2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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@dreaminginthedeepsouth
Via
* * * * “You don’t have to set aside a time for meditation. You can do it while you’re driving your car, while you’re at work, while you’re playing music. Just be aware of yourself, of who you really are, and realize the rest is a projection of your mind.”
— Robert Adams
[Alive On All Channels]
One of my favorite paintings by Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti, “The Walnut Tree in Benevento,” 1826.
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“Before we came to believe humans were so important before this awful loneliness. Can molecules recall it? what once was? Before anything happen? No I, No we, No one. No way. No verb. No noun. only a tiny dot brimming with is is is is is is All everything home.” ― Marie Howe
Yoshitaka Amano: The Tale of Genji (2006)
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“When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Glee Violette
Breaking: Another US Service member was killed Saturday by a downed Iranian drone in Northern Iraq. And remains have been found in Jordan that likely belong to the US Service Member who was missing in Friday's attack, bringing the total of US military members who have been sacrificed by the Trump regime during its war on Iran to 17.
And once again, as it is EVERY time, the unspecified number of US Service members who were wounded only received "minor injuries." See? We did not need those corrupt and nasty journalists allowed into to Pentagon, or to be embedded among the troops. Hegseth's War Department will ALWAYS tell us the truth.
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Once again, Central Command made the announcement, not the President. Trump was busy, BEING BOOED in New Jersey, today, Sunday, at the FISA World Cup final between Spain and Argentina. He was seated along with FIFA co-hosts Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
He, alone, though, will get to break tradition, and present the trophy to the winning team.
The King and Prime Minister of Spain are also present, but President Milei of Argentina is not, out of a long-standing superstition not to jinx his team.
A number of media outlets are reporting that the audio on FOX, which is broadcasting the game, was turned down nearly to mute, when the jumbotron displayed Trump, and the boos, predictably, began.
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Thursday, many assumed that Trump's "big address to the nation" would center on the resumption of his war with Iran. His attacks last week happened only a day after he announced at the NATO Summit that the war was "over" and that he had reached his objective of "denuclearizing" Iran.
But, he mentioned his war only in passing, Thursday, just to say that it was practically won. Again. He has not addressed America about it since, either, even when more US Service members were killed.
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Finally, Saturday, Hannah Brandt of News Nation called HIM at his Bedminster golf resort, for his reaction to the deaths of our US Service members.
She reported that he said, "it's a very sad thing. We hate to see it happen."
Not that HE was sad, or the HE hates to see it happen. And come on, it didn't just "happen." HE chose to initiate the sequence of actions that led to this lethal strike. That killed these US Service members under his command. This was on HIM, but he would not own it.
"It's in service to our country," said Trump. As if dying is the sole PURPOSE of a soldier. As if their deaths were all their lives were worth.
He said they died because he is "never going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
HOWEVER, on July 8, only a week ago last Wednesday, Trump said at the NATO Summit that, “We denuclearized Iran. And that’s happened; they will never have a nuclear weapon.”
PAST tense. "That's HAPPENED," he said. Just as he said a year ago last JUNE that he had "OBLITERATED Iran's nuclear."
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But his war goes on, anyway. Now with not even any peace talks in the works. Now without even a Memorandum of Understanding.
Hanna Brandt asked Trump in their very brief phone call, about Iran’s announcement that it was no longer abiding by the MOU, and Trump replied, “I couldn’t care less.”
And he couldn't care less. Last night there was a Black Tie event at Bedminster. Today there is the FIFA World Cup. He's busy building a new helipad where the UFC Fight Claw stood, and he has a Gran Prix race coming down Pennsylvania Avenue in few weeks. He needs to get his Birthday Parade grandstand back up in front of the White House. SO busy...
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Brian Garlick
Retired Army General, served in the Clinton Administration. Normally retired military keep their mouths shut about current operations unless asked, and even then, try to stay apolitical. It's starting to get to the point where they can't be silent any more.
Covering "The News" Can Be An Exercise In Masochistic Self-Harm These Days--
I read various news sites while having my morning coffee just like many of you. Not just "Trump news" but a full array of coverage internationally. Something, I'm not sure what exactly, triggered me this morning while reviewing things.
This routine is a holdover from my nearly four decades of involvement in international politics through our former association with a think-tank, where we received a printed out "daily briefing." The briefing had a lead, and under it sections on different topics, included in which were news reports which we called "slugs." So, under the heading "Middle East" for example, our briefing writers and editorial would pare lengthy intelligence reports down to a readable concise format for us to take note of. So we would get reports on Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gulf states, as well as relevant background on the involvement of other power blocs outside the region.
Even after we quit our corrupted organization, (a long story, not for here or today) I maintained that routine because it was an efficient way to sort things out and organize my thoughts about all of it, putting together a "picture" to present to my network.
My political brain is like a file cabinet with hanging folders on different subjects inside of which are accumulated knowledge, and my memory for what's in it makes retrieving important background as natural to me as breathing in response to breaking news. I retain history and strategic events as if burned into my psyche, while I forget to take out the trash or turn off my oven. We also schlepped a thousand books on every subject down to Mexico with us when we retired here five years ago because we are both readers. (That was what remained of our library after we sold or gave away most of it.)
It isn't traditional journalism to see the world through one's experiences in politics because there is no pretense of objectivity on my part. I cover mostly the activities of a movement and its leaders each day whom I despise with every fiber of my being and am determined to destroy. Yet I have an obligation to be factual and transparent in how I present the news and how I can write commentary which is useful for those of you who are active.
All of this above is by way of an explanation of why I cannot, will not ever be a news presenter. I refuse to be a provider of "information" for consumers of news. There are a million and one sources of which people can avail themselves for that. In truth, the greater problem among us (as opposed to the MAGA/Fox one source propaganda channel) is that we suffer information overload. I have friends that subscribe to 247 Substacks, and I would bet those well-meaning folks haven't had a decent night's sleep since 2016, and their minds sometimes feel like a jar of sourdough starter which tripled in volume and is all over the counter.
So I limit myself to selected trusted sources and outlets, because I have to keep a narrow focus, which is the following:
1. Helping my friends to make sense out of apparent nonsense.
2. Strengthening my own and others resolve to not only continue fighting, but to take a leading role. This means overcoming fear, peer pressure, and cynicism.
3. Highlighting significant changes and shifts in the overall dynamic which might not be so obvious in their implications, yet may be advantageous to our efforts if we intervene in a timely way.
4. Giving my readers historical perspective, to see not only the parallels between the current crisis threat of authoritarian rule and civil conflict and those past, but to see how people have organized, unified, and prevailed over such threats in previous times. To remind ourselves that we have seen most of this before, and the method by which it was defeated is to us both intelligible and repeatable.
5. To combat lies, misinformation, and disinformation by our adveraries, and as well any misdirection of our forces by our own erstwhile leadership who are acting in our names.
6. To hold myself accountable to each of you for everything going out on this page, with my personal commitment to listen, to consult, to correct, retract, edit, append, and write disclaimers where the need to do so is brought to my attention. Stopping fascism is more important than our egos and it is incumbent on us to leave that stuff outside the door.
If I read everything which is sent to me, including from my wife and leading collaborator Martha, and somehow attempted to write commentary on all of it, I would lose what is left of my mind. I can't do it. The sheer magnitude of injustice and insanity which I read about each day is too much to handle.
So, I have to stick with covering those events and developments which serve my purposes as outlined above. We have a lot of new readers that have followed and friended me in the last weeks, verging on 1500 new people who don't know me well, or might find my writing style and coverage to be a bit odd. So this is my way of welcoming our new friends to whatever this is.
I am going with "odd" because it is how I think I can best be of service in times like these. And as always we are open for productive dialogue with everyone.
We have one shot at rescuing the United States, in which the next three years will literally determine whether our lives have meaning and what kind of future we are leaving behind. Every person matters, every opportunity cries out for action, and we don't have the right to fail.
On that note I'll sign off. Have a great week my friends.
Lance Rosen
Joan Halifax ·
From "Unfinished Vow," the book I am working on, as I consider the violent burning of the boundary water forests: "Consider what a lump of coal actually is. It is time: sunlight that fell on fern forests three hundred million years ago, taken in by living things, laid down, buried, compressed through spans that make the whole of human history a rounding error. Oil is the same, the concentrated time of ancient seas. Our civilization's founding act has been to burn hundreds of millions of years of stored being-time in the space of about two centuries, an eyeblink, and to exhale it into a sky whose consequences will be inherited by beings who have no vote in the matter because they have not yet been born. I know of no more precise description of the climate crisis than this: it is a derangement of time. We are spending the deep past to foreclose the future, and calling the transaction growth."
“Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn’t think the view could be any more perfect until I saw that beat-up trilby. Honestly, Sixsmith, as ridiculous as that thing makes you look, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful. Watched you for as long as I dared. I don’t believe it was a fluke that I saw you first. I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world, and I’ll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars, where we first kissed.
Yours eternally, R.F.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn’t think the view could be any more perfect until I saw that beat-up trilby. Honestly, Sixsmith, as ridiculous as that thing makes you look, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful. Watched you for as long as I dared. I don’t believe it was a fluke that I saw you first. I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world, and I’ll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars, where we first kissed.
Yours eternally, R.F.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
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“Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us.”
~ Alexander Leon
soli :: @solisolsoli :: By Paul Weiner
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“Want the Change," Rilke said, "O be inspired by the Flame!" To laurel, to nightingale, to wind... to *wanting* it, to be taken, to embrace, to fall to-ward the flame growing to fill all the senses and... not to love because it was no longer possible to act... but to be helplessly in a condition of love...” ― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
“The smell of night, inhaling stars." — Velimir Khlebnikov
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link The Continuous Life What of the neighborhood homes awash in a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes, watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender, signs that the irregular pleasures of moving from day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty, have run their course? O parents, confess to your little ones the night is a long way off and your taste for the mundane grows; tell them your worship of household chores has barely begun; describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops; say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do, that one thing leads to another, which leads to another; explain that you live between two great darks, the first with an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest thing is having been born, that you live in a blur of hours and days, months and years, and believe it has meaning, despite the occasional fear you are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing to prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside, that your search goes on for something you lost - a name, a family album that fell from its own small matter into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours, you don’t really know. Say that each of you tries to keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear the careless breathing of earth and feel its available languor come over you, wave after wave, sending small tremors of love through your brief, undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond. - Mark Strand
[Quidnunc]
Alina Stefanescu :: @aliner
To trim oneself. To wither. To wring out all the marrow, blood, secretion. Rip out the heart, the bowels, the brain.
- Aleksander Wat, "Somatic Verses" (translated by Jakob Ziguras)
“The main thing in life is not to be afraid to be human.”
— Pablo Casals
In Libro Veritas :: @InlibroV
"There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge."
Roger Bacon :: Opus Majus
Paul Wolff and Alfred Tritschler Cellophane Worker, 1937
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“One of the prime injunctions in the spirituality of the desert fathers is “be watchful,” be attentive. The advice is so central to the mystical teachings of the desert and so easily overlooked that it deserves careful consideration. Saint Hesychius of Sinai says of attention that it is a spiritual method that, if diligently practiced over a long period of time, does three things: completely frees us from the bondage of ourselves, leads us to an intimate experience of the inapprehensible, and helps us to penetrate the divine and hidden mysteries. The work of “being watchful” progresses slowly but surely through four stage, according to Saint Hesychius. Fidelity to the practice of attention produces inner stability, which in turn effects a natural intensification of attentiveness. Intensification of attentiveness in due measure yields contemplative insight, which in turn opens out into a condition in which a person, free from all images, enjoys complete serenity. Attention draws to consciousness an authentic, mysterious wholeness, and original innocence that is the human yearning expressed by the Garden of Eden myth. It is a reunion with the source and substance of one’s being, a reunion that transforms human consciousness.”
Gregory Mayers “Listen to the Desert”
[Alive On All Channels]
