Since it's the last day of the Biden presidency, I thought it would be appropriate today to look back at the last four years and do a bit of a retrospective on Biden's term overall. This is the last time I plan to talk about Joe Biden for quite some time, so I'm not going to pull any punches. It is easy to frame Biden's shortcomings as president as a series of failures and inadequacies, things he wasn't able to do or was prevented from doing by circumstance or Republican opposition. Biden himself has often retreated to this narrative, which helps square how frequently he promised one thing and then failed to deliver. He'd love to cancel all student debt for everyone, but Presidents don't have the power to do that. [1] He promised "Day One" reversals of Trump's immigration and border restrictions, but these things "take time to undo". [2] You know the script. I believe this framing to be mostly inaccurate, and I think it obscures Biden's own politics quite a bit and relieves him of any responsibility of agency for his own decisions. Biden doesn't pursue more than piecemeal student loan forgiveness because Biden was one of the original architects of the student loan industry as it currently exists, and the system that generates obscene wealth for lenders by locking millions of borrowers in perpetual, generational debt is functioning exactly to his satisfaction. Biden does not stop deportations or halt construction on Trump's border wall because Biden does not want or need these things to stop. My most enduring observation about Joe Biden is that he is a conservative. He does not make things better because he does not want to. This "Aw, shucks" routine where he pays lipservice to progressive causes while being systematically prevented from making progress is a smokescreen. Progressive interests are not his interests. He is not a progressive. He is a conservative, and he governs as a conservative. I believe that the last few years will be seen in hindsight as the final window during which meaningful action could have been taken on any number of progressive issues before things were made irreparably worse under Trump 2.0. I believe Biden's term will come to be understood as the last opportunity when meaningful steps could have been taken in anticipation or prevention for the coming disasters, and that Biden will be known for near-universally failing to meet that moment. That is what I believe we will come to see as Biden's legacy. Issues that defined Biden's term include the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, which was began during Trump's first term and was actively going on during the 2020 election, and which continued long after Biden took office; immigration, which had been one of Trump's tentpole issues during his first term; policing, which had come to the forefront for a lot of Americans during the summer 2020 protests after the murder of George Floyd; climate change, which wreaked environmental disaster throughout Biden's term and which likely reached a new tipping point by the time he left office; queer and transgender rights, which have been under steady onslaught by conservative legislators in dozens of states throughout the country over the past several years; and the finally, the bloody and catastrophic war which has been waged Gaza over the last year of Biden's administration. Let's take a look back at some highlights from Biden's term and examine his legacy on each of these issues. On the pandemic: Biden took office 1 year into the Covid-19 pandemic, inheriting a national and global crisis of unprecedented kind and scale. Throughout his 2020 campaign, Biden had hammered Trump for his insufficient response to the pandemic [3], which no doubt played a large role in his defeating Trump in the election. Yet from the start, Biden's pandemic policy closely matched Trump's. On his first day, Biden announced plans to reopen schools in his first 100 days [4], even as the first Covid vaccine was still under review by the FDA, and it would be June 2022 before CDC guidance would allow vaccines for children under 5 [5]. In this way, it was immediately apparent that Biden's priority as president would be a reopening of institutions and the economy and a return to "business as usual", even if such moves contradicted public safety or "trusting science". When the administration did take action to protect the public, it was slow to do so: For example, while Covid self-tests had existed and were approved by the FDA by the end of 2020, it would be 2022 before the first wave of free tests would be made available to households (Biden's Press Secretary, Jen Psaki famously scoffed at the idea of offering free tests when it was posed as an option by a journalist in the press room, and it was likely the backlash against her which prompted the shift in policy) [6]. When Biden took office in 2021, the CDC had tallied between 350,000 and 400,000 Covid deaths so far; more than 450,000 more would die in the first year of Biden's term [7]. By mid-2022, the total death toll in the U.S. would be over 1 million [8], with an estimated 1.2 million more disabled [9]. The Biden administration formally ended the declared national health emergency for Covid in 2023 [10], ending a range of benefits and temporary protections for Americans including free at-home Covid tests, expanded Medicare coverage to pay for vaccine boosters, and temporary forbearance on student debt collection [11]. At the time of the announcement, in January 2023, the U.S. was still averaging over 3,000 weekly deaths from Covid. On immigration: Despite campaigning against Trump's inhumane border policies and riding a wave of pro-immigration sympathy into office, Biden's administration was largely defined by a continuation and expansion of Trump's own immigration policies. In February 2021, shortly after taking office, Biden's DHS issued new ICE guidance which expanded ICE's powers and made it easier for ICE to detain and deport immigrants [12] [13]. At the same time, ICE opened its first new migrant facility specifically for detained children [14]. Photos from the facility would be released in March 2021 showing children huddled under foil blankets, sleeping on thin mattresses the floor. [15] (All this, despite Biden's earlier campaign promises to halt all deportations for his first 100 days in office, and the frequent calls to free the "kids in cages" and stop separating families at the border.) Major media outlets reported that the number of children detained along the southern border tripled in the subsequent two weeks, although Biden's CBP commissioner and the White House Press Secretary both refused to confirm the number of unaccompanied children in custody [16] [17]. Throughout Biden's term, his administration has also continued construction of Trump's widely-maligned border wall [18], and has continued deporting immigrants at record rates, surpassing even Trump to reach a ten-year high of 271,000 deportations in 2024 alone [19]. On policing, the story is similar: Biden rode into office on a wave of anti-police sentiment and a groundswell of advocacy, which peaked in summer 2020 during his presidential campaign following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police [20]. Once in office, however, he has continually offered more money and resources, not just to ICE and border control but to police generally. In his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden famously quipped: "The answer is not to defund the police, it's the fund the police! Fund them! Fund them!"[21] In May 2022, Biden encouraged states and cities to spend their Covid relief and stimulus funds to hire more police officers. In 2023, the Biden administration announced an additional 334 million dollars in Justice Department grants to law enforcement agencies to use for hiring [22]. In fact, Biden's term has over seen an all-time high in federal subsidies for police [23], with sobering results: According to police violence watchdog groups, police in the U.S. killed more people in 2024 than in any other year on record, surpassing more than 3 killings by police officers per day nationwide [24]. On climate: In 2021, Biden's administration announced the opening of 80 million acres for new oil & gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Over 1 billion barrels of oil are estimated to be produced from the sale over the next 50 years [25]. Biden's administration would later open up even more additional drilling in Alaska [26] and the Gulf [27], and would approve oil and gas drilling permits at a faster rate than Trump [28]. Biden's willingness to keep expanding new drilling during his term is the capstone to more than a century of destructive industrialization, the effects of which we are all witnessing on a near-daily basis now. Wildfires of unprecedented destructive strength [29], hundred- and thousand-year storms [30], brutal cold snaps [31], and so on are only becoming more common, not only in the seasons and parts of the country where they have always occurred, but across bigger and bigger regions and at more and more times of the year [32]. And of course these effects are not limited to the U.S.: environmental devastation from man-made climate change is producing "heat domes" that exacerbate air pollution and other health dangers in areas throughout Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Europe [33]. 2024 was the not only the hottest recorded year in human history, but it crossed the crucial threshold of 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures [34], signaling that opportunity to avoid irreparable climate disaster may now be past. Things from here will only get more and more severe as climate disasters continue to escalate - although future policies may still be able to influence just how bad things get. On trans rights: Anti-trans legislation has exploded all over the country during Biden's term, primarily (though not exclusively) in Republican state legislatures. The targets for these efforts have been ever-shifting, from "parental rights" (i.e. rights to abuse your trans child), to restricting access to trans healthcare and puberty blockers, to banning trans athletes from participating in gendered sports, to bathroom bans, to "cross-dressing" and drag bans (in practice: bans on trans people wearing gender-affirming clothing). Every year of Biden's administration has been a record year in terms of number of anti-trans bills introduced nationwide [35], with more than six hundred such bills in 2024 alone. The response to this rising tide of anti-trans legislation from the Biden administration has been practically non-existent: It has introduced no bills and issued no executive actions to protect trans minors or adults from these discriminatory laws; nothing to enshrine access to HRT for trans adults or puberty blockers for trans youth; nothing to ban conversion therapy or prevent states from forcibly detransitioning people; nothing to protect trans athletes' ability to play on their teams; nothing to limit the drag and bathroom laws that threaten to make existing as a trans person in public a criminal offense. The few times that Biden has been seen taking action on LGBT issues during his term, it has been to compromise on trans rights and find common cause with Republicans [36]. With Trump's return nigh, the anti-trans wave has now reached the federal level, with legislation targeting trans adults and children already being advanced in just the first month of 2025 [37]. On the Israel-Gaza war: There are no words to describe the horror that has unfolded in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The wanton destruction we've seen predicated on that attack has seen a densely-populated urban center made largely uninhabitable; nearly 50,000 people killed [38], primarily noncombatants; and 9 in every 10 surviving Gazans displaced from their homes by the Israeli war machine [39]. Joe Biden's role in facilitating and abetting this massacre cannot be understated: As the most powerful geopolitical force in the world, Israel's closest and most supportive ally, and the producer of much of its arsenal, the United States has unique influence over Israel's ability to wage war. The American President, more than any other person on earth, save the Israeli Prime Minister, has the opportunity to directly shape Israeli policy and decide what level of destructive capability it is allowed to hold and unleash on populated civilian centers such as Gaza. Not to mince words: That the United States has continued to support the mass murder of civilians in Gaza, has continued supplying bombs and planes and guns and drones to the Israeli military, and has failed to apply sufficient pressure to reach a ceasefire before now makes the American government, and Joe Biden personally, directly culpable in the overwhelming death toll. On these issues and a range of others, Joe Biden's legacy is that he has had a unique opportunity to apply his will and the powers of his office towards making things better, towards protecting people's lives, towards preventing or mitigating impending disaster, and yet he has chosen at virtually every turn to abdicate that power and instead continue "business as usual". Even when it meant people dying. Even when it meant people dying. Trump's reelection is a disaster. His presence at the helm will in all likelihood, make every one of the above issues worse. The world the next Democratic President - if there is one - will inherit will no doubt be far worse than the one we have today. But make no mistake: Things will get worse under Trump in large part because of actions taken, or not taken, by Joe Biden. Biden's failures at confronting the pandemic, at mitigating climate change, at standing up for marginalized peoples have left us more vulnerable to the damage Trump will do on each of these fronts. Trans people are worse off in the face of an ascendant Trump presidency because Joe Biden didn't help us first. The climate is going to continue to worsen under Trump because Biden didn't use his chance - perhaps all of our last chance - to radically shift climate policy towards a more sustainable future. And to be really reductive: If Biden had put up more of a fight on any of these fronts, done more to protect and benefit all of us in the face of these varied disasters, we might not be looking down the barrel of a second Trump term in the first place. Sources: 1. forbes.com/.../biden-says-he-i… 2. thehill.com/.../531311-biden-w… 3. npr.org/.../coronavirus-is-a-k… 4. cnn.com/.../school-reopening-b… 5. healthier.stanfordchildrens.or… 6. theintercept.com/.../anger-jen… 7. statista.com/.../number-covid-… 8. apnews.com/.../us-covid-death-… 9. americanprogress.org/.../covid… 10. aamc.org/.../biden-terminates-… 11. usnews.com/.../the-student-loa… 12. aclu.org/.../aclu-response-dhs… 13. lawandcrime.com/.../bidens-new… 14. washingtonpost.com/.../05dfd58… 15. bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-5… 16. reuters.com/.../number-migrant… 17. washingtontimes.com/.../jen-ps… 18. texastribune.org/.../biden-bor… 19. bbc.com/news/articles/c36e41dx… 20. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F… 21. pbs.org/.../watch-fund-the-pol… 22. thehill.com/.../4289536-biden-… 23. stephensemler.com/.../tracking… 24. mappingpoliceviolence.org/ 25. biologicaldiversity.org/.../bi… 26. washingtonpost.com/.../alaska-… 27. theguardian.com/.../gulf-of-me… 28. subscriber.politicopro.com/...… 29. sustainablela.ucla.edu/2025law… 30. abc11.com/.../historic-nc-floo… 31. thehill.com/.../5089542-polar-… 32. insideclimatenews.org/.../fire… 33. ippmedia.com/.../worlds-record… 34. pbs.org/.../watch-live-nasa-an… 35. translegislation.com/learn 36. thenation.com/.../biden-title-… 37. cnn.com/.../house-vote-ban.../… 38. reuters.com/.../how-many-pales… 39. news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1…
In the wake of Wednesday’s announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas due to come into effect on Sunday, displaced Gazans – ground down by 15 months of devastating conflict – have told UN News they hope an end to their suffering is in …
Trying out Friendica. If all goes well will try to drag, uh, lure my friends off That Meta Site. Here's the internet "cat" tax (she's a guinea pig, I have no cats right now):
I haven't seen this particular show, but I whole-heartedly agree with his assessment of the BBC. The modern version is an absolute mess! From terrible accents (including in the news), to spelling errors on their site. I love the old BBC, and am constantly collecting clips with RP from there and elsewhere, but I have no time for modern nonsense. There are some exceptions (David Attenborough immediately comes to mind), but they are few and far between. That said, modern television and radio is terrible almost everywhere.
(No, it isn't striped like that! That's just to get your attention. And because, of course, the penguin can't decide between light or dark!)
Attached is a ZIP archive with the four files you need to add Bookface Light and Bookface Dark as customization options for the "Frio" theme on your Friendica server. Unlike the browser user stylesheets these will adopt the Accent Color setting.
Many thanks to @Matthias for giving me some clue how to do this! Once I installed Friendica on my development server their adaptation of my stylesheet to a theme template helped me figure it out.
Work-In-Progress. Use it in production at your own risk!
I'm sure I've missed some things because I've been adding styles as I encounter things that look like they need some attention, I don't know what content/features many add-ons create might look like. You will notice that there are many, many "!important" declarations in the CSS, which are necessary for a browser user stylesheet client-side. They probably aren't all necessary in a template/scheme server-side, but I didn't go through the code and remove any of them.
Changes from V4 of my user stylesheet:
Top Bar button placement fixed for phones with small screens (down to 320px wide)
Border radius on Compose Title input normalized to match the rest of the Compose inputs.
Found and fixed some form inputs with wrongly colored backgrounds.
Fixed position of Delegate Settings "Save" button to match all other "Submit" settings.
Instructions for use are in the included README file.
There is a well-known phenomenon that happens to those who write, I don't know if it's called "blank page problem", "blinking text cursor problem" or something else. It's when you open your favorite writing application and spend hours staring at a blinking cursor (you know, the vertical bar that indicates the current position where the next character will be inserted if you decide to type any letter) inside a blank document/text field.
It's not as if there were no ideas or thoughts going on within their minds, it's because they can't be translated into words... They could fully tap into their unconscious, a process called "stream-of-(un)consciousness", but it's easy said than done: try to describe the taste of chocolate without using "chocolate", "cacao", "sweet", "sweetener", "sugar", among similar terms, and you'll realize you simply can't do it.
And there are situations where the thing *can* be translated into words, but they *shouldn't* be. It's when they're aware of the possible unwanted consequences of expressing that thing, so they keep it restricted to their own thoughts. It's not as if they were thinking an unsavory thing, but they know that it can't be said out loudly.
One of those situations is when the thing is a secret. Say someone told them a very deep and serious secret. A secret so intricate that can't be expressed without compromising the secrecy of the thing (as well as the secrecy of the person who told the secret). It's like having to carry a heavy boulder, forever.
All of those situations will face the same things: a blank page, a blinking cursor and a desire that simply can't be fulfilled to express something that can't be said. It's uncomfortable, it's on the verge of the painful.
But wait: there's more! There's a worse scenario, a scenario I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. A scenario where those three situations happen simultaneously: it's a secret, it's a thing that have no words to express it, and it's a thing that can't be shouted out loudly.
Words have consequences. Actions have consequences. Yet holding things to oneself also has consequences. Internal pressure increases until it reaches critical state. One's brain will keep rehashing and rehashing it, it's inevitable. It's akin to a Cassandra curse: they have something going on inside their mind, yet nice/good reactions wouldn't be found if they decided to express it (supposing that they could translate it into words).
So they keep it to themselves, just as Cassandra. They're the only ones that could potentially understand it... or could they? It's where the situation becomes even worse: it's a thing that they can't understand by themselves, they need help to understand it, but they're forbidden to seek help to understand it, because they can't say it in the first place. Even when they have close friends or familiar people, they couldn't use their help, and these people probably wouldn't understand either.
And this is where it becomes the worst scenario: ain't no close friends to even consider the possibility of talking to, nor "far friends", no one. Maybe they should rely on LLMs? Lol, they can't "understand" a thing, they're just fancy auto-completing algorithms, they can't reason, they can't help with the ineffable. Neither can that writing app, which is still blank, while they lost count on how many times its cursor blinked. Ain't no one besides themselves to try to tell the thing.
This is the ineloquibilis scenario: can't be said, can't be held to oneself either...
A bit over a decade ago I built a small following on Facebook. This was actually the first image I posted there:
Along with many others for reasons I won’t go into on this post, I felt the time had arrived to move to a different ‘verse for my creative content. The Fediverse.
And while many, many others have moved to the Pixelfed-verse (a terrific subset of the Fediverse ecosystem), I have decided to use the Friendica-verse instead.
Why? Well for starters, I like to tell stories when posting my Imagery. I like to share what was involved in the creation of it, perhaps share some background of the where/when/why that moment occurred, and maybe engage in a discussion with-like minded people. To me my images are also stories. And to do all that, a Facebook like format simply works better for me than an Instagram-like one.
But trust me, I am enjoying the ^%** out of all the content creators swarming to Pixelfed. But the beauty of the Fediverse is that all of this is connected together, and one approach to interacting and engaging with each other does not negate a different approach.
So, welcome to my little corner of the creative content world. Unlike Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, TikTok, X, etc… you will find no ads here. You will find no A.I. data mining. And hopefully you will find a greatly reduced pile of BS.
Let’s see if we can all do something special here. Together.
Downloaded my data from #Twitter today (not entirely sure why; I'll probably delete it in a year). Already on #Mastodon at @Alfredo and on #Pixelfed at @AlfredoL@pixey.org . Joining the crowd at helloquittex.com on Tuesday.
@leastaction @Alfredo I'm always downloading my data whenever I leave a platform. I mean, it's my entire history there. It's a pity to lose it like that in a snap.
First Post: Lazy Sunday day, got a ham in the slow cooker with some roasted veg in the oven while I work my way through the Star Trek Movies. The Undiscovered Country is next.
A week ago, I got myself a #Friendica account, and I've been #exploring it since then. My plan is to leave Facebook a bit later this year (not just "pause", or "visit sparsely", as I've done for the last couple of years), and I've made an online event where I've invited all of my Facebook acquaintances. A small subset might be interested in exploring additional platforms.
Friendica has its advantages, but so do diaspora*.
Friendica has a #Calendar function, kind of like Facebook's #Events. In my opinion, that's the only thing "missing" on Diaspora (or does it exist, and I'm the one who have missed it?), and acquiring that, it might help me move some people with me (even if they don't leave Facebook, it would be nice to still have some place to interact with them, and I think they too should explore other options).
Diaspora auto-embeds / gives a preview of links. As far as I've noticed, Friendica does not. Diaspora auto-collapses long posts. As far as I've noticed, Friendica does not.
Then again, posts (and comments) are editable on Friendica. Editing posts and/or comments are not possible on diaspora* (or were they for a while? ... can't remember). There are advantages of both approaches.
My posts on diaspora* seem to #federate fine to Friendica, but (my) posts on Friendica seem to take their time (none has federated in that direction as of yet). Then again, the admin on the Friendica instance I'm on posted about a backlog, so that may flow better with time?
I'm also considering whether to get a #Mastodon account. I had Twitter, but stopped using it, and then (quite recently) finally deleted my account.
I have no plans to leave diaspora*, but as things are at the moment, I think it will be easier to "lure" people over to Friendica or Mastodon (than to diaspora*), so if they're "there" — or whichever non-Meta platform they chose — I think I would like to have profiles there as well.
Twitter heb ik nooit gehad. Evenmin TikTok...Maar ben razend benieuwd hoe morgen eruit gaat zien. Denk dat het chaos wordt... Goed van je dat je van Twitter af bent! Dit is een manier van vreedzaam protesteren en mits dit mondiaal gebeurt, kan dit niet zonder gevolgen zijn. Deze media zijn een onderdeel van de macht van Trump en consorten. Elk klein beetje wat we ze kunnen afnemen , is weer iets! Niets doen is geen optie. Liefs terug ❤
It seems like an absurd joke to me that Tik Tok shut themselves down, practically begging for Vice President Trump's help. Now it seems it's back up and they thank the incoming VP.
Just told my girlfriend about the fediverse. I think I lost her a bit when I started enumerating all the services I can use here. I got her back when we discussed how to utilize this for smaller groups to get out of Silicon Hell Valleys grip
I tend to focus on Mastodon, Friendica, and Pixelfed when I present the Fediverse to people. Anything more than that requires the person having mentioned something specific they want to do, like podcasts or videosharing, the aforementioned ones aren't built for. I believe it helps avoiding paralysis of choice.
Thats a good point! I guess I just got kinda excited when I discovered all the possibilities, that I didn't recognize when to stop 😀 I think that the use of those three, you mention, should help alot of people feel more at home here
Ruud
in reply to Sarsaparilla Sam • •