ShrinkRants

I am an ex-psychiatrist and Narrative Therapist with an interest in philosophy, social studies, and history, especially poststructuralism, and decoloniality. My daily work for many years was in a Family Medicine residency program, where I tried to help the residents develop some knowledge and skill at understanding people's problems in the context of the many discourses that pull them toward pills, procedures, and "productivity" and away from listening so as to develop narrative empathy for peoples' predicaments. I use this tumblr to share interesting info about these things, and to refine my ability to describe what's precious but not widely appreciated in this complex universe in these tumultuous times. I believe that even in the most disempowered of lives, there is always lived experience that is worth noticing and re-experiencing. Narrative therapists seek to develop ways of thinking and working that bring forth stories of specific persons in specific contexts so that they can lay claim to their otherwise marginalized stories and live out the possibilities those stories reveal for their lives.

[azspot]

“Dude, the Internet.”

Prestige Silicon Valley television.

At the time, critics mostly took for granted Halt and Catch Fire’s greater value: it’s an excellent television show that grew in sophistication over multiple seasons, isn’t based on existing IP, and isn’t a cookie-cutter genre exercise. The encroachment of the tech industry into Hollywood itself has potentially made prestige television shows like Halt and Catch Fire one of the television industry’s last products that can stand the test of time. Firstly, because the quality of television has cratered in the past decade. Secondly, by focusing its narrative on the tech industry itself, Halt and Catch Fire’s staying power has only increased. The story it tells still has something to say about our present-day reality. 

[shrinkrants]

Love me some halt and catch fire.

[shrinkrants]

Israel Is Stepping Up Its Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

While international attention is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran, violence and displacement in the West Bank continue to intensify, an

[shrinkrants]

Thanks to Kyle Killian's FB post.

[robertreich]

A tyrant can exercise tyranny only insofar as the objects of his tyranny continue to allow it. Remember this. I urge you to attend a No Kings protest where you live.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Why is it that ICE agents are able to stay safe at airports without masks, but have to wear them when they arrest immigrants?

Notice how these ICE agents "working" at a U.S. airport are NOT wearing their masks?

I thought they were so afraid of being doxxed that they had to wear masks to protect themselves and their families?

Apparently not.

ICE agents were probably told NOT to wear masks at the airports to avoid terrorizing average Americans.

This gives credence to the hypothesis that ICE wears masks to terrorize immigrants and to avoid responsibility when they use illegal tactics to apprehend them.

What is happening at the airports lets us know that the Democrats' demand that ICE stop wearing masks is being shown to be more than reasonable by the very fact that ICE agents are mask free at the airports.

And Trump was the one who ordered that ICE work the airports in order to avoid giving into the Democrats' demands.

Oh, the irony.

[shrinkrants]

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom’s long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept’s complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate. Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience, or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. Her abiding interest lies in ongoing “practices of freedom” by which we negotiate our interrelation with―indeed, our inseparability from―others, with all the care and constraint that entails, while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion. For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture―from recent art-world debates to the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation, from the painful paradoxes of addiction to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis―is itself a practice of freedom, a means of forging fortitude, courage, and company. On Freedom is an invigorating, essential book for challenging times.

[azspot]

“It’s sadly not unusual for journalists to receive death threats for reporting the truth, and Israel is the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist. The IDF has murdered at least 274 journalists to date”

— Cory Doctorow

[saywhat-politics]

[shrinkrants]

National Guard was doing this in New Orleans last month

[shrinkrants]

March 24, 2026

This morning, economist Paul Krugman came right out and said it: “People close to Trump are trading based on national secrets.” Another word

This morning, economist Paul Krugman came right out and said it: “People close to Trump are trading based on national secrets.” Another word for that, he said, is “treason.” The evidence for such a claim is the sudden and isolated jump in trading volume in S&P 500 and oil futures about 15 minutes before Trump suddenly announced that the U.S. and Iran were in negotiations to end the war—an announcement that turned out to be false.

The oil futures trade alone was worth about $580 million, the Financial Times estimated. As Krugman notes, exploiting confidential information for financial gain, otherwise known as “insider trading,” is illegal. But exploiting confidential information about national security for private financial gain is something else again. It puts profit-making above Americans’ safety.

[saywhat-politics]

March 28 will be the biggest protest in US history. Find your local No Kings event to make it clear that America rejects the Trump regime’s brutality at home and abroad.

Paid for by Indivisible Project (indivisible.org).

[shrinkrants]

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

— Kurt Vonnegut (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[shrinkrants]

- Laura Nader quoted from “Up the Anthropologist: Perspective Gained from Studying Up” at Upward Anthropology Research Community.

(thanks to protoslacker for calling attention to this article)

[shrinkrants]

A critique does not consist in saying that things aren’t good the way they are. It consists in seeing on just what type of assumptions, of familiar notions, of established and unexamined ways of thinking the accepted practices are based… To do critcism is to make harder those acts which are now too easy.     — Michel Foucault

(via sonofforneus)

[shrinkrants]

“This is the thing about ecology: everything is interconnected. It’s difficult for us to grasp how this works, because we’re used to thinking of the world in terms of individual parts rather than complex wholes. In fact, that’s even how we’ve been taught to think of ourselves – as individuals. We’ve forgotten how to pay attention to the relationships between things. Insects necessary for pollination; birds that control crop pests, grubs and worms essential to soil fertility; mangroves that purify water; the corals on which fish populations depend: these living systems are not ‘out there’, disconnected from humanity. On the contrary: our fates are intertwined. They are, in a real sense, us.”

— Jason Hickel, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

[shrinkrants]

“… those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.”

— Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

[shrinkrants]

Democracy Now! 30th Anniversary Special Event

Amy Goodman, Juan González, Nermeen Shaikh and the entire Democracy Now! family held a 30th anniversary celebration at the historic Riversid

From Greg Mitchell: Last night, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! (I have been a guest numerous times) celebrated its 30th anniversary at Riverside Church in NYC, with musical guest including Michael Stipe and Hurray for the Riff Raff. It’s all below but it is cued up for you for Springsteen singing his Minneapolis protest song and joining friend-of-the-show Patti Smith and the others for “People Have the Power.” New doc about Amy and the history of the program debuts next month.

[azspot]

“Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.”

— Chris Hedges