In 1773, Boston stood up to a tyrant who called himself king. Today, Boston did so again.
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John Refior
@jrefior@hachyderm.io
mastodon 4.7.3Supporter of progressive economic policy. Aspiring small business owner. Volunteer lawyer. Amateur economist. Software developer.
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#BLM
#economics
#BoycottMeta
576 Followers
509 Following
25 Posts
Joined November 12, 2022
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"In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey essentially wrote a prescription for COVID shots for every person in the state over the age of 5, a move that would blunt potential federal restrictions on COVID boosters."
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/03/metro/healey-covid-booster-massachusetts-trump-kennedy-vaccine-2/
"The many dangers LaFayette faced included an assassination attempt on the same night Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi, in what the FBI said was a conspiracy to kill civil rights workers. LaFayette was beaten outside his home before his assailant pointed a gun at him..."
"LaFayette grew up in Tampa, Florida, where he recalled trying to board a trolley with his grandmother when he was 7 years old. Black passengers had to pay at the front, then walk to the back to climb on. But the conductor began to pull away before they could board, and his grandmother fell. He was too little to help.
"He was beaten in Montgomery, Alabama, and arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, becoming one of more than 300 Freedom Riders sent to Parchman Prison...
"Several of King’s marches were attacked by white mobs..."
https://apnews.com/article/bernard-lafayette-voting-rights-organizer-dies-f2f526a1a0b911edb9ef3c219cee77e8
#sncc #BernardLaFayette #selma #ushistory #obit
"The family first learned of the shooting when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. They watched the video and said the man killed appeared to be their son. They then tried reaching out to officials in Minnesota.
"'I can’t get any information from anybody,' Michael Pretti said Saturday. 'The police, they said call Border Patrol, Border Patrol’s closed, the hospitals won’t answer any questions.'"
https://apnews.com/article/shooting-minneapolis-protests-ice-immigration-41437baa4b349279cf8abfaf1076162c
“Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found.”
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-valley-uyghurs-tech-xinjiang-8e000601dadb6aea230f18170ed54e88
Barack Obama's full eulogy at Rev. Jesse Jackson's memorial in Chicago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvrxJ1dTnXE
This site down for you too? Supposedly "the official public website of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA)," part of DoD.
https://www.dsca.mil
PBS NewsHour evening news, live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LNf6GZAv5k
To say business spending on AI is now a disproportionate portion of our economy is extreme understatement. It’s recently become bigger than all consumer spending in the US.
Replying to
@jeffowski@mastodon.world
Isn't that basically
"The CIA illegally wiretapped and surveilled Anderson, but his nine children chased the spies away and Anderson mocked their incompetence in his column...Finally, in March 1972, the Nixon White House turned to the one method guaranteed to silence Anderson permanently: assassination."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/03/25/nixon-jack-anderson-assassination/
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#Nixon #ushistory #FreedomOfThePress
AI blooper reels are all around us, in this year of our lord 2025
Replying to
@emptywheel
“I was thinking of Cheney telling Pat Leahy to go fuck himself as I watched this.”
Yup. I was thinking of Reagan calling black women “welfare queens,” how he treated protesters, and how he marshaled the nation to make mass incarceration of black men a reality. Extremely toxic, if you ask me.
Replying to
@davewalker@mastodon.social
Great comic.
Quite different, but my brain still connected it with this one I saw yesterday by @sophielabelle@mastodon.lol
Replying to
@awilbert@mastodon.social @wspd7pio@bird.makeup @vincent@social.librem.one
My position on this hasn't changed: https://hachyderm.io/@jrefior/109569549351337370
Organizations should consider the implications of any delay in getting off Twitter.
Most police departments are unlikely to move because they are Trump-supporting enforcers of a racial caste system.
Content warning for image: example of police union supporting and advertising for Trump
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#Twitter #Trump #racism
"A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345 million in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago... claims brought by Dallas-based Energy Transfer and subsidiary Dakota Access"
https://apnews.com/article/greenpeace-energy-transfer-dakota-access-pipeline-30bfb9939dea06f1e9763cd2d662ae73
"A supervisor and three instructors with a Massachusetts State Police tactical unit were indicted in connection with the death of a recruit following a boxing match during training"
https://apnews.com/article/massachusetts-police-recruit-death-boxing-4d0a968b62f2bf864fe15933c28b6042
#massachusetts
"US military aid to Ukraine dropped 99% in 2025, report finds"
https://kyivindependent.com/us-military-aid-to-ukraine-dropped-99-in-2025-report-finds/
"Oracle America Inc., Redwood City, California, was awarded an $88,112,197 firm-fixed-price task order for the Cloud One program. This contract provides for Oracle Cloud service offerings"
https://www.war.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/4394525/contracts-for-jan-30-2026/
“Decades of GOP efforts to defund the government, a corporate culture of pure self interest and zero patriotism and no accountability (survey responses are down), and now Trump’s war on the truth are the causes of insufficient staffing and reduced data collection at the BLS.”
"AP reporting into an Israeli attack on a Gaza Strip hospital that killed 22 people, including 5 journalists, raises serious questions about Israel’s rationale... Israeli forces struck a position well known as a journalists’ gathering point"
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-strikes-hospital-journalists-75e79272f3acc37fa8acb653e45d564c
Replying to
@drewharwell@mastodon.social @donieosullivan@mastodon.ie Twitter is dead. No one can use it without giving at least a little indirect support to Trump (and other insurrectionists) with all the free ad time Musk gave him
Replying to
@linuxgnome@todon.eu @Haikyoneko@famichiki.jp
"ex-UKLabour"
I take it you are British and are still offended by what the American colonies did in the 1770s?
What I said is in line with how US Founding Fathers represented events:
"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world... For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent"
—US Declaration of Independence
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Wishing it were a perversion of history—because it's not how you tell it—doesn't make it so.
Replying to
@linuxgnome@todon.eu @Haikyoneko@famichiki.jp
I agree that it's rhetorical propaganda (but not that it’s only that), I'm aware that Parliament levied the taxes, and I appreciate your expertise as a historian.
I submit that "merely" is too diminutive for the Declaration's place in American political culture. Referring to the mythology of America's history, perhaps especially its birth, is essential now when the President is rejecting everything that we have been, and is trying to transform us into a fascist dictatorship and vassal for the Russian government. Among other things, it's a national identity crisis.
We are going to need a lot of powerful rhetorical propaganda to compete with what we are a up against. References to the founding fathers and the events of the 1770s resonate here, and are more likely to defuse the people who voted for the President, as they and their parents were in a population wont to make those references in years past. And the rhetorical propaganda, as you call it, is more popularly known here than any version emphasizing Parliament.