist, you work so you can have a nice life.

And Terry Pratchett didn't give us the Boots Theory just so you could not know it.
New York Post looks normal
January 1, 2026 at 8:35 PM
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this is such an important thing to recognize and call out

the fascism is mostly done being nice at this point, but it got here through well dressed men politely asking questions while the rest of us were scolded for pointing out where those questions led
Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty
January 1, 2026 at 8:35 PM
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One of the main reasons we know anything about the workings of the Soviet space program is because similar libraries were opened up to historians after the fall of the USSR.
Trashing all these documents will force future programs to resolve problems that were solved and written about in the 60s.
They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?!

Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
January 1, 2026 at 4:24 PM
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Sir Terry Pratchett is best understood as one of the most interesting, deeply ethical practical (I would say Pragmatist but I cede to actual experts) philosophers of the late 20th Century who just happened to work in deconstructed fantasy literature as his medium.
Discworld QOTD, from Hogfather
December 25, 2025 at 6:20 PM
December 25, 2025 at 10:44 AM
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I sort of think that the Covid times for many people utterly killed any sense that we all live in this world collectively and that you are actually obligated to be mindful of other people, and I think it’s a problem that goes well beyond just the Covid denialists.
Few things make me as angry as 'National Slowdown Day' People are out there driving like absolute pricks, it is getting so much worse, and the best we have come up with is 'please stop'

As if a person with that level of selfishness is going to hear about 'Slowdown' day and think it applies to them
A motorist travelling at 119km/h in a 50km/h zone in Dublin is among 150 drivers detected speeding so far today as part of a garda speed enforcement operation
December 23, 2025 at 12:27 PM
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Hunger Strike: Day 50

These are the largest collective hunger strikes in Britain since the Irish republican strikes of the 1980s. Then, Martin Hurson died after 46 days on strike. Bobby Sands was elected an MP from prison; he died after 66 days.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
Inside the Palestine hunger strike
Across the UK, six prisoners are refusing food and contemplating martyrdom
www.newstatesman.com
December 21, 2025 at 9:26 PM
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Yes. And translators, badly paid, have been trying to make people aware of this, but they have only a small platform. Need writers and readers to be aware and speak out.

All my foreign language contracts going forward will stipulate that a real person translates.
Deep breath
Ok I'm going to try and stay calm
But I'll point out that AI translation is literally causing translators to be fired (see the whole Harlequin line in France)
(1/?)
December 21, 2025 at 5:13 PM
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"The lives of the Palestine Action-affiliated remand prisoners now on hunger strike are at growing risk. On Friday, two reached day 48 without food. (In 1981, one IRA prisoner – 29-year-old Martin Hurson – died on the 46th day.)" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The Guardian view on the Palestine Action hunger strikers: the government is trying to ignore this protest | Editorial
Editorial: Doctors have warned that the lives of these prisoners are now in danger. Pretending this is not happening is not good enough
www.theguardian.com
December 20, 2025 at 7:45 AM
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Google AI is wrong to refer to the QI website for a quotation I have never examined.

The AI is confused because I do have an article referring to Lord Bowen and another article referring to an umbrella

quoteinvestigator.com/2015/02/15/h...

quoteinvestigator.com/2011/04/07/b...
December 20, 2025 at 9:08 AM
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This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.
December 14, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.
Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild
October 7, 2025 at 12:46 PM
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December 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
How can i become an opinion columnist? I’m sure i could do a better job than a lot of the current ones
"Yes, I am rubbish at juggling. No, I don't have Parkinson's."

Freeman is somehow simultaneously deliberately stupid and actually stupid. It's a marketable skill for Professional Opinion Havers.
She’s had a ‘problem’ with ADHD for quite some time.
Looks like it’s her new Bête Noire.
December 8, 2025 at 11:25 AM
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🚨NEW EPISODE🚨The boys are joined by @patrickwyman.bsky.social to talk about the US Navy's very stupid attempt to create flying aircraft carriers.
m.soundcloud.com/llbdpodcast/...
Episode 391 - The US Navy's Flying Aircraft Carriers ft. Dr. Patrick Wyman
Stream Episode 391 - The US Navy's Flying Aircraft Carriers ft. Dr. Patrick Wyman by Lions Led By Donkeys on desktop and mobile. Play over 320 million tracks for free on SoundCloud.
m.soundcloud.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:57 AM