Pinned toot

Looking at the amount of money spent to win elections and at the result of polling the public (“reinstate Trump anyone?”) “on the spur of the moment” (vox populi, vox dei?) I would like to remind us all that there still is a forgotten, but classic alternative out there, which according to Aristotle is the only, truly democratic one:

youtu.be/12V9rV_bp_M

🇬🇧Dirty tricks around tomorrow's #ChatControl showdown vote? Several critical governments are discussing whether to oppose or to abstain. If the Belgian presidency tomorrow only ask which governments are opposed, silence could be counted as approving!
patrick-breyer.de/en/council-t

Show thread

The clock is ticking: if EU citizens don’t act now, #ChatControl could become a reality – and online privacy a thing of the past. threema.ch/bp/stop-chat-contro

"Just last week, we reported on an article in Wired that claims nearly half of all renewable energy is being used to power data centers. It isn’t powering schools or hospitals or disadvantaged neighborhoods. It is being used to make more money for Google, X, Amazon, and Facebook."

cleantechnica.com/2024/06/14/c

"Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status."

Ursula K. Le Guin

Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned
Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky womb:
He also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement.
The IBM PC was his company's first major initiative, after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action.
IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years -- and IBM's delaying tactic paid off:
When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook.

But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal,
and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware
(one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software).
IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system:
they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.
The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft.
When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue,
this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft
– customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft,
creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market.
Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?
The IBM PC story teaches us two things:
stronger antitrust enforcement
-- and weaker IP protections
spur innovation and open markets for scrappy startups to grow to be big, important firms.
Microsoft learned the opposite:
monopolies are wildly profitable;
expansive IP protects monopolies;
you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government -- until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House
(Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them).
@pluralistic
pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/pat

Warum enthalten Wahlzettel nicht die Optionen:

o Keine der Parteien spricht mich wirklich an.

o Ich möchte nicht repräsentiert, sondern gefragt werden.

?

Ich seh schon, die Piraten haben noch immer nicht verstanden, warum sie unwählbar sind.

Why are people so active on again? The same old pattern of bubble against bubble fights without any rational, patient deliberation all over again?

“Look here, I told you!”
“No way, here’s the cherry I just picked that should teach you!”

And on and on it goes.

is the bane of modern democracy imho.

Thoughts?

Is rational deliberation still possible in the conflict between Israel and Palestine? Terror is no way out and suppression on the other hand is no option either. On X—former Twitter—German progressives are quick to denounce pro Palestinian reasoning as antisemitism. Yet, where are the people, who address both sides faults?

Was Israel always in the right? Was there really no unlawfulness and suppression on their side? How to have peace without a true and fair appraisal?

theconversation.com/how-israel

Wer meint, Verteidigungsfähigkeit sei gut und Kriegstüchtigkeit sei schlecht, der liefert wohl auch nur Sandsäcke aber keine Pumpen in Flutgebiete?

Show more
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.