My mother was telling Bea, in a baby-cat voice, all the ways she doesn't meet the Cymric cat breed standards. 😂 Bea is a former stray, with no tail, who before she came to live with us gave birth to a litter of tailless cats, and definitely seems to have a large amount of Manx/Cymric in her heritage. But also, well, she was a stray cat. We both agree that she's much more beautiful just the way she is than if she checked some strange cat show boxes though! #caturday

My mother would like to join mastodon and I told her I'd ask for some server recommendations! She's into gardening, crafting, ecology, cats, and prepping (from a more leftist direction). She's COVID cautious, disabled, and not very good with tech. She's in Canada and it's important to her to be plugged into Canadian politics. Any suggestions of well-moderated places that might be a good home for her? :)

Virtually everything non-anarchists come up with in their imagined terrible outcomes were anarchism to take root more broadly, are things that are actually happening right now!! Under colonialist, capitalist, authoritarian nation-states. "But cults of personality!" my guy, I've seen how you lionize politicians and political parties. "But unchecked killing!" have you noticed cops, drone strikes, an endless succession of fucking genocides?? It's telling that almost any anarchist bogeyman they come up with already exists without anarchism. It's the horrific status quo that anarchists want to stop!

Now tonight, it's snowing for REAL!! ❄️❄️❄️

Almost all anti-anarchist arguments rest on the idea that it is necessary and good for some people to be forced through violence or coercion into doing what they'd otherwise not do, for the supposed good of the whole (which can mean anything from the State, the economy, "society" or the "community," depending who you're talking to). The idea that some form of subjugation has to exist in order for society to function runs throughout, and has always been a completely vile idea to me. Also one that just lacks a great deal of imagination, showing a lack of ability to think of how things could function outside of the State, outside of authoritarian control. Anarchism isn't everything as it is now just minus the State apparatus, it's a re-envisioning of all parts of society. If you can't think of any way something could function without authoritarian control, that's a problem with how you've learned to see the world, or a problem with what information is available to you (for instance, I'm not going to suggest anarchist solutions to international trade because that's just not an area I know enough about to have ideas about). But it's not a failing in anarchism, it's just a sign of how all-encompassing the State and hierarchy in general are in people's minds. They've obliterated everything else. But it doesn't have to stay that way, you can start looking outside of it, start imagining different ways of living and functioning!

Jungle-gym for chickadee.

There's always something unknown to examine with fascination.