18+

Adults only

DIRTY shows adult content. By entering you confirm that you are of legal age and wish to see such content.

What DIRTY is · Terms

Gallery Discover Feed Market Messages

DIRTY.socialWhat DIRTY is Removal & reports Terms Privacy legal@dirty.socialThe network for adult creators · 18+

Discover
Feed
Messages
Profile

hooked on persephonics 👁 (@amphote) · DIRTY

hooked on persephonics 👁

@amphote

Former litigator, former fed.

1,628 Following363 Followers485 Posts

Is this your profile?Claim it and amphote.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· 1d

Programs crucial to U.S. interests sat unmanaged; the officers who had been in charge of them had been escorted out.
When NSC leaders realized what theyd done, it fell to me to call the people theyd humiliated and beg them to come back.
They did.
One week in, the administration I served reinstated its ban on trans people in the military. Decorated officers such as my friend Colonel Bree Fram were thrown out for the crime of being honest. In the White House, people called me "in-dispensable." I still was not welcome in their bathrooms.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· 7d

Supreme Court reform certainly is a norm-breaking escalation. It is also true that escalation encourages reciprocal escalation. It is therefore imaginable that Supreme Court reform could come to destroy the idea of an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and ultimately the republic itself. Yet that is not a reason to rule out this course, but rather it is precisely why moral courage is necessary to act rationally. As Clausewitz notes, there is little need for moral courage when the best choice appears certain. "But when a man has adequate grounds for action-whether subjective or objective, valid or false-he cannot properly be called 'determined! This would amount to putting oneself in his position and weighting the scale with a doubt that he never felt" (On War, Book I, Chapter 3). Moral courage is needed here because of the very fact that there are reasons to doubt the wisdom of court reform.

Moral courage is needed here because of the very fact that there are reasons to doubt the wisdom of court reform.
When it is clear we are on treacherous ground through which there is no safe road, we must have the courage to consider bold and daring courses, for the path that appears less dangerous is a poor choice of route if it does not ultimately lead us to safety.
For all the risks that come with violating norms, doing so is now less risky than the alternative.
In the depth of our current crisis, it is utterly irresponsible to rule out a path merely because it runs the risk of leading to the dissolution of our republic—at present, there are no courses available without this risk. To seek to preserve or reestablish norms as our primary defense against authoritarianism is to slap a band-aid on a bullet wound.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· 7d

www.liberalcurrents.com/clausewitz-a...

Clausewitz perceptively identifies that for leadership in a crisis (such as war),
intelligence is insufficient; in fact, there are many cases of intelligent people crumbling with doubts, as they become overwhelmed by all the possibilities and probabilities they can imagine, able to generate a practically endless number of arguments for and against each course.
What is needed, therefore, is strength of character, which Clausewitz defines as to "not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions" (On War, Book I, Chapter 3). Clausewitz is careful to distinguish this firmness from sheer obstinacy, which should not be mistaken as excessive strength of character, but rather seen as a failure of emotional stability, since it
derives from the egotistical desire to be correct.
Strength of character allows one to muster the emotions needed to quell doubts and undertake rational action.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· 12d

I wanted something lighter than fatigues for working outside in summer but couldn't find anything cheap (it will get dirty) and not polyester, & I know nothing about tailoring pants, so I thumbnail-sketched a pattern & cooked up a pair of these in light cotton. Not sexy but they get the job done.

Picture is of a guy on a beach putting on loose green wrap pants. Caption says "How to wear Thai Fisherman Pants in 2 different ways, BindiDesigns.eu"

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Jul 16

www.govexec.com/workforce/20...

skill lines. The occupations that went barely replaced were the analytical, technical and acquisition roles. The ones that kept being refilled were frontline service roles. Behind the percentages are stark raw counts, all for September 2025. Among management and program analysts, 8,218 people left and 106 were hired, a 1% replacement rate. In information technology, 7,456 left and 181 were hired, a 2% replacement rate. Contracting, the function that runs federal procurement, saw 3,520 departures and 174 hires, a 5% replacement rate. Statisticians saw 319 departures and three hires. By contrast, nurses saw 1,185 departures against 731 hires, a 62% replacement rate. Medical officers were replaced at 58%, while criminal investigators were replaced at slightly above one-to-one.

What the data show is the replacement gap.
What they do not directly measure, but what reasonably follows, is the consequence. When a contracting shop loses most of its officers and refills almost none, the expected result is slower procurements and thinner oversight. When information technology replacement stops, modernization and security work are the likely casualties. When analysts and statisticians leave and are not refilled, leadership has less capacity to answer its own questions with evidence.
These are inferences about capability, not measurements of it, and they should be read that way. But they are the natural reading of a contraction that hit hardest exactly where expertise is most concentrated and slowest to rebuild.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· May 29

contracts with any outside vendor. Forty federal websites run behind one personal Cloudflare account. And the Presidential Records Act seals everything for twelve years the day this administration ends, meaning until 2040, no one outside the White House can see who works there, what they collected, or where any of the data went.
What this office is doing is taking the parts of the federal government that touch you directly, your prescription, your voter registration, your passport, your federal login, out of the agencies that legally own them and rebuilding them on White House infrastructure. Vote.gov belongs to the Election Assistance Commission, and the studio built a copy. Passports belong to the State Department, and the studio is building a replacement this week. Login. gov belonged to GSA, and the studio's guy runs it now.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· May 23

Pretty sure this is because I don't shower enough to be Episcopalian

Your taste lives in the Mennonite Church USA neighborhood-the
Goshen and Eastern Mennonite mainstream of the Anabaptist tradition, distinct from the more conservative Mennonite Brethren or the plain-dressed Old Order.
The cultural neighborhood is rooted in Radical Reformation roots, gospel-of-peace theology, sustainable agriculture and a serious food culture, community discernment over institutional hierarchy, an instinct for the small and faithful over the large and powerful, and the long Mennonite Central Committee tradition of putting service into actual practice. Wendell Berry is a kind of patron saint of the type.
Politically often progressive on war, immigrationyand creation care.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Apr 5

But I DO want the pantry feature - but "Scan Barcode" doesn't seem to work? It talks to the camera properly, recognizes barcode input and flashes "Looking up product" for a second, but then goes to this screen and nothing gets added to pantry.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Mar 15

Search your camera roll for "hell"

a guide to Nature Names FOR YOUR BABY
Good
Violet
Lily
Summer
Rowan
Ash
Lavender
Heather
Robin
Dawn

Bad
Tawny Frogmouth
Blewit
Virginia Creeper
Cheeseweed
Compressed Flapwort
Screaming Hairy Armadillo

GREAT
Dragonhunter
Centaury
Bat Falcon
Hellbender
Mother of Thousands

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Mar 13

sarlacc pit

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Mar 5

getting better at this

Mar 5th 2026 (Tricky)
Four by five grid of green squares
Solved in 03:23
You're among 25% fastest!
Only 45% others had a perfect solve.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Feb 10

black sites

The General Services Administration
(GSA), which manages federal buildings and functions as the government's internal IT department, is playing a critical role in this aggressive expansion. In numerous emails and memorandums viewed by WIRED, DHS asked GSA explicitly to disregard usual government lease procurement procedures and even hide lease listings due to "national security concerns" in an effort to support ICE's immigration enforcement activities across the US.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Jan 25

This piece is. A. Banger. Love it, read it, believe it

misbehaving cops. We've finally reached the threshold of a cascade failure. The weight of the burden is too heavy to bear while the power of privilege is so easy to wield. It must be corrected for the
system to survive. If a republic is a container that can hold the maximum amount of dynamism without shattering, this kind of dark privilege must be expelled.
That requires commitment to liberal values. Being willing to face down the full force of irrevocable, inevitable violence, to carry the bright light of the law into the mouth of darkness, to confront Frank Miller's train, requires people who give a shit. Fixing the system on paper and fixing the hearts of those who operate it must be part of the same project.
This revival can't wait any longer.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Jan 18

He wanted one thing understood immediately: This is not a professional operation. "It is just ordinary people that are doing this," he said. "This isn't fun. It's middle-aged parents who would rather be playing with their kids at home."

She talked about it as mutual aid built in real time, held together by trust and speed, and by a kind of local reflex that Minnesota has rehearsed in smaller ways for years - neighbors pushing each other out of snowdrifts, shoveling sidewalks, checking in.
"You have to know your neighbors," she said. "You need to know their names."
Neighbors are showing up in droves.
Organizers told me their Signal chats were maxing out. Trainings are full. Food pantries were being inundated. And even after the horror of Good's killing, the new volunteers weren't seasoned activists, they were regular people who finally reached a point where doing nothing felt worse than the risks of doing something.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Jan 5

these two skeets taste great together

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Jan 4

It's extra important for young people especially to hear that. They have been inundated with the venality and treachery of the Trump administration, where government doesn't give a shit about you and fuck you if you think it should.
I'd implore them (and everyone) to learn the goddamn difference between democratic socialism and communism because the motherfuckers are coming after Mamdani hard, invoking Soviet gulags and Chinese oppression.
Mamdani isn't a communist. He doesn't believe that all people should be equal in property and wealth. He doesn't believe in the government owning all housing and controlling all industries so that it gives out homes and jobs. Thinking that the ultra-rich should pay higher taxes so that poor people can ride the buses for free does not equal enforced food rationing and the imprisonment of dissidents. In fact, those who keep bringing up that shit should be treated like the fucking morons or despicable liars that they are.
And it's also important that the Democratic Party watches how this all goes down and learns. Take

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Dec 27

Mary's Heritage Turkey

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Dec 21

It blows hard for sure

Picture of Siberian fox facing into the wind, captioned "it fucken WIMDY"

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Dec 19

Black and white poster of an American WWII general
Caption:

"NUTS!"
Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe
10lst Airborne Division
December 22, 1944
Bastogne, Belgium

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Oct 16

Every time Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York—the Democrat with the most power in a shutdown because his withholding of seven senators toward a procedural vote keeps Republicans from proceeding—says that Democrats are looking to open the government through a negotiation around and deal on Affordable Care Act subsidies, he is acquiescing to the idea that a government in which Border Patrol agents paid with our tax dollars can shoot real bullets at protesters in Chicago after screaming “Do something, bitch!” can and should be deemed legitimate.

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Sep 26

It's fine, these National Security couch cushions keep me safe

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Aug 21

Art print featuring a red-and-white rendition of the DC flag, with the stripes replaced with footlong subs

hooked on persephonics 👁@amphote· Aug 12

Rick the Hormone Monster from Big Mouth

Media

Stats

363

followers

1.6K

following

485

posts

🔥 High engagement⭐ Top creator⚡ Active

That's me — remove