CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@troglobit @viccie30 the perspective I'm coming at this from is that many years ago when I was an attractive young woman, as I was getting into a car a man grabbed my shoulder and tried to pull me out. I acted on instinct, slammed the door on his arm and broke it. And I actually felt incredibly guilty about the fact I'd hurt him so badly for years, until multiple people managed to convince me that if he had managed to pull me out of the car, the amount of harm he would probably have done to me would probably have been worse than a broken arm and hopefully being hurt like that made him think twice about trying something like that again. Substitute "man pulling women out of cars" for ICE agent and me for random Americans - I don't go round deliberately looking to break men's arms, but doing so probably prevented harm in the long run.

@troglobit @viccie30 I will also come back in and say that while I don't know the motivations of the crowd and everyone individual's would have been different, I don't think the point of beating the agent up was necessarily retribution as punishment for his actions, I would imagine (and again I wasn't there and heard all this 3rd hand) the motivation seemed to me to be threats as prevention of future harms, making agents afraid that if they attacked people they would be attacked back. I can understand why people may feel such threats are the only ways of protecting themselves and their neighbours remaining to them when the mechanisms of state turn against them

@troglobit I'm pretty strongly antiviolence, but in this instance I believe that harming the ICE agent will have prevented the greater amount of harm that would have occurred to others if they had been allowed to do their duty unimpeded. If i'd been there I wouldn't have hurt them myself, i would probably even have tried to stop others harming them, but I'm honestly not going to lose sleep over someone setting out to hurt others being prevented from doing so by being hurt.

An American colleague just walked into our very international research office and announced that her brother in Tacoma had just watched a crowd surround an ICE vehicle so it couldn't move, shake it till the agent got out and then beat him up. And we all cheered. Just in case any Americans were wondering how this is playing out across the world, we're all rooting for you.

@jamesb good point, well made

A question for neurotypical people (assuming there are any on here): to what extent does the average person have control of where you direct your attention? For example if you have an urgent and important work task that you hate, can you just choose to direct your attention to that because it's the most important thing right now? Does it take ongoing constant mental effort that feels tiring?

What if you have alternative things to think about, for example a very interesting but low priority bit of reading you need to do or something you're anxious about like a sick relative or a stressful housing situation? Can you consciously choose to move your attention to where it would be most usefully deployed in this situation?

RE: https://mstdn.social/@sodslawyer/116056688380387248

One of the greatest strengths of the English language is any noun can be an insult if delivered in the right tone.

@BashStKid @helenclayton @JimmyB @suearcher nothing so fancy, Mildert muck me

@helenclayton @JimmyB @suearcher no you definitely did, everyone in my hall at Durham University put them on the roof of the building when the license inspectors came round so they only got the ground floor

@suearcher @JimmyB Yeah we had a TV without a remote well into the nineties, which is when I thought they were invented, so I wonder if my parents just lost it

Were TV remotes a mistake? At least you couldn't lose buttons on the actual set. Or is that too retro tech even for Mastodon

Ireland’s basic income for the arts scheme becomes permanent

"The scheme recouped more than its net cost of €72m through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments"

Ireland’s basic income for the arts scheme becomes permanent

When piloted, initiative that provided €325 a week to eligible artists recouped more than its net cost, study shows

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

#UBI

It is a testament to how good 404 media's journalism is that I continue reading it in spite of it having literally the most infuriating sign in system I have ever encountered on a website