🌱 Ruth Bright-Needle 🧵 @brightneedle@sunbeam.city

#introductions #reintroductions hi, I'm Ruth. A friend dubbed me Ruth Bright-Needle, which is what I'd like on my grave marker.

I'm into #sewing #quilting #maintenance #repair #repurposing particularly around textiles. I work as a #librarian doing digital/cataloging/tech stuff and am trying to improve #labor conditions. I live in the grief and hope of the #Anthropocene. #NaturalBurial and the #DeathPositive movement are very important to me. I do some #writing, particularly for horror #RPGs.

I'm a Mennonite and at least aspirationally a Christian Anarchist.

As I said in my bio, I find hope in rotting logs, in mushrooms, in ecosystems... I'm also interested in #kudzupunk http://ruthtillman.com/tentative-definition-kudzupunk/

My other accounts are @ruth (which I'm retiring/redirecting) and @platypus where I talk about library stuff, esp tech and cataloging, and to some degree labor and whatnot, primarily.

... and y'all have been being so awesome for so long I just had to join up here.

Reflecting tonight that most people have lived without the type of mirrors to which I have access. I wonder what that’s like. I wonder which of us is better off.

Guns, Germs, and Here's Why European Colonialism and Genocide Was Inevitable No Biggie

... "but the German beer-brewing industry is less than half as productive as the American beer-brewing industry"

HERE, FRIENDS, IS WHY WE DON'T JUDGE BY PRODUCTIVITY

"Since my book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was published, I've spent a lot of time talking with people from Silicon Valley and some from Route 128, and they tell me that the corporate ethos in these two industrial belts is quite different."

https://www.edge.org/conversation/how-to-get-rich

no surprise Diamond likes Silicon Valley because they're "collaborative"

A piece linked to by the above -- which includes some good critiques of Steven Pinker https://www.thedailybeast.com/savaging-primitives-why-jared-diamonds-the-world-until-yesterday-is-completely-wrong

... just the idea that a genocide in a large society is less violent than a couple murders in a very small one and thus the world is getting better is... awful

Got a copy of the article "F*ck Jared Diamond" for a friend and ran across this great blog post: https://louisproyect.org/2014/10/26/fuck-jared-diamond/

'As one writer put it, after the book [“Guns, Germs, and Steel”] was adapted for the US TV network PBS, his stance means that “a PBS donor can sit in his Connecticut estate feeling no guilt since it was, after all, only an accident of geography that made him rich and the Bolivians poor.”'

I will spend part of every pollen season looking for numbers to justify how I feel.

My husband is running an errand and my dog won’t stop crying in the window. /sigh

‪Thinking about the Notre Dame fire and death positivity. One thing that sometimes comes up in such groups his people feeling guilty about deep grief. ‬

‪but that’s not what the concept is about. It’s about acknowledging it as part of life and an extremely painful one.‬

‪Part of what it’s about is accepting that you and those you love will die and living your life accordingly. Not in fear or denial, but embracing it joyfully and fully while you are here. ‬

‪Part of it is acknowledging the varying responses to death and loss and how very painful and long-standing it can be. It’s not expecting people to “get over“ it after a year. It’s being able to talk about how you feel. ‬

Loss is not easy. I’m grieving right now for a parent as complex and messy and doomed and harmful and yet precious as that cathedral. One can feel so much in grief. It’s ok that it’s complicated and messy. Or so my therapist tells me.

Worried about Gargoyles.

Spiritual ancestors whispering "how does it feel now, Catholics?"

Agree very much on CWing -- there's lots of space for them to say "dunking on Christianity" or "dunking on the French" but people who've lost things that were precious to them (not necessarily national buildings but homes, etc.) in fires or people in fires, etc., so it's a kind CW.

I've had a couple friends lose their apartments to fires and every time I see a building on fire I get all teared up because I think about how I could've lost them and how they could've lost their beloved pets. I also think of things like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory because I've read graphic descriptions. So despite various feelings about buildings, pics/videos of the fire (which I look at under my own discretion) are making me want to cry.