Hi, I’m B.

  • 10 Posts
  • 26 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: February 16th, 2021

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  • I don’t think housing can “solve” drug addiction. However, there are factors that have been shown to contribute to addiction from homelessness. Less stability, regular trauma, mental health, etc causes all of these things to interact and exasperate each other.

    The frustrating part is that voters keep telling the city, county, and state to invest in all of these areas. Measure 110 was supposed to create more space to have drug addiction treated, and there was no follow through. Now, further existing infrastructure is closing with no replacement. Similarly with housing, voters overwhelmingly keep calling for housing solutions, but any progress turns into new vendor procurement, deals with developers that don’t follow through, and half baked plans that don’t materialize.

    Also, I think it’s important to remember that a lot of drug addiction happens amongst the housed. We just don’t see it. But as our coworker who is struggling falls apart, loses their job, and times get tough the more likely they will be the one moving from pain pills at home to fentanyl in the streets.

    I’m glad some of the electeds are at least acting like they are as frustrated as I am. I hope they actually do something about it. (thought the need for national reform on both housing and drug addiction also can’t be ignored).












  • I never understood this logic.

    I’ve been on Mastodon since 2016 and never really got into Twitter. I just don’t understand why the “algorithm” matters. Who cares if people who don’t follow you see your post? I want my followers to see my posts, and then favorites allow me to know that my followers liked what I posted. It’s a nice dopamine boost and helps me feel closer to my community.

    A lot of posts I make unboostable as well (followers only). “Promotion” doesn’t really factor much into my use of Mastodon so much as being “social”.




  • What’s happening with PSR is so frustrating. I had a coworker ask me the other day what he should do to get help for an unhoused guy who seemed to be in distress but not need an ambulance. The police weren’t really the right answer (the unhoused guy wasn’t doing anything), but my coworker wanted someone to go talk to him. PSR was the only answer we could find for him to call.

    Regardless of people’s positions on funding the police, regardless on their complaints on addressing the symptoms of poverty, I can’t understand why anyone would not want a group of people to be on call to help with these types of situations. Let the police tend to other priorities.

    PSR is a really popular program in Portland. Most people want it expanded. A single city councilor leading it to failure makes me angry.




  • My politics don’t really fit in a tidy box, and I’m not really interested in wielding my personal ideology to craft this space (beyond rejecting hate). As we figure out what this place will be I hope we can work together to make it a space for those that use it. As we need more mods and new perspectives we should add those as well.

    For transparency though, I am of course biased (like everyone). I was born and raised in Portland. I’m a union member. I’m middle aged. I’m socially and fiscally far-left, but I’m also a bit of an individualist who loves freedom and guns. So, if I start wielding power to enforce those ideas (again beyond rejecting hate) then call me out on it.



  • It’s “arch based”. How are the repos setup? What packages are pinned? What bloatware is added?

    Sure I can write a script to migrate everything to how I want it, but at a point it becomes easier (and cleaner) to do a custom install script that will build it up how I want it.



  • You keep implying that any “nuanced take” contains unverified claims, but you already said that my take (which I consider more nuanced than the straw-men takes I listed) doesn’t. You just believe it doesn’t warrant US aggression toward China. Hey, I agree. I have no delusions that my take is going to stop US aggression more than the fact that I ate toast this morning will. My nuanced takes didn’t stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but neither did my organizing, marching, and shutting down the city I live in when the bombs fell. GWB literally just said “he didn’t care about protests”.

    This thread is literally the most I’ve ever written or spoken about the Uyghurs, and probably the most I’ve criticized China this year. It was literally a response to someone posting a list of claims where I called for considering that a lot of it is filtered through the US propaganda machine.

    I honestly have better things to do now. If you want to cancel me for saying China isn’t perfect and some Uyghurs exist who are unhappy with China, then by all means do so I guess. I’m going to go and actually work on a project that helps change the material reality in the community I live in.


  • I don’t use the word “tankie” personally. I find it over simplifies the position of many communists. Yes I straw-manned a fake ML take just I staw-manned a fake anarchist take, because I was trying to say that’s those staw-men are how people often argue about this. The whole concept of anarchists treating both the US and China equally in the matter is a straw-man. No anarchist that I know of is organizing efforts in Xinjiang to fight China. While pretty much every anarchist I know in the US spends hours every week organizing efforts to fight the US in one way or another.

    You keep claiming I’m saying something I’m not which is what is annoying to me. My entire point is that you are creating better propaganda for the US imperialist machine than a take of “some Uyghurs claim oppression” ever could. You make any claim that the West is producing propaganda on the subject with goals of imperial aggression seem childish and not worth listening to. You berate people who ostensibly agree with you, but they just don’t want to start flying the flag of China outside their house either.