There are about half a million #stars in this #JWST view of our galactic centre.

A vast region of ionized #hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it.

Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation.

#astronomy #astrophotography
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/148/01HF7NQKFCWPXHB5MT68G7Z2ED

Just how fucked are we?

Well, this is the year in which I've finally seen how integrated authoritarian politics, exploitative economics and all forms of media and journalism really are.

These forces are against economic justice, any meaningful climate action, social freedom and equality and peaceful human relations (they are, for example, very pro-war). They hide behind words evacuated of meaning like "free speech" and "democracy".

There is NO hope in governments, NO hope in capitalism, NO hope in what is now most often lowest common denominator or client media.

The world they sell you is a lie. And they are all selling the same thing.

A feature of Nineteen-Eighty-Four was "The Two Minutes Hate" in which the government literally mandated citizens to spend two minutes a day visibly and enthusiastically hating an entirely fabricated enemy.

I hope you have your eyes open.

you could build cities
between my heart's crater rims
life's long bombardment

#575prompt #senryu #haiku #poetry #SmallPoems #Writing

With thanks to @aethelshane for the prompt - 241 - crater.

"All those right wing “think tanks” you see,
All the right wing stooges on your TV and radio;
They are paid to shape the narrative and limit the discourse
Of what it is even acceptable to want or think."

(From "You Have No Rights" by this author. Included in "Black Void" which is forthcoming.)