every post on r/Tonga: What's life like in Tonga? I'm white and thinking about visiting or moving there! every post on r/Polynesian: I'm white and want to get a Polynesian tattoo / write a Polynesian character / name my child/business something Polynesian, please validate me!

i've had a premonition that when Tr*mp d*es it will be in a funny way

my observation of the visual artists i follow who have been using genAI tools for several years is that it doesn't seem like any of them have really developed the practice further since then, and in some cases their non-AI work has actually deteriorated in quality

research has led me to reading up on the Bible... Exodus is straight up a horror movie, this reminds me of The Conjuring or some shit. has anyone done that

one of the most mentally helpful things of my life has been understanding my body's cyclical patterns of mood/focus and how to work with them nonjudgementally. I involuntarily move thru a set of ~1-3 week mental phases and each one is kinda like a superpower with an achilles heel

blowing my mind realising the word va (space/time/distance between) is everywhere in the polynesian vocab vaha = open sea between vaka = canoe vahe = divide vaʻinga = play faiva = performance (fai = do) lava = able hiva = sing/dance ava = opening vai = water manava = womb, heart, gut (mana = power)

i regularly have multilayered dreams where i am in sleep paralysis or a lucid dream but i feel too tired & heavy to control it, so i wake myself but "wake up" into a non-lucid dream. and it's like deeper dream layer = more tired/heavy feeling... what does all this mean

wait i just remembered intimate pronouns are actually a thing in tongan lol. you use them to emphasise strong love/respect/sympathy for whoever you're talking about :')

working on a searchable copy of Churchward's Tongan Grammar which will be the first one ever afaik. may also add my own annotations & layout edits for timeliness & readability. it will be free bc i'm for the culture unlike Some tongan language resource creators. millions will ako lea fakatonga

I’m not anxious about my writing accidentally sounding like AI because I write the way I need to, and the way I need to write is the most human thing I have. When AI starts to sound like me it will be because it tried to steal me, and it can only steal something that sounds like me

it went really well!! i think i actually helped a lot with translating the native speakers' way of explaining into terms the newer learners can grasp. it became more like a collaborative exchange for everyone and i realised this is how education is supposed to be. now i want to read freire again

new monnie prod by me 🩷 "out to dry" + "welcome to my island" (caroline polachek cover) artwork by jasmine jafari bfan.link/out-to-dry

the artist's #1 tool is intention. imo ceding any part of the process to any automation, AI or not, can dilute that (why i don't fw most algorithmic art). my core problem with genAI is that it just fully removes your freedom to iterate w specificity, which is The creative process

idk if this Conversation article is AI generated but either way i'm sick to death of this sentence structure holy shit

damn that's crazy, anyway the Solomon Islands is enclosed on all sides by a network of US colonies and military installations run by the "United States Indo-Pacific Command" whose insignia is a big fascist knife stabbing through the Pacific

this is my oversimplified external take but most of the time when i see left critiques of zohran it's because he's annoyingly moderate in words, but it seems like in practice he does a lot of genuine progressive policy. which is like the opposite of all other liberal politicians lol

i kinda reversed this because 1. bluesky is insanely shit for image and video, no hope for it as a visual platform in this state 2. if you talk about politics too much on twitter you get into the auspol outrage algorithm where 🇦🇺s brigade you if you say anything about race or colonialism

obviously One Nation doesn't represent "everyday aussies" and is really just the political vehicle of some mining & property magnates. i'm sure many ON supporters can see this. so the crazy thing to me is how many people are willing to be sold out for the promise of a license to be racist

most people probably don't realise there are solid pasifika communities in extremely random rural towns around the world like australia, the UK, i assume the US. i think it would be cool if there were more media about those specific experiences

> i attend our local tongan community's language class because i want to improve my high beginner/low intermediate level tongan > it starts at absolute basics so i'm cruising > second lesson i go to everyone thinks i speak really well and am way ahead > i'm co-running the next lesson

reading about the American folklorist Stith Thompson and i can't get over the name Stith. we don't have guys called Stith anymore

explaining gas export taxes to an australian: imagine a beer

getting back into sim racing... the lonelyspeck racing team is live

new song out today as the premiere track for katharsis' new compilation, 'changes' Lonelyspeck - Each Other compilation out may 11 🦋 katharsis-label.bandcamp.com/album/changes

i was thinking of starting a page/site to make socialist politics relatable to a Pacific context but then was happy to discover there's a new Pacific socialist publication. but after some observation they're giving white stupol trots so i'm back to wanting to make my own

i've been a long time hater of spotted doves because their sound pmo in a misophonia way but i've begun to think they are cute... also my baseline mild dislike/indifference to dogs has been shifting toward positive bc i love my friend's housemate's dog so much. and i'm nice to all spiders now

sydney added! lonelyspeck.neocities.org

if anyone is going to ability fest in melb next weekend i will be there playing guitar for daine :p

unaustralian

This is off northern 'New Britain' 🇵🇬 where Polynesians' ancient Papuan ancestors may have came from. We always cite the Lapita people as Polynesian ancestors - which they are - but I feel like it gets overlooked that the Polynesian culture didn't emerge until Lapita & Papuan peoples mixed

mythical street view drop in

found an 1890 Tongan-French-English dictionary with a lot of impractical but cool-looking page scans. also really into the chunky font

proceeding as expected

And yet no one used that process in the past 2.5 years while our prime minister materially supported a holocaust just to keep his govt in the good books of that same unpopular ageing insane American leader. So it's kind of like it doesn't even fkn matter isn't it

someone name dropped me for tdov... it's special and meaningful to hear that although i'm not really sure where i am with labels these days. genderfluid has felt more fitting than others. i'm wary of denying my own feelings but equally wary of appearing to claim an experience that isn't mine

media mainly but i really think a major factor is that they don't have a david pocock type "regular aussie" personality to translate their policies into truly mainstream aus sensibilities like beer prices or whatever. pocock is basically greens lite and he's insanely popular so it's not the policies

adl + mel on sale 💜 supports announced not expecting any traction here but is australian electronic music/hyperpop bsky a thing lonelyspeck.neocities.org

they'll just have to accept that they're going to be replaced

australia is on course to have a 2 party system comprised of a spineless nominally progressive party that's desperate to crush the true left, and a fascist party that's riding the global economic crises of imperialism. now i dont know anything about history but i think this will probably be fine

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (1997) Developed by Oddworld Inhabitants.

the world is frankly in a better place than i imagined like 5 years ago because i expected it to take like 10-15 excruciating years for the empire to fall this far. a world free from the US & israel feels conceivably close. which is a type of political hope i've never felt before lol

liberal zionism is still genocidal

AUS TOUR

latest euphemism for neocolonialism: "interoperability"

i've been considering making my music streamable/downloadable for free from my website in this format as a truly independent, no strings attached alternative like old times

remix dropping this friday that's the heaviest track i've ever made

so basically - Mossad arranged the firebombings on australian jewish buildings - then got Albo to blame Iran as pretext for cutting ties and setting up hostile relations - then Herzog made a "pastoral" visit to Aus that was really to brief the govt/ASIO on Israel's war plans am i missing anything

this but unironically

The government that sucks is still the only power actively fighting the global nazi pedo empire that wants to turn the entire global south into an enslaved wasteland. This kind of self-congratulatory soft both-sidesism is unhelpful and irrelevant