Resend of Previous Post...

(I'm trying to change the title to see if that corrects the error, sorry for the multiple copies!)

I do a lot of my shopping online. I also don't use Amazon if I can help it so it's all done by individual companies. Which means a lot of promotional email. Because if you bought an ankle brace from us you CLEARLY would like to buy a knee brace and a wrist brace and a pack of supplements and...

I also sometimes sign up for the extra 10% discount email and then end up not actually buying from them so a week later I'm like...why the fuck am I getting emails from you? I have never even bought something from you! Totally forgetting that I am the one who said here, send me an email. But anyway...

I do a lot of unsubscribing.

And then a bit of marking as SPAM when the unsubscribe doesn't work.

I've also been doing more and more unfollowing on BlueSky. I follow someone for a bit, decide that maybe they aren't all that entertaining, or they are too much like other people I follow, or my figurative blood pressure just can't even with the volume of ick anymore. So unfollow.

My feed is now a touch of politics. A few writers that I enjoy. A couple of comedians. And WeRateDogs.

I've done the same with newsletters. I get a handful. I've unsubscribed from a handful more. The constant battle of wanting to be informed and also not wanting to be furious all the time. I need to know what's going on, but I also know that I personally have very little control over what is going on so I need to not be constantly focused on things I have no control over.

I believe we are already living in an authoritarian state under fascist rule, or a fascist state under authoritarian rule, whichever way sounds "better" to you. I am not at all convinced that there will ever be another free and fair election. Everything I've read and studied about democracies failing (and all the ones in the past have failed and failed into authoritarianism*, it's a specific failure that happens) made me sure that the last election was THE election to not fuck it up. Authoritarian rule takes over by votes more often than it takes over by violence. Once it's voted in it usually stays in by use of violence and we are seeing that right now.

But we the people of the United States of America voted that shit in. We of course meaning THOSE fucking idiots. But because of the way our system was designed those fucking idiots made the decision for those of us who voted the other way because THOSE even BIGGER fucking idiots couldn't even bother to not vote. Though the really depressing thing is that Brent read an article about the nonvoters that polled them and if they had all voted then it still would have gone to Trump. So yeah, we the people are fucking idiots.

But anyway... cleaning out my email and follows and thinking of how great it would be if I could do that for real life.

Oh I'm not interested in authoritarianism. Unsubscribe.
Oh fascism seems like a real drag. Unsubscribe.
Angry politicians trying to force their religion on me. Unsubscribe.

Send them all to the corn field.

Then mark the corn field as SPAM.

But for now I'll just keep tidying up my own space. And keeping things here as comfortable and lovely as I can.

I think I'll buy a new blanket. I just got an email from Geometry about their butter blankets...

*see Twilight of Democracy as a starting point book if you want to fall down that rabbit hole. There are many more that go deeper, but that one is an "easier" read than some of the others.