It looks like D.C. has become a police state. I would like to remind people of the Bud Cubby quote:

“Laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army. You know what I mean?”

This does carry all the worries about #facism #oligarchy #latestagecapitaism #empiresfall

My housemate is from the US, and her family all still live there.

She moved here 20 years ago, when we started dating after meeting online in a Yahoo Chatroom. We dated for 10 years, and had a "conscious uncoupling" before it became cool.

We both came to the conclusion that our romantic relationship wasn't "over", it was "complete". It was a different feeling than a breakup because a relationship has ended. Ours hadn't ended, it's just that the romance was completed. I'm not sure how else to explain it.

We had a discussion about how things would be going forward, and decided that unravelling our interwoven lives wasn't the best way for us. We had pets together (lots of pets!), and it wasn't fair to split them up from each other or from ourselves. We'd spent 10 years forging a life together, a life that was supportive and celebratory of love and queerness and friendship.. and we both wanted to keep that.

So we moved into separate bedrooms in the same house, got separate bank accounts, and committed to discovering ourselves as a household family instead of a romantic one.

10 years later, we still live together. We still have pets. She still drives me up the fucking wall, and I still love her. She's one of the most intelligent and thoughtful people I know, and can be one of the most frustratingly stupid people I know as well.. because we, each one of us, are full of contradictions.

.....

Anyway, she tries to go back to the US each year to visit her family.. usually for 4 to 6 weeks, depending on how supportive her work is about her working from there.

Last year she started a new position at the uni she works at, and her manager has been super supportive of her working from home when she needs, and was completely happy with her working from the US for her visit last year.

I suggested that she goes to the US for longer this time, like for 3 months.. and she's excited about that idea. She'll get to spend a good deal of time with her family, and spending 3 months with her niece (who is 2 years old) means she'll get to see a lot of her development over that time, because of how quickly kids change and grow at that age.

She's nervous about going, because it leaves me with all the pets to wrangle in my own.. I'm sure I'll be fine.

I'm nervous about her going, because it's the US and I don't want her to get killed.. I'm not sure she'll be fine.

#USPol #USA #US #EmpiresFall

Moin❣️

For this week's #RegionalRiffs by @Banur here is thrash metal band Empiresfall from Hamburg, Germany. Their second, and latest, studio album is A Piece To The Blind from 2018 🤘

It's on bandcamp here:
https://empiresfall.bandcamp.com/album/empiresfall-a-piece-to-the-blind

PS: that's a nice list of Hamburg metal bands I have collected under https://social.tchncs.de/@sariash/tagged/RegionalRiffs 😍

#Music #Metal #ThrashMetal #Empiresfall