Angtha Thar

@untamespirit

Geek who stays on top on news and have a habit of reading/watching documentaries and play with cookies. Octavia Butler fan girl. Currently reading Sarah Kendzior. And don't worry, I'm not a bot and jerk-wad troll. She/her

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Angtha Thar@untamespirit· 14d

I'm covered like you too, @mmjdanny.bsky.social ! Was very lucky I got it earlier this year!

Black Lagoon Blu-ray with Revy on the cover.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· 19d

This theory can be added on why the far right and MAGA want to go after Trans rights too. @esqueer.net said something about this (I think) a while back. Can't remember if it's a repost or an original post about it.

But it's time to stop looking away from the facts staring us in the face. The time for polite pretense is long over. Pedocon theory is not about a unique kind of mental illness that just happens to be concentrated in the Republican Party. It is not about "uncontrollable animal urges." It is about how racial anxieties and obsessions, fantasies of patriarchal domination and control, lead inexorably towards the idea that women and children exist for men's use—including sexual use. Pedophilia is simply this libidinal obsession with power and domination put into practice.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· 21d

A related example to private equity and how bad they are is from the book Bad Company and the Toys R US executives going to Disney World while the workers suffer makes my blood boil. #booksky 📚

In 2017, Liz said, Tovs R Us took everyone in management to Disney World. "Everyone" meant regional and district managers, but also the manager of every store across the country--hundreds of people in all The company covered airfare, hote stays, food, drinks, and entertainment for evervone. Organizers handed out swag, including plush knit Toys R Us sweaters. Swanky corporate retreats were common in finance and other white-collar industries. but Liz hac never heard of retail managers receivina such treatment
Yet when her boss came back from the trip, he was demoralized "We're not giving our employees decent raises because thev're tellind us not to," she remembered him saying. "You guys are working your butts off for this company, making all this money, and they're wasting money on handmade sweaters and Disney World."
It seemed strange to Liz too. Practically every request her team

made-for more staff. store improvements, anything-was rejectec by corporate as too expensive. How could sendinc hundreds of people to Disney World be in the budaet?
That year, Toys R Us owed $1.2 billion in loan payments; the next year, another $668 million. And it had no way to pay: lenders were sick of riding the Toys R Us merry-go-round. There would be no miracle deal or new set of loans. To make things worse, many suppliers began demanding payment before shipping merchandise to stores so they weren't at risk of getting stiffed. By September, stock- up time for the holiday rush, there wasn't nearly enough money in the coffers to buy an entire Christmas's worth of toys and pay off the loans. On September 18, a few months after the Disney World trip, Toys R Us filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which helped secure a new $3.1 billion loan to finance a total company overhaul.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· 23d

Today I learned that Crunchyroll removed some anime like Black Lagoon, the greatest treasure of all time. Luckily, I have the Blu-ray from earlier this year and digital versions on Microsoft (for now) and Apple TV (Roberta's Blood Trail) #tv 📺

Black Lagoon complete collection Blu-ray with Revy

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jun 30

Here's a tough lesson with democracy and institutions.

American neofascism under Trump offers a “tough lesson” about the atrophy of the country’s democracy and institutions. Too many Americans thought our democracy was forever — and perhaps even worse, they wanted it on the cheap. They assumed that others would do the work of protecting our institutions, norms and values, which left our democracy exposed.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jun 26

This should be a good reason why.

But while Carlson is taking a more mainstream, moderate-seeming view on the war, closer observation shows that most of his gripes with the Trump-led GOP is that it’s not right-wing enough. This week, Matthew Taylor, a religious studies visiting scholar at Georgetown, noted that Carlson has removed the American flag from his show’s set and replaced it with the Appeal to Heaven flag that was popular with Jan. 6 rioters.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· May 28

This Q&A from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social reminded me of a skeet from @gregpak.net a while back on Microsoft and how annoying subscriptions are for Office now; back in the day, you just get a disc of it and keep it forever.

One solution is to record your words in ways you can control. I hate that Microsoft Word and some printers now require subscriptions to work instead of letting you own them and use them in private. They have managed to cheapen self-expression while making it more expensive. The future may lie in the past: pen and paper, typewriters, other analog tools. But it is difficult to share your ideas without using the internet, which means battling algorithms, censorship, paywalls, and AI fakes. They want you to trade your humanity for chatbot hallucinations. They want you to surrender. Don’t.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· May 19

“Cities give you anonymity, and rural places give you isolation, but I think suburbs give you kind of neither and both,”

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· May 2

@karenattiah.bsky.social on the dangers of nostalgia and how it can lead to political repression.

Nostalgia— real or manufactured— can also lead to political repression, and in the worst cases, identity-based atrocities.

“..the promise to rebuild the ideal home lies at the core of many powerful ideologies today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional bonding…In extreme cases, it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters.”

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Feb 27

From 2024, @sarahkendzior.bsky.social . Also I wonder if you sometimes go analog when it comes to movies and TV shows. Earlier this month I found out that Microsoft stopped selling TV shows and movies last year. Even though I'm still able to access my stuff, I got a Blu-ray for one of them.

They ruined every good innovation of my life. They encouraged us to destroy the analog world, and after we did, they replaced it with bullshit and lies.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Feb 16

Also found this related quote from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social 's the Invaders on Eyes Wide Shut

My phone offers “news”: pseudo-revelations about Jeffrey Epstein that his victims told in the 1990s, back when Stanley Kubrick was making Eyes Wide Shut. The media ignored the victims because the media are friends with the predators. They dismissed them until 2025, when media itself crumbled and US institutions abandoned even the pretense of law. Now the predators are purchasing social media outlets, the last bastions of unfiltered inquiry, like they’re plugging leaks on their yachts.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 28

From @karenattiah.bsky.social and @sarahkendzior.bsky.social on being right too early.

Some of us spent our entire careers warning White America what was to come.

And we were punished for it. Purged for it. Called “angry”, “hysterical”, “race-baiters.”

And now, here we are.

As @Sarah Kendzior once said, there is a heavy cost for being right too early.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 25

And a more recent favorite: spicy chili ramen with some milk, chili crunch and cheese. Tip: creamy oat milk makes it tasty.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 23

@sarahkendzior.bsky.social , was MTV precious to you? Also did you heard about what Microsoft did for CDS on their media player for Windows 11?

You’re right that the last few years have felt flat and dull. Peak TV ended after decades of shows reflecting on the moral crisis of the US (Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc.) We’ve been flooded with boring shows about the ultra-rich; this shift started around 2022. The downfall of TV was preceded by the downfall of the music industry: the murder of radio, MTV, and the musical pop monoculture — and with it, the counterculture that had formed in reaction. Like streaming TV, digital music is siloed and repressed by algorithms. Politically conscious songs exist but are hard to find. Americans still long for them: that’s why the “Fast Car” duet in 2024 entranced the nation.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 21

Here's the consequences of invading Greenland for the US from reddit.

If the US invades Greenland, it will be the end of NATO, and the end of the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency. No one will buy and subsidize our military equipment and our military will become unsustainable. The US bond market would experience a price collapse and yield surge as foreign countries dump US treasuries. The US government would face much higher borrowing costs and risk debt default. Retail interest rates will soar to levels never seen before. The dollar would collapse which would make foreign products too prohibit to buy even if you pulled Trump's tantrum tariffs. And finally, say goodbye to your Social Security and your Medicare, forever. This will play out over one to two decades, but it would happen and it would be permanent.

We will become even more a country of have's and have nots. And the rich won't care. The rich in the US are already independent of the swings in the US economy. Their fortunes literally and figuratively are no longer tied to ours. And Europe won't care. And Asia won't care. And all the "third world" countries won't care. Why should they? We don't give a shit anymore about anything or anyone beyond our selfish interests. Our former allies and trade partners will all experience the purest form of schadenfreude as the US collapses inward. Because of our greed, our shallow nationalism and our native bigotry. We deserve what's coming because we are a nation of narcissists, gluttons, bigots and myopes.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 20

Found this book at my local library and Wednesday in Spanish is something I never knew I needed. #booksky 📚

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 16

Just randomly browsing on Reddit then it led me to an article on the consequences invading Greenland and saw @sarahkendzior.bsky.social getting referenced.

Liked by Brent Molnar: Voice of Reason
The end of NATO is the reason he's doing this. This is Putin wish and Trump is somehow beholden to Putin. Kompromat in action.
LIKE (6) REPLY
Liked by Brent Molnar: Voice of Reason
Exactly this. Trump has been compromised by Russia since the 1980's. It is well documented in the book "Hiding in Plain Sight" By Sarah Kendzior.
LIKE (7) . REPLY

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 14

Almost a year later #academicsky and 2025 has passed. Looking at the military misadventure part from @salon.com since we're into Greenland now. Looks like this article might be off by a year.

Military Misadventure: Present Situation

Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Jan 7

@sarahkendzior.bsky.social on wonder.

When you delete the past, you steal the wonder of discovery. Childlike wonder is key to the show cave. Their modern stewards tend to be conservationists who guard the real treasure — the transcendent geology of the underworld — from robber barons above.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Dec 14

History rhymes #academicsky

In 1919, the pandemic finally began to wane. And after two years of everybody being cooped up, what happened?

Mass violence, led by white supremacists. In over three dozen cities, white mobs stormed black businesses and neighborhoods, killing with impunity. The riots continued into the new decade, with the 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa being the most infamous example. White mob violence was accompanied by a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as well as eastern Asia were demonized in the media, and in 1924, new laws restricting immigration were passed.

This was followed by the birth of the FBI and the man who shaped it for decades, J Edgar Hoover, who of course blamed the white mob violence on Black people. The 1920s brought prohibition, which allowed mafias to thrive in the bootlegging business and then to collaborate, as the decades went on, with the US government officials, including law enforcement leaders like Hoover, who denied organized crime’s existence until the 1950s.

We are still dealing with the ramifications of that dark alliance: of the merger between organized crime, corporate crime, and state corruption.

The 1920s did not roar, they devoured. They were an era of mob mentality in every respect. And then in 1929, they crashed, and fascism rose in its wake.

Fascism rose from the ashes of collapsed empires and destroyed the new nation-states that had emerged between the two world wars: fledgling countries that in some cases had been fighting for their rights, for the right to their very existence, for centuries. I’m thinking here of countries like Poland and Ukraine, countries whose history show that you cannot count on a stable international order, and that your country often lives in your heart even more than it lives within defined borders.

Fascism emerged from the exploitation of dashed hopes and dead dreams. It emerged from the chronic underestimation of autocratic demagogues like Hitler, who staged a failed coup in 1923 and was treated as a joke until his comeback in the early 1930s.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Dec 14

Reading this @sarahkendzior.bsky.social article from 2023. Here's on losing memories from a transition to a mafia state autocracy and keeping your values.

In times of severe crisis, people lose their expectations, and what is worse, they lose their memories of their expectations. They lose their memories of who they were and what they valued and what they hoped their world would be. This is a natural process when a flawed democracy turns into a mafia state autocracy, which is why you need to stay vigilant. That this is a predictable process does not make it less threatening.

You need to remember your moral boundaries and not cross them. You need to remember who you are.

And that is a great challenge during a pandemic – two years in which time itself seems to have lost meaning, and in which nearly everything that was reliable was stripped from us at some point.

But holding onto your values is the most important challenge you face. If you are trying to figure out how to proceed, look to who is suffering. Who is suffering, who enables that suffering, who excuses that suffering, how do we abate that suffering? And then proceed from there.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Dec 4

Loved your answer on Spotify and Amazon. I also have a portable CD player mainly for Christmas music I can't find on streaming services like Mavis Staples' Christmas Vacation and Christmas with Rosemary Clooney. Also I don't think I'll have room for multiple of CDs. 😞

SK: I boycott Spotify. It was easy because I never streamed music. I wanted to own my collection and not rely on internet when it doesn’t work on Missouri backroads. When I learned about how Spotify rips off artists, it became a moral boycott. As for Amazon, I use it as little as possible. I make part of my living from Amazon, so when there is a Kindle sale, I’ll tell people, since not everyone can afford my books. But I hype up independent bookstores much more. (Speaking of, get signed copies at Left Bank Books in St Louis!) Supporting small businesses is the way to go: the strike against big corporations is less important than strengthening the underdog for the long run.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 29

Here's one. It's my favorite because it explains how a lie can become powerful due to repetition. #booksky 📚

Beware: All too often.
We say What we hear others say.
We think What we're told that we think.
We see
What we're permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we're told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we've said it
And at last to embrace it
Because we've defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we've embraced and defended
An obvious lie.

Thus, without thought,
Without intent,
We make
Mere echoes
Of ourselves-
And we say
What we hear others say.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 29

I agree. One example: Covid #science 🧪 #booksky 📚

I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 29

Sorry #booksky 📚 and #academicsky it's been a while. Butler would continue with the parable series on how demagogues use their charisma to charm and trick their followers to self-destruction.

It seems inevitable that people who can't read are going to lear more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 15

Logged in today and didn't expect Alice to die. RIP Alice 😭😢

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 14

While @sarahkendzior.bsky.social was gone for a while, here's the Substack post on Trump and Epstein along with the excerpt from Hiding in Plain Sight

An excerpt of a 2020 interview about my book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, which covers the relationship between Trump and Epstein, as well as the institutional complicity that let both of them thrive. Many of the details in my book are the same details reported now as “new”. This is why:

I know there are a lot of people who trust me: I show my work, I footnote evervthing, I give examples, Im very concrete. But if you were just to repeat, to somebody who doesn't know anvthing about the situation. what's in this book, [they would] be like, That's completely wild! If that were true someone would have done something about it! And that's when vou get to the fundamental horror of the book: It's not that no one knows, it's that they all know. Most people in official power, they know. I'm not breaking news. The reason they don't want to talk about it is that they have failed to combat it.
Sarah Kendzior

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 10

Remembering what @sarahkendzior.bsky.social said about the government being shutdown a long time ago in 2016 at the end of October. substack.com/app-link/pos...

Congress is shut down; Congress was already shut down. Congress shut down in 2016 after spending decades running on dying batteries until the invisible hand yanked them out for good. The mafia state was made plain; civics drowned in corrupt institutionalism. We were told to keep pretending representative government was real.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 10

Here's a clear explanation from @davelevitan.bsky.social on why the shutdown deal is bad.

The deal, which still needs to get through the House, would fund the government temporarily, reverse shutdown-enacted reductions in force (RIFs), and ensure federal employee back pay. It notably does not, however, include the extension of healthcare subsidies that was, it should be stressed, the entire argument on which Democrats had pinned their holdout. Instead, majority leader John Thune has agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies in December — all that pain for a shallow promise to hold a vote they will lose.

Angtha Thar@untamespirit· Nov 9

@truthout.org shows how Wall Street and NYC gave rise to Trump from last month. truthout.org/articles/the...