"By targeting Pope Leo XIV, Trump exposes the limits of power when faced with a moral authority it cannot silence. ...
The first thing to say about this attack is what it is not. It is not a sign of strength. Political power turns on a moral voice only when it has failed to contain it. If Leo were irrelevant, he would not be worth a sentence on Truth Social."
"He is being named precisely because his word has begun to leave a mark — in the conscience of American Catholics, in the European chancelleries, in the very military apparatus that, weeks earlier, had felt the need to summon the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, to the Pentagon. To attack the pope is to concede that the pope matters."
"What we are witnessing, then, is not a clash of personalities but the friction between two operating systems. On one side, a grammar of force: deterrence, national exceptionalism, the 'providential' use of power, a re-theologization of politics in which God is enlisted to bless the strong."
"On the other hand, a grammar of the Gospel: dialogue, moral limits, international law, the inviolable dignity of the innocent, the refusal to drag the name of God into the language of death. ...
The deepest consequences of this episode will be felt not in Rome but in the United States, and not next week but over the coming years. The attack forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades."
"Successive White Houses have known how to deal with popes who could be framed as 'foreign': the Argentine, the Polish, the German, the Pole who confronted communism, the Latin American who confronted capitalism. There was always a cultural distance that made it possible to describe papal criticism as an outside voice failing to understand America."
"With Leo, that shortcut is closed. He is American, he speaks the language from the inside, he knows the reflexes, the liturgies, the temptations."
Again: Trump's attack on Leo "forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades."
The US Catholic bishops, the bulk of them appointed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have for decades provided abysmal pastoral and moral leadership.
They, and the white Catholics they have led into the dead end of voting for Trump three times now, are deeply complicit in the Trump presidency and the horror show unfolding in front of us now.
They silenced a generation of theologians who had the gifts and calling to shape a robust Catholicism according to the Vatican II norms, a church engaged dialogically with the world around it, imparting its values in respectful dialogue with secular culture.
They allied themselves wirh reactionary, racist white evangelicals fleeing the Democratic party after it pushed through civil rights legislation for people of color. They played a preeminent role in getting this alliance to fixate on abortion and sexual morality as the only moral issues deserving attention — so that many Catholics now think matters of war and peace are political and not moral issues.
The US Catholic bishops hand-picked by John Paul II and Benedict XVI led their flock into the moral dead end of assuming that issues like healthcare for needy people, economic justice for those on the margins of society, how immigrants are treated, are just political and not moral issues. The theologians silenced by these bishops were capable of teachiing lay Catholics a Catholicism much more faithful to far richer moral norms.
In their lust for power and to preserve the privilege of an all-male, ostensibly celibate clerical elite, the US Catholic bishops of recent decades sacrificed the future of the church to maintenance of a mutable, historically conditioned clerical system. They slapped survivors of clerical sexual abuse in the face, alienated women, attacked LGBTQ people.
People have walked away from the Catholic church in droves, as the bishops stand by in silence.
What's happening now "forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades": Antonio Spadaro is right to say this.
But even now, large numbers of the US Catholic bishops resist Leo's leadership as they did Francis and hunger for the days when the Polish and German popes were in power and the church was fixated on clerical domination and pelvic morality.
Not that way, I may like kink, but I'm not kinky, definitely not like that. No, after I got rid of my LLC, I decided to go from a sci-fi joke for the company name to a über generic branding this time with ٭GENERAL٭ Delivery branding. Thanks to CyberGwen , I've got a logo…
![media-2]
From there it was just a matter of getting the logo put onto things, both a safety vest ordered from AliExpress
Quality from him is good, but I should've gone with a larger and/or custom size, and maybe had him do a coloured background, because this one looks kinda boring.
All in all, I think I'm out around $100 for this, plus picked up a pair of replacement magnets for the back, a pair of yellow diamonds, one reading delivery driver, the other frequent stops, those fit perfectly on either side of my license plat.
Chicago Public Library and CPS announced the expansion of The 81 Club, building on a pilot launched in 2022 to give students access to the library system's vast collection and databases.
Ok, so last month I sold a large number of my husband's books using three apps for selling them. And on Monday I reviewed that apps, calling out one of them for dragging their heals on paying me. Gee, surprise, surprise, I got paid last night, and while they inspected my first two buys (they limit buys to 100 books) and flagged a couple books as unacceptable, the third one went from received to paid with nothing in between… I think someone saw my review.
Once libraries are nonexistent any modern fascist movement wouldn't even have to burn books, but flick one switch and they'd be remotely deleted from your Amazon Kindle or similar digital “library”.
Capitalists are already building the infrastructure to do this through DRM, so stop believing tech is apolitical - the defunding of libraries and paywalling of information are all part of this.
Another call for work! Hire me to manage the stuff you have connected to the internet, regardless of operating system (yes, even that one), support status (new, current, or legacy hardware and software) or location. Server, desktop, mobile, embedded.
Out of the cloud, into the cloud, from that cloud to that other cloud, on-prem, in a local datacenter; you name it, I know how to do it, and will maintain it for as long as you need it.
I will even give you a 20% discount on your first invoice if you contract me for recurring work via this here fediverse!
OK, since tariffs fuckery is impacting my bottomline faster than I expected, with multiple clients having projects cancelled and being late with paying their invoices to the point where it is starting to become my problem, a renewed call for ops cons…
I'd missed this news story, maybe you did too: "U.S. agriculture equipment maker Deere on Monday agreed to pay $99 million into a settlement fund for farms and farmers that are part of a class action over costs and access to repairs." wincountry.com/2026/04/06/deer…
April 6 (Reuters) - U.S. agriculture equipment maker Deere on Monday agreed to pay $99 million into a settlement fund for farms and farmers that are part of a class action over costs and access to repairs.
They're either over confident, or things are rigged, because that's incredibly tone deaf, voters will not be happy with that, and the elections we've had make it pretty clear that voters aren't going to take it
Hey look, I've got jeans, jeans I'm proud of. Yeah, not everyone is proud of their genes, but…
Ooops, wait, wrong type of jeans. Seriously though, tis been a long, long time since I wore jeans because of two problems, one is that within ten washes, they're shrunk versus ten years for my cargo pants. The other is right there, cargo pants, cargo jeans don't exist. I don't need all those pockets, in fact the leg pockets hold my phone, wallet and car key, and a handkerchief in one other pocket, that's it.
Still, gotta have my cargos. So, didn't like WalMart's price for cargo pants, and since my gram had given me an Amazon gift card for Christmas, I decided to see what Amazon could do for me. After looking at pants for a while, they offered me loose fit 'fashion jeans'. More like loose fit cargo jeans!¡! Loose fit, good, everything is slim fit these days, and trust me, if'n there's not a law about stuffing my fat old body into a pair of slim fit jeans, there should be. So I ordered a pair, there's a selection of waists, but only one leg length for each, which thankfully worked for me, little long, but that's more a matter of me being an odd numbered size when pants come in even numbers, not their choice of length. So, we ordered one pair, tried them when they got here (good), washed them and tried them again (still good). Ordered two more pair in different colours, fit just as well, and all of them after a few washes have no fit problems.
I’m hard to find jeans for as well. Just recently got a few pairs after finding some Wrangler relaxed fit stretch jeans that worked for me. Being able to crouch without having them either try to insult or injure me is basically my go to test for pants at this point. They passed! Would be cool to have a couple pairs of cargo pants for when I go out with my cameras, you can never have too many pockets for film, batteries, etc.
⚠️ Heads up - there's a #Mastodon #scam bot doing the rounds. Mastodon does not "temporarily restrict your visibility", if you see a DM or post to that affect begging you to click a link to restore anything, do not click it - report it instead.
💬 0 🔁 1 ❤️ 2 · Apple is erasing Lebanese villages from its maps while Israel bombs them into rubble, and calling it a "product availability" issue. Screenshots circulating since April 12 show App…
Harry S. Truman was the first U.S. president to formally propose a comprehensive, national universal health insurance plan
In 1945 he proposed a single, federally run system for all Americans.
While Truman is the most prominent historical advocate, Presidents Richard Nixon and Theodore Roosevelt also supported different forms of universal healthcare coverage.
Back in 1945 -- a mere seven months into a presidency he inherited from Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Truman proposed a “universal” national health insurance program.
💬 167 🔁 1029 ❤️ 2316 · It's simple math that capitalists refuses to learn up until the people who they vote for are making them lose their benefits that they got from the government.
Been trying a GoSocial sorta, haven't really done much, but I did start accessing it through Phanpy. Nice enough, and I love Phanpy, but I don't see anything that makes it special, from a user stand point, there's nothing to distinguish it from Mastodon, Wafrn, etc, unless I'm missing something. Sure, supposedly its supposed to be easy and lightweight to host, but if you're not hosting, that doesn't really matter, does it?
I think my big complaint about GTS is the same I have for Snak, Hollos and all the other single user/small number of user AP software, they don't offer any features you can't get somewhere else. Look over at Friendica for what you could offer, Diaspora sharing in addition to AP, or maybe a built in RSS feed reader, or both. Or Wafrn and built in Bluesky support. Or to be original, maybe a queue function, perfect for flood control and enforcing good neighbor behavior.
yes, but "easy and lightweight to host" is the important thing if you want to host your fediverse home yourself. If you just want to get an account somewhere on somebody’s server mastodon (or other solutions) with all its bells and whistle is a good choice, of course.
Indeed, no complaints about that, its a good thing, but its just there's so many lightweight ones out there, I only named the two (three if'n you include GTS) that I can remember, so to me it seems it needs something to make it stand out to the users.
It's a matter of personal taste I guess. I for example don't want a RSS reader in my fediverse software and look with a "wtf!" on my face when I see all the strange stuff that is scrolling around at a misskey instance. 😀 it's great that we have solutions for all tastes! 👍
Misskey is fun Seriously though, if'n RSS feeds were incorporated as they are on Friendica, you wouldn't notice them unless you used them, much like Markdown. In Friendica if'n I want to add an RSS feed, I follow the same procedure as I do to follow say you, but instead of a Fediverse handle, I put in the RSS feed's URL, the rest of the procedure is the same, and RSS posts show up in my timeline, just like any post except that the reply and boost buttons are greyed out as you can only quote boost an RSS post. I use it over there to follow some news sites, some comics, and some Tumblrs, though Tumblrs are hard to do as apparently Tumblr managed to screw up RSS.
I guess it depends what you are looking for. As you say, if hosting, Mastodon is a beast to install and manage. GtS is a very easy, lightweight hosting.
I can't speak of Snac or Hollos, but GtS gives some flexibility which Mastodon is not interested in. Example: Configurable character limits for post; increased Poll options; Markdown for better post formatting. Mastodon boffins refuse to give the user those choices.
I dabbled in Friendica but found it bloated and confusing.
At the end of the day, everyone has their own needs
Gotcha, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, wasn't aware of those extra features, but they definitely count as defining feature. I don't think they're a killer feature, but they offer a good reason for someone to choose GTS beyond just easy self-hosting.
Yeah, I use Friendica for my blog, but I would definitely prefer something better, like Wafrn here, but there are those few features that I really want but can't find anywhere else. What's kinda annoying about that is that the person who created Friendica offers a library of parts that can be used to build something else, but nothing's come from it.
I think you’ve nailed gotosocial’s USP there: it’s /intended/ to be very similar to mastodon for the end user, but it’s *vastly* more simple and less resource hungry to host for relatively small numbers of users.
@daj@gofer.social Oh definitely, my compliments to the cooks, its a great product, its just that outside of hosting it didn't seem like there was much else to it until @daj corrected me. Still not the product for me, but definitely can see the appeal, the features he named are found in Pleroma, but I think GTS feels like a better product.
I was made redundant so I’m on the hunt for my next #iOS engineer role. I have over 15 years of experience and I’m based in London. Boosts much appreciated! #FediHire
My Android phone can no longer use VLC for some reason. Either VLC broke and reinstalls don't help, or my phone broke VLC. Anybody got any low overhead adequate replacements?
💬 4 🔁 117 ❤️ 218 · USS Gerald R. Ford is our best warship. It is parked off the coast of Israel. Not in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf near Iran.
It will used a pretext for full war with Iran.
Ok, seem to have an ant problem in my kitchen, that's new. Not just new here, but for how messy I am, I don't think I've ever had a problem with ants in my house. Problem showed up in force Friday afternoon, I scrubbed everything down, but woke up to a return here. They seem to be mostly staying around one corner of the fridge and there's no signs of where they're coming from. Ant traps and ant spray I guess, just make sure the spray isn't from GI Ant Company, can would prolly spray ants everywhere if'n it was
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"He is being named precisely because his word has begun to leave a mark — in the conscience of American Catholics, in the European chancelleries, in the very military apparatus that, weeks earlier, had felt the need to summon the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, to the Pentagon. To attack the pope is to concede that the pope matters."
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/2
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"What we are witnessing, then, is not a clash of personalities but the friction between two operating systems. On one side, a grammar of force: deterrence, national exceptionalism, the 'providential' use of power, a re-theologization of politics in which God is enlisted to bless the strong."
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/3
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"On the other hand, a grammar of the Gospel: dialogue, moral limits, international law, the inviolable dignity of the innocent, the refusal to drag the name of God into the language of death. ...
The deepest consequences of this episode will be felt not in Rome but in the United States, and not next week but over the coming years. The attack forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades."
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/4
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"Successive White Houses have known how to deal with popes who could be framed as 'foreign': the Argentine, the Polish, the German, the Pole who confronted communism, the Latin American who confronted capitalism. There was always a cultural distance that made it possible to describe papal criticism as an outside voice failing to understand America."
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/5
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •"With Leo, that shortcut is closed. He is American, he speaks the language from the inside, he knows the reflexes, the liturgies, the temptations."
Again: Trump's attack on Leo "forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades."
The US Catholic bishops, the bulk of them appointed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have for decades provided abysmal pastoral and moral leadership.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/6
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •They, and the white Catholics they have led into the dead end of voting for Trump three times now, are deeply complicit in the Trump presidency and the horror show unfolding in front of us now.
They silenced a generation of theologians who had the gifts and calling to shape a robust Catholicism according to the Vatican II norms, a church engaged dialogically with the world around it, imparting its values in respectful dialogue with secular culture.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/7
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •They allied themselves wirh reactionary, racist white evangelicals fleeing the Democratic party after it pushed through civil rights legislation for people of color. They played a preeminent role in getting this alliance to fixate on abortion and sexual morality as the only moral issues deserving attention — so that many Catholics now think matters of war and peace are political and not moral issues.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/8
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •The US Catholic bishops hand-picked by John Paul II and Benedict XVI led their flock into the moral dead end of assuming that issues like healthcare for needy people, economic justice for those on the margins of society, how immigrants are treated, are just political and not moral issues. The theologians silenced by these bishops were capable of teachiing lay Catholics a Catholicism much more faithful to far richer moral norms.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/9
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •In their lust for power and to preserve the privilege of an all-male, ostensibly celibate clerical elite, the US Catholic bishops of recent decades sacrificed the future of the church to maintenance of a mutable, historically conditioned clerical system. They slapped survivors of clerical sexual abuse in the face, alienated women, attacked LGBTQ people.
People have walked away from the Catholic church in droves, as the bishops stand by in silence.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/10
William Lindsey
in reply to William Lindsey • • •What's happening now "forces a clarification that the American Catholic community has postponed for decades": Antonio Spadaro is right to say this.
But even now, large numbers of the US Catholic bishops resist Leo's leadership as they did Francis and hunger for the days when the Polish and German popes were in power and the church was fixated on clerical domination and pelvic morality.
#PopeLeo #Trump #war #morality #power
/11